The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods

Jason Gintert, Co-Founder of the US Networking User Association, returns to the show to discuss his key elements and events in his professional career. Jason shares valuable lessons learned from his early days in the 90’s ISP boom, the challenges of failing at scale, and his dedication to creating regional networking communities that foster genuine... Read more »

In this sponsored episode, Kyle Baxter and Sridhar Katere from HPE join Drew to talk about automating enterprise data center networks. They discuss how HPE integrates its Apstra and Mist products to bring AI ops and self-driving capabilities into data center operations. They also break down how HPE leverages the different strengths of each platform,... Read more »

Chris Grundemann joins Alexis and Kevin to discuss his career evolution from pulling cable to co-founding the Network Automation Forum. Chris shares insights on the challenges of adopting network automation, the impact of AI on the industry, the importance of professional networking, and strategies for maintaining a healthy work-life balance. AdSpot Sponsor: Meter Most IT... Read more »

How can network architects successfully manage 95,000 hosts while navigating the complexities of large-scale cloud migrations? Devender Singh, a Principal Cloud Architect, joins Ned and Kyler to discuss the practical realities of managing network chaos, the migration from Transit Gateways to AWS Cloud WAN, and strategies for addressing the technical debt often encountered during enterprise... Read more »

If it feels like everything is on fire, today’s News Roundup will not dispel that feeling. We discuss consumer routers that ship with factory-installed backdoors, US law enforcement agencies shutting down hacking domains, and how a threat actor tied to China is targeting Cisco IOS-XR routers. Android-based auto infotainment systems are susceptible to malware, OpenAI... Read more »

Keith welcomes David Coleman to examine the technical advantages and practical challenges of implementing standard power 6Ghz Wi-Fi in indoor environments. They also discuss automated frequency coordination (AFC), geolocation mechanisms for indoor APs, and LPI fallback strategy. AdSpot Sponsor: Meter Most IT teams are managing networks stitched together from years of acquisitions and vendor contracts... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We begin with follow-up on the Cisco/Teleport deal and Chinese models on US public clouds. Our Red Alert warns of two critical vulnerabilities in HPE’s Aruba Networking Fabric Composer, and we offer a quick heads-up on OpenAI and Anthropic outages and forthcoming security disclosures from Arista. On the news front, Broadcom... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Our red alert goes to cluster of CVEs for Canonical’s LXD Linux Container system. On the news side, Palo Alto Networks adds AI-powered security evaluations as a service engagement, SonicWall introduces an endpoint security agent for SMBs, and the White House outlines a plan to authorize private companies to conduct cyber... Read more »

Today, several members of our Packet Pushers podcast team assemble to discuss whether the grass is greener on the NetOps or DevOps side of the telemetry fence. William of The Cloud Gambit, Scott of Total Network Operations, and Ned and Kyler of Day Two DevOps discuss the difficulties and differences of getting telemetry and state... Read more »

What do you do when you get your dream job and it’s not as fulfilling as you thought it would be? Ricki Cook speaks with Alexis and Kevin about navigating between career achievement and personal satisfaction. Ricki discusses his transition from traditional network architecture to touring systems engineering, the realities of maintaining real-time networks under... Read more »

Tyler Lynch, Outbound CTO at IBM, joins the show to discuss shifting from “tokenmaxxing” to “valuemaxxing” by optimizing AI agent workflows for efficiency. They explore using Obsidian for persistent agent memory to combat context bloat, the critical importance of secure sandboxing practices, and the strategic use of parallel verification to ensure your agents are performing... Read more »

Keith is joined by Ferney Muñoz and Tom Hildebrand to break down the complexities of designing high-density Wi-Fi for large-scale events. They dig into the strategic use of directional antennas, channel reuse techniques, and the necessity of on-site verification to ensure network reliability. They also share practical tips on device roaming, troubleshooting, and cross-team collaboration.... Read more »

Today we’re doing a crossover episode with the folks at Cybr.Sec.Media to talk about CYBR.SEC.CON, a community-driven security conference that JJ and Drew will be attending in Houston, TX September 15 and 16 2026. We talk with conference founders Michael Farnum and Sam Van Ryder about the origins of the event, and get into our... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Cisco takes center stage in our Red Alert after the network giant discovered a bunch of high-severity bugs in its Catalyst SD-WAN platform. It has rolled out software upgrade and there are no other workarounds. On the news front, NVIDIA assembles other tech bigwigs to form the Open Secure AI Alliance... Read more »

