Let’s explore four goals of network design: stability, speed, scalability, and security. These goals are based on Ethan’s experience designing, building, and operating networks. Network architects and design experts might have other objectives, and that’s fine, but these four goals are the basis of today’s episode. Ethan and Holly discuss why these four goals are... Read more »

Firefly is a cloud infrastructure automation platform that helps cloud teams, DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, DevSecOps, and other groups manage their entire cloud as code. Firefly helps to manage cloud complexity and produce consistent and efficient cloud platforms with code. To help Firefly better understand their customers and industry trends around Infrastructure as Code (IaC),... Read more »

“There must be a better way!” is guest Bart Dorlandt’s motto, which he applies to network automation, among other things. In today’s episode, Bart shares what he’s learned about network automation, explains why he focuses on process over tools, and reflects on the importance of mentorship. Bart and Eric also discuss why even if listeners... Read more »

Microsegmentation divides a network into boundaries or segments to provide fine-grained access control to resources within those segments. On today’s Packet Protector we talk about network and security reasons for employing microsegmentation, different methods (agents, overlays, network controls, and so on), how microsegmentation fits into a zero trust strategy, and the product landscape. Episode Links:... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with a Red Alert for the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Tool, which has an unpatched (as of recording time) vulnerability that could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code. On the news front, Salesforce ponies up $8 billion for Informatica to improve data governance capabilities, Google researchers revise estimates of... Read more »

If you participate in the public Internet by announcing your own netblocks, you should be familiar with Internet Routing Registries (IRRs) and the Routing Policy Specification Language (RPSL). These are tools that help you be a good network citizen. In a world of BGP hijacks and other problems, these tools matter more than ever. We... Read more »

Total Networks Operations sits down with Justin Ryburn for a wide-ranging discussion on the state of the networking industry. Topics including how to attract new talent to network engineering and network operations; getting literate in DevOps/infrastructure tools such as GitHub, Terraform, and Python; pairing Dev and NetOps to maximize domain expertise; integrating tools and trying... Read more »

We wanted to do an episode on SD-WAN, but realized we needed to set the stage for how wide-area networking developed. That’s why today’s episode is a history lesson of the Wide Area Network (WAN). We talk about how WANs emerged, public and private WANs, how WANs connect to LANs and data centers, the care... Read more »

Cloud networks aren’t like traditional data center networks, so applying a traditional network design to the cloud probably isn’t the best idea. On today’s Day Two Cloud, guest Aidan Finn guides us through significant differences between Microsoft Azure networking and on-prem data center networks. For instance, subnets don’t segment hosts, network security groups do; every... Read more »

Aviatrix is a cloud network security company that helps you secure connectivity to and among public and private clouds. On today’s Packet Protector, sponsored by Aviatrix, we get details on how Aviatrix works, and dive into a new feature called the Secure Network Supervisor Agent. This tool uses AI to help you monitor and troubleshoot... Read more »