Packet Pushers

Network Break

Network Break keeps you informed with fast, focused analysis of IT news, products, tech trends, and business outcomes. Blending sharp commentary with a touch of humor, hosts Greg Ferro and Drew Conry-Murray sift through the weekly landslide of press announcements, product launches, financial reports, and marketing decks to find the stories worth talking about. You come away with the information and context to make smart decisions in your organization and career … all in the span of a (longish) coffee break.

Author

Packet Pushers

Category

Technology

Podcast website

packetpushers.net

Latest episode

Jun 29, 2026

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Episodes

NB531: Cisco Spotlights AI, Unified Management at CLUS; Ultra Ethernet 1.0 Unveiled 16.06.2025

Take a Network Break! Our Red Alert for the week is a remote code execution vulnerability in open-source XDR platform Wazuh. In tech news, we dig into several announcements from Cisco Live US including: unified management of Meraki and Catalyst gear, new switches, an AI Assistant for the Meraki dashboard, a Deep Network Model LLM, ... Read more »

NB530: Broadcom Hits 102.4 Tbps With Tomahawk 6; Wireshark Debuts Certificate Program 09.06.2025

Take a Network Break! We start with two critical vulnerabilities: one affecting cloud versions of Cisco ISE, and the other for HPE StoreOnce. In the news, Broadcom announces the Tomahawk 6 ASIC with 102.4Tbits of bandwidth, SentinelOne suffers a self-imposed network outage, and the Wireshark Foundation announces its first-ever professional certification for Wireshark. Cisco rebrands ... Read more...

NB529: HPE Debuts 8Tbps Switch with Onboard DPUs; NVIDIA Revenues Run Wild 02.06.2025

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 »

NB528: IP Fabric Adds Firewall Rule Simulation; Extreme Networks Debuts Agentic AI in Platform ONE 27.05.2025

Take a Network Break! We begin with a Red Alert for critical vulnerabilities Kubernetes Gardener. Up next, a threat actor has been squatting on unused CNAME records to distribute malware and spam, and IP Fabric rolls out a new firewall rule simulation capability to let administrators test the effect of firewall rules on traffic patterns. ... Read more »

NB527: AWS Releases AI Agent for VMware Migration; Cisco Bullish On Customer AI Spending 19.05.2025

Take a Network Break! Guest co-host Tom Hollingsworth steps in for Johna Johnson. We start with Google patching a significant Chrome vulnerability and de-elevating Chrome running with admin rights when it launches on Windows. On the news front, we discuss a report, unconfirmed as of recording time, that Arista is acquiring VeloCloud, then discuss Broadcom ... Read more »

NB526: Cisco Unveils Quantum Networking Prototype; Arista Earns Record Revenues 12.05.2025

Take a Network Break! We start with follow-up from a listener on the best way to listen to our podcast that helps the most. The answer? Any listen on any platform helps. Even better is to tell a friend! We discuss two critical security issues. First, CISA adds active exploits against known SonicWall vulnerabilities to ... Read more »

NB525: Cisco, IBM Recruit AI for Threat Response; HPE Air-Gaps Private Clouds 05.05.2025

Take a Network Break! This week we catch up on the Airborne vulnerabilities affecting Apple’s AirPlay protocol and SDK, and get an update on active exploits against an SAP NetWeaver vulnerability–a patch is available, so get fixing if you haven’t already. Palo Alto Networks launches the AIRS platform to address AI threats in the enterprise, ... Read more »

NB524: Forward Networks Adds Endpoint Discovery; Intel Forecasts Q2 Layoffs 28.04.2025

Take a Network Break! We start with a Red Alert for SAP NetWeaver’s Visual Composer Metadata Uploader, and then dive into a new endpoint discovery feature from Forward Networks, and Ericsson adding clientless ZTNA to its SASE offering. Aviatrix adds a Secure NAT Gateway for Microsoft Azure as a way to help Azure customers navigate ... Read more »

NB523: CVE’s Reprieve, Google WAN For Sale, NVIDIA Pledges More US-Made Chips 21.04.2025

Take a Network Break! We start with a red alert for the CVE program, which nearly lost government funding before CISA stepped in, and then raise an alert for a Dpanel vulnerability. Google makes its Cloud WAN available to enterprises and governments that want connectivity options, a US District Court rules Google’s ad business a ... Read more »

NB522: Git Turns 20, An iPhone Airlift, Cybersec Silence Speaks Volumes 14.04.2025

Take a Network Break! Guest co-host Ned Bellavance steps in for Johna this week. We start with a Fortinet vulnerability, and then opine on a memo from Shopify’s CEO on the company requiring and measuring AI use by employees. Git celebrates 20 years, DARPA names 15 companies to participate in a Quantum Benchmarking Initiative to ... Read more »

NB521: Optics Advances in the Data Center; Google Extends Gmail’s End-to-End Encryption 07.04.2025

Take a Network Break! We check in on a serious Firefox vulnerability, explore NIST’s latest post-quantum encryption algorithm, and discuss a broken auto-update functionality in VMware Workstation. NetBox adds config drift detection to its network automation software, the startup Lightmatter tackles co-packaged optics, and Corning launches Glassworks AI in a bid to replace copper cabling ......

