Packet Pushers - Fat Pipe

You’re already running IPv6, even if you don’t know it yet. Your remote users are using it at their homes, your printers come with it built into the kernel, your generals are using it on their mobile phones (check out our news headlines section). So let’s stop trying to disable it whack-a-mole style, and start... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Nvidia announces new 800G switches, one for Ethernet and one for InfiniBand, for building AI fabrics. Nvidia also announces an “AI supercomputer,” a rack-scale pre-built bundle of Nvidia GPUs and CPUs connected via InfiniBand switches. The NaaS startup Meter announces new campus switches and what it calls a “digital twin” capability,... Read more »

Fiserv is one of the largest payment processors in the world, In 2023 it handled more than 35 billion transactions worth $2.03 trillion US dollars. Its network is critical to the business. The organization knew it needed network automation, but early attempts got some things wrong. On today’s Heavy Networking we talk about how Fiserv... Read more »

In this podcast episode, Randy Horton from Orthogonal and Ian Sutcliffe from AWS discuss the complexities of supporting regulated medical devices in the cloud. They explore the challenges of adhering to regulations, the importance of security, and the need for robust frameworks. The conversation highlights the non-prescriptive nature of regulations, encouraging best practices rather than... Read more »

Welcome back for Part 2 of Eric’s interview with Roman Dodin, co-creator of containerlab. Roman describes containerlab as a “lab as code” tool that quickly and easily creates virtual networking topologies. With increased automation and containerization in network engineering, the tool’s popularity has exploded. We talk about how folks contribute to containerlab’s development and what... Read more »

This episode is for IT professionals who work in small- to medium-sized businesses and are expected to handle cybersecurity on top of issues like “my camera isn’t working on Zoom.” Guest Joe Stern has been filling this role for an 80-person company for almost 30 years. We talk about how he prioritizes risks, security tools... Read more »

This week on Network Break we discuss a new on-prem version of NetBox Labs’ source-of-truth software with enterprise support, why Selector AI is adding an LLM to its operations and observability product, and whether a new Web application firewall from Cloudflare can protect LLMs against malicious prompts. Viavi Solutions consolidates the network testing space with... Read more »

Matt Horn built a data center network through automation, remotely. This is the future of network engineering. Matt shares how his team did it technically: Terraform, a little Ansible, leveraging pipelines, etc. But he also shares the processes and culture that made it happen: Management and peer buy-in, tight enforcement based on user access, and... Read more »

What if you could eliminate the burdens of networking without losing your control and visibility of the network? That’s the idea behind Nile. With Nile co-managing the network, you don’t have to spend all your time chasing down tickets, running patches, and dealing with CLI syntax. Instead you get to focus on higher level tasks... Read more »

According to Bryson Bort, you can build higher metaphorical fences, electrify them, and have sharks with laser beams prowling the moat, but attackers are still going to get through the security perimeter. That’s why the priority of any IT team should be to identify anomalies and anticipate attack logic. To do this, organizations need to... Read more »

This week we discuss a new network observability offering from Arista that integrates network telemetry with application data, why startups such as Groq and Taalas think they can break Nvidia’s grip on the AI chip market, and how Microsoft is hedging its LLM bets. Amazon goes nuclear with the purchase of a reactor-powered data center... Read more »

Today we metaphorically pop open the hood of switches and routers, taking a look at the mechanics of how they work. We cover the three states: configuration, operational, and forwarding. We talk RIB and FIB, along with CAM, TCAM, and MPLS. We also cover line rate, port-to-port latency, and buffers. Whether it’s been awhile since... Read more »

Big risk, big reward: That’s the origin story of both containerlab and its maintainer, Roman Dodin. Roman tells Eric the story behind containerlab, a free software platform for building network labs and testing designs, as well as his own story of taking leaps into the unknown. This is the first episode of Network Automation Nerds... Read more »

Today we welcome a new co-host, Kyler Middleton, to the Day Two Cloud podcast. Kyler grew up in rural Western Nebraska, fixing neighboring farmers’ computers in exchange for brownies and Rice Krispies. Now she’s the newest co-host for Day Two Cloud… perhaps a lateral move, given the lack of baked goods. Kyler will draw on... Read more »

When you’re picking a penetration tester to poke at your security infrastructure, how do you know if you’re picking a good one? Is pen testing even the right service for your needs? Pen tester, SANS course creator, and OWASP board member Kevin Johnson joins the show to share tips for what to look for in... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Johna Till Johnson joins as guest host while Greg Ferro enjoys some time off. We start with follow-up regarding damage to subsea cables in the Red Sea, and then dive into news. AT&T deals with the fallout of a major US outage, Vodafone also suffers outages in the UK, and Elisa... Read more »

Right now, we have the building blocks for network automation, but we don’t have end-to-end designs or complete systems. It’s like having a bunch of Legos but no instructions for how to build your spaceship. Ryan Shaw, David Sinn, and their colleagues in the Network Automation Forum are tackling this problem. Their goal is to... Read more »

Chances are, you’ve probably only heard of GovCloud because at the bottom of new feature releases from the Big 3 there’s usually an asterisk that says “not yet available in GovCloud.” So what is GovCloud? And why does it not get the newest shiny thing as fast as the rest of us? Chris Wahl has... Read more »

What are the best cybersecurity certs to get? Do advancements in cloud and AI mean security professionals need to re-skill? How do certifying organizations decide what new courses to create? Chief Curriculum Director and Faculty Lead at the SANS Institute, Rob Lee, joins Jennifer “JJ” Minella and Drew Conry-Murray to give an insider’s view on... Read more »

Take a Network Break! This week we cover financial results from Palo Alto Networks (good, but next quarter’s softer forecast resulted in a drubbing), Cisco (not good), and Nvidia (so good that Wall Street is nervous about how long the party’s gonna last). Prosimo and Nokia have announced generative AI assistants that claim to help... Read more »