The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods

Today on the podcast, data protection. There’s always been a tension between the need for companies to share data, whether among coworkers, partners, or customers; and the need to protect data, whether it’s for security, privacy, compliance, and so on. That tension existed before AI, but the rise of third-party and external AI tools has ... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with a Red Alert in Oracle’s WebLogic Server Proxy Plugin for Apache or IIS, which has a severity score of 10. In the news, Fortinet warns that attackers have found a new exploit path against previously-patched vulnerabilities, Microsoft 365 services suffered an outage, and ServiceNow inks a deal with ... Read more »

What is the real-world impact of AI on network operations? Drew and Ethan have a chat with Carlos Pignataro, Founder & Principal at Blue Fern Consulting, to cut through the AI hype machine. Carlos offers a thoughtful, balanced take on where the industry is headed, and where it’s missing the mark. Together they discuss Intent-Based ... Read more »

Thinking of setting up an IPv6 lab this year? Our hosts dive into a major update on building and testing modern IPv6 networks, focusing on the game-changing “IPv6-mostly” architecture. They break down the essential components you need to get this working, including DHCP Option 108 and the nitty gritty of client support. In this episode, ... 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 »

Ned and Kyler sit down with industry analyst Jon Collins for a fun and free-ranging discussion that covers everything from the changing landscape of software engineering to the importance of good architecture (physical and digital). They tackle the pros and cons of “Vibe Coding” as well as the “Augmentation Gap”, the idea that AI tools ... Read more »

In this sponsored episode, Eric sits down with Lee Peterson, VP of Product Management for Secure WAN, at Cisco. Together they discuss how Cisco Unified Branch is helping organizations scale, automate, and secure their distributed environments. They also define the Branch Network, discuss the major challenges facing network teams, and walk through Cisco’s vision of ... Read more »

Is AI just a fad or is it fundamentally changing Wi-Fi operations? Keith sits down with Robert Boardman to discuss the reality of AI-augmented Wi-Fi engineering. Robert describes AI as a tool, and explains how it can be useful for automating monotonous tasks and proactive troubleshooting. They also explore the human factor and how experience ... Read more »

The start of a new year is a good time to assess what’s important. We’ve gathered some Packet Protector listeners to talk about their security priorities for 2026 in a roundtable discussion with hosts JJ and Drew. We talk about key risks for 2026, whether those risks have changed since last year, use cases for ... Read more »

Take a Network Break! This week we start with follow-up from a perhaps not-so-red Red Alert, and then cover two very-red Red Alerts. On the news front, Ruckus Wireless gets a new parent company, and sources say Extreme Networks may be interested in bringing Ruckus into its fold. AT&T rolls out an IoT management offering, ... Read more »

Ethernet is everywhere. Today we talk with one of the people responsible for this protocol’s ubiquity. Doug Boom is a veteran of the Ethernet development world. His code has helped landers reach Mars, submarines sail the deep seas, airplanes get to their gates, cars drive around town, and more. Doug walks us through the origins ... Read more »

Are you an AI skeptic or an enthusiast? Ethan and Drew sit down with Igor Tarasenko, Senior Director of Product Software Architecture and Engineering at Equinix, to break down the reality of AI in the network. In this sponsored episode, Tarasenko discusses why APIs are the new CLI, the critical need for observability in AI, ... Read more »

Is it possible for IT professionals to remain technical when moving into roles that expand influence, scale, and reach? Matt Starling, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Ekahau and co-founder of the WiFi Ninjas podcast, joins Alexis and Kevin to share how your career can evolve beyond on-call operations without losing the technical core. His ... Read more »

Eric Chou is joined by Dr. Levi Perigo, Scholar in Residence and Professor of Network Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder. They discuss Levi’s non-traditional career path from being in the network automation industry for 20 years before shifting to academia and co-founding QuivAR. Levi also dives into the success of the CU Boulder ... Read more »

The industry has pivoted from scripting to automation to orchestration – and now to systems that can reason. Today we explore what AI agents mean for infrastructure with Chris Wade, Co-Founder and CTO of Itential. We also dive into the brownfield reality, the potential for vendor-specific LLMs trained on proprietary knowledge, and advice for the ... Read more »

Everything old is new again in this Packet Protector news roundup, from end-of-life D-Link routers facing active exploits (and no patch coming) to a five-year-old Fortinet vulnerability being freshly targeted by threat actors (despite a patch having been available for five years). We also dig into a clever, multi-stage attack against hotel operators that could ... Read more »

Leaders may shy away from thinking about insider threats because it means assuming the worst about colleagues and friends. But technology executives do need to confront this problem because insider attacks are prevalent—a recent study claims that in 2024, 83% of organizations experienced at least one—and on the rise. Moreover, AI and deepfakes vastly enhance ... Read more »

Take a Network Break! The virtual donut factory is back from hiatus, and we’ve got a fresh batch to pass around as we discuss the week’s tech news. We start with an emergency patch for Cisco ISE, then dig into a set of new product announcements from Arista including a new ability to deploy wireless ... Read more »

It’s been over a decade since the first Packet Pushers podcast on EVPN. Now, guest Jeff McAdams can legitimately suggest that we “EVPN all the things.” Hosts Ethan Banks and Drew Conry-Murray dig into Jeff’s stance on EVPN/VXLAN. They look at how VXLAN and EVPN work; talk about use cases in the data center, the ... 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 »

Will Microsoft’s CLAT bring widespread adoption rates for IPv6? Will there be significant advancements in corporate and cloud adoption as well? Will this finally be the year we see the fix for the RFC 6724? Ed Horley, Tom Coffeen, and Nick Buraglio make their predictions for the new year in the first IPv6 Buzz of ... Read more »

Marina Wyss, Senior Applied Scientist at Twitch, joins Kyler and Ned to discuss her unique path from political science to AI Engineering. Wyss clarifies the difference between AI Engineering and Machine Learning Engineering and offers practical advice for aspiring engineers who want to incorporate data science, AI, and machine learning into their work. She digs ... Read more »

Kubernetes is a popular container orchestration platform. Today’s IPv6 Buzz episode explores the benefits of using IPv6 in Kubernetes, and how Kubernetes uses IP addresses in both the control plane and data plane. We also address why the adoption rate is estimated to be so low, from default configurations to issues with non-IPv6-aware applications inside containers. ... 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 »

Ned Bellavance and Kyler Middleton are joined by Rachel Stephens, Research Director at RedMonk, to discuss the state of DevOps and the impact of AI. They explore the distinction between developer productivity and development productivity, underlined by a DORA report finding that while AI dramatically boosts individual developer productivity, it often fails to improve overall ... Read more »