Intentionally poisoning BGP routes in the Default-Free Zone (DFZ) would always be a bad thing, right? Actually, this is a fairly common method to steer traffic flows away from and through specific autonomous systems. How does this work, how common is it, and who does this? Jared Smith joins us on this episode of the Hedge to discuss the technique, and his research into how frequently it is used.

QUIC is a middle-aged protocol at this point—it's several years old, and widely deployed although TCP still dominates the transport layer of the Internet. In this episode of the Hedge, Jana Iyengar joins Alvaro Retana and Russ White to discuss the motivation for developing QUIC, and its ongoing development and deployment.

Although there are varying opinions 5G—is it real? Is it really going to have extremely low latency? Does the disaggregation of software and hardware really matter? Is it really going to provide a lot more bandwidth? Are existing backhaul networks going to be able to handle the additional load? For network engineers in particular, the world of 5G is a foreign country with its own language, expectations, and ways of doing things.

Many networks are designed and operationally drive by the configuration and management of features supporting applications and use cases. For network engineering to catch up to the rest of the operational world, it needs to move rapidly towards data driven management based on a solid understanding of the underlying protocols and systems. Brooks Westbrook joins Tom Amman and Russ White to discuss the data driven lens in this episode of the Hedge.

Communication is one of those soft skills so often cited as a key to success—but what does effective communication entail? Mike Bushong joins Eyvonne Sharp and Russ White on the Hedge to discuss radical candor, and the importance of giving and taking honest feedback to relationships and business.

When the interests of the end user, the operator, and the vendor come into conflict, who should protocol developers favor? According to RFC8890, the needs and desires of the end user should be the correct answer. Mark Nottingham joins Alvaro Retana and Russ White on this episode of the Hedge to discuss why the Internet is for end users.

Decision making, especially in large organizations, fails in many interesting ways. Understanding these failure modes can help us cope with seemingly difficult situations, and learn how to make decisions better. On this episode of the Hedge, Frederico Lucifredi, Ethan Banks, and Russ White discuss Frederico's thoughts on developing a taxonomy of indecision. You can find his presentation on this topic here.

The international pandemic has sent companies scrambling to support lots of new remote workers, which has meant changes in processes, application development, application deployment, connectivity, and even support. Mike Parks joins Eyvonne Sharp and Russ White to discuss these changes on this episode of the Hedge.

Crossing from the domain of test pilots to the domain of network engineering might seem like a large leap indeed—but user interfaces and their tradeoffs are common across physical and virtual spaces. Brian Keys, Eyvonne Sharp, Tom Ammon, and Russ White as we start with user interfaces and move into a wider discussion around attitudes and beliefs in the network engineering world.

Combining, or stitching together, open source projects to build something unique for your network is becoming more common. What does this look like in the real world? What are some of the positive and negative aspects of building things this way? How do open source projects interact with the commercial world? Daniel Teycheney joins Tom Ammon, Jett Tantsura, and Russ White to discuss open source software in networking, particularly around network monitoring and management.