Art of Network Engineering Holiday Special

Speaker 1 0:16

This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast . Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering . I am AJ Murray and welcome to our Holiday Extravaganza Special . I am joined by probably the largest panel we've ever had on this show , but I'm very excited to welcome everybody here . Let's start by going around clockwise on my screen here . Immediately next to me , is Andy Holiday Boy Laptef , you are so dressed up , it looks fantastic . I love the glasses . I wish I had those glasses myself . Happy holidays to you .

Speaker 2 1:18

Happy holidays to you , my friends . This is lovely .

Speaker 1 1:22

What's going on with Andy lately ? You all ready for the holidays , you all ready for Christmas ? Yeah , man , I know that's a loaded question , but we'll figure that out later .

Speaker 2 1:32

So I will be super subtle , but I will say that there are challenges have presented themselves in my personal life . I'm only saying that here because you guys here this team has been super supportive and listening to me the past few days as I work through some stuff , just life stuff , no big deal . It's something that we all probably go through eventually . Yeah , life is good . The holidays are here . It's exciting . We go to these Christmas light things and s'mores party things . I love this time of year . It's really my favorite time of year . I don't know what it is about Christmas , it's just a joyous like .

Speaker 2 2:12

All my happiest memories I think when I was a kid were from Christmas , for whatever reason I've never lost that and now I get to do that for our kids , which is just really fun to do .

Speaker 1 2:22

Isn't it fun ? Oh my gosh , I have so much fun with that now .

Speaker 2 2:24

Except for the elves . I don't like the elves .

Speaker 1 2:27

Oh my God , the elf on the shelf .

Speaker 2 2:29

I told my wife not to do it a couple years ago and now it's yeah . At night I have this anxiety that if I forget , I'm going to be in so much trouble .

Speaker 1 2:38

Oh my God dude , my wife and I have forgotten . And luckily , when my son gets out of bed he's got like this bed that's high up off the ground . So when he gets out he thuds and we have moments before he comes out .

Speaker 3 2:55

So it's like we hear that noise we're like oh God , we forgot to move the elf .

Speaker 5 3:02

The magic of Christmas is dead .

Speaker 1 3:04

So then , like one of us is like dashing out the bed . Well , we're both running out . One of us is going to like greet him at his door and install him from coming out , and the other one's , like you know , down the hallway doing the , doing the move .

Speaker 2 3:15

So , anyway , we've never been busted , You've never been like . Why did the elves move ?

Speaker 1 3:19

Okay , not yet , not yet .

Speaker 5 3:21

It'll happen .

Speaker 1 3:22

I'm sure , I'm sure it will , I'm sure it will . And that was Tim McConaughey . Tim , how are you doing ?

Speaker 5 3:27

I'm good man , just you know , finishing all the holiday shopping and all that good stuff , trying to try to keep it somewhat reasonable . You know I've been trying for years now to keep it reasonable . But yeah , we have the same elf anxiety . Although I think this might be the last , this probably is going to be the last year . My youngest is turning 10 in a couple of days and she's definitely dropped some hints that it's probably about time to hang it up . But you know , fun well lasted for the better sweet , better sweet 10 years , I think , we've been doing it , yeah , so yeah , let's .

Speaker 2 4:01

Let's keep in mind that there may be children listening to this with their parents . So , well , well played , Tim yes .

Speaker 1 4:08

Maybe I'll . Maybe I'll put a disclaimer at the very front of this episode . There are some spoilers .

Speaker 5 4:13

So don't listen to this from here . Yes , I think it's holiday spoilers .

Speaker 1 4:20

I would hate to get blamed for ruining the magic of Christmas for some little boys and girls around the world . Yeah , next is Tim Bertino . Tim , how are you Tis the season , fellas ? You look very jolly with your .

Speaker 3 4:32

I love your lights . Your necklace is great . I feel jolly , thank you . You know I was doing kind of a year in review in my head earlier today thinking about this show , and it's it's been quite the year , hasn't it ? I mean , like I was thinking just in terms of you guys and AJ , I've seen you three times this year . I'm sure I know Talk about spoiled Seen you three times , Andy . I've seen you once , seen Dan a couple times .

Speaker 3 4:57

It's , it's been a very creepy interaction with Andy's photo and oh , so yeah , no , I guess I guess I've been with Andy twice .

Speaker 5 5:06

Yeah , my condolences .

Speaker 3 5:09

Yeah , tim McConaughey busted that one open on Twitter . Thanks for that .

Speaker 2 5:13

And Tim , you just reminded me I met Alex this year . I forgot to mention that . Yeah , yeah , yeah , I saw Alex this year . I met Alex . That was very cool .

Speaker 3 5:20

He put up with us for a few days . Yeah , I faked it pretty well .

Speaker 6 5:25

AJ taught us how to edit video .

Speaker 3 5:26

It was , it was fantastic .

Speaker 1 5:28

Oh , that was fun . That was fun , excellent . And Chris Miles from Down Under .

Speaker 4 5:33

What's up guys ? Yeah , I'm , I'm dressed like I'm like it's cold here , just to you know , kind of keep with the theme , but I'm , I'm definitely warm right now .

Speaker 1 5:45

So well , if you need to , you know if you would wardrobe change before we get started , by all means .

