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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.
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HN849: Meter Acquires Packet Pushers
Packet Pushers has been acquired by Meter. On this special Heavy Networking episode, guest host Scott Robohn talks with Ethan Banks and Anil Varanasi, CEO of Meter, about the acquisition. Ethan and Anil explain how this relationship will wo
HN848: NetClaw: Your Open Source Network Assistant
John Capobianco returns to Heavy Networking to discuss his latest open source project, NetClaw. NetClaw is an automation assistant for network engineers that leverages MCP and has a robust security architecture to ensure production safety.
HN847: Building Trust In The Agentic NOC (Sponsored)
Many network engineers don’t trust AI, in part because the tech is non-deterministic and can behave in unanticipated ways. Simultaneously, the networking industry is baking AI functions deeply into operations, which has proven useful, but e
HN846: How Meter Built a Topology Design Tool to Speed Deployments from Hours to Seconds (Sponsored)
In this sponsored episode, Alex La Fazia and Daniel Kaczmarczyk of Meter explain how they built an internal tool to automate network topology creation, drastically reducing design time from hundreds of hours to seconds. They share how they
HN845: Real Life Use Cases for BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP)
Bart Dorlandt discusses the practical applications and architecture of the BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP) for service providers. Bart has developed a BMP application to help his customers monitor BGP. He talks about how he handles data colle
HN844: Multipath Reliable Connection (MRC)
Today’s show puts the “heavy” in Heavy Networking with a discussion about Multipath Reliable Connection (MRC). MRC is about getting an even distribution of RDMA traffic across equal cost multipath links in massive data centers, and doing so
HN843: From Network Engineer to Network Architect with Kevin Nanns
Drew and Ethan talk with Kevin Nanns about his journey from network engineer to network architect. Kevin shares his experience grappling with the shift in responsibilities, increased pressure, and communication and management challenges ass
HN842: How Network Engineers Can Prepare for a Post-Quantum World
Q-Day signals the public emergence of a cryptographically relevant quantum computer that can break public key encryption. The date of Q-Day is unknown but the tech industry is making preparations now. Bill Dockery joins Drew and guest host
HN841: HPE Melds Apstra and Mist for Self-Driving Data Center Networks (Sponsored)
In this sponsored episode, Kyle Baxter and Sridhar Katere from HPE join Drew to talk about automating enterprise data center networks. They discuss how HPE integrates its Apstra and Mist products to bring AI ops and self-driving capabilitie
HN840: How to Make a Technology Buying Decision
When engineers look to buy new technology they tend to focus on features and functionality, but there’s more to it than that. Sian Morgan joins Drew and Ethan to discuss the best practices involved in making a good technology buying decisio
HN839: Why Flows, Packets, and DDI are All Critical for Operational Effectiveness (Sponsored)
If you think of BlueCat as just an IPAM or DDI company, think again. BlueCat acquired LiveAction in 2024, and since then, they’ve been working to integrate LiveAction’s network observability capabilities with the DDI portfolio. In this spon
HN838: Meet Mr. Packets – Building Your Own Agentic AI Team Member
What does it take to build your own AI agent that could help with day-to-day network tasks? Hank Preston, a Distinguished Architect at Cisco, asked himself that question. He developed a presentation that walks through all the elements one m
HN837: Agentic AI to Reduce MTTR
Ethan Banks sits down with Eduard Dulharu live at AutoCon 5 to explore how agentic AI can be used to reduce Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR) for complex network environments. Eduard breaks down how these AI agents leverage deterministic workflo
HN836: Optimize AI Traffic on the WAN with Ciena’s Integrated IP Networking (Sponsored)
As more applications and services rely on AI inferencing, that means more traffic on the WAN. Yes, bandwidth can solve a lot of problems, it’s not unlimited and AI inference traffic still has to share pipes with other flows. That means thin
HN835: The Pros and Cons of Shortest Path Bridging (SPB)
Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) remains an intriguing and reliable fabric technology, offering a unique approach to Ethernet that differs from more widely deployed fabrics such as EVPN/VXLAN. Jeff Wilson joins Ethan and Drew to share his exper
HN834: HPE Self-Driving Networks: The Next Evolution of Network Automation (Sponsored)
In this sponsored episode, HPE’s Sunalini Sankhavaram and Jose Tellado discuss the architectural evolution toward self-driving networks. Together with Ethan and Drew, they break down how integrating agentic AI enables an autonomous architec
HN833: The State of Packet Pushers 2026
Ethan and Drew gather the rest of the Packet Pushers team to discuss the State of the Packet Pushers Network. Together they provide a behind the scenes look into current initiatives like adding video and raising the standards of our audio.
