The Fat Pipe - Most Popular Packet Pushers Pods

Today's Heavy Networking podcast dives into academic research on DDoS attack techniques. Our guests have published a paper about how the TCP protocol and middleboxes such as firewalls can be weaponized by bad actors and used in reflective amplification attacks. We discuss technical details, how they performed this research, potential countermeasures, and more.

Today's Day Two Cloud episode dives into multi-cloud networking with sponsor Aviatrix. Aviatrix offers a cloud network platform with a common data plane and operational model that works across public clouds and supports visibility and automation. We dig into the product with Aviatrix guests and a customer.

This week's Network Break examines how ransomware has insurers rethinking premiums and coverage limits, discusses the pros and cons of ISPs sharing flow records with security companies, digs into Arista's efforts to tackle the router market, pontificates on TSMC chip price hikes, and more tech news analysis.

In today's sponsored Heavy Networking show, we talk to Opmantek about NMIS, an intelligent network management platform that spans monitoring, visibility, automation, and configuration management. Our guest is Opmantek CTO Keith Sinclair.

Today's Day Two Cloud podcast discusses the challenges of stitching together a fabric across more than one public cloud. How do you architect a fabric given the constraints of each cloud? We also drill into the idea of API gateways. Our guest is Chris Oliver, a network architect at NI.

It's the Network Break! This week we analyze Cisco's $500 million acquisition of a container-based and serverless application monitor, Intel's announcement of Mount Evans, an Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU) for network and storage offload, and more tech news. Guest analyst Johna Till Johnson, CEO and founder of Nemertes Research, joins Greg Ferro.

Like anything in the world of IT, TLS has gone through various versions. TLS 1.1 and 1.2 are still commonly used, but TLS 1.3 is really where it’s at. Our guest is Ed Harmoush. Ed’s a professional instructor who’s researched TLS 1.3 and more as he’s prepped for his latest course offering, Practical TLS, which you can find at http://pracnet.net/tls. Use coupon PacketPushers100 to get $100 off this deep dive course from Ed.

Kris Nóva, Senior Principal Software Engineer at Twilio, claims that managing infrastructure using tools like Terraform isn't that far away from just writing your own code to do the job yourself. Kris joins co-hosts Ned Bellavance and Ethan Banks to challenge the notion that ops folks can't become developers. Kris says they can.

The world of virtual donuts is supply constrained. Extreme Networks finally gets SDWAN buying Ipanema from Infovista at a bargain price. Research firms that does the numbers Dell'oro pitches that Education and Government markets will be spending big on WiFi6E - we aren't so sure that campus spending will be big just some spending but Dell'oro told us that government economic stimulus is the driver. Most will focus on distributed work. Huawei posted 29% revenue reduction as the trade sanctions impact their overall business. A reminder that political solutions are slow if you have to make plans. And in space networking, SpaceX acquires pico-satellite company Swarm for IOT networking.

On today’s Heavy Networking, we drill into VMware’s vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) to learn how it provides end-to-end monitoring, how it uses flow records and other data sources, and its architecture. We’ll also discuss modeling/digital twin capabilities, and applying vRNI to security, troubleshooting, and other use cases. VMware is our sponsor.

Today's Day Two Cloud podcast walks through a massive outage that hit CDN provider Bunny.net. An automated update triggered cascading failures that essentially took the company offline for two frantic hours. The company shared a detailed postmortem of what happened, and we're joined by company founder Dejan Pelze to walk us through the issues and share lessons learned about infrastructure, automation, and dependencies.

This week's Network Break podcat discusses Marvell's Innovium buy and its impact on the high-end Ethernet market, new Juniper security software for applications, Arista financial results and component concerns, and more IT news.

Today on Heavy Networking, we talk with Remington Loose, Solutions Architect at a mid-sized VAR, to get a sense of what technology is in demand; what problems customers are trying to solve; and how cloud, DIY, and other forces affect the competitive landscape. It's a #VARlife episode.

Today's sponsored Day Two Cloud episode talks WAN networking with PacketFabric. PacketFabric lets you provision point-to-point and hybrid cloud connectivity as a service. Built on a private fiber network, the company's goal is to let you set up networking as if it was software. Our guest is Anna Claiborne, Co-Founder, CTO and CPO.

Zoom buys its way into the contact center biz with the $14.7 billion purchase of Five9, Extreme announces Wi-Fi 6E APs, Cloudflare debuts Green Compute for scheduled workloads, and IT vendors report strong quarterly financial results. We analyze these stories and more IT news on today's Network Break podcast.

On today's Heavy Networking podcast we discuss network compliance. The big idea is to rethink how you do compliance so that the process is automation friendly and accommodates all the network device types you have to manage. We're sponsored by Itential and our guest is Chris Wade, CTO.

Today's Day Two Cloud podcast dives into Cloud Development Kits (CDKs). How do CDKs differ from tools such as Terraform? What are the selling points for CDKs for infrastructure and development professionals? Our guest is Michael Levan, Researcher and Consultant at GigaOM.

