In this episode of PacketPushers Podcast, Drew Conry-Murray and Jennifer Minella provide in-depth coverage on the pressing issues of supply chain security and the evolving field of post-quantum cryptography, recorded live from Security Field Day 12. Highlighting expert insights, the discussion delves into strategies for fortifying supply chains against emerging threats and the importance of advancing cryptographic methods in anticipation of quantum computing capabilities. Their comprehensive analysis offers listeners actionable information to enhance their cybersecurity measures in an increasingly complex digital landscape.
Citrix Does ZTNA? Here’s What I Learned
Drew Conry-Murray explores Citrix’s entry into the Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) space, highlighting the company’s strategic move to enhance security and adapt to modern cybersecurity needs. He delves into the functionalities Citrix offers, comparing its solutions against the competing market to inform readers on how effectively Citrix integrates ZTNA with its existing network and cloud services. Conry-Murray provides an insightful analysis for those interested in understanding the evolving landscape of enterprise security and how traditional network vendors are transitioning into this newer model of network access. Read more in this article for PacketPushers following the Citrix presentation at Security Field Day 12.
You Don’t Need Post-Quantum Crypto Yet
With the advent of quantum computers, the likelihood that modern encryption is going to be invalidated is a possibility. New standards from NIST have arrived that have ushered in the post-quantum era. You don’t need to implement them yet but you need to be familiar with them. Tom Hollingsworth is joined by JJ MInella, Drew-Conry Murray, and Alastair Cooke in this episode to discuss why post-quantum algorithms are needed, why you should be readying your enterprise to use them, and how best to plan your implementation strategy.
A Look at Broadcom’s Jericho3-Ai Ethernet Fabric: Schedules, Credits, and Cells
Broadcom has devised innovative mechanisms to tackle the issues facing the development of an Ethernet-based fabric supporting AI workloads, offering solutions to alleviate congestion, latency, and prevent dropped frames or packets. These methods, which include a scheduling framework, cells, and credits, have been showcased at Network Field Day 32, demonstrating how Broadcom creates an Ethernet fabric optimized for AI via its Jericho3-AI and Ramon ASICs. By creating a scheduled fabric and dividing Ethernet frames into equal-size cells, Broadcom minimizes tail latency and optimizes load balancing, enhancing the handling of AI and HPC workloads. Read more in this article for Packet Pushers written by Drew Conry-Murray.
Life on the Edge – a Roundtable Discussion
Some of the biggest discussions happening in IT are around edge computing. Based on a roundtable discussion from the recent Networking Field Day event, this article throws light on what IT insiders think of this new computing paradigm, and the course it will take in the ever-shifting IT landscape. Read the article at Gestalt IT, or watch the Delegate Roundtable Discussion on the website.
Anuta Networks Adds Synthetic Tests for On-Demand Network Performance Monitoring
Drew Conry-Murray gives his thoughts on the “sensible addition” of the active assurance capability of ATOM, the network automation and orchestration software from Anuta Networks. Check out the article on the Packet Pushers website.
Juniper Apstra Freeform Supports New Topologies, Protocols for Data Center Automation-With Caveats
At the most recent Networking Field Day, Juniper Networks announced their Apstra data center automation technology; Freeform. In this article, Drew Conry-Murray goes into detail on Freeform and what goal’s Apstra has with this new technology. Take a look here at Drew’s thoughts!
An Overview of Cisco’s SecureX Device Insights
After seeing Cisco present at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US, Drew Conry-Murray writes about Cisco’s SecureX Extended Detection and Response Platform and it’s new SecureX Device Insights feature. Conry-Murray highlights SecureX Device Insights’ goal of answering security and network teams questions on asset tracking and report running as well as questions surrounding third-party information about devices on the network. Check out his thoughts on his website, Packet Pushers, and be sure to also check out all the videos from our event at Cisco Live this year!
Briefings in Brief 102: ZPE Systems Melds Universal CPE With Out-Of-Band Management
The Packet Pushers take on the Networking Field Day presentations by ZPE Systems in this podcast episode. Specifically, Drew Conry-Murray and Ed Horley attended the event as delegates, and use their experiences there to guide the conversation on ZTE. Take a listen to learn more!
Briefings in Brief 101: Juniper Wants to Wire Your Campus Fabric With Mist Cloud
Juniper Networks has announced a new wired campus fabric solution that uses EVPN VXLAN to create a fabric and ties into the Juniper Mist Cloud for automation and management. Drew Conry-Murray, a Networking Field Day delegate, dives into the details to the solution Juniper presented in September. Check out the podcast Drew and fellow delegate, Ed Horley, published!
