The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods

Today’s episode covers buffers, the space between ingress and egress where a packet might have to live for a fraction of a second if the egress port is tied up transmitting other packets. This topic came courtesy of John Howard who joins Drew and Ethan as a co-host to discuss buffers with guest Rob Sherwood. How... Read more »

Why is IPv6 so much more complicated than IPv4? Could a newer version such as IPv8 be the solution? Guest Brian Carpenter joins our hosts to explain that many of IPv6’s complications are mathematical necessities. They point out that IPv6 has a 30 year head start on any IPv8 proposal that would struggle with many... Read more »

Network teams are being asked to move faster than ever as automation and AI-driven workflows increase the volume and frequency of network changes. In this episode, sponsored by Cisco, we explore how modern network operating systems make zero-downtime, zero-stress updates possible, even at machine speed. We’ll break down three key capabilities: Atomic Config Replace (ACR),... Read more »

Alexis and Kevin sit down with Linda Haviv, an AI/ML Engineer and founder of Coding Crystals. Linda is known for making AI infrastructure accessible, and for a career path that went from philosophy student to professional singer to self-taught developer to AI engineer. Together they discuss the difference between AI infrastructure and AI engineering, the... Read more »

Eric Chou talks with Adrian Iliesiu aka NetGru, a seasoned CCIE veteran and community leader known for his work to simplify network automation and make it accessible to network engineers. He focuses on helping network teams navigate the transition into AI and vibe coding while maintaining their core technical skills. Adrian shares insights and practical... Read more »

Eyvonne and William sit down with Joseph Nicholson, a Network Operations Engineer with NTT DATA, to share how public speaking transformed his career and technical experience. Joseph went from a terrifying ten minute lightning talk at AutoCon 2 to presenting 45-minute sessions at conferences like NANOG. Together they discuss how conversations in conference halls influenced... Read more »

In theory, a zero trust initiative seems straightforward: you just need the right tools and maybe some whiteboard sessions to work out the architecture. In practice, our guests note that zero trust “unfolds inside organizations filled with legacy systems, political friction, budget constraints, and competing priorities.” Without accounting for those complications, a zero trust project... Read more »

Enterprise strategists need to worry about securing their environments against AI-powered attacks. John and Johna discuss what cybersecurity and IT leaders need to consider in developing a cybersecurity strategy that addresses AI-augmented threats as well as how to use AI defensively … and why AI attacks can be like a duckbilled platypus. AdSpot Sponsor: Meter... Read more »

Take a Network Break! It’s a busy show this week. We start with follow-up on Anthropic’s Project Glasswing, router bans, and end-of-engineering/end-of-support date changes for Fortinet’s FortiOSv7.4. Our Red Alert warns of 13 critical CVEs in the Linux kernel (all of which can be addressed by updating to version 7). On the news front, Cisco... Read more »

Tom Coffeen and Nick Buraglio welcome Chris Cummings to talk about developing code for IPv6. Chris argues that moving to IPv6 restores end-to-end connectivity, which reduces complexity for developers without the need for “ridiculous hacks” caused by IPv4 NAT. The discussion offers practical advice on avoiding common developer traps, and covers financial benefits such as... Read more »

Eyvonne Sharp and William Collins speak with Sif Baksh, Principal Solutions Architect at Tines, to discuss the power of automation. Sif shares some personal stories of how he has been able to use automation to innovate and modernize networking operations. They also discuss the importance of learning AI and using it as a tool, how... Read more »

Your enterprise better have a cybersecurity strategy for AI. But where to start? Everywhere! Securing AI means securing all the AI layers and throughout the lifecycle: data, model, and applications, in training and in inference. Johna and John discuss what your strategy must address and how to get support for it because, of course, it’s... Read more »

Today our hosts discuss IPv6 Privacy and Temporary Addresses to clarify how address provisioning can potentially work for host operating systems. The discussion covers the difference between permanent and temporary privacy addresses, their uses, and how interface identifiers are assigned to hosts.  

Speedtest Certified is a network connectivity verification program for properties and venues, allowing them to prove the performance of their Wi-Fi. Alan Blake of Ookla joins the show to break down what the certification actually measures, how assessments are performed, and what it means for network owners as well as Wi Fi professionals. This is... Read more »

How should you shape your IT strategy around the possibility–or is it probability–that the AI economy is a true bubble and will burst soon? John Burke and Johna Johnson revisit the signs indicating that an AI bubble is in full swing and pointing to the potential for collapse in the near term. Doomsaying having been... Read more »

Vibe coding: give AI a description of what you want, the model writes the code, you ship it, and then you hope for the best. It works great for side projects, but it can fall apart the moment you point an AI agent at production infrastructure. Today, William and Eyvonne sit down with John Capobianco,... Read more »

The best strategy in the world won’t succeed if a team falters operationally. But what is operational excellence, and what does it take to acquire it? Cal Poly faculty member (and former Intel strategist) John Miranda shares his thinking with our Heavy Strategy listeners. He discusses concepts like the theory of constraints, root-cause analysis, and... Read more »