Speaker 4 5:50

Yeah , that's , that's one thing . That's kind of cool here , but also weird is having a hot Christmas . So it's like the middle of summer . So you know you have Christmas lunch and you're sweating half to death and you go . Then you go to the beach afterward , so it's , it's a good trade off . I think you know it's being cold . I hate being cold , so I've never thought about that .

Speaker 1 6:10

That's , that's crazy .

Speaker 4 6:11

I just I could not imagine having like Christmas without snow and being cold and yeah , santa , who is real for all the children listening , comes in to your house by a jet ski .

Speaker 1 6:23

I guess you know he's a you know , he's a , you know he's trying to stay cool .

Speaker 2 6:28

Yeah , exactly Chris . Which way does your toilet flush ?

Speaker 4 6:32

Bro , that was when I first visited Australia . That was I had like had to do hotel quarantine because it was during COVID . I swear to God , I went in there and the first thing I did was flush the toilet , just like see what happened ? Bro , it's , it's bullshit . The water just goes straight down , Doesn't even swirl . I was like it's an airplane toilet . Not really that . It's not like . It just doesn't spin , it's just like the toilets here .

Speaker 2 6:57

You've never , you've never met a toilet in Australia . The torels , like they all , just go straight down .

Speaker 4 7:01

I need to pay better attention , the the , the few that I've , that I've interacted with and paid attention .

Speaker 3 7:07

He's interacted with , he's been with .

Speaker 1 7:10

Australia toilets for like a year or whatever , and he's only had to use the bathroom like twice and he just yeah , I'm holding it in for next time at AJ's house .

Speaker 2 7:20

Chris , for the record up here by Philadelphia . Mine spins clockwise , so can you just check in your travels and let me know , cause I asked Daniel the Tetchhnea Chetchhnee-ish ?

Speaker 1 7:30

I forget how to say this Tetchhnee , Tetchhnee , Tetchhnee .

Speaker 2 7:32

He's an Australian friend we had on here and I don't think he answered my question .

Speaker 4 7:36

I'll take a video for it . I'll take like a selfie video or like I'm giving a thumbs up while the- .

Speaker 2 7:40

But it's a thing and it's called the Coriolis effect that I'm putting a dollar on the fact that yours go the other way , but you're not helping me out here so .

Speaker 1 7:47

I've seen Just make sure you when you do the selfie , there's like a big deuce . So we know clearly- .

Speaker 3 7:52

I was going to say the opposite . Please make sure it's it's just a test run . This is definitely .

Speaker 6 7:58

Chris- .

Speaker 5 7:59

Mike .

Speaker 6 7:59

V2 had a good suggestion though Put that on our TikTok account . That's how you gain followers .

Speaker 3 8:04

That's good content , Dude that's content Toilet humor is the one joke that's funny from birth till death .

Speaker 4 8:11

I yeah , just saying Yep , yep .

Speaker 1 8:13

No doubt , no doubt . Yeah , I'm on my death bed .

Speaker 4 8:15

Someone leans in for my last words . I'm just going to say , like fart or something , it's going to work , no matter what .

Speaker 1 8:22

Oh my gosh , all right , and the last elf on the list here is Alex Perkins . Alex , thanks for joining us tonight . How are you doing ?

Speaker 6 8:30

I'm doing great , doing great . Yeah , a lot of stuff started to be mentioned . Obviously , this is the earliest ever that we have finished Christmas shopping . Yeah , no , you don't have to brag .

Speaker 1 8:40

I just can't even believe it .

Speaker 6 8:42

You don't have to brag . I can't even believe it , Dude . I've never been so ready it is yeah , it's such a good feeling it takes a stress on us .

Speaker 4 8:48

You're making those of us that haven't started feel bad , so you should just fall down .

Speaker 6 8:54

Oh man , yeah , so no , I mean we're just doing a bunch of family things , like Annie mentioned . You know , there's like all kinds of light shows and walk around things to do , so lots of fun stuff . And , as Tim Bertino mentioned , I got to meet all you guys in Knoxville this year , so that was pretty awesome . But I'm sure we'll talk about all this .

Speaker 1 9:10

Absolutely , and that'll be a nice segue to the theme of tonight's show is we want to recap some of the high points of this year and talk about what the podcast means for us , what this community means for us .

Speaker 1 9:22

Once again , because it's the holidays , it's all about that warm fuzzy feeling we get from all the great things that happened throughout the year and the time for reflection and thinking about what lies ahead for us in the future . So I want to kick it off with some of the great guests that we had on , because this show does not happen without some guests and we have some very generous people that give us their time and share their knowledge with us , and I think we've had a lot of great discussions , a lot of great conversations , and there's quite a few that stick out in my mind . I think one of the More eye-opening ones for for me was our conversation with Josh Farghisi , where we talked about OT versus IT . That was just a fun episode and I could tell like when we were talking in , the more Andy talked to him oh , he was just like mind blown every every couple of minutes . It's a fun conversation .

Speaker 3 10:16

And I'd say my . My takeaway from that is I would have thought if I was just meeting Josh , I would have thought he's been doing a podcast for quite a while . I mean , it's just a very you can tell that part of his business is going into Companies in teaching because he's just . He was able to walk through all of that with us , with Tacked and it just sounds like he talks to people all the time . It was . Yeah , that was a fun one .

