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The Thinking Network Series

The Thinking Network Series

The Thinking Network

A documented journey in building autonomous intelligence from the ground up, written for the THT community who asked to understand AI from the inside out. No computer science degree required. Just curiosity and a willingness to travel.

Some of you have been asking about AI. Not the surface-level questions. The real ones. How does it actually work, what is it doing underneath, and is there a way to understand it that doesn't require taking someone else's word for it.

This series is the answer. Not a course. Not a tutorial. A real-time documented journey through building a carrier-grade AI research environment from the ground up, on commodity hardware, using open source tooling. The failures are honest. The progress is real. The understanding you take away is yours.

The Field Work

Installment 1: The Invitation. The foundational prompt to build an autonomous intelligence from the ground up using a four-node diamond topology running on repurposed hardware.

The Thinking Network (Installment 1): The Invitation to AI-Driven Networking
Installment 1 of The Thinking Network. A foundational guide to integrating artificial intelligence with traditional network infrastructure, transforming static architecture into an autonomous, intelligent network.
THT SystemsThomas Harvey

Installment 2: Network Virtualization & The Workshop. Setting up the digital workshop using Ubuntu, Docker, and Containerlab to host the Nokia SR Linux operating system

The Thinking Network (Installment 2): The Workshop & Network Virtualization
Installment 2 of The Thinking Network. Step inside the workshop as we deploy virtualized network infrastructure to build the foundation for our autonomous, AI-driven routing lab.
THT SystemsThomas Harvey

Installment 3: Bare-Metal Linux Infrastructure for AI Networks. Changing the workshop floor by migrating to Garuda Linux to establish a precise, predictable host operating system.

The Thinking Network (Installment 3): Linux Infrastructure for Autonomous Networks
Installment 3 of The Thinking Network. We configure the physical floor of the workshop, utilizing Garuda Linux as the bare-metal foundation for our AI-driven network environment.
THT SystemsThomas Harvey

Installment 4: Containerlab & The Fabric Deploy. Transforming a single source-of-truth configuration script into thirteen running containers and eight virtual links in thirty seconds.

The Thinking Network (Installment 4): Containerlab & The Fabric Deploy
Installment 4 of The Thinking Network. We execute the build script, using Containerlab to dynamically deploy a carrier-grade SR Linux network topology in thirty seconds.
THT SystemsThomas Harvey

Installment 5: IS-IS Routing & The Network Underlay. Configuring one of the oldest backbone protocols so the routers flood the link-state database and independently calculate the shortest path.

The Thinking Network (Installment 5): IS-IS Routing & The Network Underlay
Installment 5 of The Thinking Network. We configure the network underlay using the IS-IS link-state routing protocol to build the foundational topology for autonomous SR Linux routers.
THT SystemsThomas Harvey

Installment 6: The BGP Overlay & EVPN Services. Building the iBGP full-mesh overlay and EVPN layer to carry service routes and establish the control plane levers for traffic engineering.

The Thinking Network (Installment 6): The BGP Overlay & EVPN Services
Installment 6 of The Thinking Network. We deploy the BGP overlay and EVPN address families to create the control plane lever our autonomous AI will use for traffic engineering.
THT SystemsThomas Harvey

Installment 7: Automated Network Health Audits. Executing a programmatic 17-point health validation to ensure the control plane is stable before exposing it to the intelligence layer.

Coming Soon

Installment 8: The Sensing Layer & Streaming Telemetry. Replacing legacy static polling with a high-frequency gNMI streaming telemetry pipeline to create a continuous operational nervous system.

Coming Soon

Installment 9: Reactive BGP Automation & SR Linux. Constructing a reactive, closed-loop actuator that monitors Prometheus metrics and autonomously alters BGP Local Preference to mitigate immediate SLA breaches.

Coming Soon

Installment 10: Predictive Routing with Machine Learning. Moving beyond simple thresholds by training a local linear regression model on rolling telemetry data to forecast congestion and proactively steer traffic before a breach occurs.

Coming Soon

Installment 11: AI Trust Layers & Explainable Networking. Defining a mathematical Trust Index Formula based on accuracy, reliability, and explainability to establish a safety threshold for autonomous operations.

Coming Soon

Installment 12: Live AI Telemetry & Automated Fallbacks. Wiring the trust monitor to live data and executing a Chaos Engineering test to prove the network autonomously suspends AI authority during a sensing failure.

Coming Soon