The Art of Pushing Packets, with Ethan Banks

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From refinancing a car to attend Novell School to founding one of networking's most influential podcasts, Ethan Banks shares his remarkable journey through the evolution of network engineering with raw honesty and deep insight.

In this captivating conversation, Ethan takes us back to the mid-90s when networks ran on a patchwork of protocols like IPX, DeckNet, and AppleTalk, before the industry consolidated around IP. His career trajectory mirrors the transformation of networking itself—constantly adapting, expanding in scope, and requiring an ever-broader skill set.

The story behind Packet Pushers reveals the grind of content creation that many never see. Starting in 2010 when podcasting was still emerging, Ethan and co-founder Greg Farrow recorded remotely (Ethan in the US, Greg in England) while working full-time jobs. Their philosophy of "just hit publish" and focus on consistent, quality content built a community when network engineers often felt isolated in their roles. Five years of this double workload culminated in taking the leap to full-time podcasting in 2015.

What makes this episode especially valuable is Ethan's perspective on where networking is heading. Today's engineers need to understand not just routing and switching, but cloud architecture, cybersecurity, automation, and software development principles. While certifications like CCNA still provide foundational knowledge, Ethan emphasizes understanding the "why" behind networking decisions rather than just memorizing commands.

For aspiring content creators, Ethan offers encouraging wisdom: don't be intimidated by existing content. Your unique perspective and communication style will connect with people in ways others can't. Creating technical content also forces deeper understanding, revealing knowledge gaps you might not have recognized otherwise.

Join our community at linktree.com/artofneteng and visit our Discord "It’s All About the Journey" to continue the conversation about career development, content creation, and navigating the future of networking.

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Find everything AONE right here: https://linktr.ee/artofneteng

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Art of Network Engineering, where
technology meets the human sideof IT.
Whether you're scaling networks, solving problems or shaping
your career, we've got theinsights, stories and tips to
keep you ahead in theever-evolving world of
networking.
Welcome to the Art of NetworkEngineering podcast.
My name is Andy Laptev and inthis monumental episode an
episode like no other in ourworld we have a very special

(00:20):
guest.
But before we get to the veryspecial guest, I would like to
other in our world.
We have a very special guest,but before we get to the very
special guest, I would like toreintroduce to our listeners our
new full-time slash 1099,because we don't have full-time
employees here at the Art ofNetwork Engineering.
Jeff Clark, how you doing, jeff?
Doing great.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Good, I'm happy to have you here.
Thanks for joining, thanks forhopping on the team and helping
us out.
As soon as you can, help me getour pictures up on the website.
That would be great, becauseJeff is much better at we have
complementing strengths andnavigating.
Wordpress is not mine.
I added Jeff and then deletedmy picture, so as the wheels

(00:58):
fall apart as I try to addthings, jeff's going to help me
fix it.
But while we're really heretoday, this is a very special
episode for me and hopefully foryou listeners we have of Packet
Pusher's fame, ethan Banks.
How you doing, ethan?

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Hey Andy, nice to be here.
I am doing all right, I'm doingall right.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
This is surreal for me.
So I know You're always so like, oh whatever, I'm just a guy,
right?
But so let me tell you why thisis surreal for me.
When did Pack a Pusher start?
It was like 2010, 2012.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
2010 was the first podcast we ever put out the door
.
Yeah, Right.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
So I think why you and your show means so much to
me and why every time I get oncalls with you, even at work,
it's getting less and less weirdfor me.
Every time I get on calls withyou, even at work, it's getting
less and less weird for me.
But when you meet somebodywho's had such a big impact in
your career and in your life, itkind of it does something to me
so quickly and then I'll shutup because I want to hear from
you.
But I met my now wife, thengirlfriend, in 2010.

(01:57):
And I was a cable guy for anISP, getting my butt kicked, not
making much money, climbing upand down ladders, getting hurt.
And it was right around thattime in 2010, when you started
Packet Pushers, that I decidedto start studying for my CCNA
and I'm like I need to build abetter life here.
My wife had an amazing job andeducation and I'm like making 20

(02:18):
bucks an hour killing myselfclimbing ladders, I'm like I
really need to do something.
I went to like this career fairthing while I was out hurt and
you know they were saying and Iwanted to go into network
engineering, how do you do that?
Right, it's we've all talkedabout it a million times.
The chicken or the egg had toget experienced without the job,
blah, blah, blah.
Right, and there's a lot ofanswers to that question, but
some of the best advice I got atthis career fair thing was you

(02:40):
know you can.
You can join social media.
At the time, twitter is big.
You can join Twitter and youcan connect with people in the
industry hiring managers,thought leaders, whatever you
know.
There are things like podcastsand YouTube videos.
You can go and you know.
They said what you want to dois you want to get in these
virtual rooms.
You want to hear how thesepeople speak and what?
What are they dealing with dayto day?

(03:00):
Like, what's that world like asyou're studying your CCNA?
So, anyway, I'm in my cable guytruck studying for the CCNA
with almost no support outsideof my girlfriend and close
family at the time, and I cameupon the Packet Pushers and what
you and Packet Pushers show didfor me was it let me in rooms
that I didn't have access to.
Yet you know, I heard you guystalking about the different

(03:22):
protocols and the differentproblems and what's happening
and, like I think I looked it upearlier, I think like some of
your first episodes might havebeen like Trill, just to, like
you know, ground us in time,right?

Speaker 3 (03:32):
But yeah, in 2010,.
We were like what's an Ethernetfabric going to look like and
what's the successor to spanningtree and stuff like that.
Those were all the rageconversations we're having for
quite a while.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
And we're having for quite a while and we're all
going to move to ipv6 soon, ohyeah, and automation right,
don't get me started.
Um, so anyway, the reason Ithink I I'm so thrilled to talk
to you and why this is amazingfor me and it's just.
I want to thank you for theimpact that you had, because I
listening to you, to your team,week after week as I was

(04:04):
studying, it took me quite sometime to get that certification,
quite some more time to get myfirst networking job.
I think in 2012 was when Ifinally got my first job, or
2013, in networking.
So, anyway, thank you for yourcontributions to not only my
life and my career but thecommunity, because I think
without you and without all thepeople that connected with me on
Twitter and tried to help me,you know, I might've given up.

(04:26):
Right, there was people thatwere like, when I was going to
give up over subnetting, you'relike, hey, man, hang in there,
let me show you a trick.
And when you know I'm like I'mnever going to learn any or I'm
not ever going to understand anyof this, I'd hear one of you
guys on your show and be like,yeah, this is really complicated
years and it's hard for them.
You know, like, maybe I can soso anyway, man, that's.
You know that's that's mylittle fanboy thing, but thank

(04:47):
you so much for being here.
Um, I thought we'd start withlike I don't know anything about
you outside of this packetpushers founder guy, and you
know we're not going to go backto like your birthday.
Like you know what was it likebeing a baby?
But what got you intonetworking?
Like I know you were in FinTech, right, you were a computer
science guy, yeah that was alongthe way.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Yeah, I got a computer science degree that
prepared me for programming iswhat that degree was.
So I graduated from college in93, and that degree was built
around coding and the languagesof choice at the day were things
like COBOL huge COBOL was bigat the time.
It wasn't Java yet, it wasn'tyou know a lot of languages, it

(05:33):
wasn't Python yet.
And I went out looking for workand, just long story short, I
wasn't really finding anything.
And I ended up after a coupleof years of poking around
looking for some kind ofprogramming work, going to
Novell School around looking forsome kind of programming work,
going to Novell School.
Novell NetWare was theoperating system of choice for

(05:55):
this brand new thing calledclient server networks and
building LANs at businesses andit was like this is an
opportunity, man, there's notnearly enough engineers that
understand how this stuff worksand just hop in and go.
So I, I I refinanced my car sothat I could go to Novell school
and got, get my, get a networkthree certification as a

(06:16):
certified network engineer.
And the company that ran thetraining school also ran a
consultancy and they neededsomeone and they saw me in the
class and went hey, youinterested in working for us as
a consultant?
I'm like, yes, and it startedfrom there.
So I started doing.

