Heavy Networking
Episodes
HN825: Faster Than Dijkstra? Exploring a New Shortest-Path Algorithm with Bruce Davie
01 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Dijkstra’s algorithm is the foundation of shortest path calculations for link state routing protocols. But researchers have developed a new algorith...
HN824: That’s Not a Job for an LLM: The Right Way to Apply AI to Network Operations (Sponsored)
24 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s sponsored Heavy Networking, we get off the AI hype train to talk about how different artificial intelligence techniques usefully impact n...
HN823: Defining A Modern Network Service
17 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s episode Ethan is joined by Mark Prosser, a self-described Network Operator Advocate and Network Automation Dreamer, to embark on a though...
HN822: Now I Understand. You Mean an AI-Safe Zero-Trust Network Automation Approach (Sponsored)
10 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s sponsored episode we talk with David Gee, CEO at Curvium, a systems integrator and VAR. David holds thoughtful opinions about network...
HN821: Boring Network Design Is Good
03 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Ethan Banks sits down with Ryan Hamel at the 96th North American Network Operators’ Group (NANOG96). Ryan, a network automation developer for the Za...
HN820: Cyber Week 2026 Wrap Up with Palo Alto Networks: Agents, Prisma AIRS and NGTS (Sponsored)
27 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Palo Alto Networks released a slew of product news at the 2026 RSA conference around AI security, SASE, and a new certificate lifecycle management off...
HN819: Recipes for Automation – A Look Inside Eric Chou’s AI Networking Cookbook
20 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Chou, author of the AI Networking Cookbook and host of Network Automation Nerds, joins Ethan and Drew to discuss adding artificial intelligence t...
HN818: Introducing LIM: A Large Infrastructure Model for Multi-Cloud Terraform Migration (Sponsored)
13 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
One of the early promises of public cloud was that, in theory, you could move workloads from Cloud Provider A to Cloud Provider B for any number of re...
HN817: Is There a Better Way to Do Software Defined Networking?
06 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a centralized architecture in which a controller, or a hierarchy of controllers, runs software that computes netw...
HN816: Inside the Case: A Hardware Deep Dive with Meter (Sponsored)
27 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Our topic today is the designing and building of high-performance networking hardware. If you assume the hardware details don’t matter, you’re mis...
HN815: All About PCE
20 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Traditional routing protocols like OSPF simply choose the “shortest” path. If the shortest path is full of traffic and there are alternate paths c...
HN814: Automating Your Network with Cisco Crosswork Workflow Manager (Sponsored)
13 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Our topic today is building and running network workflows. If your network workflows live in a spreadsheet, a SharePoint document, or in your head, yo...
HN813: What Should Networkers Know About Software Development (and Vice Versa)?
06 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What should network engineers know about software development? What should software developers know about networking? Ethan and Drew sit down with Chr...
HN812: Nokia EDA: AI Ops You Can Trust (Sponsored)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
AI is everywhere in networking right now, but most of it feels like hype. In this sponsored episode, we go deeper than buzzwords with Steven Butler fr...
HN811: What AI Startups Get Wrong
23 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 Cons...
HN810: AI in Network Operations: Pragmatism Over Hype (Sponsored)
16 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Are you an AI skeptic or an enthusiast? Ethan and Drew sit down with Igor Tarasenko, Senior Director of Product Software Architecture and Engineering ...
HN809: EVPN All the Things!
09 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 thi...
HN808: Is IT a Young Person’s Game?
12 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Is the ideal IT employee just leaving college or a veteran with years of experience? Russ White joins Ethan Banks and Drew Conry-Murray to discuss the...
HN807: A ‘CLI Lifer’ No More
08 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Andy Lapteff once considered himself a ‘CLI lifer.’ As a network engineer he wasn’t interested in Python. He didn’t want to le...
HN806: Let’s Get NUTS!
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Unit testing is a software development practice for checking that an individual component of code works before integrating that unit with other compon...