HN832: AI Agents Are Just Another Tool: How to Integrate With Your Network Automation Strategy (Sponsored)
AI has complicated network automation. It has created questions: If AI generates code for me, do I need to learn Python? Should I be writing a script to gather network information if I can dispatch an AI agent to gather that information for
HN831: The Sum, Not Just the Parts: How and Why to Think Holistically About Your Network
Your network is an interconnected system. A change you make on one device has consequences beyond that device. Therefore, to do your job well, you must think about the network as a whole. That’s the big idea behind a blog post written by gu
HN830: Tailscale CEO on WireGuard, Zero Trust, and Securing AI (Sponsored)
If you think Tailscale is just a VPN for the home lab, think again. On today’s sponsored episode Ethan and Drew are joined by Tailscale CEO Avery Pennarun. Avery explains how the company has evolved into an enterprise-grade connectivity and
HN829: EVPN/VXLAN Vs. TradCore
Drew and Ethan sit down with Tony Bourke to determine whether TradCore or EVPN VXLAN is right for your network. Tony is a seasoned instructor in automation, network design, and more. They explore the key factors for choosing a design, inclu
HN828: How Selector Unifies Cloud and On-Prem Network Observability (Sponsored)
Selector is extending its AI-driven network observability capabilities into public clouds. On today’s sponsored episode, we dig into how Selector gathers and analyzes public cloud network telemetry, how it integrates cloud and on-prem netwo
HN827: When Buffers Attack: Understanding Buffers to Better Diagnose Network Weirdness
Today’s episode covers buffers, the space between ingress and egress where a packet might have to live for a fraction of a second if the egress port is tied up transmitting other packets. This topic came courtesy of John Howard who joins Dr
HN826: An Inside Look at Palo Alto Networks Prisma Browser for Business (Sponsored)
A Mastercard survey reveals that 46% of small and medium businesses have experienced a cyberattack, and nearly 20% of those that suffered an attack were then forced to file for bankruptcy or close their business. Ethan and Drew along with g
HN825: Faster Than Dijkstra? Exploring a New Shortest-Path Algorithm with Bruce Davie
Dijkstra’s algorithm is the foundation of shortest path calculations for link state routing protocols. But researchers have developed a new algorithm that improves on this decades-old approach. Today’s Heavy Networking welcomes Dr. Bruce Da
HN824: That’s Not a Job for an LLM: The Right Way to Apply AI to Network Operations (Sponsored)
On today’s sponsored Heavy Networking, we get off the AI hype train to talk about how different artificial intelligence techniques usefully impact network operations—and where they aren’t a fit. The various forms of AI represent a set of to
HN823: Defining A Modern Network Service
On today’s episode Ethan is joined by Mark Prosser, a self-described Network Operator Advocate and Network Automation Dreamer, to embark on a thought exercise about network services. Together they grapple with questions such as: What is a n
HN822: Now I Understand. You Mean an AI-Safe Zero-Trust Network Automation Approach (Sponsored)
On today’s sponsored episode we talk with David Gee, CEO at Curvium, a systems integrator and VAR. David holds thoughtful opinions about network automation and orchestration, how such platforms are to be built, and the impact AI is having o
HN821: Boring Network Design Is Good
Ethan Banks sits down with Ryan Hamel at the 96th North American Network Operators’ Group (NANOG96). Ryan, a network automation developer for the Zayo Group, talks about why boring network design is actually a good thing. He and Ethan explo
HN820: Cyber Week 2026 Wrap Up with Palo Alto Networks: Agents, Prisma AIRS and NGTS (Sponsored)
Palo Alto Networks released a slew of product news at the 2026 RSA conference around AI security, SASE, and a new certificate lifecycle management offering. On today’s Heavy Networking, sponsored by Palo Alto Networks, Ethan and Drew dig in