Speaker 1 10:42

You could easily tell how much he loves what he does . Right that ? That was very clear .

Speaker 2 10:47

Well , blew me away and really hope my imposter syndrome was I never feel like I know enough and everybody's smarter than me and blah , blah , blah , right , all that crap .

Speaker 2 10:54

And then we're talking to him and he's put a whole business around like , oh yeah , all the industrial places , at least in the US , like their networks are such a mess . Like you could , you could take the first five minutes of CCNA and be a rock star in any Industrial network . Like you know environment he's like dude I'm teaching them about like what you know a managed switches and like layer 2 and and and segmentation , and I just , I just couldn't believe that there are Networks out there running very critical services for things and you know they just have unmanaged switches daisy chained everywhere and it's just a poop show . You know what I mean and and he's cleaning it all up , thank goodness . But it just opened my eyes right , like you're a networking for a decade , you talked to all the people and then you talked to somebody who just shows you completely different world of networking and that , yeah , he was amazing .

Speaker 4 11:44

Yeah , my , my last job I did like a relatively large SD land deployment and incorporated in that was also reconfiguring a large OT network that every major Manufacturing site did . Some of those are such a mess Dude , it's crazy . Yeah , like , like . Like you said , there's just like the same , like IP networks reused over and over again , like the one 192 168.1 network is everywhere , and then they're like oh , what do you mean connect these things together ? No , you can't do that , no way , though . That would be insane . It's amazing that it's been functioning like that for like 20 years or something . It's , it's very eye-opening .

Speaker 1 12:23

What for you guys ? I don't want to say here name . You know all the guests I thought were were great . What are some other guests that stuck out for you ?

Speaker 3 12:30

so we did a not even necessarily on purpose , but we did a string of . We had a string of guests that had a military background . In fact , the , the big one we did we did a panel of folks in the military and the . The goal behind that one was to kind of guide and teach people that are in the military how to transition out and and what to do and what advanced , what programs to take advantage of . And that was that was really Eye-opening for me , because I've I've never been in the service . So hearing what they go through and what programs that they can take advantage of was really beneficial to me and I I think that was a good one to have .

Speaker 1 13:16

In general , so so that episode came out Came about because I have a cousin who's in the army and he reached out to me about careers in IT . And you know I said I'm happy to jump on a call and talk with you about this . And he's just like , well , would you talk to my group ? I'm like , oh yeah , sure I don't care .

Speaker 1 13:37

So on a whim I grabbed Brittany mussett because you know she's a tech recruiter and she certainly has experience hiring people with clearances and stuff , and so I thought she would also be a good resource to have , although I certainly don't have a military background and I wasn't able to give them any specific Pointers on that . But I was able to say , hey , when you transition into the enterprise world , here's what I think will be different for you coming from the military . And so it was a great conversation . We recorded it we . We met with them via WebEx and recorded the conversation and I was able to provide that to him so he could have other folks in his group watch it back , because he had a whole wide range , like some folks were getting to Getting ready to get out within days and somewhere were months down the road . But from that stemmed the idea for for this episode and reaching out to the community and finding some people that had more Experience transitioning from military to civilian life , and that was that was a great episode , for sure .

Speaker 6 14:33

Yeah , I was . I was mad that I could not attend that . You know , I , aj and I were even talking about this at the time and I just had like other things going on when the episode was recorded . Man , it was really good and that's super valuable information . Just as someone who's gone through that transition like . That's very helpful information for a lot of people out there .

Speaker 1 14:55

Oh , I agree , that was a really good one some other folks We've had on the show this year that you know Bring out for me or should the cat for me is is Russ White for

Highlights From Various Podcast Episodes

Speaker 1 15:03

one . What , what a fun conversation Talking to Russ White earlier this year . Talk about a humble person . I mean the . The man has just accomplished so much and he does so much like professionally , personally , recreationally , like he's . He's got a ton of hobbies , he's got a ton of interests and and just having a conversation with him Was just amazing . It was . It was so much fun to talk to him and learn more from him .

Speaker 1 15:29

We we talked to Jason Gintert , who was one of the original founders of the usnua , and I believe all of us now have been to some form of usnua meeting or we're we're co-leading One in our local area . So that's been a really great opportunity to Meet others from our local network engineering communities as well as just be social . So that's that's been a lot of fun . Uh , jeremy stretch . I wasn't there for that one , but that was a great episode talking to Jeremy stretch . Another one that was really fun was talking to Brett Morris . Tim , you and I talked to Brent from Cisco exam security and talked to him about some of the challenges and some of the real dumbass shit people do to try to steal steal certifications .

Speaker 3 16:17

My favorite was the , the one he talked about where they caught somebody , where there was a guy . They could clearly see a guy standing behind a curtain , um In the room giving people or coaching people on answers to certification tests . That's just wild , yeah , crazy .

Speaker 3 16:36

Um one of the ones that I I wanted to call out was from early , fairly early , in the area I was in February . Uh , andy and I did it in . A big reason we did this episode is because we've all kind of talked about how we're not huge fans of Uh supporting and working with enterprise wireless . So we brought uh Roelle Dionisio on To to really just give us the the high level from a wireless engineering perspective . What do you need to do to to plan a site for deploying wireless or to go in and do surveys to troubleshoot ? And , uh , that was a lot of fun . Roelle's obviously been doing the clear to send podcast for a long time , so it was awesome to get him on and really walk us through some of those concepts .