HN805: The Past, Present, and Future of NANOG
14 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
NANOG, or the North American Network Operation Group, is an organization committed to the continuing advancement of an open, secure, and robust Intern...
HN804: How Prisma SASE Builds on Public Clouds for Scale, Resiliency (Sponsored)
07 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do you architect a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) to provide critical security services to millions of endpoints distributed across the planet?...
HN803: How to Start a Networking Meetup
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s episode, we take a break from one’s and zero’s for a discussion about starting a networking meetup. Our guest is Steinn “Steinz...
HN802: Unifying Networking and Security with Fortinet SASE: Architecture, Reality, and Lessons Learned (Sponsored)
24 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The architecture and tech stack of a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution will influence how the service performs, the robustness of its securit...
HN801: Will a Natural Language Interface (NLI) Replace Your CLI?
17 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Could an LLM or some kind of an AI-driven language model, such as a natural language interface, someday replace our beloved CLI? That is, instead of n...
HN800: Root Cause Analysis for the Entire Stack (Sponsored)
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s show is one of those “We’re living in the future” episodes, where we talk about using AI to perform root cause analysis of a perfo...
HN799: Multi-Homing IPv6 to Your Home Lab
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve got an Autonomous System Number (ASN) and an IPv6 block, you too can multi-home IPv6 to your home lab! Sounds easy, right? Well, maybe...
HN798: Fortinet Offers a SOC Every Org Can Grow Into (Sponsored)
26 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s Heavy Networking: the Security Operations Center, or SOC. When I think of a SOC, I picture a miniature version of NASA’s mission contro...
HN797: What To Do When The Business Asks for “AI”
19 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When someone from the executive suite starts an AI initiative, what does that mean to you, the network engineer? The executive suite probably doesn...
HN796: The Why and How of Making Your Infrastructure Quantum-Safe (Sponsored)
12 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Your production IT operations are almost certainly using cryptography libraries that are not quantum-safe, and the time to begin planning a cryptograp...
HN795: Adventures In Latency
05 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Monitoring and troubleshooting latency can be tricky. If it’s in the network, was it the IP stack? A NIC? A switch buffer? A middlebox somewhere...
HN794: How the Bundle Protocol Enables Interplanetary Networking
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How might we get network traffic from Earth to a lunar base? Or Mars? Or to spaceships carrying astronauts or probes exploring space? And how do we ge...
HN793: A Deep Dive Into High-Performance Switch Memory
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is all about high-performance memory in switches. We dig into the differences among TCAM, SRAM, DRAM, and HBM, and all the compl...
HN792: Understanding Agentic AI for Network Operations (Sponsored)
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
LLMs and AI-powered chatbots are becoming a regular feature of network operations tools and vendor product portfolios. Now the next iteration of AI in...
HN791: Should You Build or Buy Your Automation Platform?
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps the biggest question around adopting network automation is whether you should build a solution using open source tools and a lot of coding glu...
HN790: From Rule-Based to Goal-Based: Rethinking Autonomous AI Operations (Sponsored)
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On Heavy Networking today, AI operations for networking. That is, how do we delegate some amount of responsibility for network operations to artificia...
HN789: How a Global Payments Processor Automates Firewall Changes at Scale
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Adyen is a global payments processor whose primary business is providing payment services for merchants, retailers, and venues, as well as online paym...
HN788: Behind Megaport’s Network Automation Platform (Sponsored)
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We have a network automation discussion for you today from sponsor Megaport. At the AutoCon3 conference earlier this year, Luke Gollan presented on a ...
HN787: Are We In a Post-SNMP Era?
27 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
SNMP is still widely used in today’s networks. But modern telemetry and network observability are bringing changes to network monitoring. Today&...
HN786: From Intent-Based to Autonomous Ops With Cisco Crosswork and Provider Connectivity Assurance (Sponsored)
20 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Service provider networks face a couple of difficult challenges: how to map service level agreements to actual network health and performance, and how...
HN785: How To Take Your First Steps Into Network Automation
13 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There’s an old saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. On today’s show, we talk about taking your first step int...