(06:37):
I was a junior consultant at aconsulting firm doing mostly
network and network related kindof work.
This was before Cisco was a bigthing.
This was before Palo Alto was abig thing.
Microsoft was just Windowsprimarily.
They weren't the behemoth thatthey became.
They were big, but not in theway we think of them in 2025,

(06:58):
for sure, and that was the startof it.
My Novell education taught meEthernet and what an Ethernet
frame is, and it wasn't reallyTCP IP at the time.
It was IPX.
In the Novell world that wasthe transport that they used for
everything, not IP.
Ip came later in the NetWareworld.
It eventually became IP, but inthe beginning it was IPX and so

(07:27):
I worked on networks in thebeginning that were a lot of
network and then also a mix ofother stuff.
A lot of shops had like deckminis, these mini computers that
would take up a substantialamount of space in a computer
room and you'd log into themwith a remote terminal of some
kind.
But there was a lot ofcommunications that would happen
across a network using DeckNetlot of communications that would
happen across a network usingdeck net again not ip, and I ran

(07:49):
.
I worked at a college for awhile that was a big apple shop
and again it for a while itwasn't ip, it was apple talk.
And so networks back in the mid90s were this mishmash of all
different kinds of networkingprotocols that eventually
consolidated it on ip, I'd sayby 99, 2000, 2001,.
Pretty much everything was IP atthat point.
Network converted, microsoftran on a mix of things but

(08:11):
settled on IP and everybody elsehad followed suit at that point
because the internet wasblowing up big.
So that's how it started.
I spent the first five years ofmy career doing a variety of
things, but mostly consulting,mostly around network, and then
later converting people off ofnetwork onto Microsoft

(08:32):
technologies because it was justway cheaper to go that route,
and so I did a lot of workmigrating people from network to
Windows NT and then laterWindows 2000 backends.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
I love that you refinanced your car to go back
to school.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
Like I love that, oh yeah, and then I wrecked it, and
then I was upside down on theloan.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Oh no, oh yeah, I used to sell cars.
I know what that means.
It's terrible.
You should have had gapinsurance, sir.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Oh yeah, Gap insurance was dad, my dad helped
me with the balance and wefound an absolute beater of a
replacement car that was like900 bucks in reverse.
Only worked half the time soyou had to be careful where you
parked and uh, and that got methrough novelle school until I

(09:13):
got my consulting job and then Icould.
I could get an actual car thatworked and stuff, yeah,
resourceful aren't we thenetworkers?

Speaker 1 (09:20):
and what I love most about that refinancing your car
story is like when I seesuccessful people, I think
they've always been successful.
There's like this weirdcognitive bias I have.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
I'm like, oh, he's always been on the top, Right,
yeah.
But then you get to know people.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
But you get to know people and you're like yo.
I had to refinance a car to goback to school because the comp
side didn't get me my job.
So like I just love hearingthis stuff this stuff like hey,
you know, listen her out there,like what you ever see, that
meme of, like you know it wasnothing's a straight line, it's
you know how it was a grind foryears, I mean.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
So I'm talking about the consulting gig but the rest
of the stories.
In that five years I consultedfor a while.
I had full-time jobs for awhile.
In order to get ahead or to geta job that either paid better
or had better benefit benefitsor had more responsibility and
more interesting challenges, Ihad to move around around a lot.
I mean some of my gigs.
Just I wasn't there for five,10 years.
I was there for two years,maybe three, maybe four was

(10:12):
usually my longest stintanywhere that I went.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
But I so.
It's funny you mentioned that,because that's actually one of
the things that I tell a lot ofnewer engineers who were talking
to me about.
You know, how do you move up inyour career.
I'm like sometimes you got tomove out.
It's really easy to thinkyou're going to get that job or
you're going to stay thereforever and maybe you really
like the people you work with,you like your manager, but
there's going to come a timewhen you're going to get stale

(10:41):
on what you're learning or thepay Sounds like you learned it
too.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
It was no choice.
You're a young guy, youngmarried, two little kids at home
, mortgage car payments andyou're scraping and fighting and
I'm doing work on the side.
I had two jobs a lot of timesthe main job and then some kind
of moonlighting In.
Let's see, sort of been 2000,2001,.

(11:05):
Maybe I moonlighted running aweb hosting services out of my
basement.
I got a uh, I had done thatwork for a service provider that
was a startup and went out ofbusiness.
So I had all these skills whereI understood how to do web
hosting, dns, uh, email and soon, email and so on, got a

(11:27):
business line from my isp sothat I could have the ip
addresses I needed and all thatstuff.
And uh and did, did that forpeople as a way to make a few
extra bucks.
Uh, that's just, that's justwhat you did and it's.
It's a wicked grind, it is hard,and all during that there's
certifications.
I'm studying for certs.
Novella is just the beginning.
Then it was Microsoft certs,later on it was Cisco certs and
it was just this constant how doI qualify myself to have a more

(11:51):
responsible position?
And figuring out a strategy andthen going after the next thing
.
And it was constant.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
How did you get?

Speaker 2 (12:00):
your industry insight .

Speaker 1 (12:02):
Like I would listen to pack of pushers or on Twitter
posts and people would say, oh,you got to get your CCNA, it's
the first thing, right, likewhere were you getting your
industry knowledge from when youwere coming up?

Speaker 3 (12:11):
There was a paper trade rag that I got.
That was, I think it was aweekly called Network World.
Network World it was largeformat.
It was not like a traditionalmagazine, it was quite a bit
bigger and more like somewherebetween a magazine and a
newspaper.
I guess I'd read that.
They report on things the IETFwere doing things that was
happening at at ICANN bigchanges going on in the internet

(12:32):
, a big lab report.
We tested all the MPLS boxes.
I didn't know what MPLS was,but I read about it, trying to
get my head around what wasgoing on.
And there were also mailinglists.
There were news groups, nntp,usenet that whole world was out
there.
So there were places toexchange information for sure.
More or less the same as wehave today, just different

(12:59):
protocols, different platforms.
And then classroom.
There was a lot of classroomwork I did and you'd pick up a
lot going to those classes.
So you go attend a class,you're surrounded by a bunch of
other nerds that are in some Idon't know firewall class or
something, and you just talk topeople at once.
What are you guys working on atyour shop?
Well, we've got this project.
We're doing this.
What are you in the classroom,for Well, I've got to figure out

(13:19):
how to standardize our firewallbuild so that we can deploy
this to, you know, 150 remoteoffices or something like
whatever it was.
And you, you pick up a lot ofthings that way.
It was slower, but you, youpicked up stuff like that in
that way.
There weren't podcasts, someamount of newsletters, there
were RSS feeds from from a lotof websites that had articles

(13:43):
and then and then paper.
Literally, I look forward togetting Network World on my desk
in my office every week, or inmy cubicle, as the case may be,
and I'd thumb through it andread what I could and you just
pick it up as you go.
Just a little different thannow where everything's real time
and everything's clamoring foryou and you've got the waterfall

(14:04):
on LinkedIn and you couldn'tkeep up.
There's too much to keep upwith in 2025.
And it's kind of been that wayfor a while.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Now it feels like there's too much right, and
you're such a pro.
You made the segue for me, sothank you.
You said there was no podcastback then, so I'm doing the math
.
It looks like you're inindustry.
I Setback Pushers startedaround 2010.
So how do you get from the guythat you just described to like
hey, I want to start a podcast?
There's this new thing calledpodcasts, right?

Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah, yeah, Yet another industry source were
blogs.
So there were a lot of us thatwere independent people that
were blogging, and I was one ofthem.
I blogged through my CCIEstudies, starting in 2007
through 2008 until I finallypassed that lab.
And there were others of usthat had some notoriety because

(14:51):
of blogging and we all kind ofknew each other, and Greg Farrow
, who was the other founder ofPacket Pushers.
He retired in 2024.
But he approached me.
He's like hey, you want towrite for my blog?
He had a really popular blogcalled the Theory of Mind.
That was an honor to be askedand I was like, well, I got my

(15:11):
own blog, that's doing okay.
So I don't really have thespace to write for the Theory of
Mind, but I had this idea abouta podcast.
He's like, yeah, because I'vebeen talking to people about a
podcast too.
So he and I were both had beenthinking about that because we'd
both been listening to podcastson our own.
We're kind of there, wasn't?
We both knew there was nothingin the networking space and we

(15:32):
were intrigued and and I hadsome audio background and Greg
had spent time in a band, so weboth knew a bit about audio and
about performance and that kindof stuff and we're like, let's
give it a shot, and so, and sowe did, we, so we did.
That's the long and the shortof it.
We kicked it around.
There was a third guy that hadjoined us, Dan Dan, not long
after the podcast started, wentto work for AWS in Ireland and

(15:59):
was not allowed to speakpublicly anymore.
That was just the rules ofworking for AWS.
So he had to drop prettyquickly.
But there were three of us inthe very, very beginning and
then it was Greg and I and Itook some classes and did some
different things and TomHollingsworth, who you guys
might know from Tech Field Dayfame and some of the podcasts

(16:19):
that Tom is on, covered for mewhile I was doing some classes
in those early days.
And then I got done with thatwork and you know, and I was
Greg and I, you know, for for along time.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Are the old episodes available?
Like I know, sometimes it agesout of pod catchers and you have
to like subscribe.
They're not stuff.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
They are available if you but you have to, but but
not conveniently.
You need to go Backupbushesnet.
Just dig through the archives.
All the MP3s are there, all theway back to the very very
beginning, when Greg was evenmore free to say what was on his
mind in the very early days.
There's some gems.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Wait, there was a more free Greg version of the
Greg I know.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
You have no idea.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Oh my God, I mean I love Greg, I love his snark, I
love his.
You know I love the.
So I came up listening to radioas a kid and I was a howard
stern fan and like.
So you guys, you and greg, kindof had a really good.
You know he was the wild manright like he would just say
whatever and poke whoever andlike, but then you always seemed
way more.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
I don't know we, we played it.
That uh, he was the a classiccomedy duo, if you will is the
straight man and the funny man.
So I would be more of thestraight guy and he'd be more of
the funny guy.
But we weren't doing comedyexactly, but he would be.
He'd lean into his personalityand say the things that were
outrageous.
It was a persona that you wearto be this larger than life

(17:39):
personality.
That, uh, that he did so wellit was, it was so effective in
that role.
But it got to be.
He and I would trade offediting duties was back in the
day, we edited the shows um,ourselves, and you know,

(18:00):
depending on the week, I'd do itor he'd do it, and uh, it'd be
his turn to edit and I'm likeyou're gonna edit out that bit
where you said whatever, andhe'd be like oh yeah, yeah, sure
.
And then I'd listen back to theshow.
It's like, oh crap, you left itin, so let me ask you this was
early 2010.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Were you guys in the same room recording then, or?
No were you able to manage todo it remotely, and then what?
You send the files to eachother.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
Because we, yeah, we, we, exactly we we did it
remotely.
Um, greg has lived in inEngland for the whole time.
I've known him and I live onthe East coast, us and we'd
record with Skype.
In the very early days I don'tthink there were any other tools
that we were using.
We share some kind of a scriptdocument and we record.

(18:49):
We would record our individualtracks locally and but typically
the way we do the edits in theearly days were just record
Skype as an application.
There was the software we woulduse would grab Skype as an
application.
Right, there was, uh, uh, thesoftware we'd use would grab
skype as an application becauseyou get both tracks on the same
you know audio file, which youknow meant sometimes people

(19:11):
talked over each other andwhatever it wasn't you know like
.
You know perfect quality, likeyou can get if everybody's on an
individual track, like we'regetting, and not the recording
platform we're using now.
Um, but it was good enough andthat's the thing.
That's one of the things Gregand I learned early on.
It's like just hit, publish,just stop fussing over it, just
get it, just get it good enoughand get it out the door, hit,

(19:32):
publish, go.
And we did.
We came up with a formula in ourediting workstation so that the
audio would be good enough andwe'd edit out the worst of the
errors and whatever, whatever weneeded to, and uh and just hit
publish.
That's we.
We did, uh, did it that way.
So it was a little raw, it wasa little unhinged at times, but

(19:52):
we were always trying to havegood quality content out there
for network engineers to.
Like.
You were saying, andy, wewanted people to have community,
we wanted people to be like I'mnot alone out here.
I'm not because so many networkengineers in our experience
were alone.
We were the only ones, or therewere maybe two of us, and we
didn't work in the same office,whatever company it was, and so

(20:14):
it was a lonely gig.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
It was before social media, right, it wasn't even
like everybody was connectedeverywhere there was Twitter,
but it hadn't blown up yet.

Speaker 3 (20:25):
There were blogs and, like, the commenting world of
blogs mattered more and you'dsee some of the same handles
come up and again there were usenet groups and you know there
was kind of community, but itwasn't.
Social media wasn't as popularas it is now.
It wasn't the thing.
You just counted on that backin those days not everybody had
a phone in their pocket becausethey were expensive and not
everybody could justify them.

(20:46):
And you might have still had aBlackBerry for marketing, you
might even still had a pager andso on.
So yeah, we evolved through allof those changes.
And what is normal modernsociety these days?

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Did you have day jobs at the time?

Speaker 3 (21:01):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, big time.
Yeah, greg was consulting for acloud operation in Europe that
I can't remember the name of,and I had a mix of jobs.
I was working for a companythat published IT training and I
wasn't doing any of thetraining.
I actually was internal ITsupport.
I was building the network andrunning the network for all

(21:24):
their offices.
That was like a three-yearproject.
I did a full overhaul of thatnetwork at that time.
Then I went to work for amedical information exchange
startup that didn't end up goinganywhere, but they hired me
because they were going big boy,here we go and I'm like you
know, it's going to cost sevenfigures to do the network right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get thefunding, it's gonna be fine.

(21:45):
They never did, as far as Iknow, get the funding, and so I
gave up after a while on that.
But but we went full time withpacket pushers in 2015.
Greg had come to the end of hiscontract and didn't want to
renew it.
He could have kept working atthe where he was at, and it was
just like I'm done, I don't wantto and packet pushers looks
like it's going somewhere, andfor me, I was in the same boat.

(22:08):
It's like I've been working twojobs for a long time and I was
getting pretty tired and againpacket pushers looked like it
was going somewhere, and so heand I had both like paid down
our mortgages to de-risk thingsand we're like let's try it and
see what happens fingers crossed.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
2015 about five years in yeah, five years in a bit
yeah, but that was five years ofgrinding man.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
I mean, you, you have a podcast.
You know the deal.
To put a show out every weekjust a single show is like a lot
of work.
Um, you got to coordinateguests.
You got to do the editing.
You got to, you know, hitpublish.
You got to plan shows.
You got to be looking ahead andthinking about what you're
going to do, not just this weekbut the week after that and the
week after that, and you know,and then as sponsors started to

(22:52):
work with us.
Now you've got responsibilitiesto them and you got to deal with
accounting and you have tostart an LLC and you got to
think about an accountant thatcan help you with taxes and it's
all this stuff that comes.
You're running a small business.
Now is what's happening, and ittook a lot.
So we were doing that as wellas working the full-time jobs,
and it got to be a bit much.

(23:12):
So when we had a shot where wecould just go full-time with it,
we decided to lean into thatand that seemed to be a catalyst
for, like, well, pack-a-punchis doing okay to okay, this is a
full-time thing, and thatseemed to kick it up a notch

(23:33):
where, all of a sudden, when wecould devote our full time to it
, it felt like it took off.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, you just read my mind.
It took off right around thetime you two made the commitment
that, like, this is now our job.
And I wonder if they're related.
You know, like when you guysjust committed and had more time
.
And because I often wonder, andagain, I don't, I can't imagine
it ever working, because I knowhow much we charge for one
sponsored episode and then Ithink of how many I'd have to
sell just to cover what I makeat a vendor and I'm like, oh my

(23:58):
god right, so so it's, it's.
It's always like a scary thing,thinking like how could I ever
make this happen?
But it's so amazing.
Refinance your car.
Yeah, that's what I need to dofor sure.
Do you have any favorite guestsor episodes that stick out?
It's probably impossiblebecause you've been doing it so
long and I don't want to hurtanybody's feelings, but are you

(24:19):
like, oh my God, that day thatGreg told the AWS CEO to screw
off was the best day ever?
I'm guessing it's somethingGreg said.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
I don't have a story like that.
I guess that sticks out in thatI probably recorded, I'm going
to guess, a couple of thousandpodcasts over the years and a
lot of stuff blurs together likeheavy networking, which I've
been on the majority, vastmajority of is we're approaching
800 episodes now.
I did a lot of network breaksin the early days that's, that

(24:51):
was the new show.
I did a lot of a differentseries that we've sunsetted but
it was called Priority Q.
It was kind of our overflow forheavy networking.
So there's just there's allthese shows that I've been on,
you know, plus guest appearanceson shows like this one and Russ
White's, the Hedge and you knowand other shows.

