TracketPacer

TracketPacer

@tracketpacer.com

🚀rockit network engineer 👩🏼‍💻ethernet fangirl 🛜 weird use cases & silly tech! 🌎 tracketpacer.com/links

14.3K followers220 following2K posts

i feel like every other week i learn about a new guy in cybersecurity or networking who’s a batshit right wing christian freak who hates The Queers. im tired grandpa

network engineer interviews be like “you need to have expert level knowledge & experience working with BGP, OSPF, IS-IS, 4 major vendors, & route redistribution in production” …& then the job is just answering the same easy customer ticket over & over forever

it’s spider season in seattle, which means it’s time for me to abduct a bunch of juvenile orb weavers & rehome them in my garden

im back for WiFi Day 2026 my dudessssss let’s go!! October 22 @ 12-3pm ET Ekahau is giving away a Sidekick 2, full license, & ECSE training to one lucky winner drawn out of the registrants! all u gotta do is be on stream when we call yr name 🛜

> work on project 2 days straight, very pleased with progress > nice diagram, good code, well-thought-out test plan > “thanks for doing this, Lexie, but we need to completely scrap it and do something much more over-engineered and complex” 😐

some of u may remember me posting a fundraiser link ~2 yrs ago, where i smashed some network stuff to raise $ for a litter of puppies that my friends found on the side of the road in TX. well, things have come full circle bc i have now adopted one of those (grown) puppies!! her name is Siana ♥️

one time i made a joke inside of a larger joke about getting hit on while working in a male dominated field & one of my coworkers reported it to HR because they were worried it meant i was getting sexually harassed??? i can’t anymore dude

if u have ever wanted to see me say “i can’t talk about that because ITAR” in person now’s your chance

TracketPacer@tracketpacer.com

i will be a panelist at WA NUG’s fall event this week, 9/24! come hang out if you’re in the seattle area! (it’s free, you just gotta RSVP) www.usnua.com/live/wanug-f...

the amount of stuff that ethernet PHYs can report, & the depth it gets to, is wild. we don’t see half of it in our usual show commands, or any network GUI. and unless you have like, a PHY EVB, or a custom-made or jailbroken network device, this stuff just sits in the background

every day i think “we can’t get more end stage capitalism than this” & then openai goes & hosts a LuXuRy iNfLuEnCeR eVeNt to… what, try to make everyone excited for the worst job market in a decade & AI shoved down all our throats??

(yes i blocked it—it is on its own IOT LAN where nothing is allowed to reach out to the internet—you can see the rule hits in the screenshot. but it still continues to send requests despite the block)

during the course of this stream i discovered data center simulator. lets just say i know what i’ll be doing next time

TracketPacer@tracketpacer.com

need an excuse to get used to OBS/twitch again. will be streamin waterpark simulator tonight @ 5ish PT :3 we can talk networking or not! twitch.tv/tracketpacer

i am just trying to supplement my income so that i’m not reliant on a single source. just being careful. promise not to push anything i don’t think is cool & worthwhile! thanks for all the support :3

every neteng job posting: - 10+ yrs exp - master’s degree in: ee, compsci, quantum physics - expert in BGP, MPLS, EVPN/VXLAN, CLOS/spine arch, ECMP, python, ansible, AWS, NIST - intimate knowledge of all network monitoring software in existence - exp w all network vendors - salary: 100k, seattle/LA

charge shark, update shark, get DHCP shark, enable NTP shark, enable toaster shark, deploy LLDP recon payload shark (…btw the other tool i used here to explore is the netally cyberscope!)

in the last 5 months i have spent more time refuting claims made by claude about networking that software engineers insist i look into than actually doing network engineering.

for an engineer like me who is maximally using Sonnet, and hasn't yet switched to a local model, it's about $6k a month, or $72k a year. it is a very very hefty fraction of the salary, & is going to be pretty unaffordable to orgs that don't see 2x+ productivity on highly-paid employees.