The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods

Let’s talk about common misconceptions regarding DNS and IPv6. We’ve heard these often enough that we felt we should talk through each one. We cover issues including what kind of DNS record types can be returned via IPv6 (and IPv4, too), more details on what really goes on with Happy Eyeballs, and combining A/AAAA records... Read more »

Our OSPF series continues with a look at OSPF neighbor formation and related timers. We talk about the five major packet types that carry information among OSPF routers, how OSPF routers become neighbors, how they negotiate link-state database exchanges, keep-alive messages, and how they negotiate designated and backup routers when multiple devices are on the... Read more »

Curl is a widely used open source tool and library for transferring data. On today’s Day Two DevOps we talk with curl creator Daniel Stenberg. Daniel gives us a brief history of curl and where it’s used (practically everywhere). We also discuss the impact of AI on curl. Open source projects are often starved for... Read more »

There’s lots of use cases for a portable edge devices that can provide compute and wireless connectivity: emergency response, a remote industrial site, an instant retail location, and so on. Heavy Wireless dives into HiveRadar’s instant edge in a box, which provides Intel NUCs, integrated switching, a wireless gateway, a PDU, support for G5 and... Read more »

There’s lots of juicy stories in our monthly security news roundup. The Scattered Spider hacking group makes effective use of social engineering to target MSPs, Microsoft pushes for better Windows resiliency by rethinking kernel access policies for third-party endpoint security software, and the US Justice Department files indictments against alleged operators of laptop farms that... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with listener follow-up on Arista market share in the enterprise, and then sound the alarm about a remote code execution vulnerability in Adobe Experience Manager. On the news front, Arista buys VeloCloud to charge into the SD-WAN market, CoreWeave acquires a cryptominer to get access to GPUs and electricity... Read more »

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we explore NVDs, or Nokia Validated Designs, for enterprise data center networks. NVDs are developed to address a broad set of customer requirements and undergo extensive testing of hardware, software, and traffic. We talk with sponsor Nokia about its validation process, customer benefits, NVD use cases, technical details, and... Read more »

Cisco recently announced a major evolution to its certification roadmap: starting February 2026, the popular DevNet certifications will transition to a brand-new Automation track. Joining us today is Francois Caen, Product Manager at Cisco, also an expert in network automation and a recognized voice in the Cisco Learning and Certification Community. We talk with Francois... Read more »

Quantum computing is here, and it’s being used for more than cracking encryption. On today’s Packet Protector we get a primer on quantum, how it differs from classical computing, its applications for difficult computing problems, why quantum will be the death of blockchain, and how to think about quantum risks. Our guest, Johna Johnson, is... Read more »

Here we are, a bit more than halfway through the year. How’s your execution against your strategy going? Roiled by the economy? Disrupted by tariffs? Thrown off by staff retirements? If you built a proper technology strategy in the first place, driven by the business strategy, then no matter what is happening don’t ignore it,... Read more »

Take a Network Break! HPE and Juniper have settled with the US Department of Justice, allowing HPE’s $14 billion purchase to move forward. However, as part of the deal, Juniper must grant a full license to its AI Ops for Mist source code to one, or perhaps two, companies via an auction to be overseen... Read more »

The Cloud Gambit is joining the Packet Pushers network! Launched in 2023 as an independent podcast, The Cloud Gambit cuts through the hype to deliver what actually matters in cloud and AI. Hosts William Collins and Eyvonne Sharp decode the strategies, technologies, and market forces reshaping enterprise infrastructure. Built for engineers who lead, leaders who... Read more »

SNMP is still widely used in today’s networks. But modern telemetry and network observability are bringing changes to network monitoring. Today’s Heavy Networking is a roundtable discussion about alternatives to SNMP and real-world use cases for those alternatives. This episode was inspired by a request from listener Nikolay. He says… While telemetry (gRPC, etc.) is... Read more »

On today’s show we talk about NetDevOps and AI Ops with Greg Freeman, VP of Network and Customer Transformation at Lumen. Greg spearheads network automation, orchestration ,and AI strategy, guiding the highest technical tier in operations and championing NetDevOps methodologies. We talk about the people and work culture that’s influenced the development of automation and... Read more »

By popular request (and now that we have some other background topics covered) we start our series on the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) routing protocol. We kick off the series with OSPF basics including Link State Advertisements, Link State Database, and other related essentials. We’ll explore additional OSPF topics over subsequent episodes. This week’s... Read more »

Today’s show is in memory of Fred Baker, who passed away on June 18, 2025. Fred was a pivotal figure in the IPv6 community. He was the long-time chair of the v6ops working group, and had a distinguished career at Cisco as a Technical Fellow. To honor Fred and his contributions, we’re sharing our interview... Read more »

