Networking Tech with Fexingo: Internet Infrastructure, Routing, and Network Engineering

In this episode of Networking Tech with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna dive into the emerging practice of Network Configuration as Code (NCaC). They explore how treating network configurations like software code — with version control, automated testing, and CI/CD pipelines — can eliminate configuration drift and reduce human error. The hosts break down a real-world example: a 2025 outage at a major clou...

Episode 53 of Networking Tech with Fexingo dives into the shift from monolithic routers to disaggregated, white-box hardware running open-source network operating systems. Lucas and Luna explore how software like SONiC and FRRouting separates control and forwarding planes, enabling operators to mix and match hardware from different vendors. They examine real-world adoption at major hyperscalers, t...

In June 2026, Border Gateway Protocol remains one of the internet's weakest links. Lucas and Luna examine the mechanics of BGP hijacks—how a single misconfigured router can reroute global traffic—using the 2024 X/Twitter hijack incident as a case study. They explore why RPKI adoption has stalled at 45 percent, the role of MANRS in improving routing hygiene, and what network engineers can do today...

The cloud is moving closer to users — and that breaks decades of routing assumptions. In this episode, Lucas and Luna examine how edge computing forces a fundamental rethink of network topology, using a concrete case: a regional retail chain deploying real-time inventory analytics at 50 local stores, routing traffic to local nodes instead of a central data center. They walk through the shift from...

In Episode 50 of Networking Tech with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna dive into MPLS Transport Profile (MPLS-TP), a technology that blends the predictability of circuit-switched transport with the efficiency of MPLS packet switching. They explore why telecom carriers and utilities still demand deterministic network behavior—using a concrete example of how a regional power grid operator uses MPLS-TP to gua...

In this episode of Networking Tech with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore the technology behind Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs) and how they are transforming long-haul fiber networks. They discuss how ROADMs enabled a single fiber pair to carry 400 gigabits per second across 3,000 kilometers without electronic regeneration, using a real-world deployment by a major US carrier ea...

In 2011, Facebook launched the Open Compute Project, an initiative to redesign data center hardware from the ground up. This episode focuses on how OCP transformed networking equipment, specifically the switch design that broke the proprietary hardware model. We look at Wedge, the open-source switch operating system that Facebook built, and how it forced traditional vendors like Cisco and Juniper...

Episode 47 of Networking Tech with Fexingo dives into the overlooked backbone of global synchronization: Network Time Protocol (NTP). Lucas and Luna explore how NTP keeps data centers, financial exchanges, and 5G networks within milliseconds of each other, using a real-world example from the 2025 AWS time-sync incident that caused a 12-minute trading halt on the Nasdaq. They break down the leap-se...

Lucas and Luna explore the unsung hero of long-haul internet infrastructure: the erbium-doped fibre amplifier (EDFA). They explain how this device amplifies light signals without converting them to electricity, enabling transoceanic cables to carry terabytes per second. The episode drills into a 2025 upgrade of the SEA-ME-WE 6 cable system, where next-generation EDFAs increased capacity by 40 perc...

Episode 45 explores how the command-line interface — the decades-old backbone of network engineering — is being systematically replaced by automation and intent-based systems. Lucas and Luna break down a real-world case: a mid-sized financial services firm that moved from manual router configs to an automated CI/CD pipeline using Ansible and a network source-of-truth. They look at what was lost (d...

Episode 44 of Networking Tech with Fexingo: Lucas and Luna dive into network observability — the practice of collecting telemetry, tracing packets, and using real-time data to predict failures before they cause outages. They break down how tools like eBPF, OpenTelemetry, and streaming telemetry are changing network operations, using a concrete example: how a major streaming service used observabil...

Episode 43 of Networking Tech with Fexingo explores Multiprotocol BGP (MPBGP), the extension that enables a single BGP session to carry IPv4, IPv6, VPN labels, and even MAC addresses. Lucas and Luna break down how MPBGP works under the hood, why it's essential for modern data center fabrics like EVPN-VXLAN, and a real-world example from the 2024 Lumen network outage where MPBGP misconfiguration ca...

