Packet Pushers Podcast» Weekly Shows

Show 147 – Avaya Fabric Connect Makes Multicast Simple (Really) – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:50:40 +0000

For many network engineers, IP multicast routing is evil. Difficult to design, complicated to implement, painful to troubleshoot and challenging to scale, multicast routing is rarely implemented on a given network unless it’s absolutely required. Most engineers would just rather not bother until the issue is forced upon them. Blame PIM. Blame RPF checks. Blame [...]

Show 146 – Arista 7500 – One Switch to Rule Them All – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 06 May 2013 22:02:20 +0000

Arista is shipping a serious round of upgrades for the 7500 switch chassis. In this sponsored podcast, Doug Gourlay from Arista returns to the Packet Pushers to give an unvarnished view of the new products and why Arista can deliver 100GbE at a new price point while maintaining technical features and capabilities. Show Topics: 1) It’s [...]

Show 145 – Talking OpenDaylight and SDN

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:00:42 +0000

A community show where we get Brent Salisbury and Ivan Pepelnjak to talk about the events of the last few weeks. In the end, the only thing we seemed to cover was OpenDaylight, ONS and various SDN topics. Open Networking Summit – Brent reports in. Talking SDN and OpenDaylight Ivan asks “will you install open [...]

Show 144 – Open EIGRP With Russ White + Cisco’s Donnie Savage

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 16:31:22 +0000

EIGRP is a distance vector routing protocol that for many years was unique to Cisco networking environments. Created and championed by Cisco, it didn’t get any traction in the standards bodies in the early days, because there were already enough interior gateway routing protocols around according to some. EIGRP just didn’t interest enough of the [...]

Show 143 – Anuta Networks Demonstrates nCloudX Controller – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:44:54 +0000

On March 26, 2013, the Packet Pushers held a sponsored webinar with Anuta Networks to introduce their nCloudX controller to our networking community. In the webinar, the Anuta team covers the following: A bit about their background, the problems they are going after, and how nCloudX addresseses these challenges. An explanation of the nCloudX architecture, [...]

Show 142 – Huawei – End to End SDN Strategy – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 12:00:18 +0000

SDN innovation has been primarily focused on the data center where centralized network programmability has been shown to be capable of providing many benefits to the complex and dynamic (on-demand) data center environment. Service provider networks will also benefit from SDN. Traversing a service provider network involves crossing different network types, technologies, layers and administrative domains. SDN solutions, including OpenFlow’s programmatic control, will provide capabilities unique to these service provider technologies. Huawei presents an architecture that expands SDN into multiple, task specific, controllers and domains and extends networking control across all of the service provider network dimensions.

Show 141 – The Pace of Change Is Picking Up – #NFD5 Discussion

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 18:23:06 +0000

Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks of PacketPushers.net host a discussion with Dr. Peter Welcher, Brent Salisbury, and Stephen Foskett about many of the presentations from the Network Field Day 5 event held March 6-8, 2013 in San Jose, California. The leading podcast topic was software defined networking, as that was the vendor focus during the [...]

Show 140 – Introduction OpenStack and Quantum Projects

packetpushers@gmail.com — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 18:35:31 +0000

OpenStack is progressively developing into a product that networking needs to be a part of. One way to describe OpenStack is to say it’s an API for infrastructure. OpenStack is a combination of open source plus a significant number of hardware vendors who see contributions to OpenStack as a way of growing or maintaining their own markets and customers. Customers want OpenStack as an alternative to VMware or other commercial software - not all applications and service need to have expensive software licenses and maintenance. We need to be able to build a core of functional services that can deliver services. In the future, it seems likely that OpenStack Quantum API will be important. We discuss Open Vswitch and how it’s changing from being a “switch” to including routing, firewall and load balancing features. If you don’t like that, you could consider using Quantum API as a way to consume load balancers from your preferred vendor - the API exists to simplify the consumption of network resources.

Show 139 – Making Your Way Down the Path to Nirvana

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:51:51 +0000

Regular hosts Greg Ferro & Ethan Banks are joined by Brandon Carroll, Josh O’Brien, and Tom Hollingsworth in Packet Pushers Weekly Show 139. We translate all the SDN hype into a more practical conversation about what network engineers should be doing to update their skills. This is a mostly raw podcast with little editing – just [...]

Show 138 – HP’s Software-Defined Networking (SDN) Strategy and Solution

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 16:09:43 +0000

Show 138 – HP’s Software-Defined Networking (SDN) Strategy and Solution [Written by HP.] There has been a lot of interest in the market place recently around software-defined Networking (SDN). HP has been a leader in SDN technologies from the very beginning. HP has played an instrumental role in the development of OpenFlow and continues to [...]

Show 137 – Gartner Is Not for Sale With @Aneel Lakhani

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 20:45:46 +0000

Summary Packet Pushers co-hosts Ethan Banks & Greg Ferro chat with Aneel Lakhani, a research director at Gartner about his job. Aneel provides an insider perspective on how the research & analysis business works. More Info Analyst firm research offerings seem to cynical network engineers like bought-and-paid-for shill pieces whose conclusions follow the money back to its [...]

