Packet Pushers - Weekly Show

Today on Heavy Networking, sponsored by Juniper, we’ll talk about how Juniper’s Apstra software can help you operate your on-prem data center more like a public cloud; meaning service provisioning that’s repeatable, standardized, and straightforward to consume. We’ll also talk about how Apstra now works with Terraform to help streamline network self-service. The post HN711: Get Cloud-Like Operation Of Your Data Center With Juniper Apstra And Terraform (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Analyst Brad Casemore offers his takes on the rise of zero trust, the influence of geopolitics on IT, what's driving the need for visibility and observability on prem and in the cloud, and whether 5G will ever live up to the hype. The post HN710: The Future Of Networking With Brad Casemore – Part 2 appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Cloud environments often have poor visibility and monitoring, and controlling access to sensitive corporate data is difficult. We speak with sponsor Palo Alto Networks about how it integrates CASB and Data Loss Prevention to control Web access and prevent sensitive information from leaking from your organization. The post HN709: Protecting Data, Apps With Cloud DLP And CASB (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

The Future of Networking series continues with Brad Casemore, who survived multiple decades in the technology sector, including sixteen years as an analyst for IDC. He's been a longtime observer of networking markets, technologies, and trends. We talk about the interest in AI and try to separate the hype from the reality, multi-cloud networking, and more. The post HN708: The Future Of Networking With Brad Casemore – Part 1 appeared first on Packet Pushers.

AI and machine learning are finally being applied to networking in meaningful ways. On today's sponsored show we talk with Selector about its AIOps platform, which ingests networking logs, flows, configurations, SNMP, and other telemetry to detect patterns, spot problems, and provide contextual insights to help network engineers do their jobs better. We speak with Selector about what it is, how it works, and concrete use cases. The post Heavy Networking 707: Getting Real With Selector’s AIOps (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Today’s Heavy Networking is about collaborative automation via GitNops, which applies DevOps principles to networking. That means things like version control, working with sources of truth, operating infrastructure as code, and collaborating on network on changes and updates. GitNops benefits include automation, repeatability, and scalability. We'll dive into GitNops with guest Tom McGonagle. The post Heavy Networking 706: The GitNops Approach To Collaborative Network Automation appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Today on Heavy Networking we talk about how to get from a handful of Python scripts to a network automation platform that enables a self-service environment and incorporates the checks and governance required to make sure the automation doesn't blow up the network. Our sponsor today is Itential. Itential offers just such a network automation platform. We talk about how Itential makes it happen, including simple and more complex examples. The post Heavy Networking 705: Evolving From Python To Platforms For Network Automation (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Today's Heavy Networking is another roundtable episode. We've assembled a group of network engineers to talk about what's on their minds. Topics today include why other IT departments adn end users are quick to blame the network first, and what can be done about it; using Nokia's open-source Containerlab for testing and development work; and why you shouldn't feel left behind when you hear talk about 400G and 800G networks. The post Heavy Networking 704: Roundtable Redux: Blaming The Network; Containerlab Love; 400G Envy appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Today’s Heavy Networking, sponsored by Palo Alto Networks, discusses Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) across the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). You could think of ZTNA, as VPN evolved and SASE as SD-WAN evolved. Not only do you get an overlay connectivity fabric, but you also get cloud-hosted security services. We talk about how it all works together, the role of client software, Palo Alto Networks' architecture, integrating an IDP, and more. The post Heavy Networking 703: Integrating ZTNA And SASE With Palo Alto Networks (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Today's Heavy Networking covers Pandas. Not the cuddly bears that eat bamboo, but the Python library that makes it easy for you to work with a set of data. Import Pandas at the top of your Python script, follow one of many Pandas tutorials online, and in short order you’ll be able to perform data operations in a spreadsheet-like way. We talk network automation use cases for Pandas with Rick Donato. The post Heavy Networking 702: Supporting Network Automation With The Pandas Python Library appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Our topic today on Heavy Networking is SD-WAN monitoring at massive scale. Scale can grow quickly with SD-WAN when you account for the underlay, overlays, gateways, endpoints, and more. We talk with sponsor Broadcom about their monitoring platform and dig into a case study with a Broadcom customer providing global IT infrastructure for thousands of their own customers. The post Heavy Networking 701: Monitoring SD-WAN At Scale With Broadcom (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

