Packet Pushers - Fat Pipe

Let’s hear from the next generation of network engineers. Eric Chou sits down with Sem Eyob and Damon Hoody, two early-career network engineers, to talk about how they got into the profession and where they hope to go. They share their views on AI and its effect on their generation, their struggles finding entry level... Read more »

As AI tools and agentic AI become part of how applications are developed, delivered, and managed, application performance monitoring and observability have to adapt. Ned Bellavance sits down with Drew Flowers and Jacob Yackenovich from IBM Instana about where these fields sit today, and the potential impacts of AI. They detail the challenges of application... Read more »

Cloud-based workspaces such as Google Workspace are often the backbone of an organization. But they also face threats from spam and phishing, account takeovers, and illicit access to sensitive documents and files. On today’s Packet Protector we talk with sponsor Material Security about how it brings additional layers of protection to Google Workspace, including email... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Our Red Alert calls out a dangerous vulnerability in the popular open-source React library. On the news front, HPE decides on a “both and” strategy for its two wireless portfolios and rolls out an option to let customers pick and choose among cross-platform features in Mist and Aruba Networking Central through... Read more »

Andy Lapteff once considered himself a ‘CLI lifer.’ As a network engineer he wasn’t interested in Python. He didn’t want to learn to code. He had no desire to embrace any of the developer-like processes and tools creeping into the profession, particularly around network automation. That’s changed. On today’s Heavy Networking, Andy shares the professional,... Read more »

Will it be possible to have fully autonomous networks in the near future? Anil Varanasi, CEO and Co-Founder of Meter, joins Scott Robohn in this sponsored episode to discuss the ongoing evolution from automated to autonomous networks. Anil breaks down how Meter differentiates from other networking vendors, discusses how Meter’s network products are vertically integrated... Read more »

In Part 1 of Redundancy vs. High Availability, we said that sometimes high availability and redundancy are considered to be the same thing, but we disagree. Holly and Ethan do agree that high availability can be considered a network design goal, and that redundancy is just one technique that can be used to help make... Read more »

Ned and Kyler sit down with Deana Solis, a freelance FinOps engineer and mentor. They discuss the undervalued skills of communication, look at the inherent biases and misplaced confidence of AI models, and offer guidance for those starting their careers. Deana also talks about her journey to discover the intersection of technology, career, and finding... Read more »

There may be misconfigurations and other problems lurking in your wireless network. From a lack of peer isolation to poor segmentation to RADIUS problems and vendor fails, these issues can make your WLAN less secure. Jennifer “JJ” Minella goes from Packet Protector co-host to guest as she discusses these issues with Drew Conry-Murray. This episode... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with listener follow-up on Fortinet’s vulnerability numbering, and sound a red alert about an authentication bypass vulnerability in ASUS’s AiCloud service. AWS and Google announce a joint cross-cloud interconnect offering (other cloud providers are invited to play), Microsoft and Ciena pitch a new design to boost optical network resiliency,... Read more »

The world of networking is changing at lightning speed thanks to AI. Today Eric sits down with Chris Kane to explore this new reality for network engineers.  Together, they dive deeper into some of the changes that will be coming next, breaking down the technical demands and mindset shifts of intellectual curiosity and humility necessary... Read more »

Web applications have always been tricky to protect. They’re meant to be accessible over the Internet, which exposes them to malicious actors, they’re designed to take end-user inputs, which can be manipulated for malicious purposes, and they often handle sensitive data. Then the rise of public cloud and microservices architectures added new layers of complexity... Read more »

Take a Network Break!  We start with a relative path traversal vulnerability in Fortinet’s FortiWeb.  We’ll move on to an acquisition by Palo Alto Networks, another hiccup from our friends at Cloudflare, some AI announcements by Itential and Gluware, and finish with first quarter 2026 fiscal results from Palo Alto Networks. AdSpot Sponsor: Itential  ... Read more »

Today Scott interviews Andy Lapteff. He opens up about his non-linear career path, starting from a working class background and his physical jobs in telecom to becoming a senior product marketing manager and podcaster. Join us as Andy shares candid stories of how he developed his resilience and the heartwarming origin story for the Art... Read more »

Unit testing is a software development practice for checking that an individual component of code works before integrating that unit with other components in a larger program. A new open source project called Network Unit Testing System, or NUTS, brings the same concept to network automation. The big idea is that by incorporating unit tests into... Read more »

In today’s chat, Holly and Ethan consider a question from listener Douglas who asks, “How do you approach designing a network for high availability and redundancy?” They start by defining differences between redundancy and high availability, and talk about Holly’s experience with her own customers. Then they share examples of how to achieve redundancy in... Read more »

Ever wonder what it takes to level up your career in data science? Senior Data Scientist Darya Petrashka joins Ned and Kyler to share her personal journey from management and linguistics into data science, the real difference between a junior and a senior role, and helps us get under the “data science umbrella” to see... Read more »

Just what’s inside that commercial software you bought? Does it contain open-source components, NPM packages, or other third-party code? How could you find out? The answer is a Software Bill of Materials, or SBOM, a machine-readable inventory of a finished piece of software. Why should you care about SBOMs? Our guest, Natalie Somersall, is here... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Red Hat Samba server has a remote command execution vulnerability, and we cover some follow-up on fusion as a viable energy source (still a work in progress). On the news front, we search for signs in SoftBank’s sale of its Nividia stake, Mplify debuts a new certificate on carrier Ethernet for... Read more »

NANOG, or the North American Network Operation Group, is an organization committed to the continuing advancement of an open, secure, and robust Internet. At the NANOG Conference 95 in late October 2025, Ethan Banks chatted with Steve Feldman, a member of NANOG’s Board of Directors. Steve has been involved with NANOG since the very first... Read more »