Show 136: Avaya – Considerations for Turning Your Network Into an Ethernet Fabric – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 20:30:59 +0000

We’ve done a few shows now on Ethernet Fabrics where we have been getting deep into the different technology options and different vendor implementations. Avaya has sponsored this show where we actually interview customers who were early adopters of fabric-based and talk about what drove these customers to implement a network fabric, how they went [...]

Show 135 – Change Control Causes Constipation

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:30:11 +0000

Ethan & Greg discuss events of the previous week or two and some of the things that have happened. Closely looking the Cisco's announcements of ONE Controller, Nexus 6000 and virtual networking products.

Show 134 – OSPF Design Part 1 – Debunking the Multiple Area Myth

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 17:08:10 +0000

Derick Winkworth, Paul Gear, and Darren O’ Connor chat with Ethan Banks about their experiences with OSPF. The major focus of the conversation is on single vs. multiple areas. What We Discuss What should the reference bandwidth be set to? How big of an integer does OSPF use to store the cost metric? When should [...]

Show 133 – What Makes Brocade VCS Fabrics Different – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 17:30:22 +0000

Brocade’s Jon Hudson joins Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks for a introduction to Brocade VCS fabrics. VCS is the software that runs on Brocade VDX hardware, and Jon explains the basic implementation and use cases for the VCS approach. What We Discuss What Brocade is going after with VCS: automation & intelligence. The ability to [...]

Show 132 – Spirent Axon Test Gear – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:48:07 +0000

Introducing the Spirent Axon network testing tool for real engineers that delivers proactive testing and validation for enterprise networks and applications. The best way we can describe it: "It's a testing rig that engineers can actually afford to have in the boot of your car". Spirent Axon is the first of its kind network quality platform to proactively validate the performance and functionality of your network, network elements and application throughout the network lifecycle.

Show 131 – Golf Cart in My Fibre Tunnel

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 15:46:39 +0000

Talking with Senior Engineers from University Campus with tens to hundreds of thousands of Ethernet ports, and up to 50 000 wireless clients.What are the technology challenges of managing such huge networks. Not only do these networks handle student and academic traffic, but they also have commercial aspects including hospitals.

Show 130 – 2012 Wrap Up and Holiday Wishes

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 23:35:29 +0000

From Greg and me to you, Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays. This edition of the Packet Pushers podcast is short and sweet: Our thanks to many in the community. A fireside chat to let you know how the show has been going. What our plans are for 2013. Audio holiday greeting cards from several listeners. [...]

Show 129 – UNH’s InterOperability Lab Discusses Ethernet in Your Car

packetpushers@gmail.com — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:00:32 +0000

Jeff Lapak and Dave Estes from the University of New Hampshire’s InterOperability Lab join the Packet Pushers to introduce the IOL to the audience. We also chat about BroadR-Reach: Ethernet for your car. BroadR-Reach is enabling all sorts of automotive future tech, as our cars become just as networked as any of our other modern gadgets. In [...]

Show 128 – Big Switch Networks Demos Big Virtual Switch & Big Tap

packetpushers@gmail.com — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:40:00 +0000

After all the discussions around OpenFlow and SDN, it's time to look at real products. In this podcast, you can hear Dan Hersey of Big Switch Networks, describe the Open SDN architecture and explain how the Big Network Controller provides a network application platform. Dan describes the SDN products that run on the Big Network Controller - Big Virtual Switch & Big Tap. Stay until the end for the demonstration of Big Tap, an Open SDN-based universal monitoring application.

Show 127 – We Still Don’t Get LISP

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 20:06:04 +0000

Continuing from a previous recording, this is Part 2 of discussing events that have happened in the last month or so. Recorded on 11 November, we talk about: Vyatta acquisition by Brocade – how it fits with competitors. And a look at how Brocade works. The challenge of virtualization in smaller networks The impact of dynamic [...]

Show 126 – Plexxi & Affinity Networking With Marten Terpstra – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 13:30:19 +0000

Boston area networking startup Plexxi parks their tour bus at the Packet Pushers studios for a chat with Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro. Plexxi’s Ethernet switch with optical ring interconnect using WDM makes a highly meshed network possible without requiring core switches. Add Plexxi’s API and controller, and the Plexxi solution allows network architects to [...]

Show 125 – Bufferbloat – What Can You Do Today to Suffer Less

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 14:40:13 +0000

Buffer Bloat is the overuse of buffering in network equipment. Well meaning but misguided and, most likely, stupid equipment vendors have tried to avoid packet loss by increasing the the buffers in the network. But they have missed a fundamental property of TCP and UDP protocols, if they live in a buffer for too long, [...]

Show 124 – MPLS in the Data Centre Is Dead & SDN Changes Nothing

packetpushers@gmail.com — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:50:48 +0000

The conversation starts discussing Nexus 5K as a small/mid-size core. Yep, it works. Then Greg gets his Unicorn Riding outfit on and saddles up to run SDN race once again. This results in extensive yelling that "MPLS in the Data Centre is dead, SDN will win". Promptly followed by cool discussion that SDN/OpenFlow changes very little in networking. If that's confusing, you need to listen in.

