Chips, carriers, security alerts and earnings, plus a virtual donut.
Network Break covers the week's networking and infrastructure news, from Cisco and Broadcom hardware to CISA mandates and Intel's quarterly results. Drew Conry-Murray and Jonna Johnson read the announcements closely and ask the obvious follow-up questions, such as why anyone would pay billions for a chipmaker that had been losing money.
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Network Break is a rundown of infrastructure tech news: the switches, chips, carriers, clouds and security flaws that decide how networks actually run. Drew Conry-Murray and Jonna Johnson present the recent episodes together. Each one opens with the same line, 'Take a network break', usually followed by the offer of a virtual donut and sometimes a weather joke about hot drinks or a down coat. Then the agenda arrives, and it is rarely short. One cold open lists new Wi-Fi and switch chips from Broadcom, fresh Azure VM options, a multi-billion-dollar Texas Instruments acquisition and data centers in space. Another stacks security alerts from Oracle and Fortinet on top of a Cisco AI infrastructure announcement, Intel's quarterly results and more space networking. The pair's own word for the pace is a speedwalk. What keeps it from being a list of headlines is the follow-up. On the Texas Instruments deal, they set the price against the target company's recent losses, admit the logic is not obvious, and go back through older earnings to look for it. Intel's results get similar treatment. A steep final-quarter loss prompts the guess that losses were pushed into that quarter on purpose, along with a note that the company is pinning its hopes on its 18A process. A CISA directive on end-of-support equipment is taken deadline by deadline, with the point made that it reaches MSPs, MSSPs and cloud providers with government contracts, not only the agencies themselves. Geopolitics comes in when vendors get caught in it: one discussion of US-China tensions asks how much is a real threat and how much is posturing ahead of talks. Security is a constant. Alongside vulnerability notices from Cisco, Oracle and Fortinet, one episode gives a detailed account of a Google-led effort to disrupt a residential proxy network that botnets and espionage groups had used to hide their traffic. Space networking turns up in several recent agendas, next to cloud news from Microsoft, Meta, Google and Amazon and carrier news from AT&T and Verizon. The humor stays light and mostly lives in the framing: a 'sassy update' from Versa, a 'weekly romp', and titles such as 'Microsoft Buys Indulgences for Carbon Sins; Starlink Cleared for 7,500 More Satellites'. Some episodes close with the sign-off that too much networking would never be enough. Network Break is one of more than a dozen podcasts from Packet Pushers, and the closing notes point to its newsletters, community Slack and IRC group. Listeners can send in comments and corrections, which the show says it may address on air. It suits someone who wants the week's infrastructure news checked rather than simply repeated.
Made for: Suits a listener who works with networks, data centers or IT security and wants the week's vendor announcements, vulnerability alerts and earnings sorted in one pass. It also fits someone following where chipmakers, hyperscalers and satellite networks are heading.
What sets it apart: It stays on infrastructure: switch and Wi-Fi silicon, vulnerability notices, CISA end-of-support rules, carrier and satellite news. Earnings get the same scrutiny as product launches, and the pair check whether an acquisition price or a quarterly loss actually adds up.
Network Break keeps you informed with fast, focused analysis of IT news, products, tech trends, and business outcomes. Blending sharp commentary with a touch of humor, hosts Greg Ferro and Drew Conry-Murray sift through the weekly landslide of press announcements, product launches, financial reports, and marketing decks to find the stories worth talking about. You come away with the information and context to make smart decisions in your organization and career … all in the span of a (longish) coffee break.
Cisco's NetFoundry check gets a marriage joke; you get a better question for the vendor.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A network-news roundup where Cisco's results and CISA's end-of-support mandate meet operational reality.
Network Break frames network infrastructure news as something with operational weight, tying Cisco's financial results to policy enforcement and the people responsible for keeping networks running.
A brisk look at chips, cloud infrastructure, and the possible logic behind a Texas semiconductor bet.
Network Break frames a week of infrastructure news around a larger question: where computing gets built, and what companies are prepared to spend to control that future.
A broad network news roundup finds its edge in Google's coordinated action against a major proxy network.
Network Break frames the week's technology news as an infrastructure story, moving from Microsoft's new AI chip to Amplify's industry certification and security news involving Google, AWS, and CrowdStrike.
A clear, grounded look at AI infrastructure, Intel's 18A bet, and Blue Origin's satellite broadband ambitions.