NB520: When Good LLMs Do Bad Things, Dell’s Workforce Downsizes and Quantum Key Distribution From Space 31.03.2025

Grab a virtual doughnut to blaze through this week’s IT news with Johna Johnson and John Burke as Drew Conry-Murray is enjoying his glazed, filled and sprinkled vacation donuts.  Today, we’re going to talk about getting good LLMs to do bad things, Dell’s workforce downsizing, Cloudflare’s recent outage, some developments in space networking, and more. ... Read more »

NB519: Google Bids $32 Billion for Cloud Security Startup; NVIDIA Makes Nice With Quantum Computing 24.03.2025

Take a Network Break! This week we cover Google’s $32 billion acquisition of CNAPP provider Wiz, Cloudflare offerings for AI security and support for post-quantum encryption, and NVIDIA’s pledge to open a quantum research center in Boston. NVIDIA has also announced new switch platforms with co-packaged optics for greater efficiency, Cisco shares details on its ... Read more »

NB518: Clock Starts For New Intel CEO; Arista Load Balancing Targets AI Infrastructure 17.03.2025

Take a Network Break! We start with warnings about an Apple Webkit zero day and ransonware exploits against known Fortinet vulnerabilites, and discuss attribution issues with the X DDoS attack. Intel names Lip-Bu Tan as Chief Resurrection Officer, but how long does he have before investors get antsy? HPE plans to lay off thousands of ... Read more »

NB517: TSMC Pledges $165 Billion for US Chip Manufacturing; Will the CHIPS Act Get Axed? 10.03.2025

Take a Network Break! This week we’re joined by guest analyst Tom Hollingsworth of The Futurum Group. We start with red alerts from Broadcom on multiple vulnerabilities and an emergency patch from Cisco for its Webex platform. In tech news we discuss SolarWinds’ acquisition of Squadcast and how it fits into the SolarWinds portfolio, Aviatrix’s ... Read more »

NB516: Cisco, Nvidia ASIC Deal Chases Enterprise AI; Juniper Welcomes Third-Party LLMs 03.03.2025

Take a Network Break! This week we start with a couple of follow-ups and a Red Alert, and then jump into tech news. Cisco and Nvidia team up to put Cisco ASICs and the Nexus NOS into Nvidia Ethernet switches, the market reads tea leaves as Microsoft walks away from data center capacity, and Juniper ... Read more »

NB515: Quantum Computing’s Future Looking More Certain; Arista Posts Record 2024 Revenues 24.02.2025

Lots of good stuff in this week’s Network Break. Microsoft announces an 8-qubit quantum chip and declares that practical quantum computing is years, not decades, away. D-Wave says its quantum computers are now commercially available for research facilities, academic institutions, and governments. Apple rolls its own 5G modem into its iPhone 16e. Meta announces its ... Read more »

NB514: Cisco, Juniper Announce New Switches; SolarWinds Goes Private in $4.4 Billion Buyout 18.02.2025

Take a Network Break! We start with some Red Alert vulnerabilities to get your blood pumping, and then dive into networking news. Cisco announces new data center switches with AMD Pensando DPUs that let you deploy security and other services directly on to the switch. Cisco ThousandEyes is previewing Traffic Insights, which correlates flow records ... Read more »

NB513: UK Demands Apple Backdoor; AI Spending: Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop 10.02.2025

Take a Network Break! We start with some red alerts for Cisco ISE, Zyxel, Microsoft, and a Web manager suite called WeGIA. US senators and security experts sound the alarm about DOGE employees introducing security and stability risks in sensitive US government systems, security researchers demonstrate the effectiveness of supply chain attacks that start with ... Read more »

NB512: US Objects to HPE-Juniper Wedding; Cheeky DeepSeek Freaks VCs 03.02.2025

Take a Network Break! The US Justice Department blocks the HPE-Juniper merger with a surprise lawsuit, DeepSeek shakes up the AI world, and Broadcom rolls out quantum-safe Fibre Channel controllers. Sweden seizes a vessel suspected of tampering with a subsea cable, a code update could make Linux significantly more power-efficient, and the WLAN market gets ... Read more »

NB511: Cisco Sells Security Blanket for AI Nightmares; Stratoshark Captures System Calls 28.01.2025

Take a Network Break! We start with critical vulnerabilities affecting the Android OS, Cisco Meeting Management, and SonicWall, and then discuss a report that tens of thousands of Fortinet security appliances still haven’t been patched despite active exploits. Palo Alto Networks releases an open API to make it easier for developers to access Quantum Random ... Read more »

NB510: CISA Says US Tech Inherently Insecure; AI Now Included in Google Workspace 20.01.2025

Take a Network Break! Guest co-host John Burke joins Drew Conry-Murray for this week’s analysis of tech news. They discuss a string of serious vulnerabilities in Wavlink Wi-Fi routers, Fortinet taking a one-two security punch, and CISA director Jen Easterly calling out US hardware and software companies for being “inherently insecure.” Microsoft and Google put ... Read more &#187...

NB509: FCC to Raise Funds for Rip-and-Replace of Chinese Telco Gear; Billionaire Space Race Takes Off 13.01.2025

Take a Network Break! We start with serious CVEs for Perl and Ivanti. On the news front, the FCC wants to license spectrum to raise money to help US telcos rip out Chinese network equipment–even though there’s no evidence Chinese equipment led to telco intrusions by Chinese attackers. Verizon boasts of 5.5Gbps download speeds on ... Read more »

NB508: Google Serves Up Custom AI and Quantum Chips; Nokia Puts Muscle Behind SONiC 16.12.2024

Take a Network Break! This is our final show for 2024. We start with critical vulnerabilities in Ivanti and OpenWrt, and then discuss what effect a proposed bill from US Senator Ron Wyden would have on telecom security (short answer: more paperwork but unlikely to improve protection). Extreme Networks announces a new AI platform that ... Read more »

NB507: Arista Announces Stackable Switches; FBI Recommends Encrypted Messaging 09.12.2024

Take a Network Break! This week we warn of significant vulnerabilities in WhatsUp Gold and Cisco NX-OS. We also discuss US federal reaction to the penetration of US telco networks by Chinese state actors. These reactions include network and visibility hardening guidelines from CISA, the FBI (reluctantly) recommending the use of encrypted messaging apps, and ... Read more »

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