Show 123 – LISP Use Cases With Dino Farinacci & Victor Moreno of Cisco – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 19:27:21 +0000

This week’s podcast features Cisco Fellow & Senior Software Engineer Dino Farinacci and Distinguished Engineer Victor Moreno in a discussion of LISP - Locator/ID Separation Protocol. Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro host. The Packet Pushers talked with Victor back in show 54 about LISP. Show 123 is focused less on the mechanics of the protocol, and [...]

Show 122 – Mission Impossible: Blast Radius, Part 2

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 15:37:02 +0000

In this “part 2″ podcast (show 119 was part 1), co-hosts Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro are joined by Tom Hollingsworth, Tony Bourke, Kurt Bales, Ivan Pepelnjak and Michele Chubirka aka Mrs. Y. As the show continues, we ramble on about the following: What We Discuss The future of WAN acceleration. Greg was writing this report and started to read [...]

Show 121 – Tweet My Meat – Network Field Day 4

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 00:14:21 +0000

In this Network Field Day episode of the Packet Pushers, we talk about the happenings of the first two days. Because there were so many of us in the room we used a room mike and the audio isn’t great but it’s definitely worth listening to. Discussion Topics Spirent and the upcoming Axon test unit [...]

Show 120 – The API Layer Cake With Dave Ward and Lauren Cooney of Cisco – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 22:55:33 +0000

Dave Ward, CTO & Chief Architect of the Service Provider Division at Cisco and Lauren Cooney, Senior Director of Software Market Strategy at Cisco join Packet Pushers hosts Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks for a discussion about software defined networking and the evolution of onePK & APIs. Not to put too fine a point on [...]

Show 119 – Mission Impossible: Blast Radius, Part 1

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 19:59:09 +0000

In this free-for-all hootenanny, the Packet Pushers virtual workbench assembles a team of talking heads for a podcast that was so long, we had to split it into two parts. Ethan Banks accepts the impossible mission from Mrs. Y of hosting the show, and is joined by the following folks: Greg Ferro, exposer of hyperbole & [...]

Show 118 – Juniper MX Series – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:48:37 +0000

In today's sponsored show we cover the Juniper MX; it's a platform that's build from the ground up to support high-density Ethernet services that can be used in both enterprise and service provider core, aggregation, and edge as well as broadband and mobile backhaul. The Juniper MX line up is as follows: MX5, MX10, MX40, MX80, MX240, MX480, and the MX960. The Juniper MX features custom built silicon called Trio which focuses on high-scale, line-rate performance, and inline services such as port mirroring, IPFIX, NAT, and GRE. There are three different categories of line cards: switching only, routing plus switching, and all of the above plus hierarchal queuing. As we say, "the line cards are full of awesome"!

Show 117 – A Rope, a Chair and Helping Hands – Sue Hares and the IETF

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:31:33 +0000

Sue Hares – Long term Internet and IETF person plus BGP RFC author joins us to talk about routing protocols and life when developing routing protocols like BGP. In a wide ranging discussion we talk about software defined networking and impact on routing protocols. Sue is art of the IDR Working Group and particularly involved [...]

Show 116 – Statseeker and Network Monitoring – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 18:36:04 +0000

This week’s show was sponsored by Statseeker. If you are tired of having 90% of your switch interfaces NOT being monitored; or if you are tired of having your historical snmp data “rolled up”, then take a look at Statseeker. With Statseeker users already monitoring 23 million interfaces, every minute, while never rolling up the [...]

Show 115 – What the FEX ? Cisco UCS

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 19:09:59 +0000

Tony Bourke puts on this Cisco UCS super defeneder costume to talk about Cisco and FEX Networking. We also deviate into discussion Nicira acquisution by VMware.

Show 114 – Real-Life CCNP With Jeremy Cioara

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 17:31:52 +0000

Jeremy Cioara, IT trainer, uber-nerd, and all-around Cisco geek jacks into a Skype conference room with Packet Pushers Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro to discuss the Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) program. Scott McDermott, newly minted CCNP, also joins in the conversation to share his studying and testing experiences. We don’t just yammer on about [...]

Show 113 – IETF 84 Wrap Up With Russ White – Audio Fixed

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 14:36:26 +0000

Talking with Russ White about the some of the topics at the IETF 84 meeting at Vancouver last week.

Show 112 – SDN’s Potential as a Displacement Technology With Jeff Doyle & Bill Koss

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 17:14:11 +0000

Well-known author and independent consultant Jeff Doyle joins Bill Koss of networking startup Plexxi as first time guests on the Packet Pushers podcast. Ethan Banks hosts, and Greg Ferro plays the role of in-house opinion-maker, trend-setter, and fashion icon. What We Discuss Let’s define SDN (again), because the definition has been shifting around as different [...]

Show 111 – BYOD Isn’t a Technology Problem It’s a Management Issue

packetpushers@gmail.com — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 11:26:15 +0000

This week it's about BYOD. The user driven IT fad that everyone is talking about as consumer devices offers features that corporate IT cannot hope to deliver. Or can they ? Can a slow moving, underfunded, under resourced IT department that is lumbered with low quality products from Microsoft deliver a viable solution ? Can that the spawn of add ons to keep it somewhat secure from users who don't care, will users pay for what they use, and will IT Management be able to step up their game and manage the network of the future ?

