Today, Ethan and Holly provide an overview of firewalls. While cybersecurity is a separate discipline from network engineering, much of what happens in cybersecurity is interesting at the packet level, so there’s a good deal of overlap. It’s likely that as a network engineer, you’ll be managing, or at least dealing with, firewalls in your... Read more »

Quality of Service (QoS) is a huge topic with a punishingly large group of acronyms. Join Ethan and Holly as they help you build a mental framework of what QoS is and what it solves. Not only do they break down essential acronyms, they also discuss QoS fundamentals, define the major groups of QoS tools,... Read more »

Go beyond the basics to understand the mechanics that keep your default gateway from becoming a single point of failure. Ethan and Holly demystify Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP), which helps provide network redundancy. They break down everything from the VRRP election protocol to the protocol’s unique communication methods. They also look back at previous... Read more »

Ethan and Holly discuss the major differences between In-band and Out-of-band (OOB) management and the pros and cons of both. They explore how to implement a proper OOB network and critical use cases where OOB is required. They also explain the differences and roles of the data plane, the control plane, and the management plane.... Read more »

If you’re curious as to what Ethan and Holly have in store for 2026, they give you a sneak peak on today’s episode. Hint: Some of these topics might include letters like B, G, P, Q, o, S, A and I.  They also take time in this episode to answer listener questions, ranging from how... Read more »

In Part 1 of Redundancy vs. High Availability, we said that sometimes high availability and redundancy are considered to be the same thing, but we disagree. Holly and Ethan do agree that high availability can be considered a network design goal, and that redundancy is just one technique that can be used to help make... Read more »

In today’s chat, Holly and Ethan consider a question from listener Douglas who asks, “How do you approach designing a network for high availability and redundancy?” They start by defining differences between redundancy and high availability, and talk about Holly’s experience with her own customers. Then they share examples of how to achieve redundancy in... Read more »

MACsec is a protocol for encrypting Ethernet frames on a local (though not always local) network. Ethan Banks and Holly Metlitzky have an ELI5 (explain like I’m 5) discussion as to what exactly is MACsec and how it differs from IPsec. They talk about when and whether you need to implement MACsec with all the... 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 »

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 »