HN784: Accelerate Your Network Automation With Gluware Labs and New Ansible Collection (Sponsored)
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Network automation is today’s topic with sponsor Gluware. Gluware provides a network automation platform that targets both network engineers and...
HN783: BGP Routing Policy for Enterprise Networkers: Unpacking IRR and RPSL
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you participate in the public Internet by announcing your own netblocks, you should be familiar with Internet Routing Registries (IRRs) and the Rou...
HN782: Netris Meets Your Network Automation Challenges in AI Data Centers (Sponsored)
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Netris is tackling the issue of automating multi-tenancy in an AI data center. Netris has your answer to this challenge, and it’s a solution certifi...
HN781: CCIE Service Provider Free Workbook & Track Update
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
While studying for the CCIE Service Provider certification, Andrew Ohanian assembled a workbook to help him prepare. It’s packed with lab exerci...
HN780: The Whys and Hows of Automated Network Testing
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s Heavy Networking we talk with Dan Wade about testing the network, inspired by Dan’s talk at AutoCon 2: “Step 0: Test the ...
HN779: Do We Really Need the Modern Networking Stack?
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s Heavy Networking, a roundtable panel considers whether a modern network needs to be built around underlays and overlays. This isn’t jus...
HN778: Understanding Model Context Protocol (MCP) with Selector (Sponsored)
25 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a very new protocol that provides a standard way to link AI models to a variety of data sources and tools. As the indu...
HN777: Overlay All the Things?
18 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s Heavy Networking is all about overlay technologies, their history, development, and current state, both from engineer and vendor perspec...
HN776: Security Platforms: Balancing Efficacy, Ops, and Emerging Threats (Sponsored)
11 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Network security has evolved from stateful perimeter firewalls with maybe some IDS/IPS to a complex stack delivered as numerous unique tools, which of...
HN775: How To Train Your Very Own AI-Enabled Slackbot
04 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s Heavy Networking, we’ll discuss building a Slackbot wired to an AI and trained on your own organization’s knowledge. The potential us...
HN774: Who Put These OT Risks In My IT Ops? Fortinet Has Answers (Sponsored)
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
IT and infosec professionals are used to operating and protecting mission-critical infrastructure; servers, databases, load balancers, and so on. But ...
HN773: Optimizing Ethernet for AI – An Update On the Ultra Ethernet Consortium
21 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) is an industry body that aims to optimize Ethernet for AI and HPC use cases. On today’s Heavy Networking we ...
HN772: Measuring Users’ Digital Experience with Catchpoint Internet Performance Monitoring (Sponsored)
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) is all about understanding a user’s application experience, and pinpointing problems if the experience is bad. U...
HN771: Is The CCIE Still Worth It In 2025?
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The CCIE remains the gold standard for networking certifications. But these days there are lots of other avenues for developing your skills and advanc...
HN770: Deploying A Global Network in Minutes With Megaport (Sponsored)
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In our conversation today with CTO Cameron Daniel of Megaport, we discuss their global WAN architecture, PoPs, use cases, the Megaport Cloud Router, a...
HN769: CI/CD Pipelines and Network Automation
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) is a framework that developers use to help them manage and integrate frequent code changes. As ...
HN768: Ctrl+Alt+Delivered App Routing Reinvented with Palo Alto Networks SD-WAN (Sponsored)
14 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Connecting your branch to your wide area network used to be simple enough. Call your carrier, get a circuit ordered, wait a long time, then turn it up...
HN767: Effective Networking on the Cheap
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Unless you’re building out AI infrastructure at a hyperscaler, you probably don’t have unlimited dollars. On today’s Heavy Networkin...
HN 766: Ensuring QoE for Agentic AI With Broadcom VeloRAIN (Sponsored)
31 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s show, we’re discussing the complexities of network design for AI computing at the edge. We’re not talking about AIOps, although that ...
HN765: Telecom In the Bahamas: Lessons In Resiliency
24 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many of us have had network design discussions relating to natural disasters. What if a fire comes through? Or a flood? For most of us, those discussi...