Show 110 – Live From the CLUS 2012 Social Media Lounge

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 07:00:13 +0000

At Cisco Live 2012 in San Diego, we tweeted that anyone interested could gather at the Social Media Lounge to record a podcast with the Packet Pushers and No Strings Attached shows. Perhaps 20 people showed up at the beginning, but by the end I think double that number had wandered up and joined the [...]

Show 109 – Knowing Why – Cisco Certification Roundtable From CLUS 2012

packetpushers@gmail.com — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 07:00:24 +0000

In this show recorded at Cisco Live US 2012, we put mics in the middle of a big table and had a Cisco certification roundtable chat. These folks, probably all well-known to the Packet Pushers audience, offered up program updates as well as real-world advice that will help IT professionals working on certifications. Oh, and [...]

Show 108 – Wireshark With Gerald Combs

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 15:58:12 +0000

Gerald Coombs is Wireshark. From the original project that started over 15 years ago as Ethereal, Gerald has been leading the development of the Open Source packet sniffer that has become the standard tool for all network engineers.

Show 107 – Cisco Software Defined Networking Strategy With Omar Sultan – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 23:04:00 +0000

As part of the Packet Pushers Cisco Live 2012 Tour, we sat down with Omar Sultan to provide an overview of Cisco’s SDN Strategy. Ethan & Greg are joined by Derick Winkworth to talk about what Software Defined Networking means to us as Network Engineers. Cisco’s SDN strategy is a complex, multi-level approach to addressing [...]

Show 106 – Cisco Nexus Buyer’s Guide – Deep-Dive Series Kickoff

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 22:23:35 +0000

In this show, Ethan Banks is joined by Tony Mattke, Chris Marget, and Jeff Fry to kick off a deep-dive series about the Cisco Nexus product line. Nexus gear is making frequent appearances in Cisco shops these days, as enterprises and service providers refresh their aging Catalyst hardware. The Nexus line keeps growing and changing [...]

Show 105 – BGP Origin Validation With Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI)

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 18:52:32 +0000

Once again we are talking about the Internet and moves that are underway in the Routing Internet Registries to add more security to BGP routing that underpins that Internet. This is known as BGP Origin Validation using RPKI.

Show 104 – Is SDN a TRILL Killer?

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:00:16 +0000

Greg Ferro & Ethan Banks conclude their chat begun in Show 103 – Choking on Cookies, but take the conversation in a different direction. What We Discuss TRILL & SPB – are they competing or complimentary? Or aimed at different markets? If SDN really gets a strong foothold in the marketplace because of excellent applications, [...]

Show 103 – Choking on Cookies

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 20 May 2012 21:04:33 +0000

Podcast hosts Ethan Banks & Greg Ferro have a good old-fashioned chinwag about things that are on their minds in this, the first of a two-part podcast. Part two should be published later during the week of 20-May-2012 as Show 104. Stay tuned! What We Discuss Long-term goals for the Packet Pushers Podcast. How you can [...]

Show 102 – A Layer of Indirection: Is MPLS Tunneling?

packetpushers@gmail.com — Fri, 11 May 2012 02:00:09 +0000

Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks dive into a deep, dark hole of nerdery with Ivan Pepelnjak, Marko Milivojevic, and Petr Lapukov to see if we can decide whether or not MPLS is tunneling. We plumb the depths of packet and frame formatting, compare and contrast various technologies, toss different scenarios around, contradict one another, and throw [...]

Show 101 – Brocade Virtual Symposium Part 1 – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:43:38 +0000

Introducing the Brocade Virtual Symposium. In a special video session, we brought Chip Copper from Brocade into a room to talk about four key areas of Brocade’s Ethernet Fabric. The first episode is this weeks Packet Pushers Podcast. The session is discussing just “What is an Ethernet Fabric” and digging into how Brocade implements their [...]

Show 100 – Live at Network Field Day Three – Video

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:00:39 +0000

Network Field Day Three meant that a lot of regular guests on Packet Pushers were in the same room at the same time. And that room was full of cameras, microphones and a crew to run it!! So we recorded a Packet Pushers Live - the first ever show in video as Show 100. That's right - 100 shows! Two years since we started, about 6000 downloads per show and more than 50000 downloads a month.

Show 99 – I Always Use a VPN – Thomas D’Otreppe – Aircrack-NG – OpenWIPS-NG

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:52:06 +0000

This week we are talking to Thomas d’Otreppe, author of Aircrack-NG and OpenWIPS-NG about his Open Source project and what they do ? AirCrack-NG Aircrack “Aircrack-ng is an 802.11 WEP and WPA-PSK keys cracking program that can recover keys once enough data packets have been captured. It implements the standard FMS attack along with some [...]

Show 98 – The Future of TRILL and Spanning Tree – Part 2

packetpushers@gmail.com — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:10:36 +0000

This is the second part of the TRILL and Spanning Tree discussion. TRILL has been on the radar for about three years and while we are seeing some shipping hardware and deployments, it's still not clear what the current status of TRILL is. This week, Jon Hudson IETF Member for TRILL and Brocade engineer is joined with Andy Shalomon from Cisco, who is conducting testing and deployment on Cisco's FabricPath for a discussion about where TRILL is today.

