You ever want a group of fellow networking nerds to hang with once in a while? The US Networking User Association might be exactly what you’re looking for. With local networking user groups popping up in various places all over the US and soon other countries, the USNUA is fostering community and knowledge sharing for networkers everywhere. On today's Heavy Networking we speak with Jason Gintert and Chris Kane, two of the folks behind the USNUA organization, to discuss what the USNUA is, and how...
May 02, 2023•47 min
Take a Network Break! This week we discuss a new NAC solution from Arista Networks, a new version of Central from HPE Aruba, and the latest version of NetBrain. We also cover a new XDR offering from Cisco, Google Cloud's quarterly financial results, Microsoft entanglements with EU and UK regulators, and more tech news.
May 01, 2023•57 min
Fortinet is a security vendor most of you have heard of. But if all you think of when you hear the name “Fortinet” is firewalls, well yeah, but you should think more broadly. On today's sponsored Heavy Networking we're going after the work-from-anywhere challenge with Fortinet’s Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) tech, all of which is baked into FortiOS. If you’re running a FortiGate, you’ve got these capabilities already.
Apr 28, 2023•50 min
OpenTelemetry is an open-source project that brings together tools, SDKs, and APIs for collecting telemetry--that is, logs, metrics, and traces---in a standardized way. The goal of the project is to help developers and operators instrument highly distributed applications and services to understand dependencies, monitor performance, and quickly troubleshoot problems. On today's Day Two Cloud podcast we explore OpenTelemetry and how it works. We also discuss the difference between visibility and o...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Take a Network Break! This week we cover new cloud networking capabilities from Prosimo, discuss Broadcom's latest version of the Jericho ASIC which is being positioned for network fabrics for AI workloads, and explore the latest version of the open-source Dent network OS. We also cover financial results from F5, Starlink price cuts, and more tech news.
Apr 24, 2023•40 min
Today’s Heavy Networking podcast explores the concept of NetDevOps with sponsor Itential. The idea behind NetDevOps is to advance your network to the point where it’s self-service; that is, the network you operate can be consumed the way public cloud services are consumed. Our guest is Itential co-founder & CTO Chris Wade.
Apr 21, 2023•44 min
Today's Day Two Cloud delves into cloud security and cloud cost optimization for SaaS and public clouds. Our guest is Jo Peterson. On the security front, we compare and contrast traditional on-prem and cloud security challenges, explore the shared responsibility model of cloud security, and more. For cost optimization we discuss the growing concern about cloud costs, why optimization tools still need humans, tips for tracking multicloud spending, and more.
Apr 19, 2023•42 min
This week's Network Break discusses NetBox Labs's $20 million funding round and why it spun itself out of NS1's IBM acquisition, Intel Foundry and Arm teaming up on SoC manufacturing, why Amazon sees headwinds for public cloud spending (and why the opportunity is still huge), how the juice-jacking threat got hyped, and more tech news.
Apr 17, 2023•39 min
On today’s Heavy Networking we get into IPv6 essentials for network engineers, including how to incorporate IPv6 support in upcoming projects, how IPv6 affects NAT and subnetting, what the heck Happy Eyeballs and nibble boundaries are, and why you should approach IPv6 with a mindset of abundance not scarcity.
Apr 14, 2023•1 hr 2 min
On today's Day Two Cloud we dive into how the public clouds spend their money and what IT and engineering folks can learn from those spending patterns. We also look at the notion of cloud repatriation and how prevalent (or not) it is. Our guest is Charles Fitzgerald, a CapEx obsessive who writes the Platformonomics blog.
Apr 12, 2023•45 min
This week's Network Break examines Security Copilot, the latest AI-infused assistant in Microsoft's growing arsenal; discusses optical advancements from Arelion and Infinera that sent 400Gb wavelengths over 1,800 kilometers; examine a news report that claims Tesla workers shared "highly invasive" images recorded by vehicle cameras; plus even more tech news.
Apr 10, 2023•40 min
You know all those Apple and other IoT devices connected to your wireless network? Lots of them run apps that discover services on your network via multicast DNS (mDNS). All of that mDNS traffic can have a significant impact on your WLAN’s performance. On today's Heavy Networking we talk with guest Bryan Ward who has actually measured the impact of mDNS on a production wireless network to see what would happen if he let mDNS traffic run wild.
Apr 07, 2023•46 min
Today on Day Two Cloud we explore what it takes to transition from traditional networking to a career as a cloud network engineer. Guest Kam Agahian shares insights from his own career journey about what's the same and what's different between on-prem and cloud networking, what skills might you want to pick up to make the transition, recommended certifications, and more.
Apr 05, 2023•50 min
On today's Network Break podcast we cover Amazon opening its Sidewalk low-power IoT wireless network to developers, Cisco putting the expiration date on Prime Infrastructure, HAProxy adding QUIC support in its enterprise load balancer, Huawei touting revenue stability, and more IT news.
Apr 03, 2023•28 min
Lots of folks suffer from impostor syndrome. Tech is complex--how could you know what you’re doing? And yet, many of us are responsible for incredibly complex IT systems. Fake it ‘til you make it, right? To handle the cognitive dissonance of impostor syndrome, we overcompensate. In doing so, we pay a personal price. Today's Heavy Networking guest is Matt Vitale. He's here to share what he's learned about coping with and overcoming imposter syndrome.
