The Fat Pipe - Most Popular Packet Pushers Pods

On today's Day Two Cloud podcast we talk about Compute Express Link (CXL), a technology for composable infrastructure. The idea is to take all the peripherals in a system---network cards, memory, graphical processing units, and so on---and put them on a bus outside the chassis to share them among multiple hosts. Is this the dream of composable infrastructure coming true?

On today's Network Break podcast we cover a raft of Juniper vulnerabilities, whether Cisco should patch serious vulnerabilities in end-of-life products, a big T-Mobile breach, Avaya dealing with significant debt, sweeping rounds of layoffs, and more IT news.

On today's Heavy Networking, guest Tom Costello walks us through his personal lab in the cloud. We discuss pros and cons of the cloud vs. a basement, using EVE-NG vs. CML, how automation can help you manage cloud costs, resources for those who might want a cloud lab, and more.

On today's sponsored Day Two Cloud podcast we talk about zero standing privilege with strongDM. Zero standing privilege goes beyond just-in-time credentials to a model where no credentials pre-exist, but are created in real-time and paired with appropriate permissions built from policy, also created in real-time. Can such a thing be accomplished technically---and without irritating all your end users? StrongDM's Sebastian Mankowski is here to make the case.

Take a Network Break! This week's episode covers a bunch of tech news including Arista rolling out a heap of new switches, Intel pinning its comeback hopes on newly released Xeon CPUs, a serious exploit of a Fortinet SSL VPN vulnerability, Dell pulling away from China-made chips, and more.

Today on Heavy Networking, home labs. Specifically, we’re going to discuss building and using a lab with virtualized Juniper gear in EVE-NG. Our guest is Christian Scholz, who has written and presented quite a bit on this topic.

IT security is broken. Vendors ship insecure products, customers have to bolt on and then operate more and more security products, compliance and regulatory requirements don't necessarily make things safer, and getting business done always takes priority over securing systems and data. On today's Day Two Cloud podcast, guest Mick Douglas shares ideas on how to make security less excruciating and more effective.

Take a Network Break! For our first show of 2023 we skip the news to spend some time speculating on technologies and trends that may influence IT and networking in the coming year, including the influence of AI, machine learning, and ChatGPT in tech; data center network automation; cloud repatriation; and more.

On today’s Heavy Networking we get inside the process of technical writing and product documentation from a person deep in the trenches of creating docs. We also talk about why writing as a skill might be worth cultivating even if you aren’t responsible for creating the manual.

Today on Day Two Cloud we examine global network performance of some of the biggest public cloud providers. Sponsor ThousandEyes shares key findings and surprising data points from its 2022 Cloud Performance Report on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

Take a Network Break! On today's episode we cover a new certification roadmap from Cisco, speculate on the future of corporate office space, and delve into an FTC lawsuit that aims to stop Microsoft's $69 billion purchase of game developer Activision. We also cover Broadcom financial results and space networking stories from Apple and SpaceX.

On today's Heavy Networking podcast, sponsored by Juniper Networks, we discuss how metro networks are evolving to Cloud Metro, how to apply cloud principles and automation to these locations, and how the attack surface changes when you transition to Cloud Metro. We also talk about how Juniper supports active assurance and zero trust security in these environments.

On today's Day Two Cloud we continue our Kubernetes conversation with guest Michael Levan. Today's show focuses on Kubernetes deployments and managing clusters once they're up and running. We discuss whether Kubernetes is really more complex than traditional application infrastructure; examine management options such as GitOps, manifests, and Kubectl; share useful tools, and talk about why Kubernetes is all about APIs.

On today's Network Break we discuss new AWS previews for secure remote access and for connecting applications and services across VPCs. We also discuss a serious outage at Hive Social, Open RAN 5G coming to fighter jets, a promise from Broadcom not to raise prices if the VMware acquisition goes through, and more IT news.

Today on Heavy Networking, modeling your network with Batfish. Batfish is an open-source project that builds a model of your production network based on a snapshot of your network and device configurations. Engineers can then test and validate changes against this model before making those changes to the production network. Guest Rick Donato walks us through how Batfish works, use cases, and more.

On today's Day Two Cloud podcast we walk through how to build a Kubernetes cluster to support a container-based application. We cover issues such as what constitutes a minimum viable cluster, rolling your own vs. Kubernetes-as-a-service, managing multiple clusters, pros and cons of bare metal vs. running clusters in VMs, design recommendations and gotchas using a cloud service, and more.

This week's Network Break podcast discusses UK and EU regulators wanting a closer look at Broadcom's VMware acquisition, Google settling with 40 US states over location tracking charges, and the FCC publishing responses from the 15 biggest US mobile providers regarding customer geolocation data tracking, plus even more IT news.

If you're headed to AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, you can catch Ned & me recording a show live. On Wednesday, November 30, 2022, we’ll be at TopGolf with sponsor Prosimo from 4 to 7 pm. Join us to have some fun! Links and drinks, meet fellow engineers building clouds for their companies, and then watch us record the show. Space is limited, so register at prosimo.io. We’ll see you at TopGolf Las Vegas on Wednesday the 30th!