MCP, or Model Context Protocol, is an open-source project originally created by Anthropic. MCP is designed to let AI agents to connect to data repositories, applications, business and developer tools, and other agents to execute tasks and carry out instructions. Day Two DevOps explores the capabilities and pitfalls of MCP, how the protocol works, and... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Our Red Alert is a remote code execution vulnerability in Roundcube. On the news front, HPE announces GreenLake Intelligence, which will bring agentic AI capabilities to the HPE portfolio, Pure Storage brings cloud-like operations for on-prem storage, and Juniper Networks adds predictive analytics to its data center ops platform. Weka rolls... Read more »

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast, sponsored by HPE, we get a preview of HPE Discover. We talk about networking, security, and agentic AI announcements coming out of the event. We’ll also talk about how HPE is converging network and security in its product portfolio, and HPE’s approach to AI both as a tool being... Read more »

Today’s Packet Protector digs into risks and threats you might encounter in a Kubernetes environment, what to do about them, and why sometimes a paved path (or boring technology) is the smartest option. My guest is Natalie Somersall, Principal Solutions Engineer for the Public Sector at Chainguard. We talk about risks including identity and access... Read more »

AI is already widely used for wireless network operations. On today’s show, we look at how AI and machine learning are also being applied to wireless design and site surveys. My guest is Jussi Kiviniemi, Founder and CEO of Hamina Wireless. We talk about how Hamina is developing and implementing AI tools to help designers... Read more »

Service provider networks face a couple of difficult challenges: how to map service level agreements to actual network health and performance, and how to deliver service assurance to customers regardless of what happens on the network. On today’s sponsored Heavy Networking we talk with Cisco Systems about its approach to service assurance, how Cisco is... Read more »

At AutoCon 3 in Prague, Scott Robohn sat down with Ernest Lefner from sponsor Gluware to talk about lessons learned throughout his career: from his early days of pulling cable to becoming Chief Product Officer at Gluware and helping to found ONUG. Ernest talks about being a continuous technology learner, and also about the need... Read more »

People consistently overestimate their ability to predict whether a new product or feature will be a success. Instead of blithely going forward with a project that takes up lots of resources and yields minimal results, today’s guest says we should get our ideas into contact with external reality as quickly as possible, and maybe do... Read more »

If you need to route in your network, you can program static routes into all your routing-capable devices. And this can work. But at some point, you’re probably going to want to switch to a dynamic routing protocol. On today’s N Is For Networking, Ethan and Holly discuss the differences between static and dynamic routes,... Read more »

On today’s show, we’re joined NetBox Labs co-founders Mark Coleman and Kris Beevers. They recount how they founded NetBox Labs and discuss its growth and how it’s being used. We also delve into the NetBox Labs community and its importance for users. And of course, there’s the ever-present AI discussion. Mark and Kris also talk... Read more »

Secrets trickle out through misconfigurations, poor tooling, and rushed Git commits. Today’s guest, John Howard, joins us on Packet Protector to walk through practical secrets management with Vault and TruffleHog to help make sure you don’t expose your privates. John discusses work he’s done to build an automated process in his organization for developers and... Read more »

IT teams deal with technology lifecycle issues all the time–including Y2K, which enterprises across the world grappled with for years. The Epochalypse, or Year 2038 Problem, is similar. Specifically, some Linux systems’ date-time counters will go from positive to negative at a specific date in 2038, potentially wreaking havoc on embedded systems and any other... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Our Red Alert for the week is a remote code execution vulnerability in open-source XDR platform Wazuh. In tech news, we dig into several announcements from Cisco Live US including: unified management of Meraki and Catalyst gear, new switches, an AI Assistant for the Meraki dashboard, a Deep Network Model LLM,... Read more »

There’s an old saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. On today’s show, we talk about taking your first step into network automation with guest Joseph Nicholson. He’s been automating at NTT Data for many years now and has some perspective to share. He’s a network engineer by trade,... Read more »

The Hexabuild team is providing a new community resource, an IPv6 compatibility checker, for those trying to figure out IPv6 network hardware and software compatibility. It’s currently in an alpha version. We talk about what inspired it, what it does, and possible future updates. We also want to get your feedback on whether this is... Read more »

Today we chat with Megaport’s Mitchell Warden, Founding Engineer; and Alexis Bertholf, Global Technical Evangelist, to find out what NetOps is like at Megaport, a company that provides scalable internet connections for all types of organizations. We look at the origins of Megaport and how the company started with the intention of network automation from... Read more »

What shape is your network? In other words, what is its topology? On today’s episode, we discover the different types of network topologies and designs used in the enterprise, data center, and service provider networks. We cover leaf/spine, hub and spoke, point to point, mesh, and others. We also talk about how topologies affect traffic... Read more »

