Heavy Networking
Technology Podcasts
Heavy Networking is an unabashedly nerdy dive into all things networking. Described by one listener as "verbal white papers," the weekly episodes feature network engineers, industry experts, and vendors sharing useful information to keep your professional knowledge sharp and your career growing. Hosts Ethan Banks & Drew Conry-Murray cut through the marketing spin to explore what works—and what doesn't—in networking today, while keeping an eye on what's ahead for the industry. On air since 2010, Heavy Networking is the flagship show of the Packet Pushers podcast network.
Location:
United States
Description:
Heavy Networking is an unabashedly nerdy dive into all things networking. Described by one listener as "verbal white papers," the weekly episodes feature network engineers, industry experts, and vendors sharing useful information to keep your professional knowledge sharp and your career growing. Hosts Ethan Banks & Drew Conry-Murray cut through the marketing spin to explore what works—and what doesn't—in networking today, while keeping an eye on what's ahead for the industry. On air since 2010, Heavy Networking is the flagship show of the Packet Pushers podcast network.
Twitter:
@packetpushers
Language:
English
Website:
http://packetpushers.net
Email:
packetpushers@gmail.com
Episodes
HN777: Overlay All the Things?
4/18/2025
Today’s Heavy Networking is all about overlay technologies, their history, development, and current state, both from engineer and vendor perspectives. We discuss why the industry turns to overlays to solve problems, and look at overlay and segmentation approaches including VXLAN, SRv6, and EVPN. We also drill into the idea that EVPN could become the standard... Read more »
Duration:00:52:01
HN776: Security Platforms: Balancing Efficacy, Ops, and Emerging Threats (Sponsored)
4/11/2025
Network security has evolved from stateful perimeter firewalls with maybe some IDS/IPS to a complex stack delivered as numerous unique tools, which often don’t talk to one another and may need to be operated by specialists. In this environment it’s hard to unify a security policy, troubleshoot problems, manage and operate tools, and respond effectively... Read more »
Duration:00:49:33
HN775: How To Train Your Very Own AI-Enabled Slackbot
4/4/2025
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 use cases for network operations are fascinating, and today’s guest, Kyler Middleton is here to explain the finer details on how to do it and point us to free resources created so that... Read more »
Duration:01:03:59
HN774: Who Put These OT Risks In My IT Ops? Fortinet Has Answers (Sponsored)
3/28/2025
IT and infosec professionals are used to operating and protecting mission-critical infrastructure; servers, databases, load balancers, and so on. But what about valves that control the flow of gas or oil in a refinery? Temperature and vibration sensors that monitor industrial manufacturing processes? If you’re thinking “That’s not my problem” think again. There’s a whole... Read more »
Duration:00:46:53
HN773: Optimizing Ethernet for AI – An Update On the Ultra Ethernet Consortium
3/21/2025
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 get an overview of the UEC and an update on its efforts. We’re joined by J Metz and Rip Sohan, both heavily involved with the UEC. We discuss the consortium’s... Read more »
Duration:01:22:39
HN772: Measuring Users’ Digital Experience with Catchpoint Internet Performance Monitoring (Sponsored)
3/14/2025
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) is all about understanding a user’s application experience, and pinpointing problems if the experience is bad. Under the DEM umbrella, you’ll find Internet Performance Monitoring, or IPM. That’s our topic in today’s episode with sponsor Catchpoint. With more and more applications hosted in the cloud and more employees working remotely, organizations... Read more »
Duration:00:48:22
HN771: Is The CCIE Still Worth It In 2025?