(25:11):
So you know, the answer to yourquestion is I can't give you a
specific episode, but I can giveyou a specific type of episode.
So there are shows that we'vedone where the guest was such a
deep subject matter expert inwhatever their thing is.
They know their topic so welland have the ability to explain
it and they're passionate aboutit.
Those are my favorite showswhere you're just like I don't

(25:33):
want this conversation to end, Iwant to keep talking to this
person, just going deep, deep,deep in it.
One show like that that comes tomind that I've recorded, I
don't know, within the lastthree years.
Maybe there's an instructor bythe name of Ed Harmoosh.
I don't know if you know Ed,but Ed went deep on TLS 1.3.

(25:55):
He studied that topicintimately, knew so deeply that
topic, and he and I got on and Isaid, well, let's do a show
about this.
And he was able to use that asa promo for a full-blown course
he had taught on this whichdemonstrated he was just
demonstrating his knowledge.
Oh man, that show was awesomeand someone emailed me I could

(26:18):
fix it.
A few people that emailed us andsaid that show you did with
that about TLS.
I have listened to that threetimes because this change from
1.2 to 1.3 is really impactingour environment and I need to
understand this deeply, to knowwhat we're going to change to
accommodate this Shows like that.
I love that stuff, man.

(26:39):
I never get bored of the superdeep, nerdy content because it
addresses problems people haveand it's hard to come by the
information in a digestibleformat.
But you find that guest whoknows that topic super well
because maybe they're in theIETF and they've been in the
working group that's beendeveloping the standard and they

(27:00):
just they can go hard on thetopic.
Oh, love that stuff, it's great.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
So, before we pivot away from podcasting because I'd
like to get into some industryand career stuff, just because
you've talked to so many peoplefor so long and I'm hoping, part
of at the end of this episode,we can give a little bit of
insight into, maybe, where theindustry is headed, maybe the
kind of skill sets we see thatsuccessful engineers have.
That might not be replaced byour new favorite two letter word

(27:26):
that that I won't say out loud.
Two letter word that that Iwon't say out loud.
Um, so, before we pivot out, doyou have any?
I would hate if somebody askedthis to me, but it's one of my
questions um, any advice foraspiring content creators?
Right, like people who arelistening that.
So we always espouse, like, ifyou can communicate, create
content.
Like people who were trying tolook for that differentiator.
How do I get the job?

(27:47):
How do I get my name out there?
How can I, you know, showexperience?
Home labbing is always a thing.
Right, build a lab if you canshow this and that and the other
thing content creation.
And it's probably because I dowhat I do here, but I always
think it's a need, like blogging, to your point.
I started blogging back in 2011, before anything else, and I
still refer back to thosesometimes like oh, what was that
?
You know frame relay Delseything that was on the CCNA exam

(28:08):
that I wrote about.
So, um, do you have any advicefor an aspiring content creator?
We have the King here.
What would you tell somebody todo?

Speaker 3 (28:17):
I would say don't be intimidated by what other people
have written.
Ah, so-and-so already wroteabout that topic, I'm not going
to write about it.
Yeah, that's not how contentcreation works.
Um, yes, somebody else wroteabout it.
They're not going to writeabout it.
The way you can write about it,you've got your own way of
communicating.
So don't be shy, get it outthere, write your thing and your
style, develop your ownaudience.
Different people connect todifferent humans for different

(28:39):
reasons and in different ways.
And that person that wrote thatother article you're like oh, I
can't, I don't need to writethat.
Look at that article.
It's amazing that someone elsemight not connect to that
article, for whatever reason.
You're going to write it.
You're going to have your owntake and your own I don't know
diagrams, analogies, way ofexplaining things, and someone's
going to read your version ofthat and go I get it now, I get

(29:03):
it Subscribe.
And now you've just made a fanand they're going to try to keep
up with what you're doing.
So just don't worry aboutwhat's out there, just do your
own thing.
There's a lot of things you cando with content creation.
One is I think I want to make aliving.
Don't think about it that way,not to begin with, think about
it because you want to learn atopic deeply.

(29:24):
There is nothing like creatingcontent around a topic to figure
out if you truly understand atopic or no.
You're going to start writingabout a thing or creating a
podcast or a YouTube video andthen get two thirds of the way
through and go oh crap, Iactually I actually have no idea
what happens next, or, or it'dbe like I was working in the lab
.
I thought this was supposed tohappen.

(29:45):
That is not what happened.
Okay, okay, okay.
I got to stop, I got to reviewthis thing, figure out what I
did not understand, and then,you know, go again.
Um, there's nothing like thatsort of work, to make sure you
truly understand a topic.
So that's another great reasonto uh, to create a uh, to create
content, um.
Another thought is I want to bea YouTuber and make a million

(30:07):
dollars.
Yeah, you won't, especially notin a niche world like this.
It's very difficult.
I don't want to discourageanybody here, but if you think
you're going to go and makecontent and that's going to be
your living, that's hard.
One of the advantages that Gregand I had when we started, the
show we did was first to market.
We were there at the right time.

(30:28):
We got lucky.
There's an element of luck thathappens Now, in 2025, everybody
wants to be a YouTuber or apodcaster and it's very trendy
and there's all these tools outthere that make it much easier
to do it than what was out therewhen we started.
So it's just it's tougher.
So many things are going afterpeople's attention.
There's all kinds of streamingservices now that didn't use it

(30:49):
In 2010,.
Cord cutting was a questionmark.
Do I have cable or do I cut thecord and go to Netflix or
something?
Now there's 15, 20, howevermany streaming services all
competing for your attention,plus YouTube, plus TikTok and
all the rest, and you, as acreator, are competing against

(31:09):
all those services now forsomeone's attention, and it's
tough and people's brains havebeen rewired where it's harder
for them to pay attention todeep technical content.
They got to really want it andbe willing to put the effort in
to make the attention, to haveit penetrate their brains that
they can learn something.
That's a choice.
They got to make it's wayeasier to watch.

(31:29):
I don't know brain rot stuff,honestly, and that stuff tends
to be addictive, and so, as acreator, you're up against that
and I can tell you from a packetpusher perspective we're up
against that.
It's not like our subscribernumbers have been up and to the
right since 2010.
Nah, it peaked in, I don't know, 2017 or so probably 2018.
And it's been kind of up anddown.

(31:51):
It kind of oscillates sincethen and part of it is just
there's too much content in theworld for people to listen to.
So if you're an aspiringcontent creator, you got to find
your niche, you got to findyour voice and you got to be
patient and it's a grind tobuild up that audience, grind to

(32:11):
build up that audience.
But if you find your voice andyou, you and it'll take you a
little bit of time to find yourvoice what your writing style is
, if you're a podcaster orYouTuber how you present on
camera, how you say things, howyou phrase things, who you're
working with and finding thechemistry.
If you're like, do a co-hostkind of a thing, all that stuff
takes time and you gotta bepatient with it and and it.
And if you're going to dotechnical content, then you've

(32:31):
just narrowed your audience downbecause anybody can watch I
don't know a car review or amusic podcast, let's say, people
that are interested in networkengineering or cybersecurity.
It's a smaller crowd, there's asmaller TAM total addressable
market that's out there, and soto find your voice for those

(32:52):
people, it can be tough, but ifyou really want to do it and
you're good at it, you'll findthem.
They'll be there.
Just put the time in.
It's not going to happenovernight.
It just isn't.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
It's such a good answer.
Technical content is so hard.
I have like an eight minuteNetFlow video that I did.
It probably took me three weeksto like produce an eight minute
.
Just you know, you're buildingthe lab and figuring it and to
your point I'm like I know howthis works.
And then you configure it andyou're like crap, what, why
didn't it do the thing?
And then that's a weak rabbithole of like something else I

(33:22):
didn't know.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
And I'm like, oh, the thing with the other thing in
there, uh, or the dependencythat you didn't expect to see
show up, or it worked theprevious three times and now it
failed when I, after I, hit therecord button.
Why what?

