Packet Pushers - Full Podcast Feed

It’s all well and good to develop a technology strategy, articulate and document the strategy, and agree (supposedly) on that strategy. But what do you do when one or more of the tech teams act in apparent opposition to the strategy? John and Johna discuss why this happens and what questions you need to ask... Read more »

Take a Network Break! This week we catch up on the Airborne vulnerabilities affecting Apple’s AirPlay protocol and SDK, and get an update on active exploits against an SAP NetWeaver vulnerability–a patch is available, so get fixing if you haven’t already. Palo Alto Networks launches the AIRS platform to address AI threats in the enterprise,... Read more »

On today’s Heavy Networking, a roundtable panel considers whether a modern network needs to be built around underlays and overlays. This isn’t just Ethan yelling at clouds. This is a legitimate question pondering the real-world value of an overlay/underlay approach. Is overlay everywhere overkill, or is that the architecture we need to deliver a safe,... Read more »

Doug Madory has been called “The Man Who Can See the Internet.” Doug has developed a reputation for identifying significant developments in the global layout of the internet. He joins us today to discuss his role in analyzing internet data to identify trends and insights. He shares his journey from a data QA position to... Read more »

Today we talk with Tommy Jensen, a Senior Technical PM Strategist at Microsoft, about IPv6 support in Windows. Tommy shares what he hears from enterprises that are moving toward IPv6-mostly, strategies for dealing with older applications and devices that expect IPv4, and how the customer conversations he’s having about IPv6 now are more engaged and... Read more »

This week we continue with DNS. In our last episode we covered the basics; today we expand our scope to cover topics such as security for DNS, reverse DNS, and DNS record types. For dessert this week, a serving of Raspberry Pi and Happy Eyeballs. Episode Links: DNS: Turning Names into Numbers – N Is... Read more »

The shine has been coming off public cloud for awhile. Cloud costs remain high, complexity is growing, and public cloud interoperability is difficult. And while there’s talk about moving back to private cloud, that migration presents its own costs and complexities. To help us navigate the challenge that is cloud in 2025, we welcome Mark... Read more »

Submarine cables are a hidden wonder. These fiber optic bundles carry data and voice traffic around the world and serve as critical global links for communication and commerce. Today on Packet Protector, guest Andy Champagne dives into the history of submarine cables, the technological and operational advancements that allow voice and data to travel hundreds... Read more »

AI can impact an enterprise in several ways: making individuals more productive, making products and services more effective, and making it easier for customers and partners to do business. IT plays a critical role in enabling AI to have these impacts. On today’s sponsored Heavy Strategy, Cisco CIO Fletcher Previn explains how to locate AI use... Read more »

Today on Heavy Wireless we welcome Jerry Olla to give us details from his talk “Roaming Wars: How Wi-Fi Devices Handle 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz”. Jerry tested the roaming behavior of popular Wi-Fi clients across 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz. He explains his testing protocol and results, and answers questions such as whether tri-band... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with a Red Alert for SAP NetWeaver’s Visual Composer Metadata Uploader, and then dive into a new endpoint discovery feature from Forward Networks, and Ericsson adding clientless ZTNA to its SASE offering. Aviatrix adds a Secure NAT Gateway for Microsoft Azure as a way to help Azure customers navigate... Read more »

Confidence in a new technology is one of the greatest barriers to adoption of that technology. If you don’t believe it will improve your NetOps, why would you adopt it? This is especially true of AI products. On today’s show, we’re joined by Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer of Mist/Juniper to make the case for... Read more »

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a very new protocol that provides a standard way to link AI models to a variety of data sources and tools. As the industry heads toward agentic AI–in which an AI agent interacts with disparate applications, data sources, and other agents to achieve a task–MCP provides the protocol glue. On... Read more »

On this episode of Technically Leadership, Chris Leonard joins to talk about the costs of intervention in a team discussion, whether that’s to bring a team back to a topic or to make a decision that needs to be made. We discuss hero culture (both in the team and as the leader), imposter syndrome, and... Read more »

The Domain Name System (DNS) keeps the Internet running. On today’s N Is For Networking podcast, we talk about how DNS transforms human-readable host names into IP addresses so that Internet traffic can be sent to the right place. We talk about root name servers, Top Level Domains (TLDs), and other elements of the DNS... Read more »

Today we explore the current state of network automation with Chris Grundemann, a co-founder of Network Automation Forum. Chris gives the history of the Network Automation Forum and AutoCon conference, which aims to blend technology and community. He shares ideas for advancing network automation, and invites other network engineers to participate in shaping the future... Read more »

Working with multiple Infrastructure as Code (IAC) tools can be painful. Spacelift provides a platform that operates on top of disparate IaC tools, including Ansible, Kubernetes, Pulumi, Terraform, and OpenTofu. Spacelift helps build the automation with and between these tools, creating graphs of graphs that make your dependencies just work. On today’s show, we talk... Read more »

Once a month, the Packet Protector podcast likes to see what’s going on out there via our news roundup. There’s a lot happening! Today we discuss Fortinet warning that a threat actor has found a way to maintain read-only access on Fortinet devices even if you’ve applied the patch for the original threat. Avanti VPNs... Read more »

Most organizations have a long list of security holes in the form of unpatched systems and other known but unresolved vulnerabilities. Is it time to hit the big PAUSE button and fix, patch, or mitigate all of that before we resume deploying new systems (and their accompanying risks)? Join us as we tear into whether... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with a red alert for the CVE program, which nearly lost government funding before CISA stepped in, and then raise an alert for a Dpanel vulnerability. Google makes its Cloud WAN available to enterprises and governments that want connectivity options, a US District Court rules Google’s ad business a... Read more »