Show 97 – The Future of TRILL and Spanning Tree – Part 1

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:04:38 +0000

TRILL has been on the radar for about three years and while we are seeing some shipping hardware and deployments, it's still not clear what the current status of TRILL is. This week, Jon Hudson IETF Member for TRILL and Brocade engineer is joined with Andy Shalomon from Cisco, who is conducting testing and deployment on Cisco's FabricPath for a discussion about where TRILL is today.

Show 96 – Hack the Hackers: Fyodor on Nmap & The Security Industry

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:51:21 +0000

Michele Chubirka (our very own Mrs. Y), Greg Ferro, and Ethan Banks gather *in person* with very special guest Gordon “Fyodor” Lyon. Fyodor is the author of Nmap, for many years the tool of choice to perform network scanning. The four of us chat about Nmap, being a security practitioner, and goings-on in the security business. [...]

Show 95 – Security Onion With Doug Burks -or- Why IDS Rules and IPS Drools

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 07:00:33 +0000

Ethan Banks and Michele Chubirka (aka Mrs. Y aka the Network Security Princess) have a relaxed chinwag with Doug Burks, Deputy Chief Security Officer at Mandiant, community instructor for SANS, and the man behind Security Onion. What is Security Onion? To quote Doug’s website… Security Onion is a Linux distro for IDS (Intrusion Detection) and NSM [...]

Show 94 – Aerohive and Bonjour Gateway – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 19:10:21 +0000

Aerohive has recently announced Bonjour support for networking. If you aren’t familiar with Bonjour it’s the zero configuration protocol that used by Apple for all their devices to discover services on the network such as printers, AppleTVs, File Shares and more. Apple technologies such as Airplay (for music/media sharing), AirDrop (for file sharing) and Print [...]

Show 93 – Lies and Routing in the Internet

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 13:30:19 +0000

This show is few moments to breathe, take stock, and meditate about peace in our time and listen to someone else do the talking. Today, Packet Pushers is re-broadcasting a recording of a presentation by Geoff Huston from the AusCERT2011. I have to say that I’ve always known that Internet routing was a mess but Geoff [...]

Show 92 – HP TippingPoint Secure Virtual Framework With Sanjay Raja – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 20:00:47 +0000

The prime Pushers Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro chat with HP Security’s Sanjay Raja in this sponsored podcast about the TippingPoint Secure Virtual Framework (SVF). Sanjay Raja is a Product Marketing Manager with the TippingPoint organization, and describes in detail how SVF integrates into your VMware environment. What We Discuss Inspecting traffic sourced from VMs, [...]

Show 91 – Packet Party Feb 2012

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 10:02:18 +0000

Packet Pushers had a Packet Party in Feb 17, 2012 with an Open Microphonr. The Packet Party was recorded live from event where we had about 90 people on the call. People from the audience would ask questions, and we throw to topic open for discussion. Overall the discussion was great, and we covered a [...]

Show 90 – Talking Career With Todd Lammle

packetpushers@gmail.com — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:50:26 +0000

Trainer, author, and long-time network industry veteran Todd Lammle joins Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro for a chat about the good ol’ days, the days ahead, and how to make it in the networking business. Todd’s worked at some legendary companies like Atari and Xerox. He’s been around the industry for a long time, and worked hard to [...]

Show 89 – OSPF vs IS-IS Smackdown – Where You Can Watch Their Eyes Reload

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:15:58 +0000

In this show we discuss the the differences between OSPF & IS-IS routing protocols and the differences between them. protocol optimisations are both good and bad. How both protocols have poor metric generation OSPFv3 offers some hope for the future. QoS Based metrics in their forms – MPLS TE isn’t getting good adoption. Why do [...]

Show 88 – Server Internals and Network Performance

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:37:24 +0000

Having met at VMworld 2010, Daniel Bowers and I were having an ongoing discussion around server architectures and how they impact network performance. I convinced him to come onto the show and talk broadly about what goes on inside a server. Mostly we focus on how server performance impacts network performance. I wouldn’t call this a [...]

Show 87 – A SIP of Voice

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:38:42 +0000

The Packet Pushers voice crew reassembles, this time for a discussion of SIP trunks. Erik Peterson, Amy Arnold and Tom Hollingsworth are the technical talent this week, while Ethan Banks hosts and tries to keep up with the conversation without going, “Huh?” too many times. Hey, we can’t all be voice engineers. SIP gets a pretty [...]

Show 86 – Connect to the IPv6 Internet for Free Using TunnelBroker.Net

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:34:07 +0000

Hurricane Electric’s Owen DeLong joins Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro to discuss TunnelBroker.net. What’s TunnelBroker.net? It’s a free service from Hurricane Electric that lets you connect to the IPv6 Internet across an IPv4-only connection. Want to get started with IPv6? This is a great way to go, not only for the connectivity, but also for the [...]

Show 85 – Sponsored – The Span Port You Always Wanted – Gigamon

packetpushers@gmail.com — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:27:02 +0000

In this Sponsored show we talk to Gigamon about ” making the SPAN port what it always wanted to be”. In short, Gigamon makes switch devices that allow for powerful ways to capture traffic from your network, then slice, dice and forward it. If you have ever had problem with “not enough SPAN ports” for [...]

