The Fat Pipe - Most Popular Packet Pushers Pods

At AutoCon0 in November 2023, guest Jeremy Schulman delivered a talk from the main stage about delivering network assurance. If the term “network assurance” doesn’t mean anything to you, think about how you prove after an install or a change that the network is doing what it’s supposed to be doing. If you’re doing it... Read more »

While it’s easy to find technical content and make professional connections online, in-person interactions are still valuable for learning, forging business and personal connections, and career development. On today’s Day Two Cloud we discuss how and why to build local tech communities. Guest Laura Santamaria is a developer, developer advocate, and longtime community builder. We... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start the new year by examining major themes and trends that we think will affect IT and networking in 2024. Topics include: AI beyond LLMs Whether open source can remain a viable model in a predatory tech environment Cisco vs. everybody Why IT can’t ignore geopolitics for strategic planning What... Read more »

At NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, patients are the priority. That focus on patient care extends to the hospital’s campus network, data center, wireless network, and SD-WAN. These networks are instrumental for delivering medical applications and connecting medical devices. On today’s Heavy Networking, we talk with network architects and engineers at NewYork-Presbyterian about their use of automation to... Read more »

Today’s show explores platform engineering. Guest Chad McElligott has thought a lot about the practice of platform engineering, and a blog post and talk he gave about the subject inspired us to reach out and have a conversation. Chad describes platform engineering as “the application of a Product Mindset to supporting your engineering organization’s software... Read more »

On today’s Day Two Cloud podcast we talk about a cloud project where things didn’t go as planned. There were people problems, technical problems, and regulatory problems. Our guest Jonah Andersson shares lessons learned and how they can inform your own cloud strategies. We also talk about how to identify your project goals to determine... Read more »

Broadcom’s VMware has announced an end to perpetual licensing, network automation provider Anuta Networks is adding generative AI capabilities to its Atom platform, and high-end firewall revenues dip but campus switch sales soared in Q3 2023. The Open Networking Foundation, which oversaw open projects around software-defined networking, is closing its doors and folding its projects... Read more »

SD-WAN is evolving to encompass more features and capabilities around security, application performance, network visibility, and more. On today’s Heavy Networking, sponsored by Palo Alto Networks, we look at how SD-WAN has transformed from a simple network connectivity solution to a comprehensive networking and security system. We discuss the limitations of legacy branch routers and... Read more »

This is part two of a special edition of Day Two Cloud we’re calling Security KubeConversations. I spent two days in the Windy City, attending KubeCon Cloud Native Con Chicago 2023. I had the opportunity to speak to a wide array of vendors and open source maintainers about what’s happening on the security front in... Read more »

Our KubeConversations series continues with a two-part episode on securing Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure. I attended KubeCon 2023 in Chicago and had the opportunity to speak with vendors and open-source maintainers about the work they’re doing to help protect your Kubernetes environments. In this episode we’ll talk about a Kubernetes Bill of Materials, protecting K8s... Read more »

IBM has announced a new quantum processor and modular quantum computer in an effort to own the next generation of computing, Cisco unveils an AI assistant to help you untangle firewall rules, and Marvell debuts new DPUs for switches, firewalls, and other networking devices. The MEF looks for ways to stay relevant in the broadband... Read more »

Welcome to Heavy Networking! On today’s show we’ve got a roundtable conversation on the state of automation in the networking industry. This show was inspired by the recent AutoCon conference, which is a new conference focused specifically on network automation. Ethan Banks and I both attended, as did two our guests, and we’re going share... Read more »

Welcome to Day Two Cloud! In this episode with Microsoft, it’s November 2023, and I’m in Seattle for the Microsoft Ignite conference. If you think you heard this intro before and you’re wondering if you’re hearing the same episode again, you’re not. This is the second episode from Microsoft Ignite 2023. Today, I’m talking with... Read more »