Speaker 1 (33:36):
just why, yeah, or this always worked in production
, but now I'm at home and I'mvirtualizing esxi and now it's
not working.
Is it the emulation?
Is it the feature?
I don't know.
I spent three weeks fightingBFD and the 9000, you know the
virtual 9000s 9Ks for Cisco andESXi.
I spent three weeks fightingBFD to come to find out that

(33:57):
it's not a supported feature.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
I'm trying to install Librand MS on a brand new
Ubuntu, install that I did onthis old Mac I was doing that
just before we hit record hereCouldn't get PHP installed, why?
Well, you know I've been aroundthe block before and it's like
oh, you know what Ubuntu doesn'tknow about the repo that the
PHP is living in.
And I got it.
What's the command for that?
I don't know.
You know, again 10 minuterabbit hole.

(34:20):
You finally find the command,put it in, do the thing.
Yay, php is installed.
Now I can continue with LibraNMS, install Stuff like that.
It's constant.
Yeah, so yeah.
Three weeks to produce an eightminute video, I believe it.
That sounds about right.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
But you have to love this stuff and I think people
who've created content if you'reinterviewing someone across the
table and they have createdcontent to me it shows a level
of passion and curiosity that,like these people, go through
the pain, dig in the rabbitholes, get it right, because you
really have to just smash yourhead into the table sometimes to
create some of this stuff.

(34:52):
And you know you reminded meearlier there's this weird
dichotomy between, like onTikTok, you can get 100,000
viewers and get people to payyou making one minute videos,
but on the other side of thespectrum, the YouTube videos
that perform the best are likelong form.
So it's so strange and I don'tknow if that's just where the
old people are, like me like, oh, I like the long, technical

(35:13):
thing, but there's such a weirdkind of chasm between if you can
do it in a minute, great, youcan get rich and famous.
Or if you can spend an hour,you can be network chuck and
have a bajillion followers, likeI don't know where the
difference is between I thinkit's two different kinds of
audiences.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
I think there's one audience that's got their brains
kind of wired for the shortform stuff and they can't,
because they need time away fromthat to rewire their brain back
to being able to actually reada chapter of a book or whatever,
something that would take theirthey could take a long time.
And then you got other peoplethat aren't hooked that way and
they can watch longer formvideos and they're motivated by

(35:51):
something.
They're motivated by thecreator, they feel a connection
to him.
Like you mentioned, NetworkChuck yeah, he's great, he's
very personable.
Oh man, you can't help but watchthat guy and feel immediately
connected to him.
He's real, he's authentic, he'sfunny and he's got a great
beard.
Funny and he's got a greatbeard.
So you know all those things.
You're like I like this, I likethis guy, I want to watch this
guy and it's okay, you can sitthere and watch him and you're

(36:12):
going to learn something whenyou watch Network Check, do what
he does.
But those are two differentpersonality types and two types
of brains.
I think that if someone'smotivated enough to want to
learn like I was reading in asubreddit about CCNA, just to
kind of get the vibe of wherepeople are at as they're

(36:33):
studying.
They will go and watch contentabout CCNA because they really
want that cert, because they'retrying to break into the
industry.
They are highly motivated.
Yeah, they'll watch longer formcontent, but how many people
are highly motivated like that?
That is the question.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
You think that's still the cert to go after?
Here's our segue you keep doingmy job for me.
I really appreciate this.
So you know how do we?
Our industry is changing right?
I've been around for about 15years in this industry and what
has changed?
So for me, when I think ofwhat's changed in the 15 years
I've been in, when I started itseemed to be like you alluded to

(37:08):
earlier the deeper you could go, the more minutiae into the
detail.
Get your CCNA, then get yourCCNA voice, then get your NP,
then get your NP something andthen go for your IE.
It seemed like the deeper, andthere's always going to be a
need.
In my opinion, this is like theold guy crew, right?
So the TikTokers, who are like22,.

(37:36):
I don't know if this resonateswith them, but I came up that
the deeper you can go and themore knowledge you have, that
seemed to be better for yourcareer.
But I feel like we're kind ofswinging back towards more of a
generalist kind of.
It seems like we're askingnetwork engineers to do more and
more.
Does that sound true?
Or is that just my weird littleview of the world?

Speaker 3 (37:51):
I'll give you my my feeling.
Uh, I can't say, I have harddata to back this up, but my my
feeling is you're a networkengineer, but you're also other
things too.
Um, you're, you're, you have toknow something about cloud.
You, you almost certainly haveto know something about cyber
security and anything you knowat an application level, like if
you understand how web serverswork, particularly like HTTP and

(38:12):
proxies and reverse proxies,and then, well, I mean I was
going to say network adjacent,but this is still network load
balancing and those sorts ofskills.
There's a core set oftechnologies that if you were a
network engineer 20 years ago,it's kind of most of what you
needed to know and I would putthose in as route and switch.

(38:32):
If you knew routing protocols,if you knew switching VLANs and
so on, and you know how tooperate a LAN and a WAN, that
was a job for a company that wasbig enough to need your skills.
That's all you needed to know.
Along the way you picked upcybersecurity, you probably
needed to know.
Along the way you picked upcyber security, you probably
needed to know something aboutfirewalls, because you were
plump to the internet and youhad to kind of rethink a lot of

(38:55):
things and that became also.
Now you need to know ids, ips,and now you're a specific kind
of company facing specific kindof threats and there's some
other piece of hardware you hadto throw in to do proxy TCP
handshakes or something,whatever it was that you had to
put in, and the skill set justkind of got broader, what you

(39:17):
needed to know as a networkengineer, and that hasn't
stopped.
Then cloud came along, now, okay, well, now I got to know cloud
networking and I got tounderstand IPsec better than I
did before maybe, and I neverreally got into BGP.
But now I got to know more BGPand they're doing what it's a
load balancer, but in the cloud.

(39:38):
Okay, well, I was used to my F5thing that you know sat in the
rack and I knew what that did.
Now I got to figure thatfunctionality out, but in AWS or
Azure or or gcp or all three,and let's add oracle cloud to
the mix too.
And now, of course, in 2025,what's all the rage?
Automation.
Now it's like, okay, so I'mgoing to take all these things

(39:58):
that I used to configure by handand now figure out a set of
tools that are going to allow meto automate the deployment
installation of all of thatstuff.
So that's a whole differentthing and apparently I have to
do it like a software developerdoes it.
So if I didn't know anythingabout software development
before, I got to get my headaround those concepts and so I

(40:21):
guess what I'm saying is, whenyou're breaking into the
industry in 95 or 2000 or even2010, the things you needed to
know was a smaller set and theywere complicated and technical.
In 2025, you got to know allthat stuff and more.
That's also hard and figure outhow all these different things

(40:43):
work together.
So a show I started with HollyMetlitsky.
She is two years in working forJuniper Networks and I started
this show with her called NS forNetworking because we saw this
need for network fundamentalsand Holly's like I want to know
how this stuff works forwardsand backwards.
But you know what we've beengetting requests for from junior

(41:07):
engineers.
I want you guys to talk aboutEVP and VXLAN.
Well, to get to EVP and VXLAN,you have to know so much about
so much.
You need to know VLANs.
You need to know VXLAN as aprotocol translation types,
vtaps, tunneling.
You need to know BGP as arouting protocol.
You got to understand layer two, switching, because you're

(41:29):
moving Mac addresses around nowand not as in your NLRIs, et
cetera.
There's all this stuff that goeson.
There's hardware implicationsfor this.
It's a really complicated thing.
You can't start there.
The industry has evolved toEVPN, vxlan as a pretty standard
way to build out data centersparticularly, but other sorts of

(41:51):
topologies as well.
But the technology stack thatis used to build that is really
complex and there's a lot oflayers to it.
And it used to be.
Vlans were a thing you'dscratch your head about and try
to get your head around andunderstand.
And now it's yeah, that's justone teeny piece of this much

(42:13):
larger puzzle to put togetherthis fabric.
So I don't envy a networkengineer trying to get their
heads into it.
So this is a long way to getback around to.
Is CCNA the right place tostart?
Okay, let's take a step evenfurther back from that.
Training programs by vendorslike Cisco are marketing tools.

