The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods

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.

In this episode, Ed, Scott, and Tom get technical with a discussion of IPv6 Router Advertisements (RAs), what they are, what they're for, what information they contain, new and future RA options, and what you need to know about them to help deploy IPv6 effectively.

Red teams attack a customer's security systems. The idea of a red team, whether consultants or in-house, is to approach the target like an attacker would. A red team includes technical and human-based exploit and attempts to test defenses, probe for weaknesses, and identify vulnerable systems and processes. On today's episode we look at how to get the most out of a red team engagement--it's much more than just an attack and a report.

3D printing is a popular activity among wireless network engineers. Given that they deal with invisible, intangible radio waves all day, maybe it's no surprise they'd enjoy making things they can touch and feel. On today's Heavy Wireless we talk about why the wireless community enjoys 3D printing, and how engineers can make and use printed objects on the job--and at home.

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we get into Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM). DEM goes beyond traditional SLAs by offering more precise measurements of network and application performance as experienced by end users, and can provide detailed measurements to help network engineers identify and respond to problems. We talk with sponsor Fortinet about how it delivers DEM.

Take a Network Break! This week we discuss new charges for IPv4 addresses being levied by AWS, Cisco's acquisition of a BGP monitoring service, and financial results for a host of tech companies. We also speak with J Metz, the Steering Committee Chair of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium to learn more about the organization's goals; and examine the efforts to investigate claims of a breakthrough in superconducting research.

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.

Today's Day Two Cloud peers inside the box of quantum computing. We explore how it works, what qbits are and why they matter, the current state of quantum computing hardware, what problems could be solved with quantum computing, and how you can get involved with it via the Qiskit open-source project. Our guest is Abby Mitchell, Quantum Developer Advocate at IBM.

The use of physical infrastructure has changed substantially in the last three years. Data centres are scaling down, offices and branches are being re-considered. One view is that offices are ‘playgrounds’ where white collar workers gather to chat, socialise, drink free coffee and have face-to-face for one or two days a week. An opposing view is that its legacy way of working but it will take time for people to adapt to remote work.

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we explore Secure Web Gateways with sponsor Palo Alto Networks. Secure Web Gateways sit between users and Web traffic to enforce policies around Web and application access and inspect traffic for malware. We talk with Palo Alto Networks about customer challenges with secure Web gateways, innovations in Prisma Access Cloud Secure Web Gateways, and more.

On this week's Network Break we discuss a new Broadcom ASIC, a request from US Senator Ron Wyden to three US agencies to investigate Microsoft for sloppy security practices, an Intel pledge to add AI to all its platforms, Juniper financial results, and more IT news.

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.

Today's IPv6 Buzz podcast riffs on a question raised in a Reddit thread that asks why you should use IPv6 when NAT exists. Tom, Ed, and Scott provide answers, and also discuss the complicated role of NAT in both IPv6 and IPv4 networks in the past, present, and future.

On today's Day Two Cloud we get inside Cisco Secure Access, a new set of cloud-delivered security services from Cisco. We discuss the security capabilities on offer, the service's architecture and components, how Cisco addresses concerns around user experience and performance, and more. This is a sponsored episode.

Wireless pros sit at the intersection of networking and security. On today's Heavy Wireless, sponsored by Fortinet, Keith Parsons and guest Ben Wilson discuss this convergence, why visibility into the WLAN and device identity are essential, how Fortinet integrates its Fortigate firewalls with wired and wireless neteworks for unified management and policy enforcement, and more.

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we talk about traffic replication in SASE environments. Our sponsor is Palo Alto Networks, and they’ve added a new capability in Prisma Access that lets you replicate and then store traffic sent to the Prisma Access cloud service. That replicated traffic can then be used for deep packet analysis, forensics, or network analysis. We’ll talk about how Prisma Access replicates traffic, use cases, and more.

This week on Network Break we discuss the launch of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium and its intention to revamp Ethernet to support AI and HPC workloads. We also cover NOS startup Arrcus pulling in a $65 million series D round, Fortinet launching big-iron firewalls, Huawei flexing its patent muscles in 5G and wireless, and more tech news.

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.

If you want to be a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) you need strong software skills. You also have to be versed in observability, incident response, capacity planning, change management, performance, even security. But wait, there's more! Our guest on today's Day Two Cloud argues you need strong communication skills, emotional intelligence, personal resilience, and the ability to work with a team. Our guest is Amin Astaneh.