Is WebAssembly the next big thing? Here to help us understand what WebAssembly (WASM) is and what it can and can’t do is Michael Levan, a consultant and WASM trainer. He also dives deeper into WASM details such as hosting, security, monitoring, and the ever-present influence of AI. AdSpot: Spacelift Founded by the creator of... Read more »

Our security news roundup discusses the compromise of thousands of ASUS routers and the need to perform a full factory reset to remove the malware, why Microsoft allows users to log into Windows via RDP using revoked passwords, and the ongoing risk to US infrastructure from “unexplained communications equipment” being found in Chinese-made electrical equipment... Read more »

A validation survey is typically used for wireless infrastructure post-installation. It compares predictions to real wireless network performance. On today’s show we chat with Joel Crane about validation survey controversies and the challenges of producing a survey whose data has integrity. We cover topics such as the perfectly green heat map, how fast you should... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with two critical vulnerabilities: one affecting cloud versions of Cisco ISE, and the other for HPE StoreOnce. In the news, Broadcom announces the Tomahawk 6 ASIC with 102.4Tbits of bandwidth, SentinelOne suffers a self-imposed network outage, and the Wireshark Foundation announces its first-ever professional certification for Wireshark. Cisco rebrands... Read more »

Network automation is today’s topic with sponsor Gluware. Gluware provides a network automation platform that targets both network engineers and automation builders. On today’s Heavy Networking, we discuss how Gluware supports these two constituencies. We also talk about a recent product announcement, Gluware Labs. Gluware Labs includes a free Community Edition of Gluware software you... Read more »

“Reinvent or die” is an apt adage for the ever-churning technology industry. Brad Maltz joins us to share his insights on what he calls “continuous reinvention” and how that relates to his own career and why others might want to adopt this mindset. Brad is a Senior Director of AI Solutions at Dell and has... Read more »

Let’s explore four goals of network design: stability, speed, scalability, and security. These goals are based on Ethan’s experience designing, building, and operating networks. Network architects and design experts might have other objectives, and that’s fine, but these four goals are the basis of today’s episode. Ethan and Holly discuss why these four goals are... Read more »

Firefly is a cloud infrastructure automation platform that helps cloud teams, DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, DevSecOps, and other groups manage their entire cloud as code. Firefly helps to manage cloud complexity and produce consistent and efficient cloud platforms with code. To help Firefly better understand their customers and industry trends around Infrastructure as Code (IaC),... Read more »

“There must be a better way!” is guest Bart Dorlandt’s motto, which he applies to network automation, among other things. In today’s episode, Bart shares what he’s learned about network automation, explains why he focuses on process over tools, and reflects on the importance of mentorship. Bart and Eric also discuss why even if listeners... Read more »

Microsegmentation divides a network into boundaries or segments to provide fine-grained access control to resources within those segments. On today’s Packet Protector we talk about network and security reasons for employing microsegmentation, different methods (agents, overlays, network controls, and so on), how microsegmentation fits into a zero trust strategy, and the product landscape. Episode Links:... Read more »

You need someone to design your operations processes–or perhaps redesign them. That’s an Ops Architect. Should you take an ops person and train them up in architecture? Or an architect and train them up in operations? Do you even have that ops/engineer/architect organizational structure – and should you? Johna and John dive into this discussion... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with a Red Alert for the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Tool, which has an unpatched (as of recording time) vulnerability that could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code. On the news front, Salesforce ponies up $8 billion for Informatica to improve data governance capabilities, Google researchers revise estimates of... Read more »

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast, we talk about how to get more out of your NetFlow records with sponsor NetFlow Logic. NetFlow’s been around for a long time, and if you’re already including flow records as part of your monitoring and management arsenal, you may think you’re extracting all the value you can from... Read more »

If you participate in the public Internet by announcing your own netblocks, you should be familiar with Internet Routing Registries (IRRs) and the Routing Policy Specification Language (RPSL). These are tools that help you be a good network citizen. In a world of BGP hijacks and other problems, these tools matter more than ever. We... Read more »

Total Networks Operations sits down with Justin Ryburn for a wide-ranging discussion on the state of the networking industry. Topics including how to attract new talent to network engineering and network operations; getting literate in DevOps/infrastructure tools such as GitHub, Terraform, and Python; pairing Dev and NetOps to maximize domain expertise; integrating tools and trying... Read more »

Let’s chat about point-to-point links. On today’s episode we cover what should and shouldn’t be done, and discuss why following RFC’s doesn’t always get you to the right place. We dig into questions including: Don’t we just use link-local addresses for point-to-points? Shouldn’t we assign a /127, just like we do a /31 in IPv4?... Read more »

We wanted to do an episode on SD-WAN, but realized we needed to set the stage for how wide-area networking developed. That’s why today’s episode is a history lesson of the Wide Area Network (WAN). We talk about how WANs emerged, public and private WANs, how WANs connect to LANs and data centers, the care... Read more »