Packet Pushers - Fat Pipe

“If you don’t feel nervous in front of a challenge, you are not exponentially learning” is how today’s guest Christian Adell describes his own approach to career growth. Christian chats with us first about how he got started in IT, his various experiences in both networking and DevOps and then network automation. He leads a... Read more »

Cisco Systems has a sprawling portfolio of home-grown and acquired products. What’s it like trying to find and address bugs and vulnerabilities across this portfolio? Omar Santos, a Distinguished Engineer at Cisco, gives us an inside look. We dig into how Cisco identifies security bugs using internal and external sources, the growing role of AI... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We check in on a serious Firefox vulnerability, explore NIST’s latest post-quantum encryption algorithm, and discuss a broken auto-update functionality in VMware Workstation. NetBox adds config drift detection to its network automation software, the startup Lightmatter tackles co-packaged optics, and Corning launches Glassworks AI in a bid to replace copper cabling... Read more »

On today’s Heavy Networking, we’ll discuss building a Slackbot wired to an AI and trained on your own organization’s knowledge. The potential use cases for network operations are fascinating, and today’s guest, Kyler Middleton is here to explain the finer details on how to do it and point us to free resources created so that... Read more »

Guest Chris Grundemann believes that NetOps is in the third phase of networking–improving the network operator experience. Not just making the network functional or improving end user experience. In this episode, Chris tells his origin story at a wireless service provider and growth into a founder of multiple companies. He also shares his community-focused work... Read more »

To cert or not to cert? That is the question Holly & Ethan discuss on today’s episode. Will a certification really land you a networking job? Are certs the guaranteed path to tech career success? We consider this, talking through the benefits, challenges and even risks of networking industry certification. And there’s some bonus material,... Read more »

“You build a shop that solves big problems by solving small problems” is advice given by today’s guest, Merritt Baer. Merritt is currently a CISO at Reco, and has deep security experience in both government and private sectors. She chats with Day Two DevOps podcast hosts Ned Bellavance and Kyler Middleton to discuss the current... Read more »

On today’s show, we chat with Joe Evangelisto, CISO at NetSPI. He recounts his journey to becoming a Chief Information Security Officer, one that started as an IT sysadmin, advanced to management, and led him ultimately to the CISO role. Joe talks about building security programs from the ground up and developing both personally and... Read more »

Grab a virtual doughnut to blaze through this week’s IT news with Johna Johnson and John Burke as Drew Conry-Murray is enjoying his glazed, filled and sprinkled vacation donuts.  Today, we’re going to talk about getting good LLMs to do bad things, Dell’s workforce downsizing, Cloudflare’s recent outage, some developments in space networking, and more.... Read more »

There are both benefits and challenges when adopting automation in the public sector, but Red Hat Ansible enhances efficiency, security and service delivery. With the right tooling, network operators can integrate automation into existing environments and improve network security.  Providing insights into adopting automation in the public sector are Tony Dubiel, Principal Specialist Solution Architect... Read more »

IT and infosec professionals are used to operating and protecting mission-critical infrastructure; servers, databases, load balancers, and so on. But what about valves that control the flow of gas or oil in a refinery? Temperature and vibration sensors that monitor industrial manufacturing processes? If you’re thinking “That’s not my problem” think again. There’s a whole... Read more »

How do you lead with influence rather than mandate? On today’s show, we talk with JJ Asghar from IBM. JJ shares his extensive experience in managing open-source namespaces like GitHub and npm for IBM. He discusses the challenges of influencing decisions without formal authority and tailoring communication styles for different audiences. JJ also advocates for... Read more »

In today’s episode, we continue the discussion about routing and routing protocols by focusing on commonalities rather than differences among  protocols such as OSPF, RIP, EIGRP, or BGP. We explain how, in general, routing protocols discover each other, communicate, maintain relationships, and exchange routing information. Next, we explore the topics of selecting best paths in... Read more »

On today’s Network Automation Nerds, industry veteran Michael Bushong talks about lessons learned from failure. As the network industry grapples with automation and network engineers confront yet another cycle of upskilling and grinding out new certs, he warns against executives and practice leads aiming for the biggest, shiniest project. His advice? Find something that matters... Read more »

This week we dive into security headlines including a botnet bonanza that includes TP-Link routers, Chinese attackers targeting Juniper and Fortinet, and a case study of nation-state actors penetrating the operator of a small US electric utility. We also discuss ransomware attacks targeting critical infrastructure, a backdoor in an Android variant used in streaming devices,... Read more »

Take a Network Break! This week we cover Google’s $32 billion acquisition of CNAPP provider Wiz, Cloudflare offerings for AI security and support for post-quantum encryption, and NVIDIA’s pledge to open a quantum research center in Boston. NVIDIA has also announced new switch platforms with co-packaged optics for greater efficiency, Cisco shares details on its... Read more »

The Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) is an industry body that aims to optimize Ethernet for AI and HPC use cases. On today’s Heavy Networking we get an overview of the UEC and an update on its efforts. We’re joined by J Metz and Rip Sohan, both heavily involved with the UEC. We discuss the consortium’s... Read more »

What’s it like to move from a NOC role to an operations and automation role? On today’s show we get the perspective of guest Joseph Nicholson, a Network Operations Engineer at NTT Data.  He explains how he got started with automation, using tools like Python and Ansible, and the critical role of documentation in network... Read more »

Ready for more routing and routing protocols? Today we discuss the roles of the network operating system (NOS), routing protocols, the Routing Information Base (RIB), and the Forwarding Information Base (FIB). We also include the dynamics of routing protocols, the importance of hardware like TCAM for performance, and the concept of administrative distance or route... Read more »

The AI buildout is driving an infrastructure boom. On today’s show, we talk with Kendall Miller, an independent consultant in the DevOps and cloud-native space, about the boom’s potential impacts on DevOps. For instance, the rise of AI workloads will increase the amount of infrastructure to be supported. At the same time, AI tools are... Read more »