The Fat Pipe - Most Popular Packet Pushers Pods

On today’s Total Network Operations we talk through the adoption of AI in network operations with John Capobianco, Head of DevRel at Selector. Selector is the sponsor of today’s episode. John walks us through his career journey as a network engineer, and describes the moment where he realized that AI was going to change how... Read more »

Democratizing the learning environment is a passion for Deepak Ahuja. So much so, he founded CloudMyLab, a company that provides hands-on, cloud-based labs and networking environments. His goal is to offer an affordable lab-as-a-service for two groups of people: network engineers seeking certifications, and network engineers and automators that need a place to safely test... Read more »

Microsoft is rethinking allowing endpoint security software to run in the Windows kernel (including third-party and Microsoft’s own endpoint security software). While there are benefits to running security software in the kernel, there are also serious downsides (see the CrowdStrike outage). Dan Massameno joins JJ and Drew on Packet Protector to talk about the role... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with critical vulnerabilities in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center and Fortinet’s FortiSIEM. On the news front, SonicWall announces Gen8 firewalls plus a $200,000 warranty for customers that sign on to SonicWall’s Managed Protection Security Suite. IBM Cloud suffers its fourth major outage since May of this year, SASE vendor... Read more »

LLMs and AI-powered chatbots are becoming a regular feature of network operations tools and vendor product portfolios. Now the next iteration of AI in network ops and automation is likely to be agentic. On today’s Heavy Networking, sponsored by HPE Juniper Networking, we talk about what agentic AI actually means, how AI agents will accomplish... Read more »

Building things for people to use has been our guest’s goal since entering university in the 1960s. Total Network Operations is delighted to welcome Jack Haverty, who’s been instrumental in ARPANET operations and innovation, the development of TCP, and more. He takes us through the history of the internet from the early days of ARPANET,... Read more »

Ethan and Holly bring you the last installment of the OSPF series discussing OSPF area types. They discuss why OSPF areas exist, do a quick recap of what OSPF areas actually are, and then introduce the different types of OSPF areas. Lastly, see if you can answer Ethan’s rapid-fire OSPF questions. Episode Transcript: This episode... Read more »

Developers Rizel Scarlett and Ian Douglas join Ned and Kyler to talk about building an AI agent. Rizel and Ian work at Block, where they’re part of a team building an agent called Goose. They talk about what the agent does, building challenges, observability, and more. They also dive into topics such as how using AI... Read more »

Packet Protector goes global for today’s security news roundup. Microsoft discontinues a program in which engineers in China supported the US Department of Defense’s cloud infrastructure (with the help of US ‘digital escorts’), Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC fires several employees over allegations of attempted theft of sensitive tech, an Arizona woman gets 8 years in prison... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with follow-up on post-quantum support in firewalls and DPDK, then highlight a command injection vulnerability in Ruckus SmartZone software. In tech news, Broadcom rolls out the Jericho4 ASIC to help scale AI across multiple data centers, InfoBlox beefs up DNS protection to spot malicious domains faster, and HPE announces... Read more »

Perhaps the biggest question around adopting network automation is whether you should build a solution using open source tools and a lot of coding glue, or buy a network automation platform from a vendor and construct your automation solution on top of that. Either way has tradeoffs. Network engineer Lee Harper joins Heavy Networking to... Read more »

Optical networks are an essential component of networking, but don’t get much attention. Today we shine a spotlight on the intersection of optical networks and the software that automates them. Our guest is Michal Pecek, consultant and teacher in optical communication, whose work has transformed organizations including Google and Alcatel-Lucent (now Nokia). From pioneering flexible DWDM... Read more »

From SAML to OAuth to FIDO2 to passwordless promises, we unpack what’s working—and what’s broken—in the world of identity and authentication. Today on the Packet Protector podcast, we’re joined by the always thoughtful and occasionally provocative Wolf Goerlich, former Duo advisor, and now a practicing CISO in the public sector. We also talk about authorization... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Guest opinionator Tom Hollingsworth joins Johna Johnson to opine on the latest tech news. On the vulnerability front, several versions of BentoML are open to a server side request forgery. Looking at tech news, Intel will spin out its networking and edge group as it continues cost-cutting, Palo Alto Networks makes... Read more »

On Heavy Networking today, AI operations for networking. That is, how do we delegate some amount of responsibility for network operations to artificial intelligence? Cisco is our sponsor, and our guests are Omar Sultan, Director for Product Management of Automation and AI; and Javier Antich, Chief Mad Scientist for AI (yes, that’s his title!). We talk... Read more »