HN764: Should You Pursue a Technical Leadership Role?
17 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Do you think you have what it takes to be a manager? Should you go for it? Laura Santamaria, host of the Technically Leadership podcast, joins Ethan B...
HN763: You Too Can Say ‘Yes’ to Packet Analysis
10 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Packet capture and packet analysis is incredibly useful for problem-solving and troubleshooting. Analyzing packets is also a difficult skill to master...
HN762: A Network Automation Roadmap
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Once you get past a handful of Python scripts, network automation can be…daunting. If you want to make network automation process-driven, repeat...
HN761: Who Are You Building Automation For? An AutoCon2 Roundtable
13 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s Heavy Networking comes to you from the AutoCon2 tech event being held in Westminster, Colorado. This episode was recorded in conference room...
HN760: Mitigate IoT/OT Vulnerabilities with Guided Virtual Patching (Sponsored)
06 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today on Heavy Networking, sponsored by Palo Alto Networks, we explore how virtual patching can be used to protect IoT and OT devices. Virtual patchin...
HN 759: Deploying the BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP) at ISP Scale
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The BGP Monitoring Protocol, or BMP, is an IETF standard. With BMP you can send BGP prefixes and updates from a router to a collector before any polic...
HN758: How Selector Built an AI Language Model for Networking (Sponsored)
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s episode, artificial intelligence with sponsor Selector.AI. If you’re curious and maybe still skeptical about the value AI brings to net...
HN757: Building a DIY SD-WAN to Serve (Very) Remote Customers
08 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s episode, we chat with wireless ISP engineer Elijah Zeida. Elijah had an interesting connectivity challenge to solve for a remote mountain...
HN756: Alkira Enhances Its Multi-Cloud Networking With ZTNA and Security (Sponsored)
01 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Alkira provides a Multi-Cloud Networking Service (MCNS) that lets you connect public cloud and on-prem locations using a cloud-delivered, as-a-service...
HN755: Optimizing Ethernet to Meet AI Infrastructure Demands
25 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ethernet competes with InfiniBand as a network fabric for AI workloads such as model training. One issue is that AI jobs don’t tolerate latency, dro...
HN754: Secure AI by Design with Palo Alto Networks (Sponsored)
18 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
AI is finding its way into more and more consumer and business applications. In particular, the widespread use of Generative AI raises a serious quest...
HN753: Getting to Know Cisco’s Network Service Orchestrator (NSO)
14 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s episode, guest James Henderson joins the Packet Pushers to discuss Cisco’s Network Service Orchestrator (NSO). NSO’s role in ...
HN752: How Digital Twins Enable Smarter Network Ops, Troubleshooting (Sponsored)
04 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our topic today is digital twins. Sponsor Forward Networks offers software that creates a “mathematically accurate” copy of your network, ...
HN751: Top Tips for Building A CCIE-EI Lab
27 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Packet Pushers and guest Mason Reimert discuss strategies he’s using to prepare for the Cisco CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure lab exam. Mason...
HN749: Expand Your Network Labs With Containerlab and Clabernetes
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s episode, we cover open source Clabernetes, a tool that allows you to run Containerlab on Kubernetes. Containerlab provides a CLI for orch...
HN748: How AI and HPC Are Changing Data Center Networks
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s episode of Heavy Networking, Rob Sherwood joins us to discuss the impact that High Performance Computing (HPC)and artificial intelligence...
HN747: Automate The Easy Things
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our Heavy Networking guest today is Hans Driessens, and we sat down at AutoCon1 to talk through some of his network automation projects. Hans shares h...
HN746: Going Deep on OSPF Route Filtering
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s episode we delve into OSPF filtering. That is, how to filter routes from a device’s routing table in an OSPF environment. This is a tri...
HN745: Using Abstractions in Automation
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode of Heavy Networking comes to you from AutoCon1 in Amsterdam, recorded live on premises. In today’s network automation discussion, ...
