Machine identities now outnumber human identities in the enterprise 109 to 1 — and most of them are running without the governance controls you’d never skip for a human employee. Service accounts, API keys, tokens, workload credentials, and a fast-growing population of autonomous AI agents: all of them need access, all of them can be ... Read more »...
Take a Network Break! Our Red Alert covers critical vulnerabilities found in OpenClaw, the open-source AI assistant. On the news front, we discuss the status of Anthropic’s Project Glasswing and examine the Korean Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute‘s (ETRI) development of an intelligent, service-programmable mobile core network, a key enabling technology for the 6G era. ... Read more »...
Scott sits down with Wi-Fi engineer Eva Santos to explore the realities of modern wireless operations. Eva shares insights on navigating site surveys, the differences between Wi-Fi bands, and the challenges of troubleshooting inconsistent client performance. The conversation also explores the evolving standards of Wi-Fi 6, 7, and 8, the role of security protocols like ... Read more »...
AI has complicated network automation. It has created questions: If AI generates code for me, do I need to learn Python? Should I be writing a script to gather network information if I can dispatch an AI agent to gather that information for me instead? What new skills can I skip obtaining if AI stands ... Read more »
Chris Lapp is an Emmy award-winning network engineer, focused on AI, media, and entertainment. Chris is also known as “The Guy”, the one you call when the problem is sitting between broadcast networking and media and the stakes are high. Join us as Kevin and Alexis sit down with Chris to find out how he ... Read more »
In this sponsored episode by Cisco we explore how agentic AI is transforming network operations and what it means for your career. Robert Barton, an AI Distinguished Engineer at Cisco Systems, joins Ethan and Holly to help us snap the artificial intelligence puzzle piece into your networking picture. Together they break down the AI trifecta: ... Read more »
Early in 2026, Drew Conry-Murray authored the first Packet Pushers Salary Survey, offering a transparent look into compensation in the network engineering industry. Drew joins Eric to discuss the results of the survey, the challenges of interpreting global data, how to use this data to advocate for your market value, and more! AdSpot Sponsor: Meter ... Read more »
MACsec (IEEE 802.1AE) encrypts Ethernet frames hop-by-hop at Layer 2 — before traffic even hits IP — making it one of the strongest protections you can put on wire. It’s been in the standards for years, hardware support is widespread, and yet most organizations aren’t running it. JJ and Drew dig into why: the hardware ... Read more »
Take a Network Break! Our Red Alert covers critical vulnerabilities in Ivanti Sentry, including OS command injection and authentication bypass, for which patches are now available. On the news front, we dig into Arista’s new 1.6Tbps rack-scale portfolio for AI infrastructure and Nokia’s Deepfield Genome Shield, designed to proactively stop DDoS from residential proxy botnets. We ... Read more »...
Your network is an interconnected system. A change you make on one device has consequences beyond that device. Therefore, to do your job well, you must think about the network as a whole. That’s the big idea behind a blog post written by guest Jason Gintert. He joins Ethan and Drew to talk about how ... Read more »
As a network engineer, you’ll end up with a lot of weird problems to solve. Many times, the problems will not be with the network at all, and it’ll be up to you to figure it all out. But how? Ethan and Holly discuss techniques for effective troubleshooting. Those techniques include how to gather accurate ... Read more »
As AI matures, it becomes increasingly important to know how it’s performing and what it actually costs. Ned and Kyler are joined by Anuj Tyagi, Senior Site Reliability Engineer for RingCentral, to discuss the critical shift toward AI observability. AI observability is not just about costs; Anuj breaks down why observability has to include agent ... Read more »
The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) is a postmortem of a year’s worth of cyber incidents and breaches, and a snapshot of how well organizations are responding to actual threats. Drew and JJ share highlights from the 2026 installment, including: For the first time, vulnerability exploits top the list for initial access What a ... Read more »...
Take a Network Break! Our Red Alert covers a critical Android vulnerability that could lead to local privilege escalation to root. On the news front, we dig into Cloud Control, Cisco’s ambitious AI ops platform that spans its networking, security, compute, observability, and collaboration portfolios. We also talk about Cisco Live Protect, which provides pre-patch ... Read more »...