On today's sponsored Heavy Networking we talk with Fortinet about how it converges network and security across the breadth of its portfolio. Fortinet is best known for its firewalls, but the company also offers campus and branch switches, has a wireless portfolio, offers SD-WAN and SASE, provides AI-supported operations, and more. We also talk about Fortinet's approach to the branch office that rethinks networking, security, and performance. The post Heavy Networking 700: Rethinking Networking and Security For The Campus And Branch With Fortinet (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Virtual Application Networks, or VANs, are today’s Heavy Networking topic. Our guest is Ted Ross, motive force behind the Skupper.io project. Skupper builds VANs in Kubernetes clusters that are conceptually like a VLAN or VPN, except that all the magic happens at layer 7. Skupper is based on the Advanced Message Queueing Protocol (AMQP), making it effectively a message bus used to interconnect application messages inside of mTLS tunnels running on top of whatever L3 network is available. If you're confused, don't be. We talk it all out, and explain why it's relevant to today's networking pros. The post Heavy Networking 699: Connecting Multicloud Kubernetes Clusters With Virtual Application Networks appeared first on Packet Pushers.

In today's sponsored Heavy Networking we explore new features in Cisco Thousand Eyes, an operational tool based on visibility and observability of public and private network. Thousand Eyes has continued to grow into complex operational areas such AWS Network Path, Webex performance, and integrations with Meraki to help you identify and fix network and application performance problems. The post Heavy Networking 697: Getting Operational Visibility Into The Networks That Matter (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

EVPN/VXLAN is our topic on today's Heavy Networking. What is it? What’s it for? Should you deploy it? Since you’ve probably already got a network, how do you add EVPN to it? Do you need special hardware? How does EVPN impact your security design? And what are the fundamentals? Our guest with the answers is IT instructor Tony Bourke. The post Heavy Networking 696: EVPN Fundamentals (And Some VXLAN) With Tony Bourke appeared first on Packet Pushers.

On today's Heavy Networking we explore network and firewall automation with sponsor BackBox. BackBox has developed a platform that aims to deliver practical automation out of the box. We get under the hood to understand how it works, what it delivers, and how it addresses the challenges of network and security operations. The post Heavy Networking 695: Automating Network And Firewall Operations With BackBox (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

This week on Heavy Networking we've assembled a roundtable of network engineers to talk about...stuff. Each guest has brought a topic to discuss with the table, so we've got lots of subjects and lots of experiences and opinions. In particular we explore SPB, career advice, getting network automation off the ground, and the joys and perils of self-hosting. The post Heavy Networking 694: A Network Engineering Roundtable appeared first on Packet Pushers.

On today's sponsored Heavy Networking we dig into cloud-delivered Secure Web Gateways (SWGs), which help guard end users against Web-based threats and enforce corporate Web access policies. As employees split time between home, office, and who knows where else, and as more applications move online, cloud-based SWGs help connect and protect workers. Our sponsor is Palo Alto Networks. The post Heavy Networking 693: Securing Workforce Transformation With Cloud SWG (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

If you’ve been staring down the barrel of network automation and wonder what the proper approach might be, today’s episode is for you. The Packet Pushers chat with Tony Bourke about what network automation tools and techniques have become the default standard, how to prepare your network and team for automation, and how to get started. The post Heavy Networking 692: Implementing Practical Network Automation – With Tony Bourke appeared first on Packet Pushers.

On today’s Heavy Networking podcast, we look at how sponsor ZPE Systems is rethinking Out-Of-Band management for automated, NetOps-driven infrastructure. This includes tasks like device staging, deployments, upgrades, and more. And you don’t just have to take ZPE’s word for it; we also talk to a customer who’s using the products to run a retail business with a lean networking team that supports more than fifty sites. The post Heavy Networking 691: Why OOB Infrastructure Is Critical For IT Ops & Automation With ZPE Systems (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.