HN744: How BackBox Helps You Mitigate CVEs for Network Devices (Sponsored)
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today we explore a network automation use case for configuration compliance in the face of never-ending common vulnerabilities and exposures, or CVEs....
HN743: Leveraging AI for Network Automation at Scale (Sponsored)
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
AI is making its way into network automation. Maybe the thought of a hallucinating ChatGPT getting its six-fingered hands on your network makes you wa...
HN742: Designing a Real-World Hybrid Cloud Network
26 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s show we talk about designing a network to support hybrid cloud deployments. That is, building and operating a network to interconnect the...
HN741: History of Networking: How Bridging Saved Ethernet
12 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ready to take a trip back to the 1980’s and learn some networking history? We talk with Alan Kirby, who was there forty years ago when the first Eth...
HN740: IETF’s Network Management Operations (NMOP) Working Group
28 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When you think of IETF, you probably just think of defining protocols, but its new NMOP working group is all about helping network operators identify ...
HN739: High Stakes Network Observability for High Frequency Trading
21 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
High Frequency Trading in finance demands the utmost quality and speed from a network, making flawless observability a must. Our guest today is Radu I...
HN738: Reducing Complexity With Fortinet’s Unified SASE (Sponsored)
14 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Fortinet’s Unified SASE provides consistent security controls and policies both for traditional campuses and the hybrid workforce.. Nirav Shah joins...
HN737: Greg Ferro: The Exit Interview
07 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Greg Ferro, co-founder of Packet Pushers, is signing off. After years of frustrating health issues, he’s decided to fully step back from podcasting ...
HN736: Understanding VMware by Broadcom (Sponsored)
31 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today on Heavy Networking, sponsored by Broadcom, we talk about VMware’s transition under Broadcom’s ownership. The acquisition has led to big cha...
HN735: Managing OT Networks
24 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The variety and number of OT devices continue to grow at such a pace that network engineers really need to think through how to manage them as part of...
HN734: Russ White Hour Part 2: Snowflakes and Network Automation
17 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the second part of our interview with friend of the podcast, Russ White. We start our conversation with a listener question about VXLAN/EVP...
HN733: Russ White Hour: IS-IS vs OSPF and a Deep Dive into Ethernet Adapters
10 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We turn the nerd meter up to eleven on today’s episode with longtime friend of the show, Russ White. First we dive into how an Ethernet adapter know...
HN732: Juniper’s PTX Platforms: 800GE and Double-Density 400GE for DC and WAN (Sponsored)
03 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The future has arrived: 800 gig Ethernet is here. Amit Bhardwaj and Dmitry Shokarev from today’s sponsor, Juniper Networks, join the show to tell us...
HN731: GraphQL: Open Source Query Language for APIs
26 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What if instead of sending multiple queries out to APIs and getting disparate data back, you could just send a single query and receive a single answe...
HN730: Retail, Healthcare, Manufacturing and More Transform Their Branches with Next-Gen SD-WAN and SASE (Sponsored)
19 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you haven’t made the leap from traditional wide area networking to SD-WAN, or perhaps you’re thinking about adding security services to your SD...
HN729: Open Source to Closed
12 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” as his guide, Srivats launched Ostinato, his open source project, in 2010. He needed an affordable network tra...
HN728: How Drivenets Leverages Ethernet Fabrics For AI Networking (Sponsored)
05 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
To run AI workloads, a network needs thousands of GPUs and those GPUs must operate in sync. If there is congestion or dropped frames, very expensive e...
HN727: Kubernetes Networking Essentials
29 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Where there are containers, there is networking. Today we dig into the networking that underlies Kubernetes, the open source orchestration platform fo...
HN726: From Automation to Orchestration for a FinTech Network (Sponsored)
22 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Fiserv is one of the largest payment processors in the world, In 2023 it handled more than 35 billion transactions worth $2.03 trillion US dollars. It...
HN725: Standing up a DC Network Using Terraform
15 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Matt Horn built a data center network through automation, remotely. This is the future of network engineering. Matt shares how his team did it technic...