The Fat Pipe - Most Popular Packet Pushers Pods

LightRiver has software and service products focused on the automation, optimization, and simplification of multi-layer, multi-vendor, and multi-generation networking. Today we have a team from LightRiver lead by Jim Brinksma to help explain how LightRiver is advancing automation in optical and bridging the gap between the IP and optical layers. They discuss the challenges, obstacles... Read more »

Today’s show is one of those “We’re living in the future” episodes, where we talk about using AI to perform root cause analysis of a performance issue. But not root cause analysis for just the networking part of the stack. The full stack. Why? Because it’s not good enough to say “it’s not the network”.... Read more »

The job interview is an inescapable part of a career journey. Today on N Is For Networking, we conduct a mock interview with a candidate who’s applying for a junior network administration role. The goal is to give Toni Mrowetz, our candidate, feedback. At the same time, we hope this helps anyone listening who might... Read more »

AI is developing at an incredible pace. With that development comes questions. For instance, how do you connect your resources to agents? How do agents connect with each other? And how do you keep it all secure? Our guest Christian Posta is here to guide us through AI, MCP, and the concept of workload identities.... Read more »

From a massive SIM farm takedown to dealing with supply chain attacks targeting npm, our news roundup provides context and commentary on a fresh crop of security news. We discuss exploits against Cisco firewalls and switches, a SonicWall firmware update to remove a rootkit targeting its SMA 100, and GitHub’s plans to harden npm packages.... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with a two-part listener follow-up and sound alarms about a serious flaw in Termix and tens of thousands of still-vulnerable Cisco security devices. Alkira debuts an MCP server and AI copilot for its multi-cloud networking platform; Cato Networks releases a Chrome-based browser extension to help secure contractor and personal... Read more »

Today we get an inside look at a major data center migration that Nokia is undertaking. Nokia is our sponsor for today’s episode. The company is moving legacy sets of data center networking equipment to its own Event Driven Automation (EDA) solution. We go behind the scenes of Nokia’s own IT department, which is supporting... Read more »

If you’ve got an Autonomous System Number (ASN) and an IPv6 block, you too can multi-home IPv6 to your home lab! Sounds easy, right? Well, maybe…but today we’re going to discuss why you’d want to and how you can do that with guest Anton Lönnerbro. Anton is a solutions architect at a managed service provider... Read more »

Starting any new endeavor is hard. That’s particularly true for a career in tech. And that’s the reason Alexis Bertholf and Kevin Nanns are launching the Life In Uptime podcast. In each episode they’ll sit down with engineers, leaders, and builders in tech to uncover the stories behind their careers to help you see how... Read more »

As AI becomes more integrated into the IT landscape, developers, engineers, and operators are looking for practical ways to use these new tools. Joining us today is Ryan Booth; he’s built a career around network automation, giving him a unique perspective on how network engineering, operations, software development, and AI intersect. We explore the practical... Read more »

What does the risk environment for Operational Technology (OT) look like in 2025? JJ and Drew review four recent reports on the state of OT security from Dragos, Fortinet, and others. We discuss ransomware impacts, ongoing risks of RDP traffic, directly exposed OT devices, and overall attack trends and the tools and processes that organizations... Read more »

There’s an abundance of vulnerabilities in this week’s Network Break. We start with a red alert on a cluster of Cisco vulnerabilities in its firewall and threat defense products. On the news front, the vulnerability spotlight stays on Cisco as the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issues an emergency directive to all federal... Read more »

On today’s Heavy Networking: the Security Operations Center, or SOC. When I think of a SOC, I picture a miniature version of NASA’s mission control: lots of computers, lots of people, some big boards with lines and arrows and telemetry scrolling across the screens. I also think of SOCs as requiring a lot of gear,... Read more »

In an IT world full of abstraction, overlays, and virtualization, it’s important to remember the physical infrastructure that supports all those things. So let’s get inside Mass IX, the Massachusetts Internet Exchange, to get a holistic view of the logical architecture and protocol mechanics of peering and Internet exchanges, as well as the iron, steel,... Read more »