Today we’re talking security, but security you don’t always see. Fortinet, today’s sponsor, has millions of devices in the field. These are real-world devices seeing real-world traffic, all day, everyday. While those devices have a primary protection role, they can also serve as sensors that collect threat signals and feed threat intelligence services that can,... Read more »

Broadcom’s latest Trident ASIC will include a neural net inference engine on the chip that can analyze traffic and take action in the packet pipeline, but it’s up to customers to build rules and signatures based on their own training data. Broadcom has also announced it will lay off approximately 1,300 VMware employees. Identity provider... Read more »

Public clouds abstract away much of the nitty-gritty work that goes into provisioning infrastructure, including networking. Application teams can quickly connect resources and deploy applications without having to know much about the plumbing that links everything together. When they compare the public cloud experience to standing up applications in an on-prem data center, the on-prem... Read more »

From using hollow core fiber to building networks designed to support AI workloads and modern applications, there’s a lot happening in Azure networking. In this sponsored Day Two Cloud episode, recorded live at Microsoft Ignite this November, we have a wide-ranging discussion about new and forthcoming features and capabilities. My guest is Narayan Annamalai, who... Read more »

Now that Broadcom’s $69 billion VMware acquisition is complete, will Broadcom invest more in VMware to compete in multi-cloud or settle for profitable revenue collection from existing customers? Nvidia debuts a SuperNIC designed to accelerate Ethernet to support AI workloads and announces partnerships with server makers to bundle its NIC in an AI Ethernet stack.... Read more »

Welcome to part 2 of my KubeConversations. I spent two days in the Windy City attending KubeCon Cloud Native Con Chicago. I had the opportunity to speak to a wide array of vendors and open source maintainers about what’s going on in the cloud native ecosystem. From those conversations, I picked up on some major... Read more »

China demonstrates the strength of its home-grown technology industry by announcing a 1.2Tbit Internet backbone that stretches 3,000 kilometers, Fortinet warns of a 9.8 severity bug in its SIEM product, and Nvidia and Dell roll out ready-made models and infrastructure for enterprises to build their own generative AI apps. HPE Aruba Networking releases a new... Read more »

We continue our Future of Networking series with part two of our conversation with Brad Casemore. Now retired, Brad has participated in the industry as both a technologist and IDC analyst. In this episode we look at the rise of zero trust and what it means for campus networking. We discuss how geopolitics influences IT... Read more »

Welcome to a special edition of Day Two Cloud. Host Ned Bellavance traveled to KubeCon Chicago 2023 and spoke to vendors and open source maintainers about what’s going on in the cloud-native ecosystem. This episode features conversations on platform engineering. Part 2 will focus on security. Episode Guests: Cole Morrison, Developer Advocate at HashiCorp LinkedIn... Read more »

Extreme Networks is jumping into Zero Trust Network Access, Palo Alto Networks is reportedly spending more than half a billion dollars to acquire a corporate browser startup, and Forrester predicts as much as 20% of VMware’s customers may jump ship after the Broadcom acquisition completes. Arista touts a strong third quarter, while F5 forecasts a... Read more »

Cloud environments often have poor visibility and monitoring, and sensitive corporate data can be placed in many different locations – object stores, databases, and so on. Maintaining access control is hard, and managing compliance and governance on that access and data is a real problem. And each cloud has its own proprietary security tools that... Read more »

What if you could have a multi-cloud network that was cloud-native, but you didn’t have to know the nitty-gritty details for each of the clouds? That is, you work with a cloud network interface, and that platform handles the networking–in a cloud-native way–for you. You wouldn’t need to know the nuances of AWS, Azure, and... Read more »

We discuss potential repercussions for security executives after the SEC charges Solar Winds’ CISCO with fraud, examine a new SD-LAN offering from Versa Networks that aims to integrate security controls into a campus fabric, and discuss a new open-source tool from Cloudflare for scrubbing sensitive authentication tokens from HAR files. Extreme Networks posts strong revenues... Read more »