This week on the Network Break we examine an $8.3 billion 5G deal between Ericsson and Verizon, Microsoft's CloudKnox purchase to bolster cloud permissions management, research into microprocessors on flexible materials, Intel's underwhelming financial results, and more IT news.

There's a huge amount that goes into building an ISP, from getting access to poles to run fiber, operating a cable plant, setting up customer support and billing, getting network gear in place---not to mention developing a viable business model and funding the whole thing. On today's Heavy Networking podcast we talk with Jim Troutman of Tilson Technology Management about building a local ISP in New England.

Today on the Day Two Cloud podcast, Ethan and Ned discuss two new AWS courses from Ned, and then tell stories about the time they took management jobs they shouldn't have. They share lessons learned about transitioning from technical to managerial roles and why it was the wrong move for them.

Today's Network Break podcast delves into security issues at SolarWinds and SonicWall, discusses a new network offload capability between NVIDIA and Palo Alto Networks, comments on Japanese bureaucrats who refuse to give up their fax machines, and more tech news.

Today's Heavy Networking examines how some of the unpleasant bits of cloud networking can be improved, particularly in the areas of troubleshooting, visibility, security, and automation. Our sponsor is Aviatrix, and they’ve sent us three architects to nerd out about cloud network design and how Aviatrix might fit into the picture. Our guests are Brad Hedlund and James Devine from Aviatrix, and customer Chris Oliver with NI.

On today's Day Two Cloud we discuss the notion of open cloud. The premise is about reducing or minimizing costs of migrating from a public cloud. In theory, open cloud lets organizations keep their options open to make changes and reduces lock-in. But is open cloud even feasible? Our guest is Chris Psaltis, co-founder and CEO of Mist.io, a startup building an open-source, multi-cloud management platform.

Subsea communications cables are an essential part of the global Internet. On today's Heavy Networking, sponsored by Telstra, we dive into the realms of undersea cables to learn how they are laid, signalling methods, POPs and landing stations, how they can be damaged (and repaired), and more. Our Telstra guests are Andy Lumsden, Head of Network Engineering and Operations; and Jeff McHardy, General Manager, Network Development and Commercial Management.

This week Network Break examines the fallout of the Kaseya breach, HPE's acquisitions of Zerto and Ampool to extend the value of its Greenlake platform, and Fortinet's purchase of a secure software development tool. We also discuss FTC accusations against Broadcom and what a court ruling could mean for Netflix and other content providers in South Korea.

Today on Heavy Networking, the icanhazip story. On the surface, icanhazip.com is simple enough: You hit the URL, and get back your external, public IP address. There are no ads, no blinky lights, just an IP. This free, simple utility has become widely popular, with billions of requests per day. We talk with creator Major Hayden about why and how he built icanhazip, the time and money he's invested, and the insane amount of personal effort it's taken to keep it going.

Fly.io is a public cloud that can run your applications all over the world. The goal of Fly.io is to allow developers to self-service complicated infrastructure without an ops team, while making multi-region a default setting to get apps as close to the user as possible. Our guest is founder Kurt Mackey. This is not a sponsored show.

This week's podcast asks how many Data Processing Units (DPUs) the market can support, discusses a startup that wants to manage your multi-vendor campus network from the cloud, explores new security capabilities in Forward Networks' network verification software, and more tech news.

Today's Heavy Networking, sponsored by Intel, dives into 5G, virtualization, and AI. Intel's 3rd Gen Xeon processors can support a variety of use cases, including running virtualized network functions in the data center, at the edge, and in the cloud. They also have built-in acceleration for AI and cryptography, giving organizations a flexible platform for a variety of workloads, including service providers building out 5G networks. Our guest is Cristina Rodriguez, Vice President Data Center Group General Manager Wireless Access Network Division at Intel.

IT and business leaders need to be more nuanced in their approach to the cloud. On today's Day Two Cloud podcast, guest Melissa Palmer discusses why cloud hype is a problem for organizations, the need to understand why you'd use cloud, what problems you're trying to solve, and why poor operational processes on prem won't magically vanish by moving to the cloud.

Take a Network Break! We discuss how HPE raises the stakes on its GreenLake hybrid cloud strategy with new features, look at new products from Aruba Networks, review the latest changes in Windows 11, and more tech news. Guest commentator Tom Hollingsworth brings the virtual donuts this week.

Curt Norris started his career as an IT support specialist. Five years later he's an automation engineer. On today's Heavy Networking we discuss his career journey including milestones, ongoing learning, the pros and cons of mentorship, whether a degree makes a difference, and more.

On today's Day Two Cloud podcast we talk storage with sponsor Scality about its ARTESCA platform, cloud-native object storage for modern workloads. It integrates with Kubernetes, serves as storage for your public cloud, and more. We dive into the product architecture, use cases, and hardware options via Scality's partnership with HPE.