Today on Heavy Networking, a discussion with sponsor VMware about SD-WAN and SASE. We’re diving into announcements from VMware Explore Barcelona 2022 covering a new SD-WAN client and more. With this client, you’ll be able to connect your users to the SASE cloud with software--no hardware edge box required. We dive into how it works, the network architecture, use cases, and more.

Today on Day Two Cloud we examine Istio Ambient Mesh, a new option for building service meshes in a microservices environment. Istio Ambient Mesh essentially brings the concept of a load balancer to a cluster of containers. Rather than run a sidecar proxy for each pod or container, you can run Ambient Mesh per node. Our guest and guide to this open source project is Christian Posta, Global Field CTO at Solo.io.

Take a Network Break! This week we cover a new continuous integration pipeline from Arista Networks to support network automation, Cisco's intention to open a new silicon design center in Spain, and Apple spending $450 million to support emergency text messaging using satellites. We also discuss Palo Alto Networks spending $195 million for Cider Security, financial results, and more.

On today's Heavy Networking we look at the idea of embedding zero trust into applications. The way we do cyber security these days has failed in significant ways. What if we could extend the AAA or RBAC model to all applications? Better yet, what if we take the RBAC model, make authentication more robust than username & password, assess endpoint security posture constantly, and evaluate each request individually up at layer 7 for all applications? Guest Galeal Zino has opinions on what embedded zero trust looks like. We discuss.

On today’s Day Two Cloud we talk through the idea of “zero standing privilege”. Zero standing privilege is an evolution of credentials management that goes beyond always-on usernames and passwords and more advanced forms of privileged access management to help lock down access to sensitive systems. Our sponsor is strongDM and our guest is Britt Crawford, Director of Product.

This week's Network Break covers several announces from VMware Explore including a new SD-WAN client. ASIC-maker Marvell goes after industrial networks with new silicon, Cisco announces the curtain falling on several ISR router models, and SolarWinds settles with the SEC. Zoom and the AMC movie theater chain partner on an offering to hold big meetings at the movies, and Starlink announces it will slow customer speeds if they cross a 1TB cap.

Heavy Networking welcomes sponsor Netris to the show with a special episode for you network nerds who are really getting into automation, infrastructure as code, pipelines, and so on. Netris is all about bringing that public cloud VPC experience to the network you’ve already got. Imagine being able to consume your existing network with APIs and being able to stand up VLANs, VXLANs, elastic load balancers, firewalls, Internet gateways, and more the same way you do in the cloud, but on premises.

On today's Day Two Cloud we talk about testing. While developers do the testing, operators may be responsible for setting up testing environments, which can be a lot of work. That work increases with microservices because of all the complexities and dependencies that come with connecting and orchestrating microservices-based applications. Today we talk about how to address testing challenges with Arjun Iyer, and explore a solution he's developed for simplifying end-to-end microservices testing in a Kubernetes environment. This is not a sponsored show, but we do talk about Signadot, a startup Arjun founded in the testing space.

This week's Network Break covers new features in Gluware and Aviatrix, new servers from HPE, and new partner specializations from Cisco. We also cover financial results from Fortinet and Arista and Russian threats against commercial satellites.

Today on Heavy Networking we have a round-table discussion about Data Processing Units (DPUs). These devices let you bring networking, security, and storage capabilities closer to server workloads without burdening server CPUs. Guests Pete Lumbis and Aaron Glenn help us dissect DPUs, identify use cases, discuss adoption and operational challenges, and more.

Welcome to Day Two Cloud! On today’s episode---databases. More specifically, controlling your databases. We’re discussing the database control plane company Severalnines with CEO Vinay Joosery. Severalnines is sponsoring today’s discussion about sovereign Databases as a Service (DBaaS).

Take a Network Break! This week we discuss a trio of stories at the intersection of tech and global political power struggles. Plus, startup Versa Networks lands $120 million investment in a pre-IPO round, and tech companies including Juniper Networks, Intel, and Google/Alphabet release financial results.

Today’s Heavy Networking, sponsored by Nokia, dives into Nokia's fabric-based approach to data center automation and operations. That approach includes its SR Linux network OS, its Fabric Services System intent-based platform, its NetOps Development Kit, or NDK, and how all this ties together to address your operational life cycle across Day zero, Day 1, Day Two, and beyond.

Today on the Day Two Cloud podcast we're going to talk with someone who was part of a DevOps teams deploying Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and applications in the public cloud. This project ran into challenges around scaling, the environments they needed to support, how to store certain artifacts, working with pipeline, and breaking up a monolithic repo into smaller repos and the repercussions of that decision.

This week the Network Break covers new SASE capabilities from Fortinet, new 800G hardware from Cisco that uses its homegrown ASIC, and an app from RSA for smart phones that can disable authentication if the app detects malicious behavior. Plus we cover new initiatives from the Open Compute Project, disaggregated Wi-Fi, and more tech news.