If you think Tailscale is just a VPN for the home lab, think again. On today’s sponsored episode Ethan and Drew are joined by Tailscale CEO Avery Pennarun. Avery explains how the company has evolved into an enterprise-grade connectivity and security platform. He also dives into Tailscale Aperture, their new AI gateway designed to bring ... Read more »
Scott is joined by Brett Lykins, a Senior Systems Development Engineer at Amazon. Brett works with software-defined infrastructure built around SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud). Together they dig into what it’s actually like to use, maintain, and operate a network this way. They also discuss not just the architecture, but the day-to-day ... Read more »
Today’s guest takes us behind the scenes of modern concert venues, which rely on wired and wireless IP networking. Michael Keith Lewis is a front-of-house engineer, tour manager, audio creator, and co-founder of Truck Packer. Michael shares his career path from starting in a church, quitting a salaried job to tour with his favorite band, ... Read more »
Sif Baksh joins Eric Chou to share his professional experience and resources to help engineers get their arms around using AI in network automation. They discuss practical advantages of AI over standard Python scripts and the risks and benefits of vibe coding for prototyping. Sif also breaks down the P.E.N.E. framework, a structure for writing ... Read more »
Starting an investigation—be it for troubleshooting, problem diagnosis, threat hunting, incident response, and so on—is fairly straightforward. There’s a question or thesis you’re pursuing, you have logs and data sources to check, and you have tools to deploy. But if you don’t find anything, does that mean there was nothing to find? Are you sure ... Read more »
Take a Network Break! We start with listener followup and a red alert affecting ScadaBR, an open source SCADA controller. On the news front, Forward adds predictive testing to its network digital twin software, Qumulo and Cisco team up to offer cloud-bursting for file storage, and NetBrain adds new skills and other updates to its ... Read more »...
Drew and Ethan sit down with Tony Bourke to determine whether TradCore or EVPN VXLAN is right for your network. Tony is a seasoned instructor in automation, network design, and more. They explore the key factors for choosing a design, including scale and redundancy, operational complexity, and workload mobility. AdSpot Sponsor: Auvik Sponsor Auvik Network ... Read more »
In the previous episode of N is for Networking, Jennifer “JJ” Jabbusch gave us a thorough overview of Network Access Control (NAC) for wired networks. This week we’re going wireless! JJ walks us through the major differences between wired and wireless NAC, how 802.1X is more seamless in Wi-Fi deployments, the unpredictability of web portals, ... Read more »
Hosts Ned and Kyler compare notes on everything they’ve been doing with AI, including the successes they’ve enjoyed and headaches they’ve suffered building and implementing AI agents. They talk about how AI has sped up their workflows, how managing multiple AI agents is akin to raising toddlers, the necessity of using deterministic scripts for increased ... Read more »
HPE has announced new features in its Juniper Mist portfolio. On today’s sponsored Packet Protector, we dig into those features, including a dry run option that lets organizations test and refine Network Access Control (NAC) policies before pushing them out, a policy validation feature that can identify shadow NAC rules, and a microsegmentation capability aimed ... Read more »...
Take a Network Break! We sound the alarm about a critical vulnerability in an on-prem Azure stack. On the news side, AI NetOps startup Selector adds public cloud observability to its portfolio, Versa Networks adds zero trust capabilities to its AI assistant, and IBM gets a billion-dollar investment to build a foundry to fabricate quantum ... Read more »...
Scott sits down with Avi Freedman, CEO and co-founder of Kentik, to discuss if AI has advanced enough to automate human-centric NetOps. Together they caution against vendor hype regarding closed-loop network automation despite the progress AI has made. Avi also shares his personal experiences in the industry and the hard won lessons he learned along ... Read more »...
Selector is extending its AI-driven network observability capabilities into public clouds. On today’s sponsored episode, we dig into how Selector gathers and analyzes public cloud network telemetry, how it integrates cloud and on-prem network data to provide end-to-end visibility, how it integrates with third-party Application Performance Monitoring (APM) systems to correlate network and application performance, ... Read more »...
Today’s guest is Eyvonne Sharp, a Google Cloud technical leader, Network Collective co-founder, co-host of The Cloud Gambit podcast, and former network architect at a Fortune 100. Eyvonne shares stories from her impressive career, offers advice to her younger self, and how to appreciate those “magic” moments in your career when a project fires on ... Read more »
Eric Chou and guest host Drew Conry-Murray sit down with deep space networking specialist Scott Spicer. Following the Artemis 2 mission, they discuss the challenges of long-delay space communications and the essential technologies making it possible such as the Interplanetary Overlay Network (ION), Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN), and Contact Graph Routing (CGR). AdSpot Sponsor: Meter Meter ... Read more »...
JJ and Drew unpack an overstuffed suitcase of infosec stories in today’s News Roundup. Microsoft’s Edge password manager stores credentials in plaintext and Microsoft says “Yup”, the Linux kernel takes a one-two punch from Dirty Frag and Fragnesia, and a new industry coalition takes critical infrastructure protection private. A Taiwanese radio enthusiast allegedly brings high-speed ... Read more »...