(42:35):
That's their primary purpose inlife.
The reason Cisco systems is theI don't think anyone would
fight me on this the mostsuccessful networking company
that's ever been.
By sales volume, by products,by acquisitions, however you
want to do the measurement, Imean Cisco's the biggest,
baddest company that's ever beenas far as networking goes.

(42:55):
One of the reasons that becametrue is because back in the day,
you followed the Ciscocertification ladder to become a
network engineer.
It was more or less the onlygame in town.
It was respected, it wasthorough.
Their training was you couldn'tfault it.
Really, it was absolutelyexcellent and they took you from

(43:16):
the associate level to theprofessional level, to the
expert level, and CCIEs werelike deities.
Someone was a CCIE, they hadtheir number.
You, someone was a CCIE, theyhad their number.
Oh, you know, that was like oh,may I?
May I ask you a question, sir?
You?

Speaker 1 (43:32):
said I still, I still treat you like a deity.
By the way, the IE is I'm stillamazed by, because I know how
hard the NP was.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
I've been abused lately.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
So that but that but.
But why did what?
Was the the benefit for Ciscoto put that training out the
door?
They didn't do italtruistically, so that, like
you know, we think we're goingto shoulder the burden of
education for the community.
Well, no, what they were doingwas building soldiers for their

(44:04):
army.
You get your CCNA NP andwhatever else you might get.
What do you know?
You know your CCNA NP andwhatever else you might get.
What do you know?
You know networking?
Yes, absolutely.
You knew networking really well.
You also knew it from the Ciscoperspective and you were
comfortable at the Cisco commandline and you knew the Cisco
product set.
And so what were you mostcomfortable with and what were
you going to recommend?

(44:24):
As a consultant or as the techlead at your company where you
were a network engineer?
You're going to recommend Ciscogear.
That's the way that worked.
And Cisco took over the planeton to, in my mind, on the backs
of, uh, of their certifiedpeople, uh, people like me, and,
and thousands of others,millions of others that got some

(44:47):
level of cert.
Uh, and if you're reallybonkers, yeah, and thousands of
others, millions of others thatgot some level of cert.
And if you're really bonkers.
Yeah, you went all the way upto the IE level and you were an
advocate for Cisco In 2025, Idon't think those certs are
quite the same.
Is it still excellent education?
You bet Absolutely it is.
But the market has fractured alot.

(45:11):
And Cisco does networking.
That's still what they're knownthe most for.
But if you look at theiracquisitions over the years and
the other things that they'vebeen doing, they do a lot of
stuff that's IT related andthey're working on quantum
computing now and they gotstorage stuff and they've made a
bunch of security acquisitionsand they'll sell you all kinds
of things.
They were big into voice.

(45:32):
I remember when they boughtsomebody to help them get into
the voice world and they startedmaking IP phones and we were
all like, yeah, is that whatyou're going to do?
And I don't know what that.
That was a huge business forthem.
They did a massive business inthat and that's been their

(45:56):
strategy, where it's networkingand then networking adjacent
stuff.
That feels like networking butit's more like applications that
run on top of the network, likevoice, where you got to know
things like quality of serviceand how to configure a switch
that when an IP phone plugs intoit, it's going to get the right
IP address and be put in theright VLAN and the traffic is
going to be prioritized in theright way.
And so now, in 2025, if youlook at what most of the Cisco
certification programs are, itis still good network education,

(46:18):
but with a heavier accent onthe Cisco way and the Cisco
product lines and the Cisco wayof doing things, because in part
of this fracturing that's inthe market.
Like Andy, you work for Nokia.
Well, the Nokia way of buildingthings and the tooling that is
used and the approach isdifferent.
It's just a different, a wholedifferent vibe from doing things

(46:39):
.
The Cisco way, juniper it's thesame boat.
Juniper has been fightingagainst Cisco forever and the
Juniper way of doing things isdifferent from the Cisco way of
doing things.
Are they the same protocols?
Do we end up with the sameresult?
Do we recognize that this is arouter running BGP?
Sure, but the implementationdetails across these different

(47:01):
vendors is wildly different andyour comfort level to be able to
make the thing, do the thingchanges based on your training
and education.
So, if you get your CCNA in 2025, are you able to go work on a
Nokia network?
Yes, and no, because you're notgoing to understand a lot of

(47:21):
the configuration of the tooling.
You're going to understandVLANs and OSPF and BGP and a lot
of other things that are goingto be common, but the feel of
it's going to be different andyou're going to have some
learning to get you over there.
So maybe you want to do Nokiatraining or maybe you want to do
Juniper training or maybe youwant to do something else.
There's training alignmentsthat have got you more tied to

(47:45):
the vendor ecosystem than whatyou really wish you had, which
was general network engineeringknowledge.
I can apply no matter whatthere is out there which you get
to.
You do get there over time, butthat only comes with experience
.
I had a lot of Cisco backgroundand CCNA and P&IE training and

(48:06):
so on, but I got to a pointwhere it's like someone would
interview me for a position andhe'd be like you're a Cisco guy,
but we got a lot of Juniperhere.
Are you okay with that?
I'm like, yeah, that's fine,tell me about your Juniper now.
Well, we're doing this and this.
Yeah, fine, okay, I've neverrun a Juniper SRX firewall.
I could figure it out and I didand it was fine.

(48:32):
It was not threatening once youkind of realize configuration
matters.
But it isn't the thing.
Being able to configure adevice isn't the core skill set
you want to major on.
You want to be able to explainto somebody how a firewall
passes traffic, and then writingand applying policy is an
important implementation detail,to be sure, but it's an
implementation detail.
And now we're looking atnetworks that are run by

(48:54):
controllers.
We're looking at networks thatare, you're, abstracted a level
from the command line of thesedevices in many cases, because
we're using automation toconfigure this stuff.
It's become much more key toknow what the end result is that
you're going for, and it's lessimportant that you understand
the CLI.
And some people are going toscream and be upset that I said

(49:16):
that, but I think that's thereality of it, where your value
as a network engineer is inunderstanding the result that
you're going for and being ableto figure out what the
implementation details are.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
The configuration details to get you there no
matter what vendor gear issitting in front of you.
I've often said that nowadays, Ithink, where a network engineer
really shows that theengineering part is
understanding why we're doinganything in the network, not
just how to do it, because, likeyou said, so much of it, how
you do it on one platform isdifferent than how you do it on
another.
But what you're reallywondering is why are we making

(49:57):
that change?
What's the reason that we'relooking to use IBGP here instead
of OSPF, or what's the reasonwe're doing whatever?
So understanding the why, Ithink is really critical.
And you're right, that's nottaught in a cert.
That's taught by banging yourhead against the wall and
getting experience.
Sometimes a cert will get youinto that first thing.

(50:20):
But again, that cert, it maynot be a Cisco cert, it may be
whatever they need for that jobright then.

Speaker 3 (50:23):
Yeah, the real learning is going to happen on
the job.
When you have a choice to solvea business challenge, to
implement a particular feature,and so you go ahead and do it
and then realize six monthslater, I should have done it a
little different.
It's too hard to support theway we implemented it, for
example.
There's things like that,choices that you would have made
differently had you had thatexperience the first time.

