The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods

On today’s Packet Protector we answer listener questions about Wi-Fi security with guest Stephen Orr. Stephen is Chair of the Security Technical Task Group for the Wi-Fi Alliance and a Distinguished Solutions Engineer at Cisco. Questions include what recommendations Stephen would make for using multiple SSIDs vs. role-based device segmentation, what he sees as the... Read more »

Take a Network Break! This week we discuss a proposed class action lawsuit against CrowdStrike, while Delta investigates options to seek damages from CrowdStrike and Microsoft. Microsoft Azure goes down after a DDoS defense error, campus switch sales are forecast to drop significantly in 2024, and DigiCert warns customers that an error it made will... Read more »

AI is making its way into network automation. Maybe the thought of a hallucinating ChatGPT getting its six-fingered hands on your network makes you want to run the other way. But the story of AI for IT operations is more nuanced than the hot takes we get about the confidently dumb results that Large Language... Read more »

Today, Lexie Cooper shares her journey from a NOC environment to networking engineering in the aerospace industry. Along the way, the discussion makes stops at the importance of medium skills, and the role of humor and relatability in attracting and educating younger professionals in networking. Finally, Lexie relates her challenges when working on the New... Read more »

In the wake of one of the largest global IT outages, resiliency is the theme of today’s show. We dig into the CrowdStrike debacle as well as an Azure outage that kinda flew under the radar. We also look at the Resiliency Planning Framework Playbook from CISA and other frameworks for building resilient infrastructure. We... Read more »

When choosing vendors, what strategy should you employ: big rock, best-in-breed, or ecosystem? The big rock approach consolidates vendor relationships around a few strategic partners. Best-in-breed focuses on selecting top solutions from various vendors. The ecosystem model combines elements of both. Today’s conversation explores all three models and also highlights the importance of integration, the... Read more »

Providing Wi-Fi in multi-dwelling units (MDUs) such as apartments or dormitories is complicated. These environments require dense AP deployments, have to provide secure access to lots of users, must support myriad device types, and must offer good performance. Our guests are Kyle Leissner, founder of Wire Star; and Bart Giordano, president of the RUCKUS at... Read more »

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we talk OpenConfig and data models with sponsor Nokia. Nokia’s SR Linux network OS has embraced OpenConfig to help you support automation initiatives. We talk with Nokia about why it chose OpenConfig, how it handles mixed data models for device platforms that may or may not use OpenConfig, and... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with listener follow-up on CrowdStrike and Microsoft, and then examine a CrowdStrike incident review in which the security company says a bug in its content validator meant that a problematic update was mistakenly validated. An insurance company estimates the CrowdStrike Windows crash will cost the Fortune 500 about $5... Read more »

On today’s show we talk about designing a network to support hybrid cloud deployments. That is, building and operating a network to interconnect the Big Three US public clouds (GCP, AWS, and Azure) as well as on-prem infrastructure to support a variety of applications and workloads. The network design had to meet several requirements, including... Read more »

RFC 9099 addresses security considerations for operating IPv6 networks, including issues such as address allocation and architecture, security considerations for DHCPv6 and DNS64, and more. Two of the RFC’s co-authors, Merike Kaeo and Eric Vyncke, join the IPv6 Buzz team to talk about the motivations for and challenges of creating RFC 9099. Episode Guests: Merike... Read more »

This first episode of Technically Leadership explores distinctions and commonalities between the management track and the staff engineer track with guests Nick Silkey and Martin Smith. Our guests share their stories from both perspectives and offer advice for those considering similar paths in technical leadership. Episode Guests: Nick Silkey and Martin Smith Nick Silkey, Senior... Read more »

Guests Ashish and Shilpi from the Cloud Security Podcast converse with Ned and Kyler on how humor and relatability can foster an engaging and collaborative environment in DevOps. The conversation also covers the importance of foundational knowledge in technology, the impact of AI on careers, and the value of just being human and learning from... Read more »

From an SSID confusion exploit to a RADIUS attack to a critical vulnerability in a Windows Wi-Fi driver, the past several months have seen multiple attacks and exploits targeting the wireless realm. On today’s Packet Protector podcast we talk with Wi-Fi security expert Stephen Orr to get his take on the severity of these issues,... Read more »

Should enterprises ditch Microsoft because of security concerns? Microsoft’s numerous vulnerabilities and questionable responses make it a significant risk for continued use. At the same time, Microsoft’s strong integration and utility in enterprise environments make it attractive for continued use. Johna Till Johnson and John Burke debate. They also weigh considerations including the challenges of... Read more »

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we discuss vulnerability management for IoT and OTT devices with sponsor Palo Alto Networks. These devices–think video cameras, sensors, medical equipment, industrial control systems, and so on–present unique challenges when it comes to finding, prioritizing, and managing software vulnerabilities. Palo Alto Networks’ machine learning-based solutions offer visibility, risk prioritization,... Read more »

