Packet Pushers - Weekly Show

Today on Heavy Networking, we talk about how to roll your own network automation workflow. Guest Steve Puluka has developed an automation workflow system that uses GitLab and Jenkins, among other tools, to make sure the network devices he supports are pure gold. We talk about how it works, and how you can put your own together.

On today's sponsored Heavy Networking podcast we examine the use of SmartNICs and DPUs to offload networking and security processes. We also discuss the use of the SONiC network OS to run on SmartNICs and DPUs, with P4 as a programming layer. Dell Technologies is our sponsor, and our guest from Dell is Ihab Tarazi, Sr. VP and Networking CTO.

5G, IoT, and low-latency virtualized edge services present a major opportunity for providers and enterprises to build and consume new services in the metro network. On today's Heavy Networking episode, sponsor Juniper Networks is here to share its vision of new metro architectures. Our guests are Amit Bhardwaj, Sr. Director Product Management; and Mats Nordlund, Sr. Director Product Management.

Today's Heavy Networking explores how to communicate complex, nuanced technical topics to non-technical people. We examine how to balance finicky details with broader outcomes, discuss the value of editing and review, share writing tips, and more.

In today's sponsored Heavy Networking podcast, Juniper Networks is here to make the case that service providers are building cloud services at the edge that enterprises can take advantage of. Joining us is Kevin Hutchins, SVP, Strategy & Product Management at Juniper, to assert that service providers can thrive and compete in a cloud-based economy, and that Juniper will be a key part of that ecosystem.

On today's Heavy Networking we dive into Intel's portfolio---including Tofino, SmartNICs, P4, and more---to understand how it unlocks the compute power of your data center. Our guest is Mike Zeile, Data Center Group Vice President and General Manager of End-to-End Network Applications at Intel. Intel is our sponsor.

Does EIGRP need defending? Can this protocol even be defended? Ethan Banks and Zig Zsiga debate the case for EIGRP and discuss major use cases, design considerations, scaling tips, and more.

Today's Heavy Networking episode is a grab bag of topics delivered in our community roundtable format. Five engineers join Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro to talk about subjects including IPv6, SmartNICs, firewall rule management, becoming a manager, and other topics.

On today’s Heavy Networking, we explore how to get network data you reference all the time and store it in a CSV using Ansible, the Genie parser, and Jinja2. Our guide for how to assemble these gears and get them cranking is John Capobianco, automation maven and Sr. IT Planner and Integrator for the House of Commons in the Canadian Parliament.

In today’s sponsored show with Juniper Networks, we dive into Juniper's Paragon product portfolio, which measures service quality for critical applications. The portfolio allows service providers and enterprises to get deeper visibility into, and automated control over, their networks. Our guests from Juniper to walk us through the portfolio are Peter Weinberger and Jonas Krogell.

In today's podcast, sponsored by IP Fabric, we dive into the IP Fabric Network Assurance platform. This platform gathers network configuration and state, and then builds a network model using a graph database. The result is a "digital twin" of the network that engineers and security teams can use for troubleshooting, to plan and verify changes, for network and security analysis, and to enable closed-loop automation. Our guests from IP Fabric are Pavel Bykov, CEO; and Daren Fulwell, Network Automation Evangelist.

Construction sites generate tons of data but often lack network connectivity. Today's Heavy Networking explores how one CTO has found ways to move huge data sets to HQ and the cloud using everything from Free Space Optics to LTE to consumer broadband. There are also stories about flying drones and robot dogs, and the operational impacts of SD-WAN. Our guest is Michael Shepherd, CTO of Rogers-O’Brien Construction.

Today's sponsored Heavy Networking dives into SR Linux, a new network OS built by Nokia. SR Linux combines a microservices architecture with modern data center networking features and is designed to fit multiple use cases while also being automation-friendly and extensible. Our guest is Bruce Wallis, Senior Director of Product Management in Data Center Switching at Nokia.

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) transforms routers, load balancers, firewalls and other network devices into virtual instances that can be service-chained, spun up and down as needed, and are cloud-friendly. But if you're a hardware hugger or have been been burned by virtualization in the past, should you avoid NFV? Today's Heavy Networking guests want to change your mind. The Packet Pushers speak with Michael Pfeiffer, a Cloud Networking Architect for a VAR; and Brad Gregory, Senior Product Manager at Equinix.

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) is the topic on today's Heavy Networking. IT folks tend to view user experience from their own particular area of responsibility--networking, security, app development--but the reality is there's a common set of data that IT should consume and understand. Sponsor Catchpoint joins us to discuss its DEM platform and how it measures user experience using metrics that are relevant across the IT stack. Our guest is JP Blaho, Director, Product Marketing at Catchpoint.

GNS3 is a tool for building virtual networks for labbing. Heavy Networking welcomes GNS3 co-founder and developer Jeremy Grossman and networking instructor David Bombal. We cover the state of GNS3 in 2021, including what GNS3 can do that maybe you didn’t know, and what’s on the roadmap.

Today's episode is the last Heavy Networking of 2020. In the spirit of an end-of-year reflection, we're going to talk about network design trends from this year, some of which were driven, or at least accelerated, by the pandemic hellscape that was 2020. Our guest is Zig Zsiga, a network designer, architect, CCDE, and instructor.

Today's Heavy Networking talks about the tradeoffs between commercial and open source software. While open source takes time and effort to make work, is commercial software any better? Guest Daniel Teycheney is here for the debate.

Hannes Gredler stops by the Heavy Networking virtual studios to educate us on what BGP-LS is, the problems it aims to solve, how it differs from segment routing, and whether the industry is loading too many features onto the back of the BGP workhorse.

On today's Heavy Networking, sponsored by Fortinet, we dive into a variety of topics including a multiplicity of edges that require connectivity and security (WAN edge, LAN edge, cloud edge, remote edge, etc.), the convergence of infrastructure and security, the need for interoperability among security vendors, implementing Zero Trust Access (ZTA), and the current and future roles for machine learning and AI. Our guest is John Maddison, EVP of Products.