Network security has evolved from stateful perimeter firewalls with maybe some IDS/IPS to a complex stack delivered as numerous unique tools, which often don’t talk to one another and may need to be operated by specialists. In this environment it’s hard to unify a security policy, troubleshoot problems, manage and operate tools, and respond effectively... Read more »

On today’s Heavy Networking, we’ll discuss building a Slackbot wired to an AI and trained on your own organization’s knowledge. The potential use cases for network operations are fascinating, and today’s guest, Kyler Middleton is here to explain the finer details on how to do it and point us to free resources created so that... Read more »

IT and infosec professionals are used to operating and protecting mission-critical infrastructure; servers, databases, load balancers, and so on. But what about valves that control the flow of gas or oil in a refinery? Temperature and vibration sensors that monitor industrial manufacturing processes? If you’re thinking “That’s not my problem” think again. There’s a whole... Read more »

The Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) is an industry body that aims to optimize Ethernet for AI and HPC use cases. On today’s Heavy Networking we get an overview of the UEC and an update on its efforts. We’re joined by J Metz and Rip Sohan, both heavily involved with the UEC. We discuss the consortium’s... Read more »

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) is all about understanding a user’s application experience, and pinpointing problems if the experience is bad. Under the DEM umbrella, you’ll find Internet Performance Monitoring, or IPM. That’s our topic in today’s episode with sponsor Catchpoint. With more and more applications hosted in the cloud and more employees working remotely, organizations... Read more »

The CCIE remains the gold standard for networking certifications. But these days there are lots of other avenues for developing your skills and advancing your networking career, including network automation, cloud networking, and yes, even AI. So is the CCIE still worth it? We chew on this topic with Eman Conde. Eman has been known... Read more »

In our conversation today with CTO Cameron Daniel of Megaport, we discuss their global WAN architecture, PoPs, use cases, the Megaport Cloud Router, and more. Megaport is our sponsor today. It’s accurate to describe Megaport as providing Network-as-a-Service. Megaport’s automated connectivity solutions enable rapid provisioning of circuits, contrasting sharply with traditional telcos. The discussion also... Read more »

Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) is a framework that developers use to help them manage and integrate frequent code changes. As network automation evolves, should network engineers adopt CI/CD? Guest Tony Bourke joins us to talk about CI/CD pipelines: what they are, how they’re used, and how they can support network automation efforts. We... Read more »

Connecting your branch to your wide area network used to be simple enough. Call your carrier, get a circuit ordered, wait a long time, then turn it up. A little routing, and there you were. Cloud blew that model apart. Now when we connect branches to our corporate networks, we have to consider not only... Read more »

Unless you’re building out AI infrastructure at a hyperscaler, you probably don’t have unlimited dollars. On today’s Heavy Networking we talk with guest Frank Seesink about how to build and operate networks effectively when money’s tight. We look at free and open source tools, talk about the trade-offs that come with free software, and how... Read more »