Take a Network Break! This week we cover the CrowdStrike/Microsoft patch debacle, why SolarWinds isn’t entirely out of trouble following a judge’s dismissal of most–but not all–of an SEC lawsuit, and why an AT&T breach revelation highlights third-party risk. Juniper announces an AI infrastructure testing lab and enhancements to its capabilities to operate AI infrastructure,... Read more »

Technically Leadership is a brand new podcast on the Packet Pushers network. Host Laura Santamaria explores leadership in the tech industry, with conversations and insights to help you development your management skills. Whether you’re considering your first management role or you’re an experienced manager working your way to the C-suite, this podcast is for you.... Read more »

Ready to take a trip back to the 1980’s and learn some networking history? We talk with Alan Kirby, who was there forty years ago when the first Ethernet bridge was created at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). He explains the story of why and how it came to be. We discuss how Ethernet compared to... Read more »

What are the operational considerations and differences between DHCP and DHCPv6? In today’s episode we explore the implications for network management, security, and operational models. We also discuss the challenges of DHCPv6 failover, high availability, complex device tracking and identity management in various environments. Episode Links: Scott’s Infoblox IPv6 CoE blog post Introducing DHCPv6 Prefix... Read more »

On today’s episode, host Eric Chou and guest Kyler Middleton discuss the transition from on-prem network engineering to cloud networking; the importance of adapting to new platforms such as AWS, Azure, and Terraform; and the future of cloud versus on-premises solutions. We also discuss Kyler’s background, navigating the journey from a farm upbringing to a... Read more »

Third-party test labs can help buyers make decisions about which products to purchase. While a testing lab can’t mimic the conditions of your specific production environment, it can assess a product’s fundamental capabilities and measure throughput, performance, and–in the case of security devices–effectiveness against a test suite of malware or attack techniques. On today’s episode... Read more »

The evolution of wireless surveys is the topic of today’s Heavy Wireless podcast with guest Jussi Kivineimi of Hamina. We cover the transition from traditional on-site assessments to predictive tools, with an emphasis on the importance of a hybrid approach for accurate network design. We also tackle the role of APIs in network design, the... Read more »

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we talk with Jonathan Symonds, Chief Marketing Officer at MinIO about MinIO’s object storage offering; a software-defined, Amazon S3-compatible object storage that offers high performance and scale for modern workloads and AI/ML. We discuss how MinIO helps customers across industries drive AI innovation and AI architectures, how object storage... Read more »

Take a Network Break! This week we cover why the Google Chrome browser won’t trust a set of Entrust digital certificates come November and what you should do about it, an emergency security patch from Juniper, and the reasons why France’s Competition Authority is scrutinizing Nvidia. A roaming provider in the EU says a massive... Read more »

Service Level Objectives (SLOs) are a set of reliability measurements for customer or user expectations of services; in other words, are people having a good experience with your application or service? Today’s Day Two Cloud explores SLOs, the relevant metrics, and how to measure them. We also talk about how SLOs are a cross-discipline objective... Read more »

It’s an all-news episode for this week’s Packet Protector podcast. We cover critical vulnerabilities in the MOVEit file transfer software and in thousands of ASUS routers, and a remote code execution vulnerability in a Windows wireless driver that you really should patch. We discuss a Wall Street Journal article about how AI tools are helping... Read more »

The evolving role of IT in business is the topic of lively discussion between co-hosts Johna Johnson and John Burke. Johna argues that IT should align with business goals, acting as an executive assistant, while John believes IT should take a proactive leadership role, driving innovation and framing business problems. They explore the challenges IT... Read more »

The rise of SASE has eclipsed SD-WAN as organizations develop strategies and analyze products for secure access. But SD-WAN is an essential component of SASE; in fact, sponsor Palo Alto Networks says SD-WAN is the most important component. On today’s Tech Bytes podcast we talk with Palo Alto Networks about why SD-WAN underpins a SASE... Read more »

Greg Ferro bids farewell to Network Break, and Drew Conry-Murray and Johna Till Johnson bid farewell to Greg. Of course, the podcast must go on, so we also cover some tech news. First, Nokia acquires optics maker Infinera, Broadcom brings new features to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), and campus switch sales drop. A Microsoft subsidiary... Read more »

When you think of IETF, you probably just think of defining protocols, but its new NMOP working group is all about helping network operators identify issues and deploy solutions, including those that pop up around automation. Mahesh Jethanandani is an Area Director (AD) for Management in IETF, which oversees the NMOP WG, and joins the... Read more »

Imagine a world with no broadcast storms, basically no DAD issues, not even ARP and reverse ARP. That is the world of IPv6 neighbor discovery. In today’s episode, we teach you the simplicity of IPv6 neighbor discovery: just native Layer 3 addresses, ICMPv6, and multicast. If you’ve ever been annoyed at a guy hopping on... Read more »

This is the final episode of a series of interviews with Scott Robohn (for now). We discuss AI in networking operations and how it’s still too early to tell exactly how much, if any, value will be created. We also dig into Scott’s Total Network Operations framework, what it consists of and how he wants... Read more »

