The Fat Pipe - Most Popular Packet Pushers Pods

Welcome to part 2 of our spanning tree series. We start with a quick review and then discuss root bridges, root ports, designated ports, and forwarding and blocked ports.  We explain the impact of topology changes on spanning tree and network performance, and discuss how topology changes and convergence events are communicated. Last but not... Read more »

Developer experience is a hard metric to measure qualitatively. On today’s show, we talk with Kristen Foster-Marks about Developer Experience, or DevEx. We start with the controversial concept of “ghost engineering,” which claims many software engineers do not contribute meaningfully to their work. We delve into the validity of this claim, and discuss the scientific... Read more »

There’s a robust malware economy with an active market for exploits, brokered access to compromised systems, ransomware, bots-as-a-service, and more. And this malware economy is targeted at you. On today’s Packet Protector we talk with Jake Williams, a security researcher, consultant, and instructor, about the malware economy, how it operates, and the most effective strategies... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with some Red Alert vulnerabilities to get your blood pumping, and then dive into networking news. Cisco announces new data center switches with AMD Pensando DPUs that let you deploy security and other services directly on to the switch. Cisco ThousandEyes is previewing Traffic Insights, which correlates flow records... Read more »

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 »

Collaboration among tech and business teams is crucial to advancing your business. Extreme Networks is introducing Extreme Platform ONE to support this collaboration. In this sponsored episode, we talk about how this product is designed to streamline workflows and enhance user experience through automation and AI integration. Extreme Networks Platform ONE is a centralized platform... Read more »

Spanning tree is a topic so mysterious and complicated that common advice is just to disable it. In today’s episode, we start a mini-series on spanning tree, hoping to better explain what it is and what it does. We begin with basic spanning tree terminology and its role in preventing loops in an Ethernet network.... Read more »

Embracing change is sometimes easier said than done. Today we talk with Monika Machado, who has held significant roles at companies like Microsoft and Oracle. She shares her story of learning and personal growth. Monika highlights the value of mentor-mentee relationships, continuous learning, understanding the difference between leadership and management, and the value of owning... Read more »

The Cloud Security Maturity Model (CSMM) is a practical blueprint for improving the security of your public cloud deployments. Developed in partnership with the Cloud Security Alliance, IANS, and Securosis, the model covers 12 categories, such as network security and application security, across 3 domains. It describes 5 levels of security maturity, and includes process... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with some red alerts for Cisco ISE, Zyxel, Microsoft, and a Web manager suite called WeGIA. US senators and security experts sound the alarm about DOGE employees introducing security and stability risks in sensitive US government systems, security researchers demonstrate the effectiveness of supply chain attacks that start with... Read more »