What’s the next era of network management and operations? Total Network Operations talks to Mahesh Jethanandani, Area Director(AD) for all of Operations and Management (OPS) at IETF and Distinguished Engineer at Arrcus. Mahesh describes a workshop from December of 2024 that sought to investigate the past, present, and future of network management and operations. He... Read more »

We ask listeners for follow up and you’ve sent it in. On today’s show we respond to listener comments and corrections on tunneling, the link aggregation control protocol, link aggregation in general, and DHCP options. We also talk about the network engineering certification journey. If you’ve got a “Well, actually” or any other follow up,... Read more »

On today’s show, we talk to Armon Dadgar, co-founder and CTO of HashiCorp regarding HashiCorp’s future within IBM. We start with a quick recap of IBM’s acquisition of HashiCorp and then move on to the challenges of bringing a small, young tech company into a huge corporation that makes lots of its revenue on legacy... Read more »

Mobile devices blur the boundaries between personal and work devices and are packed with sensitive information, making them popular targets for malware, spyware, and data collection. On today’s Packet Protector we dig into strategies for managing threats to mobile devices with guest Akili Akridge. Akili started his career pulling burner phones off suspects as a... Read more »

Take a Network Break! In our Red Alert section we note that memory safety bugs bug Firefox and Thunderbird, and on-prem SharePoint instances are under attack. In tech news, Fortinet adds support for Post Quantum Cryptography in FortiOS, Cato Networks integrates Azure Virtual WANs to its SASE offering, and we weigh the pros and cons... Read more »

Adyen is a global payments processor whose primary business is providing payment services for merchants, retailers, and venues, as well as online payments. On today’s Heavy Networking we talk about a firewall automation project the company has undertaken. With dozens of change requests coming in every day that need to touch network and host firewalls,... Read more »

Auvik is network management software that lets users monitor, manage, and troubleshoot their networks. On today’s sponsored episode we talk with Doug Murray, CEO; and John Harden, Director of Strategy & Technology Evangelism, both from Auvik, about the challenges facing today’s network operators. We look at the rise of the IT generalist, workloads and burnout,... Read more »

Laura Santamaria opens the listener mailbag to answer questions, including how to say yes or no to leadership opportunities without tanking your career or trashing your work-life balance. She also explores the mid-year review process and offers tips for successful self-evaluation and paths to self-growth. Episode Links: The Line Between Management and IC Leadership –... Read more »

Ethan and Holly continue their OSPF journey this week with OSPF Network Types. They discuss the two main OSPF network types used today: the broadcast and point to point networks. They also explain designated routers, backup designated routers, and when those are used and why. Lastly they discuss some soft skills – knowing your vendor... Read more »

NautobotGPT is a new AI assistant for Nautobot that helps engineers with network automation, answers questions, recommends tooling, and delivers working code. We discuss the user experience of NautobotGPT with Matthew Schwen, Associate Director of Network Automation at Humana, CoFounder and CTO of PortalCX; and Brad Haas, VP of Professional Services at Network to Code.... Read more »

CyberRatings, a non-profit that performs independent testing of security products and services, has released the results of comparative tests it conducted on Secure Service Edge, or SSE, services. Tested vendors include Cisco, Cloudflare, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, Skyhigh Security, Versa Networks, and Zscaler. We look at what was tested and how, highlight results, and discuss... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We begin with a listener question about a paper critiquing Shor’s Algorithm and quantum computing, and touch on a remote code execution vulnerability in Riverbed SteelCentral NetProfiler / NetExpress 10.8.7. We discuss a Cloudflare BGP misconfiguration that caused the Internet to hiccup, Broadcom’s new Tomahawk Ultra ASIC aimed for–you guessed it–AI... Read more »

Kevin Nanns is today’s guest on Total Network Operations. Kevin describes his “Wizard of Oz” moment when he discovered the world of networking. He talks about how he came up through the ranks working a help desk and then in a NOC, and his climb up the certification ladder. We also discuss how AI is... Read more »

We have a network automation discussion for you today from sponsor Megaport. At the AutoCon3 conference earlier this year, Luke Gollan presented on a complex network automation project migrating Megaport’s API-driven software defined network from a legacy VXC overlay to an EVPN framework. This helped improve scalability, but was fraught with practical challenges, not the... 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 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 »

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 »