Speaker 1 17:20

We also had a cloud networking episode where we had three cloud networking experts join us . I don't want to make any assumptions about our our listeners . So , uh , if you're , you're just joining and listening to the podcast . The three Joining us tonight tim mcconnell , hey . Chris miles and alex perkins are the co-hosts of our other podcast cables to clouds , which we , uh , we're very excited to put together and launch earlier this year . Uh , and and so we kind of sneakily brought them onto the show to talk about hybrid cloud networking and and its presence . Uh , you know , clearly it's here to stay . And then we quickly followed that episode up with an announcement Of their podcast and and launched it . And you guys have been doing a bang-up job this year . The stats are already looking really good . We're coming up on pretty close to one year launched . It was , uh , what january of this year . You guys approached me about , you know , doing the podcast and I think we actually launched it in march .

Speaker 5 18:14

That's right yeah .

Speaker 1 18:15

Yeah .

Speaker 4 18:15

I think that's right . It was early marsh . Yeah , I think I'm looking at when that episode came out . Yeah , it was , uh , it's been it's been quite a year . I think we've all learned that , um Running a podcast , it's very easy to get started and it's a lot of work to get done At the end of the day , but it's , it's been worth it , man , it's just like you know , being able to , you know , get recognition and even have people come on and want to talk to us . This is just an amazing feeling , you know , because I I just like sitting around and talking shop with , with people that want to talk . So , uh , it's , it's been a , it's been a great outlet for me , for sure .

Speaker 6 18:49

Yeah , uh , you know , thanks to you guys , like we wouldn't be where we are If you guys didn't , you know , agree to let us Come under your umbrella and AJ , man , with all the editing tips , like Tim was calling out at Knoxville , you were , I think there's a picture of the Andy took of you , like me and Tim leaning over your shoulder while you were showing us how to edit .

Cloud Podcast's Impact and Appreciation

Speaker 6 19:12

Awesome man , you guys just thank you very much .

Speaker 3 19:15

Alex was learning . I had been drinking , so I was looking at the screen .

Speaker 1 19:21

No , that that was great and you know again , alex , I have to say I appreciate you . Uh , wanting to learn and and taking that over , because not editing two podcast shows is is definitely noticeable in my life .

Speaker 6 19:34

So I was doing one . I can only imagine .

Speaker 1 19:40

I truly appreciate that and I think we're gonna get Tim set up here to help out editing as well . So , no , no , that was that was great . I , as you know , I love to , to teach and share my knowledge , so that was that was actually really fun to to show you guys how to edit and all the tips and tricks that I've learned throughout , uh , the few years I've been doing this and kudos to you guys .

Speaker 2 19:57

You're doing such a great job . Like you said , it's easy to get started and it's hard to maintain it and just , you guys have been grinding out and putting out some Great content . And I remember when AJ came to me and like , hey , you know these , these guys want to start up a cloud podcast and you know I'd like to help them out and just like , bring them under the umbrella . I'm like , oh my god , that's amazing , right , because so much of this for the piss . I mean , since the beginning really has just been about helping each other , you know , whether it's between us or in the discord or whatever , right ? So the fact that we had any I don't think you necessarily need us , you guys are killing it right but the fact that we were able to help get you guys started , it's just been such a a phenomenal thing to watch .

Speaker 2 20:31

And you know I've beat up on cloud Over the years , but it's really just because I got beat up by the cloud you know it might in my fintech job and and , honestly , I wish I've said it before about our show and our community . I wish our community was there when I was getting started . Honestly , if you guys and and the show cables the clouds was In existence when I got thrust into the cloud world . It would have been such a huge benefit to me because I was just lost and overwhelmed and didn't have anybody To even talk to about it that knew , like you guys . You know , you're the experts and you touch so many great topics and it's just so like my favorite episode so far I loved , I love a von right . She was . That was just a fantastic episode . And then , uh , the Pete Lombas episode . I think that dropped not too long ago .

Speaker 4 21:16

I mean , that's one . Yeah , that was all I yeah .

Speaker 2 21:19

I've listened to both of those multiple times and not to say the other ones weren't great , but just some grabbed me and the avan and the Pete episodes were just so good . And you know you guys are I don't want to say hitting your stride , right , but you're getting better and better and that's what happens with anything , right , you practice your work at it and yeah , so it's just been so cool to watch you guys grow and your show and your following and I'm learning and listening along the way . So you know , thank you for what you're doing , because I know it's . You know you got families and careers in a life and some nights it's like all right , you know you're asking the wife like , hey , you know , these maniac kids are yours right now . I got to go do the thing and make this all straight . So you guys just doing a great job . Thank you , I'm really enjoying the show .

Speaker 3 21:59

And we and we appreciate all the royalties that are coming to us , because we all know there's a lot of money in tech podcasting .

Speaker 3 22:08

I do want to want to echo what Andy was saying . I think the biggest thing that I appreciate about what you are doing is you've stayed true to what you started with . You wanted to create something that was to help bridge the gap between what I call traditional network engineering and cloud networking , and even the episodes that you go into cloud networking concepts at a decent depth , you always take a step back and kind of equate it or or help the network engineers that don't have a strong foothold in the cloud . So While I don't have cloud networking experience , I feel like I'm still able to hang with most of your episodes because of how you approach it , which is really cool . And since Andy was . I'm sorry if I'm taking everybody's thunder , but since Andy was calling out his favorite episodes , I do want to call one out too . It was the one where it was almost like a live lab episode where you guys were testing different models , ai models , things like .