Episode 42 of Networking Tech with Fexingo dives into Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN), the IEEE standard that guarantees microsecond-level latency for industrial and automotive applications. Lucas explains how TSN works with gating schedules and time-aware shaping, using a real-world example from a German automotive assembly line that cut cycle times by 15%. Luna questions whether TSN can scale be...

Episode 41 of Networking Tech with Fexingo explores why traditional network architectures buckle under AI training and inference workloads. Lucas and Luna break down the bottleneck: GPU clusters communicating via remote direct memory access (RDMA) over Converged Ethernet, and how a single packet loss can collapse training throughput by 50%. They examine the rise of co-designed networks for hypersc...

Episode 40 of Networking Tech with Fexingo dives into EVPN-VXLAN, the technology modernizing data center interconnection. Lucas and Luna break down a real-world case: a major bank consolidating two legacy data centers into a single logical fabric. They explore how EVPN replaces spanning tree protocol for any-to-any connectivity, why VXLAN solves VLAN scalability limits for multi-tenant environment...

Episode 39 dives into the mechanics of link-state routing protocols like OSPF and IS-IS when a fiber cut happens. Using the real-world example of a multi-vendor outage in Frankfurt in late 2025, Lucas and Luna walk through the convergence sequence: failure detection, LSA flooding, SPF recalculation, and FIB update. They explain why convergence times vary from milliseconds to seconds depending on t...

Episode 38 of Networking Tech with Fexingo explores Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP), the automation technology that lets network devices configure themselves without manual intervention. Lucas and Luna break down how ZTP works using DHCP and bootstrap servers, why it's essential for large-scale data center deployments, and how it reduces human error. They discuss real-world adoption by cloud provide...

Episode 37 of Networking Tech with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna explore network configuration drift—the silent accumulation of undocumented changes that leads to unexpected outages. They walk through a real 2025 incident where a single uncommitted 'no shut' command on a core router caused a 47-minute outage for a major European bank. They explain what drift is, how it happens (manual patches, emergency...

Ethernet is the quiet backbone of the internet, but it's not standing still. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how Ethernet is evolving beyond the data center to meet the demands of 5G, industrial IoT, and autonomous systems. They focus on the IEEE 802.3cz standard for 800 Gigabit Ethernet, the rise of Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) for deterministic latency, and how companies like Cisco an...

Episode 35 of Networking Tech with Fexingo dives into VXLAN (Virtual Extensible LAN) — the overlay protocol that lets network engineers stretch Layer 2 networks across distant data centers. Lucas and Luna unpack how VXLAN encapsulates Ethernet frames in UDP packets, enabling virtual machine mobility and multi-tenant isolation without rewriting physical infrastructure. They walk through a real scen...

Lucas and Luna dive into segment routing, a modern traffic engineering approach that simplifies how networks steer packets. They explain how segment routing labels replace complex per-flow state, compare it to MPLS, and walk through a real-world case where a large cloud provider cut bandwidth costs by 30 percent. The episode covers the role of the segment routing header in IPv6, how it improves ne...

Episode 33 of Networking Tech with Fexingo dives into Zettastructure, a radical network architecture that treats the entire data center fabric as a single logical switch. Lucas and Luna unpack how this approach, pioneered by startups like DriveNets and Arrcus, disaggregates hardware from software and uses centralized control planes to eliminate spine-leaf complexity. They walk through a real examp...

In this episode of Networking Tech with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore network slicing—a technology that carves virtual lanes out of a single physical network, each with guaranteed bandwidth and latency. They trace its roots to 5G mobile networks, where operators slice spectrum for autonomous vehicles versus streaming video. Then they shift to the enterprise: how companies are now slicing their o...

Most engineers obsess over compute costs, but egress bandwidth charges can quietly eat a startup's margins. This episode dissects the case of a fictional cloud-native company that built a data-heavy video-processing product on AWS. Within six months, egress fees surpassed their EC2 bill by a factor of two. Lucas and Luna trace the math: why AWS charges $0.09 per gigabyte for data leaving its netwo...

Lucas and Luna dive into SD-WAN's real-world impact on enterprise networking, using a specific case: a multinational retailer that slashed WAN costs by 40% while improving application performance. They break down how SD-WAN decouples routing from hardware, the role of centralized controllers, and why traditional MPLS isn't dead yet. The episode also touches on security integration and common pitfa...