Packet Pushers - Fat Pipe

When you think of IETF, you probably just think of defining protocols, but its new NMOP working group is all about helping network operators identify issues and deploy solutions, including those that pop up around automation. Mahesh Jethanandani is an NMOP leader and joins the show today to tell us what they are working on... Read more »

This is the final episode of a series of interviews with Scott Robohn (for now). We discuss AI in networking operations and how it’s still too early to tell exactly how much, if any, value will be created. We also dig into Scott’s Total Network Operations framework, what it consists of and how he wants... Read more »

If you care about nutrition, you check the ingredients of your food. If you care about your IT infrastructure, you check the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) of the tech. At least that’s the future that Thomas Pace hopes for. Right now, SBOMs aren’t super common and software transparency is very low. Thomas walks us... Read more »

This is Greg’s last Heavy Strategy episode before he heads off to retirement. He gives us his final pieces of career and life advice, opinions on private equity, and a Cookie Monster quote. We also briefly introduce John Burke, the new Heavy Strategy co-host. Farewell, Greg. Thank you for all the great debates. Episode Transcript... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with a longish round of FUs, and then dive into news. HPE announces HPE Private Cloud, which includes software, switches, and GPUs from Nvidia for building out infrastructure to support AI workloads. HPE also announced KVM virtualization for HPE Private Cloud. We debate whether Britian’s anti-trust inquiry to the... Read more »

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast, sponsored by Nokia, we hear from Nokia customer NL-IX. NL-IX is a leading Internet Exchange based in the Netherlands. The organization recently redesigned and upgraded its network. Nokia played a role in that upgrade, including 400 and 800G routers and FP5 silicon. We’re joined by Dirk Kalkman, Chief Network... Read more »

High Frequency Trading in finance demands the utmost quality and speed from a network, making flawless observability a must. Our guest today is Radu Ionco from Jump Trading, and he tells us about how they built their own custom network observability platform, even creating a monitoring system for the monitoring system. We talk through streaming... Read more »

When you’re trying to share your cool new network automation with your co-workers, the last thing you want to do is deal with other systems’ different libraries and dependencies gumming it up. That’s where our episode sponsor torero comes into play. As an “automation gateway,” torero dynamically creates an execution environment based on what has... Read more »

Most platform engineers are scared of databases, and most database administrators prefer it that way. But our guest today says it’s time to move forward together toward a future of database linters, observability, and abstraction. Adam Furmanek makes the case that just like how developers had to learn some networking, and networking tools were created... Read more »

Today we discuss how to secure your all-powerful root accounts on the three major public cloud providers: AWS, Azure, and GCP. Our guests today, Ned Bellavance and Kyler Middleton from the Day Two Cloud podcast (soon to be Day Two DevOps podcast), describe the struggle of securely managing several root accounts at once. They take... Read more »

Asking questions is a critical skill whether you’re an outside consultant or on an internal IT team. In today’s episode, Greg and Johna review what kind of questions to ask and how to ask them. They discuss the ‘Five Whys,’ identifying points of invariance, discovering unknown unknowns, and watching out for landmines. They also cover... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with an announcement from Greg about his impending retirement. After we dust ourselves off from that, we pivot to this week’s tech news. Fortinet acquires a company to bolster its offering in securing cloud deployments and workloads, Cisco announces an Ikea-like kit to build AI infrastructure on prem, and... Read more »

When it comes to SSE, it’s helpful to know the vendor’s history and approach to understand if it’s the best fit for your organization. HPE Aruba’s SSE journey started when it acquired Axis Security, a company focused on solving the problem of third party access. Because of that focus, HPE Aruba says its SSE is... Read more »

Fortinet’s Unified SASE provides consistent security controls and policies both for traditional campuses and the hybrid workforce.. Nirav Shah joins us to explain how Fortinet is positioned to do this: a foundational software developed for 20 years, a network of over 140 POPs, a security lab with over 1,000 researchers, continuous ZTNA verification proxies, and... Read more »

In part two of Scott Robohn’s interview, Scott tells us about his experience starting his own business and co-founding the Network Automation Forum and the AutoCon conference series. He describes the strong desire among many engineers to drive network automation forward, and how AutoCon creates a community to help make that happen. He and Eric... Read more »

Drew and JJ have recovered from the overstimulation of the RSA expo floor and are ready to discuss their takeaways from the conference. They discuss the surprising emphasis on microsegmentation and storage backups, and the not-so-surprising focus on IoT security and AI-assisted products. They also pull back the curtain on what the conference’s own SOC... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Johna fills in for Drew for a second week. We start with a follow-up on last week’s take on HPE and 5G. With this week’s HPE announcement that it’s launching Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G, we see that its offloading of OSS/BSS was to streamline, not a step away from its... Read more »

When a network for a new location needs to come online, networkers are faced with a predictable (and painful) to-do list: deal with ISPs, design and implement floor plans, obtain hardware, configure devices, etc. Meter’s Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) is here to take care of all that for you. Meter’s CEO Anil Varanasi joins the show to... Read more »

Greg Ferro, co-founder of Packet Pushers, is signing off. After years of frustrating health issues, he’s decided to fully step back from podcasting and industry analysis to take care of himself. After 14 years, today is his last appearance on Heavy Networking. In this parting episode, Greg shares his final dose of incisive insights and... Read more »

All good things must come to an end, and in this case that means saying farewell to Kubernetes Unpacked. In this final episode, Michael and Kristina pack up the Kubernetes Unpacked podcast. They look back on covering issues including sustainability, security, open source projects, and certifications. They thank the professionals who joined the show as... Read more »