Today our hosts discuss the essential role of Stateless Address Autoconfiguration (SLAAC) in successfully deploying an IPv6-mostly network. SLAAC is required to assign a unique IPv6 address to the Customer-side Translator (CLAT), which allows devices to operate on IPv6. However, enterprise operators might prefer using DHCPv6 for network tracking and accountability, potentially trapping them in... Read more »

Keith Parsons is joined by Bradley Wegner, the creator of the Build Your Own AP deep dive at WLPC. Brad discusses his class, which focuses on hands-on hardware experience of constructing an AP. He talks about balancing hardware costs with capabilities, sourcing the components, and the software and firmware involved. He also shares his vision... Read more »

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we talk network automation. More specifically, we dig into the need for proper data management to support your network automation initiatives. Automation relies on accurate, up-to-date information about your infrastructure, but that information can be scattered across innumerable repositories, systems, and spreadsheets. And it may, or may not, be... Read more »

William Collins and Eyvonne Sharp invite Skylar Sands, Senior Automation Engineer at World Wide Technology, to discuss what it means to integrate AI into the daily workflow in a meaningful way. Together they break down the shift in the automation engineer’s role now that AI can instantly generate the “toolkit” of Python, Ansible, and Bash,... Read more »

One of the early design principles of the Internet was end-to-end connectivity: that is, every device on the Internet would be publicly addressable, and every device could share its resources or provide services. That design principle wasn’t achieved with IPv4 for a variety of reasons (including address scarcity, and many network owners not wanting endpoints... Read more »

In this sponsored episode, FluidCloud co-founders Sharad Kumar and Harshit Omar sit down with William and Eyvonne to discuss how FluidCloud tackles multi-cloud portability. They detail how FluidCloud acts as a cloning platform that scans an existing cloud or VMware environment, extracts complex infrastructure configurations (including compute and storage, as well as firewall rules and... Read more »

OpenIntent is an open-source, collaborative effort by network operators to develop a standard schema to describe the necessary information needed to deploy network equipment. Keith sits down with Jake Snyder, the developer behind OpenIntent. They discuss why he developed OpenIntent, the building blocks of the schema, and his vision for seamless Wi-Fi design interoperability. AdSpot... Read more »

Mav Turner, Chief Product Officer at Kentik, joins John Burke and Drew Conry-Murray for an in-depth conversation on the importance of deep visibility into enterprise networks. As networks grow more complex and stretch from on-prem and WAN to multi-cloud and edge locations, this sponsored discussion explores how good visibility supports everything from daily operations to... Read more »

The tech industry is split between two fantasies  – that AI writes production software while you get coffee, and that everything AI touches is slop. The reality is messier and more interesting: AI tools are force multipliers for people who already know what good looks like, and an expertise amplifier disguised as an easy button. ... Read more »

At CES in January, NVIDIA, AMD, Siemens and others spun elaborate tales of a world suffused with AI: AI in the cloud, AI at the desktop, AI in the factory, AI underneath enterprise software and as the UI for enterprise software and agentically accomplishing anything and everything in a world of embodied, physical AI. Johna... Read more »

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we hear from Statseeker, a network monitoring company that collects high-fidelity network data to help engineers and administrators get visibility into physical, virtual, and logical interfaces to find problems faster, understand root causes, and spot behaviors and anomalies so you can prevent problems instead of just reacting to them.... Read more »

If you’re looking for a network automation project but you’re worried about breaking stuff, why not build your automation adventure around IPv6? If your production traffic runs on IPv4, you can experiment with automated configurations and changes using IPv6 without negatively impacting that v4 traffic. You can get a two-for one experience learning both IPv6... Read more »

Digi International has a whole lot of things that aren’t exactly in the Wi-Fi space, but are close enough to be of interest to WLAN engineers. Joining us today to talk about Digi International’s wireless tech, and what it means for wireless LAN pros, is Bob Blumenscheid. Bob discusses Digi’s offerings, including their XBee modules,... Read more »

OT networks used to be air-gapped. These days, more and more OT networks are being bridged by IT networks, which exposes critical industrial controls and other systems to serious risk. On today’s Tech Bytes, sponsored by Palo Alto Networks, we dig into how organizations can detect “precursor signals” that may indicate a broader attack chain,... Read more »

William and Eyvonne tackle the biggest AI stories of early 2026. They dissect Matt Schumer’s viral “Something Big is Happening” essay – agreeing professionals need to skill up now while pushing back on the doomsday framing with real-world examples from engineering disciplines. The conversation takes a fascinating turn as Eyvonne draws a parallel between AI-assisted... Read more »

Every employer knows to conduct background checks. However, conducting background checks on IT professionals requires an extra layer of verification, given the privileged access they typically have to IT systems and tools. Moreover, in this AI era, background checks need to be deeper and more effective than before–in the past we didn’t need to verify... Read more »