3/7/2025
The CCIE remains the gold standard for networking certifications. But these days there are lots of other avenues for developing your skills and advancing your networking career, including network automation, cloud networking, and yes, even AI. So is the CCIE still worth it? We chew on this topic with Eman Conde. Eman has been known... Read more »
Duration:00:55:52
HN770: Deploying A Global Network in Minutes With Megaport (Sponsored)
2/28/2025
In our conversation today with CTO Cameron Daniel of Megaport, we discuss their global WAN architecture, PoPs, use cases, the Megaport Cloud Router, and more. Megaport is our sponsor today. It’s accurate to describe Megaport as providing Network-as-a-Service. Megaport’s automated connectivity solutions enable rapid provisioning of circuits, contrasting sharply with traditional telcos. The discussion also... Read more »
Duration:00:35:53
HN769: CI/CD Pipelines and Network Automation
2/21/2025
Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) is a framework that developers use to help them manage and integrate frequent code changes. As network automation evolves, should network engineers adopt CI/CD? Guest Tony Bourke joins us to talk about CI/CD pipelines: what they are, how they’re used, and how they can support network automation efforts. We... Read more »
Duration:00:57:40
HN768: Ctrl+Alt+Delivered App Routing Reinvented with Palo Alto Networks SD-WAN (Sponsored)
2/14/2025
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. A little routing, and there you were. Cloud blew that model apart. Now when we connect branches to our corporate networks, we have to consider not only... Read more »
Duration:00:44:53
HN767: Effective Networking on the Cheap
2/7/2025
Unless you’re building out AI infrastructure at a hyperscaler, you probably don’t have unlimited dollars. On today’s Heavy Networking we talk with guest Frank Seesink about how to build and operate networks effectively when money’s tight. We look at free and open source tools, talk about the trade-offs that come with free software, and how... Read more »
Duration:01:09:58
HN 766: Ensuring QoE for Agentic AI With Broadcom VeloRAIN (Sponsored)
1/31/2025
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 might come up in this conversation. Instead, we’re focusing on how to effectively cope with the network traffic patterns happening on your network as a result of AI computing workloads. Our subject... Read more »
Duration:00:55:06
HN765: Telecom In the Bahamas: Lessons In Resiliency
1/24/2025
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 discussions don’t feel overly worthy of our attention. Yes, we should think about it. Yes, we should plan for it. If we’re really serious, we’ll even dust off the... Read more »
Duration:00:52:45
HN764: Should You Pursue a Technical Leadership Role?
1/17/2025
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 Banks to discuss those questions. They talk about the motivations for moving into a management role, the challenges of managing people, and the need to understand the business... Read more »
Duration:01:04:59
HN763: You Too Can Say ‘Yes’ to Packet Analysis
1/10/2025
Packet capture and packet analysis is incredibly useful for problem-solving and troubleshooting. Analyzing packets is also a difficult skill to master. With the incredible array of network troubleshooting tools at our disposal, including emerging networking models for artificial intelligence, do we still need to fuss around with Wireshark in 2025? Our guest Chris Greer says... Read more »
Duration:00:55:42
HN762: A Network Automation Roadmap
12/20/2024
Once you get past a handful of Python scripts, network automation can be…daunting. If you want to make network automation process-driven, repeatable, reliable, and something that doesn’t just rely on your scripts and the knowledge inside your head, there’s an entire landscape that opens up before you. Have you thought about network discovery? How about... Read more »
Duration:00:57:43
HN761: Who Are You Building Automation For? An AutoCon2 Roundtable
12/13/2024
Today’s Heavy Networking comes to you from the AutoCon2 tech event being held in Westminster, Colorado. This episode was recorded in conference room on site at AutoCon2 in November, 2024. The format? Roundtable. Four network automators have raised their hand and brought topics they want to discuss. Those topics include: Crafting tools to “listen” to... Read more »
Duration:01:02:27
HN760: Mitigate Iot/OT Vulnerabilities with Guided Virtual Patching (Sponsored)
12/6/2024
Today on Heavy Networking, sponsored by Palo Alto Networks, we explore how virtual patching can be used to protect IoT and OT devices. Virtual patching leverages intrusion detection and intrusion detection, combined with threat research, to block exploits targeting IoT and OT devices. Why would you use virtual patching? When it comes to IoT and... Read more »
Duration:00:42:55
HN 759: Deploying the BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP) at ISP Scale
11/22/2024
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 policy filters are applied. Once collected, you can analyze this routing data without any impact on the router itself. On today’s Heavy Networking, we talk with Bart Dorlandt,... Read more »
Duration:00:56:32
HN758: How Selector Built an AI Language Model for Networking (Sponsored)
11/15/2024
On today’s episode, artificial intelligence with sponsor Selector.AI. If you’re curious and maybe still skeptical about the value AI brings to network operations, listen to this episode. Selector is on the forefront of AIOps for networking, building models that are customized and specifically targeted at networks. What Selector is doing is NOT simply the low-hanging... Read more »
Duration:00:55:54