Speaker 3 23:11

GPT and feeding it data and saying you know , design a network for different use cases and seeing how the different ones stacked up . That was so much fun . That was such a cool idea .

Speaker 4 23:25

Yeah , it's funny because AI has changed already since that episode , so much . I guarantee if we did that episode again , it'd be 100 times different . It would be . It would just be so drastically hopefully better , I would think .

Speaker 2 23:40

But you know that's probably wishful thinking , it's so smart that you keep bringing it back to people that , like , might not be as experienced as you guys . Right , it's something we've tried to do over the years , like , I know , as soon as we start going down a rabbit hole , like okay , you know , let's explain some terms before we get to you know in the weeds , because there might be somebody that's even just contemplating like , oh , I might want to get in a networking .

Speaker 2 24:01

Somebody said , check out the show , maybe the certifications for me , like because you know and all this technical stuff , it's so easy just to you know you're in the matrix , you're in the rabbit hole and everybody's speaking you know another language , so you guys have really . It's really a smart move to always bring it back to you know . People like me who were like I can spell cloud and multi-clouds hard . And , by the way , I just caught myself on the monitor . Should I I look ridiculous ? Should I take these glasses off ?

Speaker 3 24:26

Nobody's is anybody going to listen to anything I say with these ?

Speaker 5 24:29

I think you're great .

Speaker 2 24:31

Well , I'm like up here trying to say you know heartfelt stuff , and I look like a complete dude .

Speaker 5 24:35

You're Elton John . You're Elton John .

Speaker 3 24:38

Yeah , I'm like .

Speaker 4 24:38

Elton John Put the damn guitar back on .

Speaker 1 24:41

But the thing is he kind of looks more like Flaviflave with like the Christmas Flaviflave , I guess .

Speaker 6 24:46

Oh , it is the English channel , okay it was a green change . Well , we'll forgive him for that .

Speaker 4 24:53

Says the Pat's fan .

Speaker 2 24:55

Oh , who's it ? I don't want to , even don't get me started . I have a couple of favorite episodes , unless somebody wanted . I don't want to step on anybody how we doing . Did anybody have ? Oh ?

Speaker 4 25:05

yeah , I just want to take a second to say that we really appreciate that comment from both you , tim and Andy . I think that's good . You know what it's . I think the biggest message that we wanted to get out there was not only is , you know , cloud networking a thing , it's , it's cool and it's really fun for traditional networkers who've been doing it for a long time .

Speaker 4 25:25

You know , we want more people to be into this shit , right ? So that's kind of like , well , we started this to try to , you know , bridge that gap and get more people involved , because that's the thing cloud is . I'm sure , if you , if you , google anything to do with cloud right now , networking is not going to be on any of those lists ever , right , it's going to be all AI , it's going to be all , like you know , the modernization of applications and things like that , but the networking enables almost all of that , right . So it's a fundamental piece , just like it is an on-prem . So we really just want to kind of make sure that you know , people have a seat at the table and , you know , are involved and understand there's other people doing this shit , you know . So it's really , really fun .

Speaker 2 26:03

So many great conversations you're having . Like when I , when I got thrown in a multi-cloud right , nowhere near like you guys , right , I was just this network guy who was like wait , what , like ? What is this stuff ? Somebody built and ran away from you know , you hear how simple and again we're not going to get like this crazy cloud networking discussion , right , but what I'm amazed like they talk about how simple cloud networking is . Right Like it's . They keep it simple for a reason . Right Like it's . Oh , it's simple and it's constrained . You only have a couple of things you can do in it .

Speaker 2 26:28

But man , when I I don't know if it was just that connectivity coming in and out of all my data centers and then when something would break , like wait , what application lives where and what's that thing and where do I check where and what portal and it was that multi-cloud piece of just . It was so much easier for me to have like three data go forward data centers that I knew where everything was and where it should be going . Now I have GCP and AWS and Oracle , whatever , and there's different things living in different places , and you get a call at 3am like somebody's pissed . Where do I even start in this mess , right , like you know . Like , well , cloud networking is easy ? Well , maybe , but when you got to find the mess and all your other data centers , you know for me it wasn't .

Speaker 2 27:08

And I know there's people out there with solutions to try to make it simpler , right . But that's why I love the conversations you're having , because in one breath , somebody will say cloud networking is easy and there's only a couple things you can do , and they keep it super simple . But that wasn't my experience trying to navigate the hybrid world that you guys talk about so much . So there's just so much there , right , like again , I could buy you guys for hours about this . But it's why I love the content you're putting out , because , yeah , you get in there and it just it gets hairy quick . At least it did for me and hearing you guys talk about things and break it down and make sense of it is just so helpful , I think , for anybody in hybrid cloud , which I'm guessing is almost all of us right , if you're managing a network , we'll be there soon .

Speaker 5 27:46

If you're not there yet , I mean yeah , yeah , that's the number one thing we say all the time right , it's hybrid is going to be the future .