Today's Heavy Networking explores Crosswork Cloud Traffic Analysis from episode sponsor Cisco. This tool is designed to make you deeply knowledgeable about your BGP peering relationships and traffic flows throughout your infrastructure. It will also recommend the routing tweaks in your IGPs, BGP, RSVP-TE, and segment routing to eliminate those pesky congestion points. We also discuss the pros and cons of putting network management capabilities in the cloud.

Gigamon adds a human touch to a new SaaS NDR offering, the IEEE finalizes 802.3cu for faster speeds over single-mode optical fiber, US service providers roll out managed SASE services, and more IT news in this week's Network Break podcast.

On today's Heavy Networking, sponsored by Palo Alto Networks, we hear from Salesforce about the evolution of its branch network to SD-WAN. Salesforce was able to trade MPLS for Internet broadband, get more bandwidth for less money, employ application-based steering and policy enforcement, and more. Our guests are Georgi Stoev, Sr. Network Architect at Salesforce; and Kumar Ramachandran, Senior Vice President at Palo Alto Networks.

Today we're talking Edge Cloud. Guest Alex Marcham has written a book on the subject and we'll get his take on edge infrastructure, what edge cloud is all about, real-world use cases, and how it differs from typical colo facilities or centralized public cloud data centers. We also look at requirements for edge deployments including networking and 5G, and the workloads driving edge infrastructure.

On this week's Network Break deployment of virtual donuts and tech commentary, Fastly takes out much of the Web but recovers quickly, AWS suffers an outage at a German data center, US law enforcement reclaims a large chunk of Bitcoin ransom, Bosch unveils a new fab to make silicon wafers for automotive chips, and more.

Nick McKeown, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University, stops by the Heavy Networking podcast to speculate on the future of networking. Professor McKeown has been a force behind the Software Defined Networking (SDN) movement and has co-founded successful startups including Nicira and Barefoot Networks.

On today's episode, sponsored by BlueCat Networks, we examine the technology and human challenges that arise when you integrate on-prem and the public cloud. You can't continue to do things in the cloud with traditional toolsets and processes. You need to update the tech and the people, including how they collaborate. We also discuss a new report that examines the need for, and challenges of, integrating networking and cloud teams. Our guest is Andrew Wertkin, Chief Strategy Officer at BlueCat.

Cisco debuts Cloud ACI to unify segmentation policies on prem and in the public cloud, Amazon will activate an opt-out mesh network using your Ring and Echo devices, Microsoft buys an IoT security company, and more tech news in this week's Network Break podcast.

On today's Heavy Networking, we get practical with infrastructure-as-code, talking with sponsor Gluware about how their users have integrated network automation into their IT practices, bringing DevOps to NetOps. We also explore Gluware Lab, an IDE for network engineers can develop network features and workflows. Our guests are Olivier Huynh Van, Chief Science Officer and Co-Founder; and Michael Haugh, VP of Product Marketing.

Crossplane is an open-source project that plugs into Kubernetes to serve as a control plane that can run across multiple private and public clouds. It allows infrastructure teams to compose infrastructure with all the required policies, permissions, and guardrails, while also providing APIs for developer self-service. Today's Day Two Cloud podcast dives into Crossplane and how it works with maintainer Daniel Mangum.

Today's Network Break discusses rising cyber insurance premiums and how wider insurance adoption might affect the security market. We also discuss a forthcoming Aruba AP that uses newly available spectrum, a new packet broker from Extreme with a programmable ASIC, Juniper's Apstra 4.0 release, and more IT news.

Today's Heavy Networking is a nerdy excursion into EVPN VXLAN, including how it works, why you might want it, and why multivendor interoperability is so difficult with this standard. Guest Tony Bourke and host Ethan Banks also explore hardware challenges, automation strategies, EVPN flooding mechanisms, BGP multi-homing, and more.

We're a good ten years into public cloud as an industry, and cloud operations don't seem to be getting any simpler. Why is that? Is it a problem? If so, can clouds become simpler? Guest Brian Gracely stops by the Day Two Cloud podcast to wrestle with these questions.

This week's Network Break covers new firewalls & other security products from Palo Alto Networks, discusses Arista's lowest-latency switch (now with EOS), reviews financial results from Cisco and Palo Alto, and explains why Microsoft is making Internet Explorer go away (just not entirely).

Today on Heavy Networking, we talk with sponsor Arrcus about its support for segment routing and the impact it will have on the wider network market, particularly for 5G networks. Our guests from Arrcus are Keyur Patel, CTO and Co-Founder; and Murali Gandluru, Vice President, Product Management.

A fractured cloud strategy causes headaches such as duplicated services, unnecessary costs, poor security controls, and other problems. A cloud center of excellence can reduce the pain by developing and championing best practices, socializing adoption, and addressing inevitable exceptions. Fred Chagnon visits the Day Two Cloud podcast to advocate for building a cloud center of excellence in your org.

This week's Network Break covers a pair of Cisco acquisitions, new path analysis capabilities from NetBeez, how the DarkSide ransomware gang is getting the spotlight, sleazy behavior from US broadband companies, and other tech news.