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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 Greg Ferro, Ethan Banks and 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.
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
It turns network architecture and automation into concrete questions about deployment, control, observability, and operational risk.
Heavy Networking keeps network engineering tied to operational choices and consequences. Ethan Banks and Drew Conry-Murray lead technical guest conversations that move from architecture into deployment, permissions, monitoring, and failure.
Ethan Banks ties his eyebrows in knots over AI agents; your change-control anxiety has found its people.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sponsored RSA discussion that still spends most of its time on practical enterprise security operations.
Heavy Networking presents a sponsored RSA conversation with Palo Alto Networks centered on AI security, SASE, secure browsing, and certificate lifecycle management.
A practical take on AI for network automation, with context and prompting doing the real work.
Heavy Networking uses Eric Chou's AI Networking Cookbook to keep the focus on practice, not hype. It treats AI as a tool for network automation that works better when prompts carry context, role, and clear instructions.
A sponsor episode that stays grounded in the mechanics of moving cloud infrastructure.
Heavy Networking keeps this sponsor episode focused on cloud portability rather than broad promises. The conversation with FluidCloud lays out what the product can find, what it can rebuild, and how it approaches moves from AWS to Azure, Azure to GCP, and even migrations off…
A practical look at centralized SDN, with a clear focus on operator tradeoffs and production reality.
Heavy Networking spends this hour on centralized SDN and the stubborn question of why an architecture built to simplify routing can still feel so involved.
A practical look at NANOG's role in keeping operators informed without turning prescriptive.
NANOG is treated here as more than nostalgia. The piece frames it as a working community that still has value as the network shifts, tracing its history and its continued usefulness for hands-on engineers before settling into IPv6 as a slow, uneven adoption story.
AI belongs in controlled workflows, not as a shortcut past production discipline.
Heavy Networking sits in the practical middle between network automation and the newer push to hand more of it to AI. Ethan Banks and Drew Conroy-Murray keep David Gee anchored in operator reality: source of truth, probes, permission gates, temporary access, and the habit of…
A sponsor-backed look at WAN automation and network-as-a-service details that stays practical.
This episode of Heavy Networking uses Megaport to show how WAN provisioning shifts when lead times drop from waiting on circuits to bringing one up in about a minute.
A practical reset for anyone trying to connect user complaints to the path actually failing.
Heavy Networking uses a sponsor-backed discussion to draw a clean line between Network Performance Monitoring, Digital Experience Monitoring, and Internet Performance Monitoring.
Host Jack Rhysider narrates true hacking, breach, and privacy stories from the people involved.
David Pierce and Verge staffers cover AI industry news, gadgets, and tech policy weekly.
Long-form interviews on AI coding agents, infrastructure, and security, plus a recurring SED News roundup.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
David Sparks and Stephen Robles dig into Keyboard Maestro, Shortcuts, and Mac automation weekly.
This episode explores Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM) as a new category beyond traditional Network Performance Monitoring, featuring guests from Catchpoint who explain how IPM provides visibility into internet performance for end-users, integrates with automation, and addresses challenges like ECN bleaching and IPv6 adoption.
Network automation expert David Gee argues that AI should augment, not replace, network engineers.
CTO Cameron Daniel discusses Megaport's network-as-a-service platform, highlighting its global automated WAN provisioning, cloud router for multi-cloud connectivity, and integration with tools like Terraform.
Heavy Networking opens at RSA 2026.
Ethan Banks and Drew Connery-Murray bring Eric Cho back to Heavy Networking to talk about adding AI to network automation.
Heavy Networking turns to cloud portability and the mechanics of moving infrastructure from one place to another.
Meter sponsors the opening.
Ethan Banks interviews Joshua Markle, Head of Hardware at Meter, about the design and engineering of networking hardware prototypes.
This episode explains the Path Computation Element (PCE) protocol for advanced network path optimization.
Ethan Banks interviews Steve Feldman, CEO of NANOG, about the history, evolution, and current role of the North American Network Operators Group.
A network engineer discusses his experience with network automation using Ansible, Python, and AI co-pilots at AutoCon 3.
Hosts interview GlueWare executives about network automation trends and their platform's latest capabilities at AutoCon 3.
Hosts discuss model context protocol and catch up with sponsor Selector.ai about their network observability product updates.
Discussion about building an AI-powered Slackbot trained on organizational knowledge for network operations.