Ethan Banks sits down with Eduard Dulharu live at AutoCon 5 to explore how agentic AI can be used to reduce Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR) for complex network environments. Eduard breaks down how these AI agents leverage deterministic workflows and custom fine-tuned models to analyze telemetry and propose solutions. Through the use of agentic... Read more »

Franck Martin returns to the show to discuss the practical challenges of retiring IPv4 with hosts Ed, Nick, and Tom. Together they break down key strategies, how to work effectively with vendors, and how to mitigate potential outages during the transition. They also explore the cultural shifts necessary for successful IPv6 adoption and the importance... Read more »

This week, Ethan and Holly continue their conversation around Wi-Fi. They go deeper into the benefits of Wi-Fi 7, look at what’s coming in Wi-Fi 8, and cover the differences among Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO), Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), and Multi-Link Operation (MLO). AdSpot Sponsor: Megaport If you’re supporting cloud projects, managing growing... Read more »

William Collins is joined by guest co-host Eric Chou as well as Network Automation Forum founders Scott Robohn and Chris Grundemann to discuss how their community emerged from a simple question: Why haven’t we seen full adoption of network automation, yet? They discuss the growth of AutoCon and how its practitioner-focused, vendor-neutral approach has fostered... Read more »

Eric Chou welcomes Juulia Santala, a Solutions Engineer at Cisco, to discuss her transition from traditional network programmability to cutting-edge AI research. They explore how she moved beyond simple RAG to make AI truly agentic, while solving some hallucination problems in production configurations. They also cover the number one skill network engineers need by 2027,... Read more »

Packet Protector uncorks another News Roundup! We talk about attackers capturing hotels’ captive portals to steal Microsoft credentials, and the OpenAI-attacking-Hugging Face story and how it ties into a broader industry effort to keep the US government from blocking access to open weight AI models from China. Nvidia and the Linux Foundation launch separate AI... Read more »

IT folks spent a lot of time in the last 20 years creating globe-spanning infrastructures that maximize performance while minimizing the number of data centers or cloud instances they operate. More recently, the steady rise of regionalized data sovereignty requirements has created counter-pressure. AI regulations are now adding to that pressure to ditch a single... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with red alert for a serious vulnerability in HashiCorp’s Terraform MCP server. In the news, Anthropic, not wanting to be one-upped by OpenAI, reveal that its own models are also ‘leet’ hackers. We also consider whether OpenAI and Anthropic have broken the law by not preventing their models from... Read more »

Scott Robohn sits down with guests Lenny Giuliano and Russ White to examine whether generative AI will affect internet traffic patterns. Together they explore the role of CDNs, the importance of latency, and the potential for a shift toward edge-based inference. They also discuss the impact of data sovereignty on infrastructure and the potential return... Read more »

As more applications and services rely on AI inferencing, that means more traffic on the WAN. Yes, bandwidth can solve a lot of problems, it’s not unlimited and AI inference traffic still has to share pipes with other flows. That means things like WAN latency, determinism, security, and traffic engineering are just as important as... Read more »

Jason Gooley is a longtime member of the Cisco community and author of the latest edition of the CCNA book. Jason joins the show to share his unconventional path from a challenging childhood to technical evangelist and author at Cisco. Together they discuss the importance of community, mental health, and resilience in navigating technical career... Read more »

Today, several members of our Packet Pushers podcast team assemble to discuss whether the grass is greener on the NetOps or DevOps side of the telemetry fence. William of The Cloud Gambit, Scott of Total Network Operations, and Ned and Kyler of Day Two DevOps discuss the difficulties and differences of getting telemetry and state... Read more »

There’s always been a gap between the discovery of a security issue and the time it takes to remediate. Now AI models can autonomously find weak points and chain together actions to exploit them. How does AI change the notion of “fast enough” for network defense? On today’s sponsored episode we dig into how FireMon... Read more »

Jake Snyder joins Keith Parsons to explain the mechanics of spatial reuse in Wi-Fi. They discuss practical implementation, the trade-offs involved in increasing signal detection thresholds, and why effective RF design remains the primary method for optimizing network performance. Episode Links: Jake Snyder’s Website

What if your MCP server shipped with its own manual? Angie Jones, VP of Developer Experience at the Agentic AI Foundation, joins William and Eyvonne to break down the Skills Over MCP working group effort, which delivers Agent Skills through MCP’s existing resources primitive (think voice over IP, not skills versus MCP). Angie shares her... Read more »