Show 84 – Cisco WAAS – The Sleeping Giant Awakens – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:07:26 +0000

Liad Ofek from the Cisco Borderless team joins Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro to discuss the state of Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) in this sponsored show. WAAS is Cisco’s WAN optimization platform, competing against products from Riverbed, SilverPeak, Exinda and others. If you’re wrinkling your brow while remembering a bad WAAS experience back [...]

Show 83 – We Are an Independent Show

packetpushers@gmail.com — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 21:42:07 +0000

This week it’s just Greg and Ethan talking over a few topics. What was intended to be a quick half hour chat for the new year about Packet Pushers turned into a more than an hour on a whole range of topics that interest us, especially on independence and community. Some technical, some industry stuff [...]

Show 82 – Security Failures, No IPv6, No Network Management – Another Good Year

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:19:07 +0000

Guests This week a bunch of new faces to talk about 2011 and it’s many failing: Scott Morris – well known industry figure and CCIE trainer. Chris Marget – Fragmentation Needed who works for a large reseller. And some regulars return: Tony Bourke @tbourke [Data Center Overlords](http://datacenteroverlords.com/ Hosts and Regulars And the blow hards Mrs. [...]

Show 80 – SFlow and IP Accounting

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:49:03 +0000

During the EuroNOG conference I recorded a conversation about SFlow with Elisa Jasinska who is Senior Packet Herder at Limelight Networks. ( That’s what is says on her business card). Joining me is Ivan Pepelnjak to cover the SFlow basisc and some f the more advanced ideas that you need to be thinking of when [...]

Show 79 – Elfiq & Link Load Balancing – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 15:00:24 +0000

In this sponsored podcast, we introduce Link Load Balancing – something the Packet Pushers hadn’t realised was available for Enterprise and handling multi gigabit links. We talk about what Link Balancing is, how it works, and even some of the gotchas and ‘be careful’ points when deploying. Plus some delightfully nerdy discussion about what goes [...]

Show 78 – Especially Thankful Chinwagging

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:23:34 +0000

This week we takes a nod at Thanksgiving and talk nerdy. talks about the latest security breaches. Unsurprisingly. Ivan talks about changing the name of his quite famous ioshints.info blog to ipSpace.net HP announces only one Software licensing for their Wired Ethernet switches across the product range. which naturally, leads into a rant about Cisco [...]

Show 77 – Cisco Nexus 1000V and VXLAN With Han Yang and Victor Moreno – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 18:18:56 +0000

Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks chat with Cisco Technical Marketing Engineers Han Yang and Victor Moreno to discuss Cisco's implementation of the emerging VXLAN standard (currently a draft) in the Nexus 1000V virtual switch. VXLAN is being evaluated by architects who need to scale multi-tenant networks beyond the traditional 4K VLAN limitation. VXLAN can be integrated with existing infrastructures, as it leverages IPv4 to form tunnels and multicast groups to carry broadcast traffic.

Show 76 – Why OpenFlow Has Mind-Melting Potential

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 19:17:31 +0000

OpenFlow. Brave new world, or niche solution to a specific problem? The tool we always wanted, or the need we didn’t know we had? Replacement for the legacy data center, or special purpose player at the edge? Unicorn tears or useful technology? Greg Ferro, Ivan Pepelnjak, and Derick Winkworth join this show’s host Ethan Banks in [...]

Show 75 – Introducing Aerohive Branch on Demand – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:00:59 +0000

Introducing Aerohive , manufacturers of fine Enterprise Wi-Fi networking equipment who, believe it or not, may actually have found a use for the cloud at the same time as getting rid of wireless LAN controllers in their big boned Access Points. After a quick introduction to Aerohive, we talk about their Branch-on-Demand product line that [...]

Show 74 – Juniper Certification Track Update

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:59:57 +0000

Liz Burns, Kieran Milne, and Kurt Bales join Ethan Banks for an update on where the Juniper certification tracks stand. Liz & Kieran talk about each of the tracks in turn, discuss the current and upcoming boot camp offerings, and Kurt describes his training and test-taking experience gained during the beta period. A short show, a [...]

Show 73 – Cisco ASA 1000V Cloud Firewall – Sponsored

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:28:20 +0000

Cisco is extending their Nexus 1000V in new directions. Not only is the Nexus 1000V a virtual switch, it acts as a platform for extending ASA firewall and security technology into your virtual environment. In this sponsored podcast, we get Rajneesh Chopra, Product Manager for the Nexus 1000V product line, to talk about how Virtual [...]

Show 72 – How We Are Killing the Internet

packetpushers@gmail.com — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 10:02:26 +0000

Greg was invited to be a speaker at the EuroNOG conference in Warsaw Poland. While there, Greg spoke to Jan Zorz who is a major contributor to IPv6 in RIPE and IETF and involved with many large service providers for their IPv6 designs and deployment. He says about himself “A Guy from Slovenia, the IPv6 [...]

Show 71 – OpenFlow, SDN, Controllers, VXLAN & Wishing for Fishes

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 16:36:38 +0000

A wide ranging discussion this week following the Applied OpenFlow Symposium on Wednesday and the Network TechFieldDay on Thursday/Friday where we talked about the week and the much argued about purpose of VXLAN. Probably much more relevant to network engineers, I talk to Ivan Pepelnjak and discuss his conversion to believing in OpenFlow/SDN after he [...]

