Heavy Networking 694: A Network Engineering Roundtable

This week on Heavy Networking we’ve assembled a roundtable of network engineers to talk about…stuff. Each guest has brought a topic to discuss with the table, so we’ve got lots of subjects and lots of experiences and opinions. In particular we explore: Topic 1: SPB Why running Shortest Path Bridging in your multi-tenant environment is seriously niche, and yet still wonderful. Topic 2: Career Progression And Frustration What would you advise the folks affected by recent layoffs, fed up and looking to start their own thing (not sure what is the most fashionable name these days … startup or small company). It feels a bit that networking is becoming a commodity, and I’m getting a bit frustrated. Topic 3: Automation Isn’t Hard But It Ain’t Easy Either Writing automation for software isn’t complex, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy. Classic CS problems or leet-code style issues are very rare in the network automation and orchestration space, but it’s still VERY hard to get things going as you have to spend most of your time on figuring out all the details and coordination bits that aren’t software related. Topic 4: Self-Hosting What are the barriers to the “common Joe or Jane” or small business to hosting their own file and photo sharing or other resources? Is it too complicated, too much responsibility, too costly? Other things? What could the tech industry do to resolve these barriers? Our roundtable guests are: * Chris Cummings * Marvin Martin * Pete Lumbis * Rickard Andrinsson We’ll hold more roundtable sessions in the future. If you’d like to participate, you can join our Slack channel and raise your hand, or contact us at our Follow Up page at packetpushers.net/fu. We welcome beginner and senior engineers alike. Sponsor: Paessler You probably don’t think about infrastructure monitoring often, but it’s one of your most important decisions as an IT professional. Get your monitoring hosted in the cloud with Paessler PRTG Hosted Monitor, now with 50% off monthly subscriptions for new customers for the first three months. Go to Prtg.com and use the promo code “packetpushers.” Sponsor: Palo Alto Networks Your branch has changed. Your SD-WAN should, too. Join Palo Alto Networks to see how AI/ML is powering next-gen SD-WAN and SASE for the branch. SDxCentral and Palo Alto Networks hosted an exclusive online event that shows how next-gen SD-WAN and SASE can help you modernize and secure your branches. Go to SDXcentral.com to get the link to this free event to see the replay.