(50:44):
Then the next time the issuecomes up you're like we're going
to do it right this time.
That stuff you don't get in acert.
It just it doesn't happen thatway and it doesn't matter what
the benefit.
Like Jeff, you got a Fortinethat on.
You know you guys run 40.
Oh, I don't know if you workfor.
You work for Fortinet, so.
So 40 OS, that's a wholedifferent ecosystem again.
But you can do all the things.
I know that you guys have allthe stuff from switching and

(51:06):
access, not just firewalls.
You've got 40 OS on all kindsof things.
That's yet another.
You should be able to, if youknow what the end result is, sit
at a Fortinet network and makeit do the same thing that you
can do with a Cisco or Vista orJuniper, whatever network which
is where I got my start withCisco and Juniper and HP and
Sienna.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
And next thing you know, you HP and Sienna and next
thing you know you're atFortinet.
But it doesn't really changewhat my overall job is.
My job I'm an SE now, so my jobis a lot of education, a lot of
presenting, but it's stillabout understanding the why.
Why are we doing this?
What's the overall goal?
And then how do we get there?

(51:44):
It's not as much about thevendor even though I work for
the vendor Sometimes.
It's not as much about thevendor as it's about the tool
that you've got in your handsright now and how can you use
that tool effectively.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
So I think the cert attached to your resume might be
the thing that a lot of peopleare concerned about.
Hey, if I get CCNA, that'srecognized more broadly than a
lot of other certs and so Ithink I have a better shot at a
job if I get CCNA.
Okay, but just don't limityourself to that.
Don't lock yourself into theCisco way of thinking, because

(52:17):
increasingly you'll find moreand more stuff out there.
Everybody runs a multi-vendornetwork.
There's few shops that are likewe're all Cisco end-to-end
Probably not.
There's going to be some Ciscoand all Cisco end to end
Probably not.
There's going to be some Ciscoand there's going to be a bunch
of other stuff too, odds andends, depending on how your
company grew through acquisitionand what that other network ran
.
Or they had a, they someonereally believed in Palo Alto

(52:40):
networks, firewalls, and sotheir Cisco switching and
routing, and Palo for theircybersecurity.
Let's say that's really commonto walk into a multi-vendor
network.
You're not going to get yourCCNA, go get hired by a company
and it's going to be all Ciscoand you're just going to be in
this happy place.
Now you got to know networkingfor networking and be able to

(53:02):
apply it to whatever the gear is, that's in front of you and how
each vendor interprets thatstuff.
Because they don't allinterpret it, the same is.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
that's in front of you and how each vendor
interprets that stuff becausethey don't all interpret it the
same and places that weretraditional one choke to throat
shops.
I think during the covid supplychain stuff kind of got forced
to go multi-vendor, like well,we need, you know, 200 top rack
switches from vendor x and youcan't get x for eight months
yeah, you're you're 14 monthsout, but you can get.
You get vendor Y over here inthree months, like oh okay.

(53:30):
And then you start going downthat path, like, oh well, maybe
multi-vendor, because there wasno choice then, right Like,
supply chain was just so wacky.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
And then people figured out, wait, things still
work if it doesn't say Cisco onthe front.
Oh huh.
And people's minds wereexpanded during that time.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
For those reasons, yeah, which then kind of gets
into like automation right andmore multi-vendor.
Like okay, how do I operatethis shop right If I have, I
don't know, let's say Juniperand Cisco, like all right, well,
how do I do both of those?
Can I do an infrastructure ascode thing?
How do we translate?
Like I worked at the comcastknock and it was cisco and
juniper and my brain wouldexplode every time I'd go from
one to the other, even lookingat like light levels on an sfp,

(54:06):
like show xeve or something tothis other arcane command, like
I just couldn't keep all thelanguages you know straight in
my head.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
But I think good, automation, tooling right, kind
of does some of that translationfor you and you just kind of
and it's what drives a lot of uh, the data model conversations
how, how do I model this thingso that I can abstract away
whatever the command isunderneath to get that thing
done?
Just give me a model that hasall the things in it I need and

(54:33):
I don't want to have to careabout what's underneath.
Give me some way to abstractthat because, again, it's an
important detail, but it isconfiguration, is an
implementation detail.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
So before we wrap up I know we're at the end here I
think you know we the questionof how to get into network
engineering.
To your point, ethan, youeloquently talked about it.
I think the question getsharder and harder to answer in
2010.
For me it was get your CCNA and, honestly, that was enough.
And I worked for a place thatwas so big.
I was just a WAN person, soCCNA I learned.

(55:05):
Wan never touched the LAN Yay.
I went to another giganticplace Same kind of thing, just
touched data center WAN yeah.
A lot of that's changing.
They're asking more and morethat CCNA.
That did set me up for success.
Five or six years later I woundup at a place like, okay then,
all right, now we're, you know,now we're doing automation
bloody hell, you know, notpython again right.

(55:25):
So they just even even someonelike me who got by on the ccna
as the only thing I needed, uh,I experienced that in my career
where they just started pilingmore and more things on and even
if you were in a big, siloedplace, it was like, well, you
know, tough like route switchisn't enough anymore.
And I took that personally,honestly, like like wait a

(55:46):
minute, what do you mean routeswitch isn't enough anymore.
You told me, and I did thething, and now you're like, well
, we need you to do three otherjobs, but we're going to pay you
the same.
I'm like this isn't fair andnobody cared that it wasn't fair
and I yelled about it for yearson my show and on social media
and then, you know, I eventuallygot laid off and realized
nobody gives a crap that I don'tthink it's not fair.
Go learn the thing Right.
So I think I think the bestanswer to that question, which

(56:09):
you and Jeff touched on, is,like you know, be adaptable, go
broad, right.
And and I think, if you canlearn one vendor's ecosystem to
your point, like when somebodyasked me, well, what cloud
should I learn?
Well, I go by market share.
Aws still has the lion's shareof the market.
Go get AWS.
If you're at a place that doesGCP, can you learn GCP?
Sure, it's a different thing,but it's a similar concept.

(56:29):
Same thing with Cisco.
What should I start with?
I mean, I guess you could goCompTIA, NetPlus.
I didn't do that.
I don't know how much weightthat carries in the industry,
but based on market share andbased on how difficult the CCNA
has been over the years.
They'll probably say stay withthe CCNA.
Is it marketing stuff?
Yes, but you're going to learnthat basic stuff.
And if you're interviewing andit's a Cisco shop or Nokia shop,

(56:50):
well hell, this poor person gotthrough the CCNA.
And if they're willing to, youknow, if they're adaptable and
they're willing to learn anothersyntax or, to your point, you
know, get that basecertification be adaptable, go
broad.
And something I wish I knewearlier or internalized earlier
was embrace kind of theautomation devs type of stuff a

(57:11):
little earlier, even if it'sjust python and figuring out
what the hell git does, to beable to have those conversations
and have the ability toabstract things.
Because it kind of came latefor me and I wish, yeah, I wish
I had done that earlier and it'spart of the ccna.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
Now they have a module in automation.
They they start to get you intoit.
So yeah, it's, it's an expectedskill set.
Unfortunately, because again,I'd hate to have to learn all
that stuff if I was brand new toit.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
It's so well at least you were a comp sci major.
I failed out of comp so I woundup in sales and then I got back
into networking and years laterthey're like you have to learn
programming.
I'm like God, come on.
I'm like not again, leave mealone.
But honestly, now I'm enjoyingit and I do get stuff here and
there and I'm still trying tolearn Python and I finally I

(57:58):
have learned in life.
If you complain enough andrealize no one gives a crap
about your complaints, then youjust kind of get on with it and
do the thing anyway.
So, but you feel better alittle bit.
Old man yelling at cloud right.
Um um ethan, what podcast doyou listen to?
I know you're.
You don't listen to tech stuff,right?

