On Thu, 3 Jan 2008 12:53:24 -0500 "William Herrin" <herrin-nanog@dirtside.com> wrote:
On Jan 3, 2008 11:25 AM, Tim Franklin <tim@pelican.org> wrote:
Only assuming the nature of your mistake is 'turn it off'.
Do you mean to tell me there's actually such a thing as a network engineer who creates and uses a test plan every single time he makes a change to every firewall he deals with? I thought such beings were a myth, like unicorns and space aliens!
I've had to do this. When there's SLAs / money involved for failure, you can't cowboy anything - because you're risking your job if you do. Funny thing is, going through a "rehersal" before you make any change increases significantly your chances of success - and now I prefer to plan my changes in detail before I do them, as it makes me look a lot better at my job. A firewall change in particular, because of the security consequences of mistake, justifies planning and review before implementation. Regards, Mark. -- "Sheep are slow and tasty, and therefore must remain constantly alert." - Bruce Schneier, "Beyond Fear"