Packet Pushers - Full Podcast Feed

How do you architect a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) to provide critical security services to millions of endpoints distributed across the planet? How do you build such a service for scale, performance, and resiliency? One option is to build your own PoPs or use colocation facilities, run your own infrastructure stack, and connect everything... Read more »

What does network testing and validation really mean? How do testing and validation fit within an automation workflow? Is it possible to run meaningful tests without coding skills? Dan Wade from BlueAlly answers these questions and offers practical insights into building trust in automation through test environments, using AI for ideation and problem-solving, and personal... Read more »

Today the IPv6 Buzz crew provides updates on the latest in IPv6 standards, RFCs, and best practices. They break down the recent discussions around RFC 6052, explore the options for RFC 8215, and share Nick’s spin on the now defunct testipv6.com site. Episode Links: RFC 6052 RFC 8215 RFC 6598 IPv6.army

MACsec is a protocol for encrypting Ethernet frames on a local (though not always local) network. Ethan Banks and Holly Metlitzky have an ELI5 (explain like I’m 5) discussion as to what exactly is MACsec and how it differs from IPsec. They talk about when and whether you need to implement MACsec with all the... Read more »

If you think managing Kubernetes clusters is hard, what about managing Kubernetes clusters across three different public clouds? We dive into the challenges that arises from running multi-cloud Kubernetes workloads. These challenges include workload identity, DNS query resolutions, and security. Here to help us navigate this complexity and offer possible solutions is Goutam Tadi, Staff... Read more »

Did you know college students are snooping on satellite transmissions? On today’s news roundup we discuss new research in which university investigators use off-the-shelf equipment to intercept traffic from geostationary satellites and discover that a lot of it is unencrypted. We also dig into the credential hygiene lessons we can learn from a corpus of... Read more »

Cisco Workflows is a new platform that makes network automation easier, smarter, and safer. On today’s episode, sponsored by Cisco, we get introduced to Cisco Workflows by Stephen Orr, Distinguished Solutions Engineer; and Reid Butler, Director of Product Management. They break down how Workflows helps you ditch repetitive tasks, roll out changes faster, and plug... Read more »

nOversight is a Wi-Fi analysis app from Numerous Networks for iOS and Mac iOS that helps both end users and professionals do a better job of understanding how their Wi-Fi is running and how it’s working on their individual devices. Today we talk to Ben Toner, the creator of nOversight to give us the details... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with some educational content on Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, and sound the alarm about a sandbox escape affecting the Firefox browser. On the news front, a DNS issue triggers a major Azure outage that affected numerous services and caused problems around the globe, Palo Alto Networks announces enhancements to... Read more »

On today’s show, sponsored by Itential, we talk about automation in the real world. Guest Jesse Ford is an automation architect at Itential. We talk about his career journey, how he got into network automation, how he decides which is the best tool for a job, and why tool diversity isn’t the same as chaos.... Read more »

On today’s episode, we take a break from one’s and zero’s for a discussion about starting a networking meetup. Our guest is Steinn “Steinzi” Örvar, who recently founded the ISNOG, a network operators’ group in Iceland. We quiz Steinzi about what worked and what didn’t. We also pick his brain for the nitty-gritty details about... Read more »

Your background and experiences outside of tech can become a significant factor in your tech career. Guest Chris Williams is a good example; he talks about how his undergraduate and graduate studies in psychology influenced his work as a Developer Relations Manger at Hashicorp. Hosts Alexis Bertholf and Kevin Nanns chat with him about how... Read more »

CVEs, or Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, are such a routine aspect of tech that most IT pros probably take them for granted. But like many things we take for granted, the CVE process takes some serious organizational infrastructure to function. On today’s Packet Protector, sponsored by Cisco, we talk about the organizations and processes that... Read more »

Join William Collins and Evyonne Sharp as they catch up on all things AI. They discuss the AI bubble and how it relates to venture capital, stock, and company evaluations. They talk about the AI experience for the average person, the adoption rate of AI tools, and how the AI infrastructure buildout might affect the... Read more »

Host Eric Chou talks with Jeff Kala, co-author of the newly released “Network Automation Cookbook 2nd Edition,” to discuss his book and the experiences that led him from networking to network automation author. They discuss Jeff’s learning style and why it was helpful when working on his book. Lastly, they dig into Jeff’s predictions on... Read more »

To understand how much to spend on cybersecurity, you have to accurately assess or quantify your risks. Too many people still peg their cybersecurity spend to their IT budget; that is, they’ll look at what they’re spending on IT, and then allocate a percentage of that to cybersecurity. That may have made some sense when... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Companies spying on…I mean, monitoring…their employees via software called WorkExaminer should be aware of a login bypass that needs to be locked down. On the news front, we opine on whether it’s worth trying to design your way around AWS outages, and speculate on the prospects of a new Ethernet switch... Read more »

AI infrastructure conversations tend to be dominated by GPUs, data center buildouts, and power and water consumption. But networks also play a crucial role, whether to support huge file transfers to a compute cluster, stream telemetry from edge locations to feed AI pipelines, or provide high-speed, low latency connectivity for AI agents. On today’s Tech... Read more »

The architecture and tech stack of a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution will influence how the service performs, the robustness of its security controls, and the complexity of its operations. Sponsor Fortinet joins Heavy Networking to make the case that a unified offering, which integrates SD-WAN and SSE from a single vendor, provides a... Read more »

Senad Palislamovic has held many roles in his time, from engineer to network operator to sales engineer and back again. He’s been around long enough to see trends come and go. Senad visits Total Network Operations to share some of his observations on network automation, AI for NetOps, and the quality of network data. Senad... Read more »