As technology becomes more critical and vital to companies business leaders are beginning to question the reliability and liability. Insurers now require audits and demand complienace with set practices before issuing a policy. Corporate boards are realising that so-called tech professionals have zero training or professional requirement, consultants have even less and the analysts are... Read more »

In today’s Tech Byte, we’ve got Cisco ThousandEyes sharing new product capabilities, including ThousandEyes on Meraki MX and Webex RoomOS devices and faster insights into the root cause of problems your users are calling to complain about. We also discuss the recent acquisition of SamKnows, which gives ThousandEyes deeper visibility into ISPs.

Take a Network Break! This week we discuss Intel walking away from the NUC PC, Microsoft rebranding Azure AD and launching an SSE offering, and Microsoft Exchange Online getting hacked. We also cover the EU's conditional approval of Broadcom's VMware acquisition, why Wireshark needs your help, and more IT news.

On today’s Heavy Networking we talk LACP and link aggregation. While bonding two or more links together to act as a single virtual link has been done for decades, LACP and link aggregation aren't the same thing, and the distinction matters. Our guest to get into the differences is network instructor Tony Bourke.

In this IPv6 Buzz episode, Ed, Scott, and Tom get technical (and maybe a little controversial) with a discussion about using IPv6 link-local addresses instead of globally scoped addresses (e.g., GUA and ULA) along with when and why you might choose to do so.

On today's Day Two Cloud, we talk with Microsoft about how it's embracing Terraform to make it Azure-friendly, including the Terraform Export Tool, the AzAPI Provider, and a Terraform on Azure community. This is not a sponsored episode.

Today's Heavy Wireless episode explores building sustainable and efficient backhaul networks with sponsor Ceragon Networks. We discuss the challenges of backhaul, the complementarity of wireless and fiber solutions, the frequencies and protocols used in wireless backhaul, and the concept of disaggregated routing.

Oft-asked question that doesn't have a right answer. We discuss non-convential answers that career coaches or self-help twaddle won't give you.

On today's Network Break, Greg Ferro wishes Ethernet an unhappy birthday, HPE and BT want to manage your LAN, TSMC brings in Taiwanese workers to build new fabs in Arizona, Nokia touts new Fixed Wireless Access milestones, and more IT news.

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast, we explore the concept of sovereign clouds with sponsor VMware. Sovereign clouds provide the agility and scale of the cloud while ensuring data resides in a specific country or geography and meets area requirements for security and privacy. We speak with Tietoevry, one of the first VMware partners to offer major sovereign cloud solutions for its Nordic clients.

Certifications are a part of life in IT. On today's Heavy Networking we explore preparation strategies with guest Mary Fasang. Her certs run the gamut from CompTIA to MCSE to the CCNP, as well as the PMP and ITIL certs. How should you prepare for a cert in 2023 when there’s so much content, so many training options, as well as home labbing available? How do you handle failure? Which certs have been the hardest? What study materials have proved helpful? Mary shares her strategies.

Today we talk about Large Language Models (LLMs) and writing products and applications that use LLMs. Our guest is Phillip Carter, Principal PM at Honeycomb.io. Honeycomb makes an observability tool for site reliability engineers, and Carter worked on a project called Query Assistant that helps Honeycomb users get answers to questions about how to use the product and get insights from it. We discuss taking natural language input and turning it into outputs to help SREs do their jobs.

This bonus episode of Network Break discusses a new free tier of Prosimo's multi-cloud networking offering, the latest ThousandEyes acquisition, new SEC problems for SolarWinds, and a million-dollar refrigerator.

Packet-level fundamentals are essential for network engineers to be able to diagnose and solve network and application problems. On today's Heavy Networking, we dive into the transport layer and packets with packet analysis expert and instructor Chris Greer.

Today's IPv6 Buzz podcast gets into IPv6 architecture and subnetting including how geography fits into IPv6 subnetting, minimum allocation sizes from the RIR to end-users, whether current RIR policies will provide sufficient address space for a future-proof IPv6 architecture, and more. Our guest is Daryll Swer.

Going from a tech role to manager is more than just a new gig---it's a full-blown career change. On today's Day Two Cloud we talk with management coach Steve Dwire about a manager's primary responsibilities, what new managers usually get wrong, management education vs. experience, and how to get better at the job. This episode goes places we didn't expect, so come along for the ride.

