Heavy Networking
Packet Pushers
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.
Episodes
Mentioned books
May 2, 2025 • 55min
HN779: Do We Really Need the Modern Networking Stack?
Lee Harding, founder of Proxility, Anton Lönnebro, a solutions architect in Sweden, and Kieran Sheldon, an infrastructure engineer from Australia, engage in a lively discussion about the relevance of modern networking architectures. They dive into the debate over underlays and overlays, questioning if the overlay approach is overkill. The guests explore the evolution from static hardware to software-defined solutions, touching on SD-WAN benefits, and emphasize the vital role of foundational networking knowledge in navigating today’s complex tech landscape.
Apr 25, 2025 • 51min
HN778: Understanding Model Context Protocol (MCP) with Selector (Sponsored)
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 industry heads toward agentic AI–in which an AI agent interacts with disparate applications, data sources, and other agents to achieve a task–MCP provides the protocol glue. On... Read more »
Apr 18, 2025 • 52min
HN777: Overlay All the Things?
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 »
Apr 11, 2025 • 50min
HN776: Security Platforms: Balancing Efficacy, Ops, and Emerging Threats (Sponsored)
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 »
Apr 4, 2025 • 1h 4min
HN775: How To Train Your Very Own AI-Enabled Slackbot
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 »
Mar 28, 2025 • 47min
HN774: Who Put These OT Risks In My IT Ops? Fortinet Has Answers (Sponsored)
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 »
Mar 21, 2025 • 1h 23min
HN773: Optimizing Ethernet for AI – An Update On the Ultra Ethernet Consortium
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 »
Mar 14, 2025 • 48min
HN772: Measuring Users’ Digital Experience with Catchpoint Internet Performance Monitoring (Sponsored)
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 »
Mar 7, 2025 • 56min
HN771: Is The CCIE Still Worth It In 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 »
Feb 28, 2025 • 36min
HN770: Deploying A Global Network in Minutes With Megaport (Sponsored)
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 »
