Introduction

Welcome
This is the first post on my brand new blog and I want to welcome everybody who reads this blog about all the elements that make a good solution design. I hope you enjoy it.

Who am I
My name is Marcus Hoff and I'm a network architect. I have worked in the network world for the past 10 years and even longer in the IT world. Mainly my employers have been ISPs but I have also worked for VoIP companies and even had my own business.
I finished my Masters in Telecommunications Engineering in 2003 and have designed networks, security solutions and products for service providers and enterprises of many kinds and sizes ever since.

Why this blog
I read an article saying, that there are 1 million new blogs created every day. So what is the point of being one in a million?

Like most blogs I have something I want to share with you.

Through my work, I have seen the same problems, faced the same decisions and met the same attitude over and over again. Always thinking, that "next time it is different" or "if only things where done my way". But "next time" isn't different and when I actually get it "my way", it doesn't turn out how I imagined. I finally realized, what the problems are and why next time is going to be exactly the same and why dictating the "right way" never turns out they way I imagined.
It's as simple as this: If I think I know the solution, I haven't understood the problem.

I whish I had known this 10 years ago and that's why I want to share this with you. If this can help, just a few of you to think different about how you approach to solution design and give you that "a-ha!" moment, then that will be my tiny contribution to the network world. And if you take the time to write about your experiences, good or bad, it will also make me feel better, knowing what works, and what doesn't.

What this blog is and isn't
This blog is about what the above means in network and solution design. I'll be writing about problems, rather than solutions and how to look at them. I'll be writing about how some solutions actually are the problems. I'll try to show you how to approach the problems, by first being able to identify them.

This isn't a place to look for updates on the newest technologies or a place to find ready-to-use designs or to help with the specific syntax of an implementation. No solution or design I present here will work in your situation, they can be helpful to look at and you can draw inspiration from them, but true solutions only arise organically from understanding the problems.

I welcome any feedback about my posts, good or bad. I love to hear about your experiences, problems and solutions. If there is anything you would like to read about on the blog, please let me know.