Network Automation Nerds

Uzair Khan from RUSH University Medical Center is today’s guest on the Network Automation Nerds podcast. Uzair discusses the complexities of healthcare technology and the critical role of automation in enhancing operational efficiency and patient safety. He provides examples of how Itential’s automation and orchestration products have given his teams the tools they need to ... Read more »

Ivan Pepelnjak joins host Eric Chou to reflect on his extensive career, his decision to reduce his content creation, and offer advice for young engineers. They discuss the evolution of networking technologies, emphasizing the importance of mastering Linux and obtaining relevant certifications. Ivan highlights the significance of creating professional visibility and owning one’s content. The...

GitHub Codespaces aims to simplify spinning up a developer environment in the cloud. Containerlab, which provides virtual lab environments for network engineers, is now integrated with Codespaces to make it easy to set up and share network labs. On today’s Network Automation Nerds show, we delve into this innovative use of GitHub Codespaces and containerlab ... Read more »

This episode was recorded with Greg Ferro, co-founder of Packet Pushers, just days before his retirement in July 2024. Greg and Eric reflect on Greg’s influential career in network engineering and the evolution of the industry. Greg discusses the challenges of maintaining open-source projects amid increasing commercialization and corporate exploitation. He emphasizes the importance of ... Read mor...

On today’s episode we delve into Internet2’s mission to advance research and education through high-speed connectivity. University and research networks may have more complicated designs, requirements, and restrictions than you’d expect. We talk about these challenges, along with innovative network automation solutions. The discussion emphasizes the collaborative, member-driven approac...

On today’s Network Automation Nerds, we get into the infrastructure required to support AI workloads. We discuss key considerations including bandwidth, the substantial power and cooling requirements of AI infrastructure, and GPUs. We also talk about InfiniBand and Ethernet as network fabrics for AI workloads, cabling considerations, and more. This is a sponsored episode. Our ... Read more »

Today we spotlight an open-source project called FakeNOS. Whether you’re a network engineer looking to experiment in a controlled environment, or a DevOps engineer wanting to run a network testbed for your processes, you can use FakeNOS for your projects. My guests are FakeNOS creator Denis Mulyalin and the maintainer of this project, Enric Pitarch. ... Read more »

Today, Lexie Cooper shares her journey from a NOC environment to networking engineering in the aerospace industry. Along the way, the discussion makes stops at the importance of medium skills, and the role of humor and relatability in attracting and educating younger professionals in networking.  Finally, Lexie relates her challenges when working on the New ... Read more »

On today’s episode, host Eric Chou and guest Kyler Middleton discuss the transition from on-prem network engineering to cloud networking; the importance of adapting to new platforms such as AWS, Azure, and Terraform; and the future of cloud versus on-premises solutions. We also discuss Kyler’s background, navigating the journey from a farm upbringing to a ... Read more »

This is the final episode of a series of interviews with Scott Robohn (for now). We discuss AI in networking operations and how it’s still too early to tell exactly how much, if any, value will be created. We also dig into Scott’s Total Network Operations framework, what it consists of and how he wants ... Read more »

When you’re trying to share your cool new network automation with your co-workers, the last thing you want to do is deal with other systems’ different libraries and dependencies gumming it up. That’s where our episode sponsor torero comes into play. As an “automation gateway,” torero dynamically creates an execution environment based on what has ... Read more »

In part two of Scott Robohn’s interview, Scott tells us about his experience starting his own business and co-founding the Network Automation Forum and the AutoCon conference series. He describes the strong desire among many engineers to drive network automation forward, and how AutoCon creates a community to help make that happen. He and Eric ... Read more »

Welcome to a crossover episode with the Day Two Cloud podcast! Eric Chou was there for the birth of the public cloud. Before DevOps or SREs were a thing, before Azure was Azure, Eric was a network engineer for Amazon, helping them build out their retail technology platform. Of course, that platform evolved into the ... Read more »

Scott Robohn is responsible for so much of the current buzz and awareness of network automation. Today, we sit down with the co-founder of Network Automation Forum to learn about his own journey. We chat about his education and the question of if college degrees are necessary. We also talk about his experience at big ... Read more »

Curious about what it takes to write a technical book as a network engineer? You’re in luck. The team behind Nautobot is also the team behind the book “Network Automation with Nautobot: Adopt a network source of truth and a data-driven approach to networking.” Jason, Ken, and John tell us about their writing process, timeline, ... Read more »

Today we chat with the maintainers of Nautobot, the open source network source of truth and network automation platform. Jason Edelman, Ken Celenza, John Anderson explain how their day jobs at professional services company, Network to Code, informs their work on Nautobot. They walk us through Nautobot’s core, out-of-the-box capabilities as well as the extensibility ... Read more »

The expectations for application delivery are higher than ever before, the networks that support those applications are increasingly distributed, and visibility is essential for network operations and troubleshooting. On today’s sponsored episode, Kentik’s Phil Gervasi joins us to discuss how Kentik collects essential performance data to help you monitor and manage all the networks your ... Read m...

This is Part 2 of Kirk Byers’ interview. We discuss the Git course he’s developing and the need to build bridges between networking and testing so we can move automation forward. This of course leads us to geek out about AutoCon and the talks we’re most excited about. Plus, Kirk shares his wisdom about creating ... Read more »

The intersection of Python and network engineering is Kirk Byers’ sweet spot. Today, the creator of the Netmiko library and core maintainer of NAPALM joins the show to tell us about his network automation journey. We also discuss Kirk’s experience on the business side of things, both the ups and downs. This is Part 1 ... Read more »

Welcome back for Part 2 of Eric’s interview with Roman Dodin, co-creator of containerlab. Roman describes containerlab as a “lab as code” tool that quickly and easily creates virtual networking topologies. With increased automation and containerization in network engineering, the tool’s popularity has exploded. We talk about how folks contribute to containerlab’s development and what ... Read more...

What if you could eliminate the burdens of networking without losing your control and visibility of the network? That’s the idea behind Nile. With Nile co-managing the network, you don’t have to spend all your time chasing down tickets, running patches, and dealing with CLI syntax. Instead you get to focus on higher level tasks ... Read more »

Big risk, big reward: That’s the origin story of both containerlab and its maintainer, Roman Dodin. Roman tells Eric the story behind containerlab, a free software platform for building network labs and testing designs, as well as his own story of taking leaps into the unknown. This is the first episode of Network Automation Nerds ... Read more »

Hi, I’m Eric Chou, and welcome to the Network Automation Nerds podcast, the newest addition to the Packet Pushers family. This is your audio destination for network engineers and infrastructure professionals who are on a mission to build stronger, more resilient systems through the art of network automation. Join us as we connect with a ... Read more »