Modulate Demodulate - The ModemCast

In this long overdue last episode of Season 3, we chat with Andree Toonk about his new project, Border0 , while Chris and Jay give Nick as much hell as they can fit into an hour.

In this episode Chris and Jay give Nick a recap of Networking Field Day 32. Always a worth while endeavor, the Netwqorking Field Day events provide a unique view into the networking industry and allow for industry experts to tease apart the nerdy details of some of networkings most innovative technologies. In Networking Field Day 32 we had presentations and discussions with the likes of Broadcom ,...

We shift gears a bit and take a step back from deep tech and attempt to provide some experienced based advice for those working on careers. Suggested by our own own Jay Stewart, we each give a bit of our origin story and attempt to provide some hard learned lessons about it being completely OK - and in fact healthier - to not have the always-labbing grindset, to take chances, and to embrace risk,...

What the heck is this DHCP option 108 that I have been hearing about? How can I use it? Why do they call it "IPv6-mostly"? These are all questions we make a wandering, winding attempt to answer in this last-minute, sketchily planned episode of MODEM. Over the last few months, Nick has been testing and even operationalizing DHCP option 108 in a daily use network. In this podcast, Chris Cu...

"Multihoming IPv6 is a pathway to many things some consider to be ......unnatural." ―Darth Sidious, maybe. In this episode of MODEM, we get super nerdy about the current state of multihoming IPv6 and all of the gory details and exposed limitations. Join Chris Cummings, Nick Buraglio, and John Osmond as we discuss a new IETF draft that describes the current state of multihoming in the IPv...

Ed Horley (of I Pv6 Buzz podcast fame) listened to the last show about point to point addressing and hit me up to say "Hey! You're doing it wrong!", and since there is never a bad opportunity to learn from the masters and improve, John and I said "great, let's do another show! And this time we'll bring along Jay and Chris! Listen in as we wander through a lot of interesting facts about TCAM,...

Ahh, the perennially overlooked and ignored art of point to point addressing. You know, the IPv4 and IPv6 addressing that gets slapped onto a link between a core and distribution router, or the addressing placed on the link between your BGP speaker and the ISP. Those are kinda important, ya know? Do you know the best methods to use, what is common, what isn't? Well, John Osmon and Nick Buraglio ta...

" Quality of Service ". That nebulous term that is very capable of bringing out the frothing-at-the-mouth, highly opinionated engineers that either love it or hate it. As polarizing as it is, the real question is "what in the heck *is* it?!". For a topic that is so, so able to cause a cavernous divide between even the most sane, seasoned, and and stoic engineers, the definition is exceptionally ha...

Join us for a meandering walkabout with Network Engineer Nick Campbell. We walk trough optical power, wave division multiplexing, and SD-WAN in what we've been calling a "Stop and Chat" session. Join us!! 

So, you need a 100G router or switch, but are deeply concerned about:  Cost Power draw Cooling issues Price Capabilities Money Availability CapEX Never fear, for we have news of the front, and that news is encouraging. Once again we have Kevin Myers from IPArchitechs (not anointed an official co-host, for whatever that means), who - even according to Mikrotik is "part of the family - to tell...

Yes, it’s ULA! The IPv6 addressing sensation that’s sweeping the nation! Free at participating Internet standards bodies and ULA generating websites... Get yours today! Warning : Pregnant women, the elderly, and children under 10 should avoidprolonged exposure to ULA. Caution : ULA may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds. ULA contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture,should not...

We’ve been busy! At least that’s our excuse. We recorded this episode with Dave Taht and Seth David Schoen about some new drafts they wrote for the Unicast Use of the Formerly Reserved address blocks such as 240.0.0.0, 127.0.0.0 and a few others, back in February. Needless to say, it was pretty interesting. Full of very polarizing topics (for oh-so-many reasons) this winding and wandering podcast...

Is this a crossover episode? Ivan Pepelnjak of ipSpace.net and the SGW Podcast joins Chris Cummings and Nick Buraglio to discuss his latest project, netsim-tools ! Tune in to learn about how Ivan has gone all-in on using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) prinicipals for building network labs with his latest project netsim-tools. This project lets you not only define your lab topology using a declarativ...