Speaker 3 (58:15):
yeah, actually I don't, uh, I don't listen to
much tech stuff because it's myjob and so, weirdly, I'm not
listening to a lot of a a lot oftech uh shows.
But, uh, I trail run and uh,and so a lot of the shows that I
listen to are related to trailrunning.
So, uh, there is sally mcrae'sshow which is um, oh gosh, I'm

(58:38):
gonna forget the uh, forget thename of it, but she's a, she's a
trail runner and she and her,her husband, eddie, do a great
show.
Just search Sally McRae, you'dfind it Great stuff.
There's a show called Fuel forthe Soul, s-o-l-e.
It's great about.
I'm still a nerd even though Irun, so I care about things like
how many grams of sugar shouldI be, or carbs mostly sugar

(59:05):
Should I be consuming per houron a trail run so that I can
stay fueled properly, and theynerd out about stuff like that
and that's important.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
So you've bonked on a long training thing and
bottomed out on sugar.
You don't realize how importantthat is.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
It's huge.
Yeah, there's the FKT podcast.
Fkt stands for fastest knowntime and there's people that
come on that show and talk abouthow they completed some route
in the fastest known time whichcorrelates with the fastest
known time website, and theytalk about their stories and how
they did it.
And people that go out forthese bonkers, you know multi
hundred mile runs and, uh, youknow it takes them several days

(59:37):
to complete the route.
I nerd about, about stuff likethat these days.
Um, which doesn about stufflike that these days, which
doesn't mean I don't like tech,but it's like that's what I do
for eight to 10 hours a day.
I'm reading, I'm researching,I'm preparing for podcasts, I'm
recording shows, and so, outsideof it, it's not like, yeah, I
want to listen to another showfor networking or whatever I

(59:57):
don't, and there's a lot ofgreat shows out there.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
It reminds me when I was a busboy at an italian
restaurant in ninth grade andafter a year of just smelling
and having red tomato saucespilled all over me all day,
every day, I like couldn't evenlook at italian food for like
three years because it just, youknow, I was in it all the time
and I'm like, oh, you know, I'moverwhelmed with it.
Get away from me.
Same thing with tech, you know.
You just you need a break.
Your brain shouldn't be in itall the time.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Yeah the sally show I just remembered is called
choose strong.
So if anybody out there's yeah,I, I, my brain, decided to
cough up that information.
I'm at that age where it's like, yeah, my brain picks and
chooses what information it'llgive back at it in real time.
Sometimes I've got to pull itout of cold storage and it takes
a while, and but then it popsup, you know, welcome to my
crappy club if, If it is.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
Hey, jeff, you got anything?

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
No, I've just been sitting here and enjoying
watching you guys, who both havea wealth of knowledge in the
podcasting side, and then, uh, Ifeel more like a spectator than
I have really a co-host on thisone.
But I've enjoyed it, it's been.
It's been really great.
I mean, what is it?
10,000 hours of what they saymakes you an expert.
With 15 years of the podcasting, I think you're well into the
expert phase there.
So it's really been nice tohave you on here as an expert,

(01:01:08):
and it's also nice to see that,even though you spend a lot of
time talking about tech, it'sreally nice to see that you
still play with it.
As we were talking before theshow, that you're still building
stuff in your own labs.
I think that's really animportant thing.
For any engineers we're talkingabout what's the most important
thing they should be studyingright now study what really
interests you and then try toget a job doing what you really

(01:01:28):
like, because that's whereyou're going to shine, and
obviously you're really shiningit at being such a great
communicator.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
oh it's awesome having you here.
I love this stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I stilllove, love this stuff.
I still like doing networkingvery much and playing with this
stuff.
It's yeah, 100, it's still uh,I still love nerding out about
it.
No, yeah, no, yeah, it's my jobto do podcasting, but I still
love this stuff, no doubt aboutit.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
I feel stupid asking this question, but it's part of
my closing remarks for thoseliving under a rock that aren't
familiar with you where canpeople find you and and what do
you have cooking?
Do you have anything newhappening that people should
check out?

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
Yeah, so you can find most of my content creation
work by going to packetpushersnet or just anywhere you
listen to podcasts.
If you search for packetpushers, you're going to find
what do?
We got 13 shows that we do nowunder the packet pushes umbrella
.
We have too many?
I don't know.
I don't know that we'll bedoing 13 shows in a year.
It's a lot of shows, but youcan find all different sorts of

(01:02:26):
shows that are buying forengineers.
They're shows where people thatare experts in wireless or
cybersecurity or DevOps createcontent by talking to other
experts that are in the industry, and all that stuff is free.
It's paid for by sponsors andeven with sponsored content,

(01:02:48):
it's not sponsors likeSquarespace or mattresses.
It's sponsors who are vendorsin the industry, who have
products that you probably careabout because it's of interest
to your job and your business,where you that you work for and
and then and that's how we payour bills, that's how we do the
things that we do.
So PacketPushersnet the showsthat I specifically am on are
heavy networking.

(01:03:09):
That was the original PacketPusher show the OG back in 2010,
the same series.
It's gone through a couple ofrebranding because it's like we
have more shows.
We can't just call it PacketPushers, right, and so anyway,
it's called Heavy Networking.
These days I'm on that show, uh, every week, uh.

(01:03:29):
The other show about networkfundamentals that I mentioned
earlier is called and is fornetworking.
I do that with uh, with holly,and we have great conversations.
We've gotten a lot of reallypositive feedback about that
show.
People like our banter.
We have good banter and uh andgood discussions where we
explain network fundamentals.
So I I mean, if you're learning, like you're a junior engineer
trying to break in, trying toget your CCNA, you're in sales
or marketing and find yourselfworking for a networking company

(01:03:50):
, you're like, what has happened?
What did I sign up for?
That show can help you andwe've gotten lots of feedback
from folks there.
And then YouTube.
There's a packet pusherschannel on YouTube that I do.
The vast majority of thecontent that comes up there that
is either original videocontent or, like Holly and I do,
our show is Talking Heads onYouTube and I'm working on more

(01:04:12):
of that, more original contentfor YouTube.
That will be mostly lab focused, and you can also find me
working with vendors to likeshow me the cool thing.
Like Andy, you work for Nokia.
Nokia has done some, somevideos with us at packet pushers
.
That has been, you know, supercool.
So you can find me over there.
Uh, as well on youtube on thepacket pushers channel, and I

(01:04:33):
feel like I'm forgetting stuff.
Oh, newsletters, we, you canfind all that at packet
pushersnet.
Yeah, there's a slack groupthere's a slack.
yes, we got a big audience slackwith community about 4 000
people in it.
It's a good community.
We break out the channels intotechnical topics, like you want
to talk about campus networking,you've got a channel for that.
You want to talk about Linuxnetworking, there's a channel
for that, et cetera.
Plus all the pods have theirown channels in that Slack group

(01:04:56):
.
And yeah, again, you can findthat at packuppushersnet.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
And you have the best tagline in the business Too
much networking would never beenough.
Yes, it's so good.
I smile every time I hear it atthe end of a show Ethan, thanks
so much for coming on.
It means the world to me.
It's, it's I've had.
You know.
Once you got rolling and started, I'm like, oh, here he goes,
and I just started learningstuff and hearing cool things.
So I I learned valuableinformation every single time I

(01:05:20):
listen to you speak, and that'sbeen constant for 15 years.
So again, thank you for yourcontribution to not only my
career but our industry, and youguys just continue to be a
shining light and a place to goto learn new cool stuff.
And even the N is fornetworking show.
I love it because there'ssomebody said a saying once like
if you stick to the basics, younever have to go back to the
basics.

(01:05:40):
And when I listen to Anna's fornetworking I'm like, oh yeah,
that like I forget half of whatI learned, probably.
And then when I hear you twodig into it, I'm like, all right
, that's the thing with the andthen it goes over to that thing.
So I just love the networkingfundamental breakdowns that you
guys do.
It's been a great show so far.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
Yeah, thanks for saying so, and it takes a long
time to prepare because I haveto relearn stuff.
I've forgotten to make sure Iget the details right and then
sometimes I still get littlethings wrong and people send us
a well, actually, well actually.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
Whatever it was, yeah , which is great, I love it.
I love the interaction.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
Gotta love the well, actually crowd.
Yeah, Jeff, as always.
Thanks for being here, Ethan,it's been fantastic For all
things.
Art of Network Engineering youcan check out our Linktree at
linktreecom forward slashartofnetenge.
The podcast is on there.
We have a study group, Discord,called Tell About the Journey.
You can join there.
Thanks so much for listeningand we'll catch you next time on

(01:06:37):
the Art of Network Engineeringpodcast.
Hey folks, if you like what youheard today, please subscribe
to our podcast and your favoritepodcatcher.
You can find us on socials atArt of NetEng and you can visit
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You can see our pretty faces onour YouTube channel named the
Art of Network Engineering.

(01:06:57):
That's youtubecom forward slashArt of NetEng.
Thanks for listening.