On today’s Heavy Networking episode, I talk with Nick Carter about Flock Networks, his routing protocol stack startup, as well as Nick’s love of the Rust programming language. As a network engineer, maybe you don’t think you care about Rust. Nick’s here to explain why the discerning network engineer might prefer their routing daemons to have been written in Rust. We also talk about the pleasures and travails of startup life.

Today's Day Two Cloud podcast, sponsored by AppDynamics, explores how AppDynamics Cloud brings observability to your Kubernetes deployments by ingesting and visualizing all metrics, events, log and trace data from across your cloud and on-prem landscapes.

Take a Network Break! This week we cover a lot of news including a new SONiC startup, Cisco and Microsoft teaming up on collaboration, new hardware from Google and Intel, a new SOC from Palo Alto Networks, space networking, and more.

As carriers and service providers look to embrace disaggregated infrastructure and software, and drive new business through technologies such as network slicing, it’s critical to have management and orchestration capabilities to coordinate hardware and software resources in the RAN, the transport layer, and the network core. On today's sponsored Heavy Networking, sponsored by Juniper, we dive into Juniper's Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) platform, which is designed to provision, manage and monetize custom network services on demand.

On today's Day Two Cloud we talk about what it's like to interview for a job at a massive tech company. How do you get yourself in line? What can you expect from the interview? How do you prepare? How do you overcome your own imposter syndrome? Our guest is Nathaniel Avery, Outbound Product Manager at Google Cloud. He recently ran the gauntlet of the tech interview, and is here to share tips and insights on the process.

This week's Network Break podcast discusses new security capabilities from Aryaka, a Cisco/Microsoft partnership, the guilty verdict for Uber's former CSO, a startup tackling decentralized cell networks, and more tech news.

On today’s Heavy Networking podcast, Kevin Myers joins us for a whitebox conversation. Kevin helps Internet Service Providers build their networks, and has noticed increased adoption of whitebox switches. Why? Are the problems whitebox solves for these ISPs the same you might have at your company? Should you consider whitebox instead of Cisco, Juniper, or Arista? Maybe…and maybe not.

Multi-cloud services are an emerging category of software designed to make your Dev and Ops teams' multi-cloud reality easier to cope with. Sponsor VMware stops by the Day Two Cloud podcast to talk about how the operational challenges of running workloads in a mix of public and private clouds and how its multi-cloud services initiative can help.

Today's Network Break covers three Google stories including Google Fiber's ambitions for multi-gig Internet and the killing of Stadia. We also discuss a rise in firewall sales, using plant-based materials in USB cables, and more IT news.

On today’s sponsored Heavy Networking we dive into new features of Cisco’s Network Services Orchestrator, or NSO. NSO is a network orchestration platform for large enterprises and service providers that offers multi-vendor automation, configuration management, service creation, ongoing monitoring and upgrades, and more.

On today's Day Two Cloud we dive into Istio with Kevin Davin, a senior back end engineer who works deeply with Istio. We discuss Istio's promises, balancing its complexity with the capabilities it enables, understanding when and when not to use it, and more.

This week's Network Break podcast covers a startup backed by ex-Cisco CEO John Chambers, US federal agencies wanting service providers to get serious about BGP security, SASE growing 30% in a quarter, a thriving floppy disk business, and more IT news.

Encrypted traffic poses a problem for enterprise policy enforcement. On today's Heavy Networking, we explore the notion of zero knowledge middleboxes, which use a variety of techniques to allow firewalls or other middleboxes to enforce policy without the need for decryption. Our guest is Dr. Paul Grubbs, whose research into zero knowledge middleboxes prompted this episode.

Today on the Day Two Cloud podcast, we talk DevSecOps and how it's more than just a marketing term. We also discuss Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and IT as Code and what that actually means for operations folks. It doesn't mean you have to write code all day, but we make an effort to put some specifics around what an Ops person should know when it comes to code.

This week's Network Break podcast covers new capabilities for data center automation in Juniper Apstra, new encryption-friendly Arista routers, and why climate change risks should factor into your IT planning. The startup Veego is pitching an end user experience app to ISPs, the Google spin-out Aalyria looks to build networks using free-space optics, and Microsoft announces Azure Orbital Cloud Access that uses Starlink to connect remote sites to Azure.

A full zero trust architecture goes up and down the stack, bringing in policy and enforcement strategies from the application layer, all the way down into the network. On today's Heavy Networking podcast we discuss zero trust network access, or ZTNA, with sponsor Fortinet. ZTNA is but one part of a robust zero trust architecture, but what a crucial component it is. Alex Samonte, Director of Technical Architecture, joins us to get into nerdy specifics about Fortinet’s ZTNA.

Today on the Day Two Cloud podcast we have a frank discussion about tech marketing. Why? Because engineers are a target of marketing, so it's helpful to know how marketing works, what's trying to be communicated, and how it could be better. We also discuss whether the tech industry has over-committed on chasing developers while ignoring operations and sysadmins, why ops and sysadmins shouldn't be ignored, and more. Our guest is Gina Rosenthal, founder of Digital Sunshine Solutions.