We dive back into the world of IPsec with an episode dedicated to configuring IPsec tunnels. After discussing a listener comment regarding transport mode in IPsec tunnels, Ethan Banks and Holly Metlitzky work through topics such as multi-vendor IPsec configuration, licensing, and the details of configuration and routing. Bonus material: MTU size and NAT-T. Episode... Read more »

Today we talk to Elad Ben-Israel about his former startup Wing Cloud, and the language that was built along with it, Winglang. We discuss why Eland started Wing Cloud, lessons learned about founding a start up, and what the future holds for the Winglang language. Ad Spot: Faddom Faddom helps you discover and map your... Read more »

Transforming over 5,000 network devices across 56 data centers is no small feat. Doing that with a very small team is even more impressive. On today’s episode, sponsored by Network To Code, we talk to Greg Botts from Intel, who with his team accomplished just that. They started with YAML files and DNS records and... Read more »

Microsegmentation is a complex topic. We did an overview episode earlier this year, and we invited listeners to reach out to keep the microsegmentation conversation going. Today’s guest did just that. Philip Griffiths is Head of Strategic Sales at Netfoundry. However, this isn’t a sponsored show about NetFoundry. Philip is also involved in a working... Read more »

It’s big-money deals and ever-more AI on this week’s Network Break. We start with a red alert from NVIDIA, which has rolled out a software upgrade to patch multiple bugs in its Triton Inference Server, one of which is a dangerous remote code execution vulnerability. On the news front, NVIDIA pledges a $5 billion investment... Read more »

The digital twin is an evolving technology in the networking space. On today’s sponsored episode of Total Network Operations, we dig into details and definitions of the digital twin, how it ties into network automation and autonomy, and the power of abstraction layers. We’ll also talk about how the concepts in today’s show might influence... Read more »

When someone from the executive suite starts an AI initiative, what does that mean to you, the network engineer? The executive suite probably doesn’t know what their AI idea might mean for infrastructure. They might only have a vague idea of what they’re even trying to accomplish with an AI initiative. Regardless, that initiative puts... Read more »

Life In Uptime is a brand-new podcast that explores the real journeys of the people who build and run enterprise IT. Each episode dives into the personal and professional paths that got each guest to where they are today—because the road to a career in technology isn’t one-size-fits-all. This show is for anyone wondering how... Read more »

Network Automation Nerds has reached a special milestone: episode 100! Eric Chou looks back on 5 years of conversations with network automation pioneers, practitioners, and visionaries. Drew Conry-Murray from the Packet Pushers joins Eric, along with online guest Ioannis Theodoridis, to find out why Eric started the podcast, his goals for all these conversations, a... Read more »

You can build effective, scalable detection pipelines using free and open-source tools like Zeek, Suricata, YARA, and Security Onion. Today on Packet Protector we welcome Matt Gracie, Senior Engineer at Security Onion Solutions — the team behind the open-source platform used for detection engineering, network security monitoring, and log management. Matt has over 15 years... Read more »

We got some interesting listener feedback from our series on OSPF, so today’s N Is for Networking is another “Well actually” episode where we dig into that feedback. In particular, we’ll cover a defense of OSPF multi-area deployments, and dig into OSPF LSA types. Episode Links: OSPF Basics – N Is For Networking Episode 38... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with a listener correction on Cisco’s history of wireless certifications, then dig into a couple of red alerts on Microsoft Defender and a backdoor in Outlook. On the news front, Cisco announces new AI agents and SoC packages for Splunk; F5 spends $180 million to buy an AI security... Read more »

Jeremy Schulman has been working at network automation for much of his professional life. On today’s Total Network Operations, host Scott Robohn talks with Jeremy about his ongoing quest to get the network engineering bottleneck out of production. They discuss the early days of network automation when engineers tried to adopt tools from the compute... Read more »

Your production IT operations are almost certainly using cryptography libraries that are not quantum-safe, and the time to begin planning a cryptography overhaul is now. But this is likely to be a daunting project because it touches everything: clients, servers, apps, network devices, middleboxes, and so on. Daunting, but doable. We talk with Richu Channakeshava, Principal... Read more »