Show 70 – Preview of Tech Field Day and OpenFlow Symposium

packetpushers@gmail.com — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:00:15 +0000

Jeff Fry, Tony Bourke, and Tom Hollingsworth chat with Ethan and Greg about the upcoming Tech Field Day and closely tied OpenFlow Symposium events to be held in San Jose, California this week. On Wednesday, October 26, 2011, several compelling vendors & potential customers (such as Google and Yahoo) will present their unique take on [...]

Show 69 – HP Talks Tech at Interop NYC on OpenFlow, Optical Backplanes, IRF, and IPv6

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 23:00:06 +0000

At Interop NYC held the first week of October 2011, HP invited several network engineers engaged in social media to attend at HP’s expense. Ethan Banks was one of those in attendance, and he captured several hours worth of audio from the event. This podcast is not the typical “let’s gather around the virtual conference [...]

Show 68 – Practical Introduction and Application of OpenFlow Networking

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 09:22:02 +0000

Practical Introduction to Applied OpenFlow We’ve heard a lot of talk about OpenFlow recently and it’s potential impact for networking but not a lot about how it works. This screencast is Practical Introduction to OpenFlow with a focus on how we would actually make it work in real networks. Instead of muttering into beards about [...]

Show 67 – CCIE Security Track Update With Natalie Timms, Program Manager

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 01:19:12 +0000

Natalie Timms, CCIE Security Program/Product Manager for Cisco, is kind enough to spend a little time chatting with Packet Pushers podcast host Ethan Banks about the current state of the Cisco CCIE Security track. Ethan and Natalie build a conversation around the following items: Talk about what Cisco is doing to help preserve the integrity of [...]

Show 66 – VXLAN and NVGRE With Ken Duda

packetpushers@gmail.com — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 16:00:56 +0000

I wanted to know more about VXLAN and NVGRE so who better than Ken Duda from (http://aristanetworks.com) from Arista Networks, the only author listed on both IETF RFCS and [Ivan Pepelnjak](http://blog.ioshints.info) on a call to go fast and loose on the topics. [IETF VXLAN](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-mahalingam-dutt-dcops-vxlan/) [IETF NVGRE](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-sridharan-virtualization-nvgre/) What is VXLAN and why does networking need it [...]

Show 65 – Second Shot of Strong Opinion

packetpushers@gmail.com — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:05:21 +0000

This show in all about Beast Attack on SSL, Cisco Nexus network designs and limitations of the FEX switching, and a bitch slap between MrsY and Greg on DNS Load Balancers. This is the second half of the show recorded on the 25th Sep, 2011. You can find the first show. Beast Attack on SSL. [...]

Show 64 – Catalyst 6500 Supervisor 2T Deep Dive With Cisco TME’s Patrick Warichet + Scott Hodgdon

packetpushers@gmail.com — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:00:38 +0000

In this sponsored show, Cisco Technical Marketing Engineers Patrick Warichet and Scott Hodgdon join Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks to chat about the recently announced Cisco Catalyst 6500 Supervisor 2T in a deep dive discussion. We mine the depths of the new sup’s architecture and get the feeling that, “there’s life in the old dog yet!” The [...]

Show 63 – The First Shot of Strong Opinion

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:26:58 +0000

First up, we talked about the how Packet Pushers is moving into some sponsored shows and contents. We are a community driven group so your feedback is important and valuable. The good news is that sponsorship will help to continue making content and doing cool things. The bad is that some advertising will appear. We [...]

Show 62 – Technical Deep-Dive – Infineta Data Mobility Switch (DMS) Hyper-Scale WAN Optimization

packetpushers@gmail.com — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:00:19 +0000

Haseeb Budhani, VP of Products at Infineta, chats with Greg and Ethan to do a technical deep-dive of Infineta’s Data Mobility Switch (DMS) in this sponsored show. The DMS is the industry’s first Hyper-scale WAN optimization solution that can fill WAN pipes as large as 10Gbps. Targeting customers who need to accelerate replication, backup traffic, Hadoop, and similar data sets between data centers, Infineta [...]

Show 61 – Securing an Internet-Facing App – Part 2 – Border Routers, Firewalls, IDS/IPS

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:32:24 +0000

In show 61, host Ethan Banks is joined again by Mrs. Y, Daniel Powell, Bob Plankers, and Tom Hollingsworth in the second part of a virtual workbench discussion begun in show 56. We recorded this heart-warming, family-friendly episode about securing an Internet-facing application on September 9, 2011. The Packet Pushers eagerly anticipate award nominations for [...]

Show 60 – Introducing Infineta Hyper-Scale WAN Optimization

packetpushers@gmail.com — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:00:18 +0000

Haseeb Budhani, VP of Products at Infineta, chats with Greg and Ethan to introduce Infineta’s Data Mobility Switch (DMS) in this sponsored show. The DMS is the industry’s first Hyper-scale WAN optimization solution that can fill WAN pipes as large as 10Gbps. Targeting customers who need to accelerate replication, backup traffic, Hadoop, and similar data sets [...]

Show 59 – Design Clinic 1 – Is This Virtual Whiteboard on ?