Ed, Nick, and Tom discuss the need for Network Address Translation v6 to v6 (NAT66). While Network Prefix Translation (NPTv6) exists, its limitations make it insufficient for real-world business needs. They also highlight that without a standardized NAT66, the market is forcing vendors to implement their own, hindering widespread IPv6 adoption. Episode Links: IPv6-to-IPv6 Network... Read more »

Adrian Granados joins Keith Parsons to discuss new iOS tools available for the WLAN Pi.  These new tools extend a professional’s ability to run Wi-Fi scanning and analysis apps such a Wi-Fi Explorer Pi and Airtool Pi on iOS devices such as iPhones and iPads. Along with the small, portable WLAN Pi itself, these apps... Read more »

Where are all the network engineers? OK, obviously, there are network engineers out there, like the thousands of you listening to this podcast. But there’s an impression that the current generation is aging out of the profession while fewer young people are taking on network engineering as a career. At the same time, networks are... Read more »

We’ve spent a decade figuring out how to (more or less) securely authenticate humans. Now AI agents are crashing the party, and identity just got a whole lot more complicated. Today we sit down with Dan Moore, Senior Director of CIAM Strategy and Identity Standards at FusionAuth, to explore the collision course between artificial intelligence... Read more »

The recent U.S. Executive Order 14365, Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence, is the administration’s latest attempt to prevent the enforcement of most of the AI laws passed in individual US states. Because it is only an executive order (EO), it cannot directly nullify, supersede, forestall, or put a pause on state-level laws.... Read more »

Are you struggling to get IPv6 working, whether in a lab or even a pilot deployment? Ed, Nick, and Tom walk through the essentials of IPv6 troubleshooting, revealing the non-negotiable differences between IPv4 and IPv6 that can trip up even experienced network engineers. They break down why blocking all ICMP, like in v4, will instantly... Read more »

Every Wi-fi or network professional occasionally struggles with understanding what their endpoints are experiencing. Keith sits down with Bill Bushong, creator of NetViews, a macOS application originally called PingStalker. In this conversation they discuss why he built NetViews, the technical details on how it works, its network monitoring capabilities, and how Wi-Fi professionals can use... Read more »

In this episode, we sit down with Adam Zimman, author and VC advisor, to explore the world of progressive delivery and why shipping software is only the beginning. Adam shares his fascinating journey through tech—from his early days as a fire juggler to leadership roles at EMC, VMware, GitHub, and LaunchDarkly – and how those... Read more »

Keith sits down with old friend Jussi Kiviniemi, CEO of Hamina, to unveil their new product: The Hamina Clip. Together they discuss this new wireless survey device, including its portable design, its price point, and its ability to help you perform surveys and create heat maps without a floor plan. They also compare it to... Read more »

Are there some things that can come off your strategic planning radar for IT and cybersecurity in 2026? If you ask AI, you’ll get some surprising answers. Johna and John take a critical look at this AI-generated list to see which ones may or may not be “solved enough” to fall off the strategic planning... Read more »

Today on the podcast, data protection. There’s always been a tension between the need for companies to share data, whether among coworkers, partners, or customers; and the need to protect data, whether it’s for security, privacy, compliance, and so on. That tension existed before AI, but the rise of third-party and external AI tools has... Read more »

Thinking of setting up an IPv6 lab this year? Our hosts dive into a major update on building and testing modern IPv6 networks, focusing on the game-changing “IPv6-mostly” architecture. They break down the essential components you need to get this working, including DHCP Option 108 and the nitty gritty of client support. In this episode,... Read more »

Is AI just a fad or is it fundamentally changing Wi-Fi operations? Keith sits down with Robert Boardman to discuss the reality of AI-augmented Wi-Fi engineering. Robert describes AI as a tool, and explains how it can be useful for automating monotonous tasks and proactive troubleshooting. They also explore the human factor and how experience... Read more »

The industry has pivoted from scripting to automation to orchestration – and now to systems that can reason. Today we explore what AI agents mean for infrastructure with Chris Wade, Co-Founder and CTO of Itential. We also dive into the brownfield reality, the potential for vendor-specific LLMs trained on proprietary knowledge, and advice for the... Read more »

Leaders may shy away from thinking about insider threats because it means assuming the worst about colleagues and friends. But technology executives do need to confront this problem because insider attacks are prevalent—a recent study claims that in 2024, 83% of organizations experienced at least one—and on the rise. Moreover, AI and deepfakes vastly enhance... Read more »

Will Microsoft’s CLAT bring widespread adoption rates for IPv6? Will there be significant advancements in corporate and cloud adoption as well? Will this finally be the year we see the fix for the RFC 6724? Ed Horley, Tom Coffeen, and Nick Buraglio make their predictions for the new year in the first IPv6 Buzz of... Read more »

Kubernetes is a popular container orchestration platform. Today’s IPv6 Buzz episode explores the benefits of using IPv6 in Kubernetes, and how Kubernetes uses IP addresses in both the control plane and data plane.We also address why the adoption rate is estimated to be so low, from default configurations to issues with non-IPv6-aware applications inside containers.... Read more »