Speaker 5 27:52

So network engineering will be hybrid . No , I really appreciate all that and honestly , I feel like we're just doing for the cloud network pieces which you guys have been doing for the network side of the house for years now already , like we're obviously far behind the trend , but you guys have put out so much content that has helped so many people . I mean hell . I remember oh God , it was years ago now , right , but I just started . I think I had just connected with any guys on Twitter and you're like hey , come join our discord and popped in and you know , I think Andy , you and you were looking for an episode one time and that's how I ended up being a guest on the show and like out of nowhere , right , like it's the industry so small like this , you've been .

Speaker 2 28:37

You've been such a great supporter and help . Like there's a couple times we pulled you in the second . Like dude , we had a guest and they bailed . Or like I , you know whatever happened . Like Tim , smart and he's good and you know we love talking to him . Like hey , tim , you know we got an episode and 30 minutes recording . Like you around it's like sure .

Speaker 3 28:54

Well , not even that's a friend , you know , not even just the podcast . I've hit him up and talking about things and he's like , hey , let's get on the phone so I can help you figure out how to negotiate a salary . I'm like , oh okay .

Speaker 4 29:09

Tim's never doing anything . Well , he always seems to be helping people , which is just fantastic .

Speaker 2 29:16

Like I start . Honestly , tim , I probably never told you this . I started offering resume critiques on our discord because you did it so much and I'm like I can look at somebody's resume , like I'm not an expert but I might be able to help somebody coming up and and I only started that because I saw you doing it so much and like that's , that's like a low effort thing . I could try to like help people with sure , and you know you do so many of those things not to say it was low effort right yeah , no , no , I was helping people yeah yeah , chris got it right .

Speaker 5 29:41

I just never do anything . I just have horrible ADHD , so I just look for things to distract me from from from things I should be doing . Not I mean , but but the fish . Thank you , I appreciate all those words , but yeah , no , it's been a great year for us and we could have done . We truly , I mean we probably . I won't say we couldn't have done it without you , but like it made , having as like help us and and and be our cheerleaders and all of that and all the stuff they did , everything just it's been , it's made it Possible , I guess so much more possible , to get that leg up and get started that's the thing

Podcasting Reflections and Admiration for Guests

Speaker 5 30:20

.

Speaker 4 30:20

We certainly could have started something on our own , but you know , we wanted , like we . We posed at the age like , hey , we want to start a podcast . How do we do this like ? How do you do it tell ?

Speaker 1 30:29

us how you do ?

Speaker 4 30:30

what do we do ? And then , you know , I kind of flooded it like would you want to Help us with it ? And age was immediately like yes , let's do it . And then like we , because , like you guys have done all this work , you built a community . You know you have this large following of people that respect your craft and you know , I think you actually speak to people that don't have a lot of you know kind of vocal people in in this type of environment , within tech . So you know , I mean , if we can ride your fucking coattails , we're gonna do it , man .

Speaker 2 31:03

It's a beautiful thing that you built . So yeah , it's , it's been awesome . Well , listen , our master plan is once traditional on , prem networking goes away and we're all dinosaurs and it doesn't mean anything anymore . We're gonna be working for you guys . Everything's gonna be in the cloud with the overlord , so jokes on you .

Speaker 5 31:25

I hope that never actually happens . I definitely the futures hybrid . So , yeah , I'm excited for both of the worlds for favorite episodes . Right , I'm trying to remember . Actually there I had so many favorites . There were some really good ones . The one that sticks out in my head for a one is the one that I was able to , a couple that I was able to record , because I have so much content that I can't even remember what was this year .

Speaker 1 31:53

That makes yeah , I go back and actually look at all of our episodes , look at what we really sincere , so yeah , getting of the episode .

Speaker 2 32:02

When AJ was talking , I was scrolling through the same thing like it's just so much , right .

Speaker 4 32:08

I think that's now now we see behind the curtain so we know all the cool shit you're doing hasn't even come out yet right , so it's like it's hard to remember .

Speaker 5 33:16

Yeah , so yeah , no , I mean that we yeah , there's just so many , so many good ones this year . You guys have such great guests that it just it makes the almost stress . Really was really good , like you , I think somebody already said that one right , that was a really good one , honestly you and you joined us for you , and Chris joined us for a cca panel , along with Erica that was a good one .

Speaker 2 33:43

Yeah , I really enjoyed Erica I never . I know her from my community and like Twitter and stuff .

Speaker 1 33:48

But I never heard of her .

Speaker 2 33:49

I love Erica . She was so like I loved her .

Speaker 4 33:54

Just a real , like snarky . No , no bullshit .

Speaker 2 33:58

I love this great , I really . Yeah , she said the things I'm afraid to say publicly exactly I don't know how many times that she would .

Speaker 3 34:06

She said something and immediately said I'm gonna get in trouble for this , but I don't care .

Speaker 5 34:12

Yeah , absolutely , she's great . Yeah , no , that's , that's it . And then maybe on for hours , I had to really this one rise I struggled with cuz yeah , I guess maybe it's . I don't know if the perspective is different when you're the one recording or whatever . When you're the one recording it and what , not planning it . I really liked the one we did with Steve McNutt , which was , I think , our third episode , which was about designing security solutions for the cloud . I like that one because yeah that was our first guest .