Google, Microsoft, Twitter, META/FB and a few others laid off an estimated 200,000 tech and tech-adjacent folks in recent weeks. Other companies like Fedex and Amazon have made layoffs, many impacting the IT teams. What does that mean for the tech industry? Between AI and our corporate overlords are we all lucky to be employed, and should we go back to working 80 hour in-office weeks?

Have you ever wanted to build a community of professionals in your field, but didn't know where to start? In this episode of the Heavy Wireless podcast, Keith Parsons interviews Ferney Munoz, founder of the Tes@s en Wi-Fi community in Latin America, to learn how he built a successful community of Wi-Fi professionals.

Its about reducing the cost and complexity of DWDM coherent optical networks. Connecting the DWDM network directly to your router removes the DWDM edge equipment which simplifies operation, reduce cost,space & power while improving provisioning time. How is Juniper entering this market and what do you need to know ?

Cisco announces AI Networking versions of SIlicon One ASICs and buys another DEM business. HPE Greenlake adds AI LLM. FTC talks bandwidth caps. Google accusing Microsoft of monopolistic behaviour. We laughed.

Today’s Tech Byte is a discussion on Nokia’s Photonic Service Engine (PSE) optics. Release 6 of its PSEs promises huge changes to DWDM Edge by bringing coherent optical DWDM circuits directly to your Nokia routers and switches. No more costly DWDM shelves and transponders just to terminate a tail circuit, reducing lead times and providing more options for resilience.

FU, vendors co-operating ? Google ditches something, Quantum computing, the state of AMD DPUs. Finally liquid cooling is toxic due to PFAS are 'forever chemicals'.

Today we’re going deep on software-defined networking for containers and OpenStack with sponsor Juniper Networks. Juniper has revamped its approach to secure networking for telcos and telco cloud-delivered services with Juniper’s Cloud-Native Contrail Networking or CN2 software. CN2 lets you automate the creation of network connections for containers and for virtual machines while also providing routing, security, segmentation and isolation of workloads. Our guest and guide into the guts of Cloud-Native Contrail Networking, hereafter referred to as CN2, is Nick Davey. Nick is Director of Product Management for SDN and Telco Cloud technologies.

There's only going to be one episode 128 of IPv6 Buzz, and this is it. In this Cisco Country Digital Acceleration Program sponsored episode, co-hosts Ed Horley and Scott Hogg talk with Pradeep Kathail and Mark Townsley. Pradeep is the CTO of Enterprise Networking, and Mark Townsley is a Cisco Fellow in the Meraki Business Unit.

Welcome to this episode of Day Two Cloud! Today, we'll be diving into the world of platform engineering and internal developer portals. Our special guest, Suzanne Daniels, Developer Relations Lead at Port, will be sharing her insights on how platform engineering can take your DevOps journey to the next level. With platform engineering, you can treat technology as a product and developers as customers, resulting in a more efficient and effective workflow.

Remote operation of infrastructure has renewed importance in the era of remote working. Opengear offers secure, zero trust and segmented methods to reach serial & LAN ports plus GUI interfaces. You can add observability agents like Thousand Eyes into containers so that your worst day becomes just another day.

SD-WAN provides new options for connecting branch locations to your headquarters, SaaS, and cloud applications. But SD-WAN is about more than just connectivity, Palo Alto Networks offer an application fabric. Learn more in this episode.

Host Keith Parsons speaks with Peter MacKenzie, a trainer and course developer in the wireless industry, about the importance of vendor-neutral training.

Take a Network Break: Drew is on holiday (again) and Ethan shows up. Who knew he was still around ? We start with FU, Cisco Live was underwhelming announcing a new focus simplicity and that customers hate their licensing, Bluecat spends again, Hashicorp gets a financial slapping, Itential ships a new version and Quantum Space Networking.

By some estimates, 50 to 70 million tons of e-waste is generated every year, and that number is growing. When sent to landfills to be buried or burned, e-waste can leach toxic chemicals into soil and air. On today’s Heavy Networking, we’ll look at options for responsible disposal of IT gear, including repurposing it on site, reselling or donating it, and working with e-cycling companies.

IT organisations tend towards two strategic approaches - enduring, permanent and susatined. Or short term, consumable and fungible IT.