Kubernetes is flexible and customizable, but it can also be notoriously complex and difficult to deploy to. On today’s Day Two DevOps we learn about kro (Kube Resource Operator), an open-source tool that helps simplify complex application deployments. Our guest is Islam Mahgoub, a Solutions Architect at AWS focused on building kro. We talk about... Read more »

Is any publicity good publicity? On today’s News Roundup we talk about how Salesloft, which makes the Drift chat agent that’s been used as a jumping-off point for credential harvesting and data breach attacks against a bunch of big-name companies, is testing that proposition. We also discuss bugs affecting industrial refrigeration controllers, and Microsoft making... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We shine a red light on an AnyShare Service Agent API vulnerability and an active exploit against FreePBX. SASE vendor Cato Networks makes first-ever acquisition with purchase of AI security startup AIM, Microsoft researchers tout hollow core fiber tests that out-perform glass core fiber optics, and Wi-Fi 7 helps drive up... Read more »

Monitoring and troubleshooting latency can be tricky. If it’s in the network, was it the IP stack? A NIC? A switch buffer? A middlebox somewhere on the WAN? If it’s the application, can you, the network engineer, bring receipts to the app team? And what if you need to build and operate a network that’s... Read more »

New technologies, tools, and innovations help move IT forward, but it can be hard for users to keep up. Network Automation Nerds welcomes guest William Collins, a dynamic force in the world of technology. As a passionate tech evangelist, he helps to bridge the gap between emerging technologies such as AI and everyday users with... Read more »

Faddom is re-envisioning what application dependency mapping and infrastructure inventory can be in the era of cloud and hybrid IT. Join us today on this sponsored episode as we speak with Faddom’s Itamar Rotem, CPO and Ofer Regev, CTO, about how Faddom’s discovery process can help to improve migrations for any size organization and help... Read more »

Our airwaves are alive with radio frequencies (RF). Right now billions of devices around the world are chattering invisibly over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and other protocols you might not have heard of. On today’s show we peer into the invisible world to better understand the RF threat environment. Our guest is Brett Walkenhorst, CTO of... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with follow-ups regarding the 7-year-old Cisco bug, risks of AI agents, and Anthropic forcing you to opt out or have your chats saved for five years. Then we highlight a serious vulnerability (which is being exploited in the wild) in Citrix NetScaler ADC and Netscaler Gateway systems. On the... Read more »

How might we get network traffic from Earth to a lunar base? Or Mars? Or to spaceships carrying astronauts or probes exploring space? And how do we get it back? The problem, among other things, is latency. The answer isn’t TCP/IP. The answer is…complicated. On today’s Heavy Networking we explore the challenges of getting packets... Read more »

Vint Cerf, widely recognized as one of the fathers of the Internet, is today’s special guest on Total Network Operations. He currently serves as Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. His pioneering work began back in the 1960’s when he was involved in the ARPANET project. Alongside Bob Kahn, Vint co-invented the TCP/IP... Read more »

It’s time to talk crypto. No, not the Bitcoin kind. Ethan and Holly introduce the basics of IPsec, the protocol that authenticates and encrypts traffic between endpoints. They discuss what it is, how it provides trustworthiness and secrecy to IP traffic, and common use cases. They review the different types of IPsec protocols and modes,... Read more »

In the changing landscape of AI data infrastructure, F5 and MinIO are partnering on a solution that brings together the best of each company. This solution bookends the AI stack—it uses F5 for reliable, secure, and observable data delivery and MinIO’s AIStor for storage of all data types. The goal is to help organizations be... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We double-dip on red alerts as the FBI warns that Russian state hackers are targeting a seven-year-old vulnerability on Cisco IOS and IOS-XE devices (a patch has been available for seven years), and a compromised XZ Utils backdoor is still lurking in some Docker images. Palo Alto Networks has added support... Read more »

Today’s episode is all about high-performance memory in switches. We dig into the differences among TCAM, SRAM, DRAM, and HBM, and all the complex tradeoffs that go into allocating memory resources to networking functions. If you’ve ever had to select a Switching Database Manager template or done similar operations on a switch, this is your... Read more »

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 »