Tune in to MODEM as Kevin Myers and Vince Schuele join Nick Buraglio and Chris Cummings to discuss their thoughts around the inaugural Networking Field Day Service Provider ! Links Mentioned Networking Field Day Service Provider IP ArchiTechs Stub Area 51 The Ramp Room blog by John Osmon CORD

Once again we're behind on publishing! Recorded this episode with Kevin Myers right after the ZeroTier on RouterOS was released into the wild. We've had some drive time with it now, and we all believe one thing: it's worth your time. A lot of other greatness in here, LDPv6, IPv6 chatter, and delightful banter. Enjoy! <h2 id="links-mentioned">Links Mentioned</h2> <ul> <li>&l...

Off for the summer - after a short hiatus we're back! Actually, we recorded this in July (of 2021) but then summer ramped into full swing and editing took a back burner.  With this episode we shift gears, change direction, flip-flop, do a roundabout and talk about less technical topics. We all have ways that we learn, and hindsight is 20/20. In this from-the-heart and retrospective episode, C...

Building large-scale network labs can be tedious and error prone—More importantly, they can be notoriously hard to spin up automatically. Containerlab is a new tool that promises to "redefine the way you run networking labs" and I really think it hits that target. On this episode of the Modulate Demodulate podcast, Nick and Chris C. are joined by Roman Dodin , one of the brains behind Containerlab...

Deep Dive into Thread with Jonathan Hui Welcome back to the Modem podcast where we visit some of the dark and musty corners of the network and shine lights in pars of the network that many people haven’t touched before. For many of us in main stream networking, we’re all about more. More bandwidth, more control. Bigger pipes. Faster switches etc… but there’s whole other spectrum that I’ve started...

BGP is one of the most versatile routing protocols out there, but let's be honest—It kinda sucks when it comes to... Well, a lot of things. Specifically, there are a lot of issues with BGP's security (or lack thereof). BGP comes from a time when The Internet was much smaller and everyone knew everyone. Now that The Internet has exploded in growth, hijacks, both malicious and inadvertent ,...

Buffer Bloat . Most folks in the networking industry have at least heard this term, and may have a vague idea of what it means. It's certain that all of us have experienced it at one time or another - and likely thought it was a different problem. Over the last few years a couple of queuing disciplines have emerged that have allowed the users of the internet to experience fewer and fewer of those...

Tune in to this installment of Modulate Demodulate as Darren O'Connor joins Chris C. , Nick , and Dave to discuss his side project— BGPStuff.net . This tool is a modern BGP looking glass built in Golang that anyone can use to gather a wealth of information on the BGP Routing table. Some of the things you can see are AS_Path, Origin AS, ROA, ASName, RPKI Invalids, DFZ RIB size, and more. In additio...

On this first episode of the MODEM Non-Blocking series, Nick and Chris C. wax ineloquent about the latest networking gossip straight from the DFZ. Recently, the DoD started announcing a lot of IPv4 address space that had been previously unannounced. How much is a lot? We're talking 13 /8s of IPv4. Tune in to hear our un-scripted thoughts on what this might mean for your network, The Internet a...

On this episode of the MODEM Podcast, Nick and Chris C. bring on a special guest, Kevin Myers , to talk about the latest software updates from one of the underdogs of networking— MikroTik . MikroTik RouterOS v7 is the next version of MikroTik's routing software that promises to solve a lot of the longest-standing requests from users. Kevin and his consulting firm IP ArchiTechs have been hands-...

How hard is it to describe the difference between a tunnel and a VPN to a completely non-technical person? Come to find out, it is fairly difficult! Chris Young - one of our esteemed co-hosts - tweeted out a seemingly simple question : “Explain the difference between a tunnel and a VPN to a non/technical audience.”. Proposed answers were given, a variety of interpretations of "non-technical audien...

As the internet grows and changes, it has become increasingly important for organizations of a certain size to dive into external routing. As many that start this path soon find, there is a wealth of information about setting up peering, configuring BGP and the associated policy, and how to connect to an "Internet Provider". But what if your internet provider is not quite enough anymore? What happ...