If you care about nutrition, you check the ingredients of your food. If you care about your IT infrastructure, you check the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) of the tech. At least that’s the future that Thomas Pace hopes for. Right now, SBOMs aren’t super common and software transparency is very low. Thomas walks us... Read more »

Wastewater containers, conveyors, chemical reactors… Scott McNeil goes out where the carpet ends to do his wireless work. Today he joins the show to talk us through the basics of designing industrial wireless architecture. With advances in wireless technology, not only is wireless now reliable enough for production environments, but it’s also much cheaper than... Read more »

This is Greg’s last Heavy Strategy episode before he heads off to retirement. He gives us his final pieces of career and life advice, opinions on private equity, and a Cookie Monster quote. We also briefly introduce John Burke, the new Heavy Strategy co-host. Farewell, Greg. Thank you for all the great debates. Episode Transcript... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with a longish round of FUs, and then dive into news. HPE announces HPE Private Cloud, which includes software, switches, and GPUs from Nvidia for building out infrastructure to support AI workloads. HPE also announced KVM virtualization for HPE Private Cloud. We debate whether Britian’s anti-trust inquiry to the... Read more »

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast, sponsored by Nokia, we hear from Nokia customer NL-IX. NL-IX is a leading Internet Exchange based in the Netherlands. The organization recently redesigned and upgraded its network. Nokia played a role in that upgrade, including 400 and 800G routers and FP5 silicon. We’re joined by Dirk Kalkman, Chief Network... Read more »

High Frequency Trading in finance demands the utmost quality and speed from a network, making flawless observability a must. Our guest today is Radu Ionco from Jump Trading, and he tells us about how they built their own custom network observability platform, even creating a monitoring system for the monitoring system. We talk through streaming... Read more »

When you’re trying to share your cool new network automation with your co-workers, the last thing you want to do is deal with other systems’ different libraries and dependencies gumming it up. That’s where our episode sponsor torero comes into play. As an “automation gateway,” torero dynamically creates an execution environment based on what has... Read more »

Most platform engineers are scared of databases, and most database administrators prefer it that way. But our guest today says it’s time to move forward together toward a future of database linters, observability, and abstraction. Adam Furmanek makes the case that just like how developers had to learn some networking, and networking tools were created... Read more »

Today we discuss how to secure your all-powerful root accounts on the three major public cloud providers: AWS, Azure, and GCP. Our guests today, Ned Bellavance and Kyler Middleton from the Day Two Cloud podcast (soon to be Day Two DevOps podcast), describe the struggle of securely managing several root accounts at once. They take... Read more »

Asking questions is a critical skill whether you’re an outside consultant or on an internal IT team. In today’s episode, Greg and Johna review what kind of questions to ask and how to ask them. They discuss the ‘Five Whys,’ identifying points of invariance, discovering unknown unknowns, and watching out for landmines. They also cover... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with an announcement from Greg about his impending retirement. After we dust ourselves off from that, we pivot to this week’s tech news. Fortinet acquires a company to bolster its offering in securing cloud deployments and workloads, Cisco announces an Ikea-like kit to build AI infrastructure on prem, and... Read more »

When it comes to SSE, it’s helpful to know the vendor’s history and approach to understand if it’s the best fit for your organization. HPE Aruba’s SSE journey started when it acquired Axis Security, a company focused on solving the problem of third party access. Because of that focus, HPE Aruba says its SSE is... Read more »

Fortinet’s Unified SASE provides consistent security controls and policies both for traditional campuses and the hybrid workforce.. Nirav Shah joins us to explain how Fortinet is positioned to do this: a foundational software developed for 20 years, a network of over 140 POPs, a security lab with over 1,000 researchers, continuous ZTNA verification proxies, and... Read more »

If you don’t blame “destination unreachable” messages on DNS servers, are you even a real network engineer? All joking aside, Johannes Weber joins the show today to teach us how to use ICMPv6 to troubleshoot network issues, pinpointing if the problem is within your network or outside of it. He walks us through identifying possible... Read more »

In part two of Scott Robohn’s interview, Scott tells us about his experience starting his own business and co-founding the Network Automation Forum and the AutoCon conference series. He describes the strong desire among many engineers to drive network automation forward, and how AutoCon creates a community to help make that happen. He and Eric... Read more »

Natural disaster responders, large event planners, and rural kids trying to do their homework all have something in common: they need a little extra help to get connected. COWs, COLTs, and WOWs can do just that. Mark Houtz joins Keith Parsons to explain how and why COW operators do what they do. First, he explains... Read more »

Drew and JJ have recovered from the overstimulation of the RSA expo floor and are ready to discuss their takeaways from the conference. They discuss the surprising emphasis on microsegmentation and storage backups, and the not-so-surprising focus on IoT security and AI-assisted products. They also pull back the curtain on what the conference’s own SOC... Read more »