Packet Pushers - Fat Pipe

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.