Mar 31, 2023•56 min
On today's Day Two Cloud podcast we talk through out-of-band management network design with sponsor ZPE Systems. If your idea of OOB management is a jump box and some terminal servers, there’s a lot more to the story when you bring automation tooling into the picture. We'll learn how ZPE gear works and talk with customer Vapor IO about using ZPE gear in its edge compute sites.
Mar 29, 2023•49 min
This week's Network Break covers Arista's new WAN routers that get the company into the SD-WAN market, debates whether Aryaka targeting SMEs is a sign of problems or opportunity, and discusses an update on the size of the SASE market. We also look at an HPE acquisition, the use of exploding USBs to target journalists, space networking, and more.
Mar 27, 2023•55 min
On today's Heavy Networking we sub in a podcast from our Heavy Strategy channel. Greg Ferro from the Packet Pushers and Johna Till Johnson, CEO of Nemertes Research, discuss the impacts of ChatGPT and AI on the technology workspace, including whether human workers can partner with these tools to increase productivity and improve technology experiences. They don't have answers, but they do have unanswered questions.
Mar 24, 2023•48 min
Today on Day Two Cloud we talk with developer Herman Martinus about his open-source blogging platform Bear. We talk about how a developer views infrastructure and operations, and how he went about building his platform.
Mar 22, 2023•48 min
On this week's Network Break podcast we examine Palo Alto Networks adding AI Ops to its SASE offering, and Microsoft Copilot bringing AI into its suite of Office tools. The Ethernet Adapter market grew 22% in 2022, but not because more NICs were sold; we discuss the real reasons and cover more tech news.
Mar 20, 2023•47 min
On today’s Heavy Networking I talk with two people who have built and are running Hachyderm, a Mastodon instance which orients itself towards technical-minded folks. What started as a cool project in the basement suddenly grew to tens of thousands of users. I talk with Hachyderm's founders on how they scaled, problems they encountered, how they solved problems, and how they grappled with technical and human challenges.
Mar 17, 2023•46 min
Today's Day Two Cloud episode gets into sales engineering. IT pros may look down on sales for not being a strictly technical discipline, but it turns out there's more overlap between an engineer and a sales engineer than you might think. Both have to solve problems, understand requirements, and design and deliver outcomes. Our guest is Pete Robertson, a sales engineer for a value-added reseller.
Mar 15, 2023•46 min
Take a Network Break! On today's episode we discuss a record quarter for switch sales, examine Germany's mixed signals about allowing Huawei gear in its networks, and debate whether employees' frustration over Google's desk-sharing plan is just entitled whining or a legitimate complaint. Plus more IT news.
Mar 13, 2023•42 min
On today's Heavy Networking, sponsor Graphaint is here to discuss how it's rethinking SD-WAN using a Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) model to help customers consume WAN connectivity instead of setting up and operating a WAN for themselves. Graphiant combines SD-WAN mainstays such as multiple connection options and traffic policies based on applications and performance, without the operational overhead of SD-WAN tunnels. We dive into the how and why in this episode.
Mar 10, 2023•49 min
Today on Day Two Cloud we engage in strategic thinking about cloud, workload repatriation, costs and spending, DevOps and Kubernetes, and more with guest Tim Banks. Tim is a Lead Developer Advocate at Dell Technologies and has done stints at AWS, Equinix, and the Duckbill Group. Besides being a techie, Tim Banks is also a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu champion and world-ranked competitor in his class.
Mar 08, 2023•51 min
Take a Network Break! We begin with some FU on what constitutes on-prem and off-prem, and then dive into news. Cisco and T-Mobile are partnering on 5G gateways, Cisco Webex is getting installed as a feature(?) in Mercedes E-Class cars, and Cisco is buying multi-cloud security startup Valtix. Valtix offers firewalling, IPS, a cloud Web ... Read more »...
Mar 06, 2023•34 min
On Heavy Networking today we look at a home lab running VMware products including NSX, as well as infrastructure-as-code products Terraform, Packer, and Ansible. These use cases create a different hardware demand than virtualized network operating system images. Guest Maarten Van Driessen explains it all, including how he saves money on lab gear.
Mar 03, 2023•48 min
Today on Day Two Cloud we put on our thinking caps about platforms, cloud, and multicloud. The last ten years or so has been a push for "cloud-first," but any wholesale approach to "X-first" (cloud, edge, digital, etc.) is problematic. We discuss why. We also explore strategies for CTOs, IT managers, and engineers on how to grapple with cloud strategy, implementation, and operation.
Mar 01, 2023•54 min
Is the private 5G market big enough to justify HPE's acquisition of Athonet? Is saving money worth retreating from public cloud? Why are organizations still getting bit by basic cloud misconfigurations? Will an appetite for AI deliver results for Nvidia? We explore these and other questions in the latest Network Break podcast.
Feb 27, 2023•46 min
In today’s Heavy Networking show with sponsor Broadcom we go deep into network management and Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM). At its heart, DEM is about understanding the user experience of the network. Network monitoring and management products that incorporate user experience, such as Broadcom's DX NetOps, can provide visibility into network and application performance to help inform troubleshooting efforts and speed resolution.
Feb 24, 2023•41 min