The Future of Networking series continues with Brad Casemore, who survived multiple decades in the technology sector, including sixteen years as an analyst for IDC. He’s been a longtime observer of networking markets, technologies, and trends. Recently retired from the analyst business, we’ve invited Brad onto the show as a kind of exit interview to... Read more »

AI and machine learning are being more widely used in IT and elsewhere. Today's episode opens the AI magic box to better understand what's inside, including software and hardware. We discuss essentials such as training models and parameters, software components, GPUs, networking, and storage. We also discuss using cloud-based AI platforms vs. building your own in-house, and what to consider when assembling your own AI infrastructure.

Today's episode includes Cisco patching a critical vulnerability affecting IOS-XE gear, startup Prosimo releasing a cost calculator to help network engineers track their public cloud networking costs, and Juniper integrating its SD-WAN to the AWS cloud WAN. We also cover Cisco's investment in a quantum networking startup, growing DPU sales, and Intel divesting from pluggable optical modules.

AI and machine learning are finally being applied to networking in meaningful ways. On today's sponsored show we talk with Selector about its AIOps platform, which ingests networking logs, flows, configurations, SNMP, and other telemetry to detect patterns, spot problems, and provide contextual insights to help network engineers do their jobs better. We speak with Selector about what it is, how it works, and concrete use cases.

On today's Day Two Cloud we talk about how to build a successful security practice within your organization. Our guest is Swathi Joshi, VP, SaaS Cloud Security at Oracle. She breaks down security teams into three core groups: proactive security, defensive security, and assurance (risk reduction, enabling secure access, meeting compliance requirements). She also shares her insights around SoCs, security automation, threat and vulnerability management, and successful blue team practices.

This week's IT news podcast covers a serious Cisco exploit against IOS XE, new firewalls from Juniper, Broadcom's hopes to capture the routing market with merchant silicon, more movement on restoring net neutrality in the US, and more.

Today’s Heavy Networking is about collaborative automation via GitNops, which applies DevOps principles to networking. That means things like version control, working with sources of truth, operating infrastructure as code, and collaborating on network on changes and updates. GitNops benefits include automation, repeatability, and scalability. We'll dive into GitNops with guest Tom McGonagle.

The goal of private AI is to bring AI models and compute to where your data is stored to ensure privacy and control. On today's Day Two Cloud, sponsored by VMware, we dig more deeply into private AI, major use cases, and the kinds of data that get fed into a private AI system. We also discuss the infrastructure required to build out a private AI platform, how to connect to your data stores, and VMware's role in virtualizing GPUs to maximize efficiency.

This week's Network Break covers a new set of Layer 1 switches from Arista for high-frequency trading, Ruckus announcing a (pre-ratified) Wi-Fi 7 AP, and AWS planning to require multi-factor authentication starting in mid-2024. MGM Resorts says it will take a $100 million hit due to a security breach, the UK finally fines Equifax for a 2017 breach, and Broadcom may have cleared a China hurdle to its VMware acquisition.

Today on Heavy Networking we talk about how to get from a handful of Python scripts to a network automation platform that enables a self-service environment and incorporates the checks and governance required to make sure the automation doesn't blow up the network. Our sponsor today is Itential. Itential offers just such a network automation platform. We talk about how Itential makes it happen, including simple and more complex examples.

Today's Day Two Cloud covers highlights from a recent Edge Field Day event. Ned Bellavance was a delegate at the event and will share perceptions and insights based on presentations from the event. Topics include a working definition of edge, the constraints of hosting infrastructure in edge locations (power, space, network connectivity and others), and operational models for running software and services in these environments.

This week's Network Break covers new HCI gear from the Cisco/Nutanix partnership, a sensor to detect Wi-Fi 6e performance, Intel financial engineering, Amazon shipping test satellites for a space broadband service, and more IT news.