Network Break 288: Aruba ESP Senses Opportunity at the Edge; Intel Wrestles With New Chip Attacks
In this episode of Network Break, Drew Conry-Murray and Greg Ferro discuss what they saw at the Networking Field Day Experience at Aruba Atmosphere Digital, where the company showed its Aruba Edge Services Platform. This brings together their wireless, wired, and SD-Branch portfolio and layers a new cloud-based AI service over the top. They discuss how this fits into the competitive landscape, and how it sets up Aruba for expanding this concept to the cloud.
Forget Transformation. Go for Digital Stability
Evangelists of digital transformation emphasize speed and change, something often anathema to infrastructure professionals. In the end though, both want the same thing, infrastructure that’s robust, resilient, and stable. In this post, Drew Conry-Murray looks at red Hat’s presentation from Cloud Field Day, who showed how with telemetry, automation, tooling, training, and processes, organizations can build infrastructure to support rapid change and innovation. In the end, this isn’t just a technology problem, people and process need to be part of this for it to work.
Aruba Bridges 5G and Wi-Fi 6 With New Air Pass Feature
Aruba recently announced a new offering called Air Pass, which Drew Conry-Murray looks at in this post. Air Pass bridges 5G cellular networks with in-building WLANs to enable seamless hand-off between 5G and Wi-Fi 6 networks. This effectively allows carriers and enterprises to build seamless handoffs from cellular to WLAN for voice and data on devices. A key technical compontent of this handoff is Passpoint, a Wi-Fi Alliance developed standard to provide automatic authentication between the carrier and WLAN. Be sure to check out Aruba’s presentation from Mobility Field Day last year, where they dug into the specifics of Passpoint and how it operates in their devices and software.
Cloud Is Hard. Kubernetes Won’t Save You
Public cloud providers and enterprise IT vendors alike position Kubernetes as the control plane for cloud-native applications. They promise an application environment that will run on any public or private cloud, reducing cloud lock-in and enabling hybrid and multi-cloud designs. Drew Conry-Murray breaks down the promise and challenge of Kubernetes in this post, inspired from the VMworld Cloud Roundtable.
128 Technology Takes a Unique Approach to Routing. Should You Care?
128 Technology has a a clever software router that takes a unique approach to getting your traffic from source to destination. In this piece, Drew Conry-Murray points out that what they offer sounds a lot like a SD-WAN solution. But 128T wants that to be part of their overall router, not a product in and of itself. He thinks the company has good ideas of approaching routing differently. The challenge is how to communicate the benefit of that to customers that are more familiar with traditional solutions.
BiB 081: 128 Technology Rethinks the WAN Router
There’s no shortage of x86 software-based routers on the market. What makes 128 Technology stand out is their implementation. In this piece, Drew Conry-Murray looks at the specifics of how they offer a stateful, session-based router with a zero trust security posture, but don’t rely on traditional tunneling or encapsulation.
What Are Your IoT Devices Up To? Nyansa’s Voyance IoT Has Answers
Nyansa has offered a pure play high velocity streaming analytics platform with impressive comparative capabilities for a while. At Networking Field Day, the company showed a new solution, Voyance IoT, which brings that analytic capability to fingerprint these connected devices, monitor performance, and alert admins of anomalous behavior. In this piece, Drew Conry-Murray gives the platform a complete overview.
Fortinet Launches New SD-WAN and Firewall Appliance, Rebrands an ASIC
Drew Conry-Murray recently got a deep dive into Fortinet’s SD-WAN technology at Networking Field Day. One aspect that fascinated Drew in that presentation was how the company combined security and SD-WAN capabilities into a single device. The company recently debutted a Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW), the FortiGate 100F, which provides the hardware foundation for that technology.
Off the Cuff – NFD20 Wrap Up
From a rainy recording in Silicon Valley, Jordan Martin gathered together some fellow delegates from Networking Field Day to discuss what they heard at the event. They run down each presenter and discuss what stood out and struck their interest. Guests include Mario Gingras, Nick Shoemaker, Richard McIntosh, Brian Gleason, and Drew Conry-Murray.
Netrounds Marries Active Testing and Monitoring to Validate Network Performance and Availability
Drew Conry-Murray is no stranger to networking, but he hadn’t heard about Netrounds until they presented at Networking Field Day last month. They offer a pretty straightforward solution for service providers and large enterprises: Active verification that services are up and performing acceptably. They do this by running a wide array of test agents to get a client-side perspective on these services. Drew also liked the automation features available, with APIs available for third-party integrations.