Network Break lines up AI infrastructure, Intel's uneven quarter, and space networking as one connected technology story. The strongest section follows Intel's 18A process bet, including advanced wafers already being produced in U.S.
A network-news roundtable links Cisco alerts, cloud sovereignty, carrier updates, and space networking to the politics of modern technology.
Network Break moves through the uneasy overlap of infrastructure, policy, and corporate power with a timely, wide-angle agenda. Drew Connery-Murray and Jonah Johnson connect another Cisco vulnerability, IoT news, CommScope's divestiture, carrier updates from AT&T and Verizon,…
Big game excitement, pointed questions, familiar banter.
Weekly Tesla news with EV context.
Linux news with sharp elbows.
Apple tips, Windows tours, space talk: TWiT in one feed.
Fast tech news with usable fixes.
Practical UK tech skepticism, weekly.
Network Break opens with a listener's critique of space data centers, arguing that depreciation and obsolescence matter as much as heat, power, communication, and radiation.
Network Break weighs SpaceX and StarCloud's orbiting data-center plans against Kubernetes' March 2026 retirement of Ingress NGINX.
["Microsoft's Maya 200 leads Network Break with a second-generation AI inference chip on TSMC's 3-nanometer process, 10 petaflops in 4-bit, and 6,144-chip clusters over Ethernet.", "The episode also opens with a red-alert HPE Juniper authentication bypass and SolarWinds Web Help Desk RCE CVEs 2025-40551 through 2025-40554, both framed as patch-now problems.", "The middle of the show covers Amplify's Carrier Ethernet for AI certification, AWS's category-based filtering in Network Firewall, Google\u2019s disruption of IPIDA, and CrowdStrike\u2019s roughly $420 million Seraphic acquisition.", "The back half lands on Microsoft\u2019s $81.3 billion fiscal Q2 revenue, a post-earnings share-price drop of more than 10%, and ASML\u2019s record 2025 results alongside 1,700 job cuts."]
["Network Break opens on Oracle's CVE-2026-21962, a WebLogic proxy-plugin bypass that can expose, modify, or delete data on Apache or IIS servers.", "Drew Conway-Murray and Jonna Johnson then move through Fortinet's warning about a new exploit path against fully upgraded FortiCloud SSO devices and Microsoft's January 22 outage across Teams, Outlook, Purview, Defender, SharePoint, and OneDrive in North America.", "Cisco's Nexus 9364E-SG2 is positioned as an AI-fabric switch for Intel Gaudi 3 clusters, while Daniel Stenberg says curl will end its HackerOne bounty because AI-generated slop flooded the queue.", "Tim Davis of Palo Alto Networks shifts the second half into browser-level data protection for GenAI tools, and the episode closes with Blue Origin TerraWave, Open Cosmos broadband satellites, and Toto's electrostatic chucks."]
Network Break opens with Microsoft buying 2.85 million carbon credits from Indigo Carbon and Cisco's CVE-2025-20393, a CVSS 10 Async OS flaw with active exploits and back-door drops.
Network Break reviews a Cisco Identity Services Engine vulnerability, Arista’s EVPN-VXLAN mobility domain for up to 30,000 access points and 500,000 clients, and Microsoft’s February 9, 2026 MFA requirement for Microsoft 365 administrators.
Network Break hosts Drew Connery-Murray, Jonna Johnson, and John Burke review 2025 technology stories, including Microsoft’s 29 known exploited vulnerabilities and the HPE-Juniper merger.
Network Break examines HPE’s decision to continue developing Juniper Mist and Aruba Networking Central while connecting features through agentic AI.
Network Break covers AWS and Google’s preview cross-cloud interconnection service, which automates setup between public clouds and may scale from 1 to 100 gigabits per second.
Network Break covers Palo Alto Networks' planned $3.35 billion acquisition of Chronosphere and its proposed autonomous remediation platform.
A weekly roundup of IT news covering mergers, cyber attacks, and tech trends, with a focus on networking and infrastructure.
Hosts discuss the HPE Juniper merger conditions, AIOps licensing, and other IT news including Backbox features and ultra-Ethernet NIC.
Hosts discuss IT news including Cisco vulnerabilities, Broadcom ASICs, and HPE financial results.
A roundup of IT news including a Salesforce acquisition, HPE switching, Cisco DNS security, and vulnerability alerts.