Today's Heavy Networking is another roundtable episode. We've assembled a group of network engineers to talk about what's on their minds. Topics today include why other IT departments adn end users are quick to blame the network first, and what can be done about it; using Nokia's open-source Containerlab for testing and development work; and why you shouldn't feel left behind when you hear talk about 400G and 800G networks.

Welcome to Day Two Cloud. If you want your journey to infrastructure automation to be successful, you have to prepare for that journey. On today's show we talk about how to lay the groundwork for infrastructure automation or Infrastructure as Code (IaC). And this isn't just about tools and training (though we do also discuss these). There are organizational, team, and personal elements required to help people to incorporate automation into their daily work.

Today's Network Break, with guest host Johna Till Johnson, discusses why Amazon is pouring $4 billion into a generative AI startup, Marvell's response to accusations of an NSA-friendly backdoor in older Cavium products, why Microsoft is investigating small modular nuclear reactors, Meta using public posts to train AI, and more tech news

Today’s Heavy Networking, sponsored by Palo Alto Networks, discusses Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) across the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). You could think of ZTNA, as VPN evolved and SASE as SD-WAN evolved. Not only do you get an overlay connectivity fabric, but you also get cloud-hosted security services. We talk about how it all works together, the role of client software, Palo Alto Networks' architecture, integrating an IDP, and more.

Welcome to Day Two Cloud! Today we talk with sponsor Mirantis about Lens AppIQ. If you've started using Kuberentes and you've got multiple clusters supporting many applications, Lens AppIQ help you get visibility into what's going on. Lens AppIQ is a SaaS service that provides app-centric visibility, policy management, and governance. It's targeted at developers and DevOps teams.

Day Two Cloud continues the Cloud Essentials series with cloud storage. We focus specifically on AWS's offering, which include object, file, and block storage options. We also discuss special file systems, file caching, instance stores, and more. We cover use cases for the major storage options and their costs. We also touch briefly on storage services including data migration, hybrid cloud storage, and disaster recovery and backup.

On today’s Network Break, Greg Ferro is joined by guest co-host Brad Casemore. You can follow Brad on his blog Crepuscular Circus. Greg and Brad discuss new capabilities in Juniper’s Apstra data center automation software, Versa partnering with Intel to put security software on a NIC, and Cisco buying Splunk for $28 billion. The Linux... Read more »

Today's Heavy Networking covers Pandas. Not the cuddly bears that eat bamboo, but the Python library that makes it easy for you to work with a set of data. Import Pandas at the top of your Python script, follow one of many Pandas tutorials online, and in short order you’ll be able to perform data operations in a spreadsheet-like way. We talk network automation use cases for Pandas with Rick Donato.

Today on Day Two Cloud we go deep on new areas of cloud security that you may not be familiar with. There are forces out there that are driving the rise of new security tools and processes, and we bring back guest Jo Peterson to help us make sense of it all.

Today on Network Break we get a plethora of networking news, including Cisco rolling out new custom Ethernet switch ASICs to compete for AI fabrics. Nokia announces new routers also boasting custom silicon, Intel makes noise about the Thunderbolt 5 connector, Marvell touts ASICs for automotive Ethernet, the AfriNIC registry goes into receivership, and more tech news.

Our topic today on Heavy Networking is SD-WAN monitoring at massive scale. Scale can grow quickly with SD-WAN when you account for the underlay, overlays, gateways, endpoints, and more. We talk with sponsor Broadcom about their monitoring platform and dig into a case study with a Broadcom customer providing global IT infrastructure for thousands of their own customers.

On today's Day Two Cloud we discuss the state of network automation and whether and how it can catch up to automation in the public cloud. We look at network automation challenges, define boundaries with other elements of the infrastructure stack, the impact of cloud networking, whether AI and ML can help, and more. Our guests are Chris Grundemann and Scott Robohn, co-founders of the Network Automation Forum (NAF).