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 13:00:15 +0000

About Design Clinics People send in their questions, we share them using an online meeting service and then use diagrams, open microphones, and lots of discussion to answer questions. We are still working out how to hold, run and manage the Design Clinic as show. This is our second, but the first to include screen [...]

Show 58 – The Packet Speaks!

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 20:01:17 +0000

In show 58, recorded August 27, 2011, Ethan Banks is joined by Tom Hollingsworth, Erik Peterson, and Amy Arnold for the Packet Pushers’ first discussion about voice technology. Think of this as a foundational show that will ramp you up if you’re a network engineer that doesn’t deal with voice much beyond a QoS policy [...]

Show 57 – Fat Cast Free for All – Virtual Workbench

packetpushers@gmail.com — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:49:13 +0000

The virtual workbench convened on August 9, 2011 with Greg Ferro, Ethan, Kurt Bales, Tom Hollingsworth, Josh O’Brien, and Mrs. Y (aka the Network Security Princess). This week we cover news, views and gossip of the last few weeks. A lot of complaining and review of what’s changing in the network industry. Discussion VMware licensing backdown after [...]

Show 56 – Securing an Internet-Facing App – Part 1 – Host Hardening

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:24:54 +0000

An all-US cast gathers around the virtual whiteboard for a security discussion in Packet Pushers podcast show #56, recorded on August 1, 2011. Sysadmin, virtualization heavy, and blogger Bob Plankers joins Network Security Princess Mrs. Y, security industry veteran Daniel Powell, show regular and CCIE Tom Hollingsworth, and this week’s host Ethan Banks to discuss host [...]

Show 55 – Questions You Should Be Asking Your Cloud Provider

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:48:07 +0000

This show is #55, recorded on July 27, 2011 with Greg Ferro, Ethan Banks, Kim Pedersen, and Mrs. Y aka the Network Security Princess. We cover a bit of news, and then discuss the security and economic implications of outsourcing your applications to the cloud. Or…the “blah blah cloud” as those of us worn out [...]

Show 54 – Speaking With a LISP Expert – Cisco’s Victor Moreno

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 07:00:18 +0000

This show was recorded on July 7, 2011 (the week before Cisco Live Las Vegas), where Greg and Ethan were joined by subject matter expert Victor Moreno of Cisco in a topical podcast about LISP, the Locator/ID Separation Protocol. QUESTIONS WE ASKED What is LISP? What problems are addressed by LISP? How does LISP impact [...]

Show 53 – CCIE Lab Preparation Tips – Persistence Pays Off

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 23:00:39 +0000

Getting Started This show is #53, and was recorded on July 12, 2011. In this show, Ethan Banks, Tom Hollingsworth, Greg Ferro, Kurt Bales, and Nicolas Michel talk about the process of preparing for Cisco’s fabled CCIE lab exam. The show gets rolling with Tom checking in from CiscoLive and Ethan explaining how to set [...]

Show 52 – Cisco Live Quickie

packetpushers@gmail.com — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 18:18:26 +0000

This week Tom is at Cisco Live and in a short sharp show, got a hold of Tony Mattke to talk about the conference and what their experiences are. Somewhere along the line, Tony told us some of his poor experiences with the Nexus 2000 and design tips for a Nexus-centric data centre. Greg is [...]

Show 51 – Juniper QFabric

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:57:08 +0000

The much anticipated show about Juniper QFabric has finally arrived. Juniper QFabric is a different approach to building a switched network core - using what I call "expanded backplane" concept - to create a single Layer data centre switch fabric that uses a different approach from what we are used to by extending the backplane from a single switch to a multiswitch design.

Show 50 – Collapsing Layers

packetpushers@gmail.com — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:50:16 +0000

This show was recorded Thursday, 6/23/2011. Greg was away at Glastonbury, so joining Ethan on the mic are Kurt Bales, Jeff Fry, and Mrs. Y for a design-oriented discussion revolving around the emerging one-tier data center. First – the news. New Zealand Herald 6/23/2011 – Free service hides your online life from prying eyes – [...]

Show 49 – Cisco Nexus 1000v

packetpushers@gmail.com — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:30:58 +0000

A show about Cisco Nexus 1000V where we poke and prod at some of it’s inner workings. 1. Virtual Machine Networking – the Nexus 1000V VEM data plane, port profiles, etc. VSM control plane (Nexus 1010) 2. Virtual Security Gateway (VSG) – VM-level firewall for multi-tenant environments 3. VM-FEX – 802.1Qbg/h comparison – Virtual Machine [...]

Show 48 – Juniper Junosphere

packetpushers@gmail.com — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:15:36 +0000

This week we talk to Juniper about their Junosphere emulator and make the case for why the current version is very good but not suited for the Enterprise market ( because its actually too good ) and question why they are charging a customer for the hosted service. junosphere, unlike other emulators, is a fully [...]

Show 47 – Load Balancers – Good Thing We Didn’t Step in It

packetpushers@gmail.com — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 17:30:21 +0000

Value market versus Enterprise Market There is the load balancing market that most in networking are aware of, with vendors like Cisco and F5, and then there is the value market. Load balancers you can get for $2,500-$10,000 a piece (redundant coming in at around $5K to start, USD of course) that have many of [...]