Unless you’ve intentionally migrated to all-IPv6, you’re operating in a dual-stack environment. And if you haven’t accounted for v6 in your monitoring and security, you leave yourself open to risks. Today we dig into some of those risks, including VPN breakouts and how attackers can use unmanaged v6 to bypass security tools. Our guest is... Read more »

Host Keith Parsons recently launched the WLAN Pros Toolbox, a multi-function app with all the calculators, live tools, reference materials, and Wi-Fi readings you need. Today, Keith opens the toolbox to talk about what’s in it, how it was built, and why it’s being given away for free. AdSpot Sponsor: Meter Most IT teams are... Read more »

Drew talks with Joao Soares, Lead IT Security Consultant, about a project Joao undertook to automate firewall rule changes. Firewall changes can be fraught in any environment, but Joao also had to contend with working in the highly-regulated energy sector. They walk through how the project went from proof-of-concept to being widely used in production,... Read more »

Malcolm Matalka joins William and Eyvonne to challenge the narrative that Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is dead. Malcolm argues that the real value of IaC was never the syntax, but state and governance. Together they examine whether the state was a file problem at all, or a distributed systems problem in a JSON costume. Episode... Read more »

Eric welcomes Eduard Dulharu, a veteran network architect and the Founder and CTO of vExpertAI, to talk about how agentic AI, open-source LLMs, and digital twins are changing network operations. Eduard discusses the rapid evolution of generative AI, draws parallels between AI’s current limitations and early network protocols such as Spanning Tree, talks about why... Read more »

Platform engineering forms the foundation for developers to build on, and you shouldn’t be surprised that folks from VMware have been thinking about platforms for a long time. In today’s episode, sponsored by Broadcom, Ned and Kyler discuss the current state and future of platform engineering with guests Jad El-Zein and Myles Gray. They cover... Read more »

Looks like it’s going to be a long, hot cybersec summer. The latest news roundup covers how Microsoft 365 Copilot got turned into a data exfiltration tool, why the FortiBleed attack is about much more than compromised firewalls, and how North Korea exploited a single npm maintainer account to poison more than a hundred software... Read more »

“Everybody codes” was an enterprise buzzword. In this era of AI vibe-coding and single-use coding, should everyone code? Should anyone code? John and Johna talk about enterprise strategies with respect to coding in the AI era, including what expertise to look for in employees. AdSpot Sponsor: Meter Meter delivers full-stack networking—wired, wireless, and cellular—to leading... Read more »

On this week’s Network Break, Johna Johnson and Scott Robohn start with a serious vulnerability in IBM’s Langflow open source software. On the news front, a massive breach of tens of thousands of Fortinet firewalls exposes some of the world’s biggest companies, the US government gets sued over an order to shut down powerful AI... Read more »

Copper twisted pair cabling serves as a fundamental component of Ethernet infrastructure and Ethan and Holly are here to break down how it works. They discuss the technical differences between cabling categories, how wire twisting cancels out electromagnetic interference, and share practical guidance on installation standards and testing methodologies. Episode Links: Watch this episode on... Read more »

Network Address Translation (NAT), a foundational element of IPv4, faces critical reassessment as IPv6 deployment shifts the landscape. Ed and Tom evaluate the evolving role of NAT, questioning whether traditional translation models remain necessary when stateful packet inspection offers more robust, transparent security solutions. Episode Links: “Fanboy” series – IPv6 and NATs – YouTube

Kyler and Ned are joined by former AWS Community Program Manager Jason Dunn to discuss what it takes to build and maintain a thriving tech community. Jason shares his “benevolent dictatorship” philosophy on community management, emphasizing the importance of authentic human connections. They also explore how AI can empower non-technical individuals to build custom solutions... Read more »

Is it better to be an employee or an independent contractor in the Wi-Fi industry? Keith walks us through the good, the bad, and the ugly of both sides of the equation, offering a candid look at the financial and professional realities of each. Keith helps provide a framework for listeners to assess their own... Read more »

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 »

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 »

The Pope issued a recent encyclical on AI, urging developers to safeguard human agency in the age of artificial intelligence. Eyvonne and William explore this encyclical, moving beyond the headlines to the core message regarding human dignity. They examine how the document provides a values-based framework for evaluating technology and the need for a balanced... 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 »

VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) and Desktop as a Service (DaaS) have been arriving “real soon now” for the past couple of decades. Will the advent of vendors’ AI spyware (as Google is introducing through Chrome) be the accelerant that finally makes it happen? John and Johna discuss why the challenges in this brave new AI-enabled... Read more »