Mason Reimert, a CCIE expert, shares his journey in preparing for the Cisco CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure lab exam. He offers practical strategies for hands-on lab work with emerging technologies like SD-WAN. Mason dives into the importance of API understanding, resource management, and virtualization tools. He emphasizes the transition from traditional CCIE to the Enterprise track, all while highlighting best practices for setting up a robust lab environment. Engaging with the CCIE community is also discussed as a valuable resource for aspiring candidates.

On today’s episode, we cover open source Clabernetes, a tool that allows you to run Containerlab on Kubernetes. Containerlab provides a CLI for orchestrating and managing container-based networking labs. It starts the containers, builds a virtual wiring between them to create lab topologies of your choice and manages the lab’s lifecycle.  We discuss the answer... Read more »

On today’s episode of Heavy Networking, Rob Sherwood joins us to discuss the impact that High Performance Computing (HPC)and artificial intelligence computing are having on data center network design. It’s not just a story about leaf/spine architecture. That’s the boring part. There’s also power and cooling issues, massive bandwidth requirements, and changes in how we... Read more »

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 his journey from a service engineer to a consultant specializing in network automation. We discuss the evolution of programming languages, the importance of foundational programming skills, and the practicalities of... Read more »

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 tricky business, because OSPF requires an identical database on every device in an OSPF area. That means you can’t stop announcing a route from one OSPF router because you... Read more »

Today’s episode of Heavy Networking comes to you from AutoCon1 in Amsterdam, recorded live on premises. In today’s network automation discussion, we cover abstraction layers with guest Jaakko Rautanen. Practically speaking, what are abstractions, and how do they help make your network automation project successful? We’ll also discuss some of our guest’s automation projects, how... Read more »

Rekha Shenoy, CEO of a network automation company, dives deep into the world of CVE mitigation. She discusses how automating configuration compliance can outpace attackers and manage vulnerabilities effectively. The conversation highlights BackBox's features, showcasing its ability to streamline network management and enhance security through proactive monitoring. Rekha also emphasizes the critical balance between automation and human oversight, and the importance of real-time feedback in tackling network vulnerabilities.

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 want to run the other way. But the story of AI for IT operations is more nuanced than the hot takes we get about the confidently dumb results that Large Language... Read more »

Dive into the complexities of hybrid cloud network design, where public clouds like AWS, Azure, and GCP meet on-prem infrastructure. Discover strategies for reducing egress costs, enhancing security, and mastering traffic management. Learn about creating efficient multi-tenant configurations and the vital role of automation and collaboration in network provisioning. Explore how architecture shifts can optimize cloud connectivity while maintaining performance and security. Join the conversation on fostering teamwork to make networking more efficient!

Alan Kirby, a networking expert, shares the intriguing history of the first Ethernet bridge at Digital Equipment Corporation in the 1980s. Topics include the comparison of Ethernet to other networking standards, advancements in twisted pair technologies, challenges in shared Ethernet transmissions, development of PAL design, sales progression of DEX Bridge 100, evolution of Ethernet technology, and transitions from hubs to switches.