Speaker 5 34:38

Yeah , yeah , absolutely . Steve was our first guest and I like that one a lot because I felt like it hit right in the middle of where I wanted had kind of envisioned the podcast to be , and so that was really good . The one with Pete Andy everybody loves that one man like that was truly good . Any of the ones with the even even is always a pleasure to listen to and talk to . So that's , that's my can we pause there ?

Speaker 2 35:00

God damn it . What is it about some people that you could just like , right , like the words are just music and everything they say and you know she's so how much big all shocks and you know , yeah , like . But there's something about . I mean , I listen to everything of on does everywhere , same with Pete on all the different shows in the hedge and this and that and the other thing , and I'm a bomb is just on with will Collins on the on the cloud gambit and like I don't know what it is . With some of these people I just I have so much like respect and like I wish I could be . It's , yeah , like I wish I was as smart and as eloquent as is and is an effective communicator is them ? Because they just seem like on this other level of and again they're , they're humble too , but I don't know like do you guys ? Is just me ? Am I totally crazy ?

Speaker 2 35:45

There's just some people who like they just get it like Pete on your show broke down the entire problem and networking like so crystal clear and like better than anybody I've ever heard . You know , like the problem with networking , quote unquote , right , like why we're not automating , why we're not getting it right why things are so behind the times . Like I was just like , oh my God , like that's it . I've been trying to find those words for years and he just killed it . Like how do people do that ? I don't know they can see things more clearly than I can . I just answer my question . Thanks for attending my Ted talk .

Speaker 2 36:19

I love those guests right , and you never know when you're gonna get one of them . You get them on your show and then you're like oh my God , this is .

Speaker 4 36:25

I think I think Yvonne's one of those people where I'm like , cuz she came from doing exactly what we've done , right , well , you know , we've all been network engineers , we've all been in the trenches type thing , and she's moving Like further and further left , you know , before .

Speaker 4 36:39

You know I guess you could say pre sales or you know customer engagement , things like that , and like trying to identify and address the problems before , but then also doing proper like translation back to the people on the other end , which is which is really cool , cuz it's like we've all just I'm sure we felt like , you know , corporate or management has made a decision where it boils down to them handing us , the implementers , a shit sandwich and we have to eat it regardless , right . And she's really good at articulating , like aligning yourself with the goals of the business . You know being being supportive of that , or at least you know having having that in the back of your mind . So you know , whenever things get tough , like that's the end goal and if that angle doesn't align with what you want , maybe maybe it's not for you , right . Maybe you can make a change for the better , right , but she , just like you said , she articulates it so much better than I ever could , and with a with a smooth southern accent to boot , just to top that thing .

Speaker 4 37:33

I'm from Kentucky as well , so I think she speaks to me so much , so much better , and that just forms my heart , bless your heart .

Speaker 2 37:45

And I got to meet her in where the hell , where we Knoxville . Knoxville yeah , and that was just dude I was . I probably embarrassed myself like I was fanboying so bad she's like you need to stop . I'm just such a big fan of you like this . I can't believe that we're in the same room like hanging out . It's amazing . So getting to meet people in person to , it's just such a fantastic thing .

Speaker 4 38:07

Yeah , let's do more of that in 2024 . Would you come on the other ?

Speaker 2 38:10

side of the planet .

Speaker 4 38:11

How are we supposed to ?

Speaker 2 38:14

We got to come see you . I guess , aj , we need a budget to go to Australia . All right , all right , we'll figure it out Easy .

Speaker 1 38:21

So , on that note , there were some notable events for the podcast this year . We talked about launching cables to clouds .

Podcast's Year Highlights and Farewell

Speaker 1 38:28

We were invited to the Juniper Enterprise Networking Summit , where they had a bunch of influencers and analysts from the industry and we got to see what was going on with the latest Juniper , and that gave us an opportunity to get some of the crew together . Unfortunately , andy couldn't join us , but the rest of the team was there . We got to hang out and pal around with a bunch of other content creators , including the guys from the packet pushers . It was a real thrill to meet them in person and hang out with them and some other folks that were there at the event . It was a good time .

Speaker 3 38:59

Now , come on now , andy . Andy still found a way to embarrass me twice .

Speaker 1 39:06

Well , I mean was that really Andy's fault , tim ?

Speaker 2 39:09

I got to tell you seeing and I got to meet Drew I'm very merry not too long ago at it at a PA Nug event , which was awesome too , Like right , it's like meeting one of your . Like , I came up listening to those guys , right Like that was it . Wasn't that the event ? Where was it ?

Speaker 6 39:23

like Drew and Ethan , like yeah hugging my picture and like but it was .

Speaker 2 39:28

it was such a like oh my God , the show that I grew up listening to the show , that I sat in my cable guy truck yearning for the day that somebody would finally give me a shot of network engineering . Like these guys know who I am , they're taking a picture with my picture , like it just . It was this weird , surreal moment of like I don't know , like , just they know who I am and they're doing this nice thing with the picture . And I'm glad you mentioned the Juniper thing , aj , cause again we've reinvested everything we've made back into the show . So none of us have you know , we're not driving Teslas yet . Like , we're not making money from this thing , right ? Like , personally .

