Remember the network? Long before "infrastructure as code", container orchestration, cluster management, or death by 1,000 clicks in some labyrinthine cloud configuration console, the network was an essential layer (or 3) of IT operations.

This may cause some to call for their fainting couch, but I never the less must inform you that the network never went away, became irrelevant, or was simplified to the point where it didn’t matter.

The network - good old route and switch, packets and bits (and more importantly flow) networking - is alive and kicking and more important than ever to those of us who care about the performance and availability of our applications.

More to the point, not only is the network the metaphorical plumbing through which all your precious non-metaphorical observability and monitoring data flows; it holds secrets you’ll never find in the traces, events, metrics, and logs of typical application observability solutions.

In this talk I’ll reveal the observability secrets hiding in plain sight within your network; suggest ways to access that information; and highlight the insights and value you’re missing if that data remains invisible, unused, or ignored.

In my sordid career, I have been an actor, bug exterminator and wild-animal remover (nothing crazy like pumas or wildebeests. Just skunks, snakes, and raccoons.), electrician, carpenter, stage-combat