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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between a Switched Virtual Interface (SVI) and Integrated Routing and Bridging (IRB), today’s show is for you! Ethan Banks and Holly Metlitzky start with some history and the basics of communication between layer 2 and layer 3 and then explain how the concepts of SVI and IRB ... Read more »
While declaring the death of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) or Terraform may get you clicks on LinkedIn, IaC is alive and kicking. On today’s Day Two DevOps we talk about why IaC still matters. Guest Malcolm Matalka argues that IaC provides the tools and a model for managing infrastructure across its lifecycle in a structured ... Read more »
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open-source protocol that enables AI agents to connect to data, tools, workflows, and other agents both within and outside of enterprise borders. As organizations dive head-first into AI projects, MCP and other agentic protocols are being quickly adopted. And that means security and network teams need to understand how ... Read more »
Take a Network Break! On today’s coverage, F5 releases an emergency security update after state-backed threat actors breach internal systems, and North Korean attackers use the blockchain to host and hide malware. Broadcom is shipping an 800G NIC aimed at AI workloads, and Broadcom joins the Wi-Fi 8 party early with a sampling of pre-standard ... Read more »...
Could an LLM or some kind of an AI-driven language model, such as a natural language interface, someday replace our beloved CLI? That is, instead of needing to understand the syntax of a specific vendor’s CLI, could a language model allow network operators to use plain language to get the information they need or the ... Read more »
Multi-cloud, automation, and AI are changing how modern networks operate and how firewalls and security policies are administered. In today’s sponsored episode with Palo Alto Networks, we dig into offerings such as CLARA (Cloud and AI Risk Assessment) that help ops teams gain more visibility into the structure and workflows of their multi-cloud networks. We ... Read more »...
A college degree can be a useful stepping stone into a tech career, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to have it on your resume. But do you really need that college degree to succeed in IT? Maybe, maybe not. Today’s guest is Wes Noonan, whose non-traditional path into and through a career in IT has ... Read more »
We’re thrilled to welcome Tim McConnaughy back to the podcast. Tim is a hybrid cloud network architect, author, and co-host of the Cables to Cloud podcast. He recently wrote a 5-part blog series titled ‘Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road’ that reflects on his career path, including his decision to leave a startup. We discuss the impetus ... Read more »
Today we’re bringing back one of our favorite guests — Akili Akridge. He’s a former Baltimore cop who transitioned to building and leading mobile offense and defense teams for federal agencies and Fortune 100s. These days he’s a straight-talking expert on all things mobile security. We’re digging into mobile threats, why they keep CISOs up ... Read more »
Take a Network Break! We start with listener follow-up on security browsers, and then dive into a deep pool of Juniper vulnerabilities to pick two critical ones affecting Juniper Space. We also get an update from SonicWall that the breach of its cloud storage service affected all users of the service. Cisco announces a new ... Read more »
LightRiver has software and service products focused on the automation, optimization, and simplification of multi-layer, multi-vendor, and multi-generation networking. Today we have a team from LightRiver lead by Jim Brinksma to help explain how LightRiver is advancing automation in optical and bridging the gap between the IP and optical layers. They discuss the challenges, obstacles ... Read more »...
Today’s show is one of those “We’re living in the future” episodes, where we talk about using AI to perform root cause analysis of a performance issue. But not root cause analysis for just the networking part of the stack. The full stack. Why? Because it’s not good enough to say “it’s not the network”. ... Read more »
The job interview is an inescapable part of a career journey. Today on N Is For Networking, we conduct a mock interview with a candidate who’s applying for a junior network administration role. The goal is to give Toni Mrowetz, our candidate, feedback. At the same time, we hope this helps anyone listening who might ... Read more »
AI is developing at an incredible pace. With that development comes questions. For instance, how do you connect your resources to agents? How do agents connect with each other? And how do you keep it all secure? Our guest Christian Posta is here to guide us through AI, MCP, and the concept of workload identities. ... Read more »
From a massive SIM farm takedown to dealing with supply chain attacks targeting npm, our news roundup provides context and commentary on a fresh crop of security news. We discuss exploits against Cisco firewalls and switches, a SonicWall firmware update to remove a rootkit targeting its SMA 100, and GitHub’s plans to harden npm packages. ... Read more »...
Take a Network Break! We start with a two-part listener follow-up and sound alarms about a serious flaw in Termix and tens of thousands of still-vulnerable Cisco security devices. Alkira debuts an MCP server and AI copilot for its multi-cloud networking platform; Cato Networks releases a Chrome-based browser extension to help secure contractor and personal ... Read more »...
Today we get an inside look at a major data center migration that Nokia is undertaking. Nokia is our sponsor for today’s episode. The company is moving legacy sets of data center networking equipment to its own Event Driven Automation (EDA) solution. We go behind the scenes of Nokia’s own IT department, which is supporting ... Read more »
If you’ve got an Autonomous System Number (ASN) and an IPv6 block, you too can multi-home IPv6 to your home lab! Sounds easy, right? Well, maybe…but today we’re going to discuss why you’d want to and how you can do that with guest Anton Lönnerbro. Anton is a solutions architect at a managed service provider ... Read more »
Starting any new endeavor is hard. That’s particularly true for a career in tech. And that’s the reason Alexis Bertholf and Kevin Nanns are launching the Life In Uptime podcast. In each episode they’ll sit down with engineers, leaders, and builders in tech to uncover the stories behind their careers to help you see how ... Read more »
As AI becomes more integrated into the IT landscape, developers, engineers, and operators are looking for practical ways to use these new tools. Joining us today is Ryan Booth; he’s built a career around network automation, giving him a unique perspective on how network engineering, operations, software development, and AI intersect. We explore the practical ... Read more »...
What does the risk environment for Operational Technology (OT) look like in 2025? JJ and Drew review four recent reports on the state of OT security from Dragos, Fortinet, and others. We discuss ransomware impacts, ongoing risks of RDP traffic, directly exposed OT devices, and overall attack trends and the tools and processes that organizations ... Read more »
There’s an abundance of vulnerabilities in this week’s Network Break. We start with a red alert on a cluster of Cisco vulnerabilities in its firewall and threat defense products. On the news front, the vulnerability spotlight stays on Cisco as the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issues an emergency directive to all federal ... Read more »...
On today’s Heavy Networking: the Security Operations Center, or SOC. When I think of a SOC, I picture a miniature version of NASA’s mission control: lots of computers, lots of people, some big boards with lines and arrows and telemetry scrolling across the screens. I also think of SOCs as requiring a lot of gear, ... Read more »
