Packet Pushers - Full Podcast Feed

Packet Protector goes global for today’s security news roundup. Microsoft discontinues a program in which engineers in China supported the US Department of Defense’s cloud infrastructure (with the help of US ‘digital escorts’), Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC fires several employees over allegations of attempted theft of sensitive tech, an Arizona woman gets 8 years in prison... Read more »

Technical conferences are an excellent avenue for building community. Guest Peter Mackenzie talks about his love for conferences and how they’ve helped him in his career. In fact, Conferences helped him so much started one in Europe called Wi-Co. It has grown to include North America so that more wireless practitioners can join in the... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with follow-up on post-quantum support in firewalls and DPDK, then highlight a command injection vulnerability in Ruckus SmartZone software. In tech news, Broadcom rolls out the Jericho4 ASIC to help scale AI across multiple data centers, InfoBlox beefs up DNS protection to spot malicious domains faster, and HPE announces... Read more »

Telecom and ISP lifecycle management can be tedious and opaque. On today’s Tech Bytes, we talk with sponsor Lightyear about its SaaS-based platform that handles telecom and ISP procurement, tracks installations and inventory, manages billing, and more. We talk about the pain points that Lightyear can solve, the components of the platform, and how Lightyear... Read more »

Perhaps the biggest question around adopting network automation is whether you should build a solution using open source tools and a lot of coding glue, or buy a network automation platform from a vendor and construct your automation solution on top of that. Either way has tradeoffs. Network engineer Lee Harper joins Heavy Networking to... Read more »

Today we explore how to build sustainable tech companies with Brian Pontarelli, Founder of FusionAuth. Brian shares his path from early programming on an Apple IIe to creating innovative solutions in the complex world of customer identity and access management (CIAM). Brian argues that single-tenancy and local development capabilities are crucial for developers. He also... Read more »

Optical networks are an essential component of networking, but don’t get much attention. Today we shine a spotlight on the intersection of optical networks and the software that automates them. Our guest is Michal Pecek, consultant and teacher in optical communication, whose work has transformed organizations including Google and Alcatel-Lucent (now Nokia). From pioneering flexible DWDM... Read more »

From SAML to OAuth to FIDO2 to passwordless promises, we unpack what’s working—and what’s broken—in the world of identity and authentication. Today on the Packet Protector podcast, we’re joined by the always thoughtful and occasionally provocative Wolf Goerlich, former Duo advisor, and now a practicing CISO in the public sector. We also talk about authorization... Read more »

Is adding AI to your environment a software purchase? Or is it more like hiring an employee? Heavy Strategy’s John Burke and Johna Johnson debate whether AI should be treated as just another application you buy and use, or be handled like an employee you’re bringing on staff (complete with background and reference checks, training... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Guest opinionator Tom Hollingsworth joins Johna Johnson to opine on the latest tech news. On the vulnerability front, several versions of BentoML are open to a server side request forgery. Looking at tech news, Intel will spin out its networking and edge group as it continues cost-cutting, Palo Alto Networks makes... Read more »

On Heavy Networking today, AI operations for networking. That is, how do we delegate some amount of responsibility for network operations to artificial intelligence? Cisco is our sponsor, and our guests are Omar Sultan, Director for Product Management of Automation and AI; and Javier Antich, Chief Mad Scientist for AI (yes, that’s his title!). We talk... Read more »

What’s the next era of network management and operations? Total Network Operations talks to Mahesh Jethanandani, Chair of NETCONF Working Group and Distinguished Engineer at Arrcus. Mahesh describes a workshop from December of 2024 that sought to investigate the past, present, and future of network management and operations. He talks about the IETF’s role in... Read more »

We’re continuing our IPv6 Basics series discussing on this episode deployment.  We’ll help you sort out why you should deploy IPv6, things to consider before starting a deployment, and what approach you should take such as “inside out” vs. “outside in” and when you should deploy IPv6. Lastly we explain why you should seek out... Read more »

We ask listeners for follow up and you’ve sent it in. On today’s show we respond to listener comments and corrections on tunneling, the link aggregation control protocol, link aggregation in general, and DHCP options. We also talk about the network engineering certification journey. If you’ve got a “Well, actually” or any other follow up,... Read more »

On today’s show, we talk to Armon Dadgar, co-founder and CTO of HashiCorp regarding HashiCorp’s future within IBM. We start with a quick recap of IBM’s acquisition of HashiCorp and then move on to the challenges of bringing a small, young tech company into a huge corporation that makes lots of its revenue on legacy... Read more »

Mobile devices blur the boundaries between personal and work devices and are packed with sensitive information, making them popular targets for malware, spyware, and data collection. On today’s Packet Protector we dig into strategies for managing threats to mobile devices with guest Akili Akridge. Akili started his career pulling burner phones off suspects as a... Read more »

Orb is an intelligent app and platform designed to help consumers understand and improve their internet connectivity. Orb continuously monitors networks to give a complete picture of true internet experience, beyond just peak speed. Today’s guest, Doug Suttles, CEO and co-founder of Orb, explains exactly what Orb does, including speed, responsiveness and reliability testing, plus... Read more »

Take a Network Break! In our Red Alert section we note that memory safety bugs bug Firefox and Thunderbird, and on-prem SharePoint instances are under attack. In tech news, Fortinet adds support for Post Quantum Cryptography in FortiOS, Cato Networks integrates Azure Virtual WANs to its SASE offering, and we weigh the pros and cons... Read more »

Ayden is a global payments processor whose primary business is providing payment services for merchants, retailers, and venues, as well as online payments. On today’s Heavy Networking we talk about a firewall automation project the company has undertaken. With dozens of change requests coming in every day that need to touch network and host firewalls,... Read more »

Auvik is network management software that lets users monitor, manage, and troubleshoot their networks. On today’s sponsored episode we talk with Doug Murray, CEO; and John Harden, Director of Strategy & Technology Evangelism, both from Auvik, about the challenges facing today’s network operators. We look at the rise of the IT generalist, workloads and burnout,... Read more »