Networks: The Decisions Behind the Design - Insights from Real World Engineers
About the event
Every network is the result of hundreds of design decisions. Some are driven by performance. Others by resilience, security, cost, or operational simplicity. The best designs are rarely accidental, they're shaped by experience, trade-offs, and lessons learned along the way. Join us on 7th October at the Covent Garden Hotel in London for the next GB Network User Group (GBNUG) meetup, where experienced network engineers and architects will share the thinking behind the networks they build and operate. Rather than focusing on products or vendor presentations, this event explores the practical decisions that shape modern network infrastructure. Our speakers will discuss the challenges they've encountered, why they made certain architectural choices, what they would do differently today, and the insights they've gained from real-world deployments. Whether you design enterprise, cloud, service provider, or hybrid networks, you'll leave with practical ideas and perspectives that you can apply to your own environment. What you'll gain: • Hear first-hand experiences from practising network engineers. • Understand the trade-offs behind real architectural decisions. • Learn how others approach resilience, scalability, automation, security, and operational efficiency. • Ask questions and take part in open technical discussions. • Meet fellow network engineers, architects, and infrastructure professionals from across the UK. If you're passionate about networking and want to hear the stories behind real-world network design, we'd love to see you in London on 7th October. Register today to secure your place. Supported by Alkira and Megaport. ------------ Speakers Michael Daly \| Co-Founder \| M5L Consulting Limited Henry Ford, Henry Royce, and Brentford FC Walk Into a Network... *An argument for building only what you actually need to* Henry Ford built cars that were precise, with every part interchangeable, pulled at random off a shelf. Henry Royce built cars that were accurate, with bespoke parts hand-filed until they fit. Most network engineers like to think their network is the second kind: a carefully crafted, purpose-built thing. It usually isn't. It's neither precise nor accurate, it's just a decade of firefighting, acquisitions, and one engineer's favourite vendor, wearing a craftsman's overalls. This talk borrows Ford's precision and Royce's accuracy, then turns to Billy Beane (The manager at the Oakland A's Baseball team) who won by ignoring what looked impressive and paying only for what actually won games and to Brentford FC, who've run the same playbook in the Premier League with a fraction of their rivals' budgets. Together they make an uncomfortable case: stop building what you're only keeping out of habit or pride, and start being honest about what genuinely deserves hand-built, bespoke attention. Precision and accuracy aren't virtues. They're cost decisions. ------------ Scott Rowlandson \| Founder \| NetAutomate AI-Augmented Network Automation AI is increasingly appearing in network operations, but often as little more than a chatbot or recommendation engine. This talk explores what happens when AI is embedded directly into a governed automation workflow: interpreting declarative intent, assessing requests against policy, generating configuration, independently verifying the result and learning from execution outcomes. Drawing on practical enterprise examples across firewalling, application delivery and disaster recovery, Scott Rowlandson will demonstrate how AI can augment existing network automation without removing control, accountability or auditability from the engineers responsible for it.