Speaker 2 40:33

But , just because we're talking about the year from my perspective , a vendor you know , one of the big three that like took note of us and decided to partner with us and do some sponsored content . For me it was just like , oh wow , like this feels like another level of recognition of , like , what we're doing is valuable , right . So I just kind of wanted to . I don't know if we did two or three sponsored pieces with them . You know , throughout the year there was that event you just talked about . There was some short form stuff .

Speaker 2 41:00

Short form , yeah , I think there was like an extra thing . So like , I don't know , man , it's just , you know , not that we're looking for validation , right , but it's just really nice when a company that big in the space that we work in shows up and it's like we see you , we like what you're doing and we'd like to work with you . It's just , I don't know , I felt very validated that , again , we're not in it for the sponsorship dollars , right . It's not like , hey , we want to do all these sponsored shows because you know , but at the same time it just really I don't know , I don't know how that hit you guys , but when one of the big three showed up and said , yes , we want to partner with you , just like , oh my God you know , I think I ran into my wife like you wouldn't believe this Guess who just called .

Speaker 2 41:37

I don't know .

Speaker 3 41:38

I got super tickled about that .

Speaker 2 41:40

And it wasn't because they're my employer , right , it was just . You know , they're one of the big dogs in the industry , right ? And they knocked on our door . I thought that was wild .

Speaker 1 41:48

Yeah , yeah , no , I couldn't agree with you more . I mean , we've had a lot of great sponsors over the years , but Juniper Networks was by far the largest , and not only are they the largest networking company to sponsor us , but they're also the largest sponsor we have in that they sponsored with us multiple times , over and over again , and you know it was a great experience and we got an opportunity to do something that we normally do , you know , as far as doing interviews and recording an episode . But then they also asked us and challenged us to do something that was outside of our box , right , that we had to put some thought into design , come up with a solution kind of thing , and present to them four different pieces of short form content , which was , you know , new for us , right ? Especially , you know , not being a generation that grew up on short form content is how I'm gonna phrase that To try to , you know , figure out how do we do this , this short form content , marketing stuff for a company where you know you're trying to advertise something without directly advertising it , right ? So that was a good challenge .

Speaker 1 42:53

We also had some other great sponsors Kentick , of course , forward Networks and Unimus . They were all great to work with this year and you know we truly appreciate the support that we get from them on the podcast and , as Andy said , we put a lot of the money that we get right back into the show . It supports us being able to , you know , pay for licensing for various products that help us edit the show , all the platforms that we're on , and so it's great to be able to make those kind of improvements in the quality of our content and where it gets released . So all good stuff , but we are planning to spend some of that and get it back into the community , as we originally intended , and so you can look for that in 2024 here , since we're wrapping up the year .

Speaker 1 43:37

Downloads-wise , we have smashed through 660,000 all-time downloads . I do predict , if the trends continue , maybe we'll hit the one million mark next year . That's insane .

Speaker 6 43:51

One million . It's serious .

Speaker 1 43:55

Yeah , yeah , it's been great . And then , of course , you know , we haven't had a chance to talk about it on the show . It was announced on social media , but Lexi , not too long ago , decided to step away from the podcast and we do thank her for all of her contributions and it's been great getting to know her over the last few years and we , of course , look forward to see what she does with her own journey . So thank you , lexi , for being a part of the team .

Speaker 2 44:21

Yeah , she was great to have on the show . I really enjoyed her from the beginning . We had what was the not Knoxville the first event we had . Oh , asheville , asheville , yeah , thank , you , asheville , and it was just so nice to get to meet her and spend the time with her and just you know , and what she's doing , even at work , is just so amazing , like I saw something . I mean like we knew her before .

Speaker 1 44:43

She was like Rocket Girl , right , like which was just really cool to watch her Like .

Speaker 2 44:47

I think she was at the knock at the time at IBM or whatever , but just to then , you know , wind up at blue . And then I saw something , a picture of like part of the New Glenn rocket being shipped somewhere for like things are starting to come to get , like that thing is going to fly soon and I'm just so happy for her that . You know she was one of those like career pivots . She had a career she hated and she went back to school and fell in love with networking and got a certification and doors opened and here she is working on the network , that's , you know , going to freaking launch payloads to like Mars . Like are you kidding me ?

Speaker 1 45:21

Like how cool is this industry .

Speaker 2 45:23

Like listen to that story , like just that . And she did it at a really relatively short period of time . And so , yeah , I'm really grateful for the time that we had with her and just wish her nothing but the best . And you know , I'm pretty sure she's going to be an astronaut and they're going to like fly her somewhere Just because , just because Lexi right Like she's going to be in a rocket someday , she's going to be like later shit birds and peew , you know .

Speaker 4 45:44

Crimpin' cables on the moon at some point .

Speaker 2 45:46

Hey man Like it wouldn't surprise me . I just I don't see any limit to like where she's going . It's just such a such a cool story . So , anyway , somebody that went from I hate my career starting over moving home to like not that long later . Like look at it now .

Speaker 2 46:03

So , just such a cool story and I'm just very grateful that she was . You know she was . She was on our journey for a bit and , yeah , I can't wait to see what she does . It's really cool . So thanks for your time with us , lex , it was great .

Speaker 1 46:15

I have just a couple more things that I want to mention . It sounds like , Tim you , you want to add more thoughts . Yeah , I was just going to say .

Speaker 3 46:20

I mean she always finds something that she wants to do and learn more about and is completely unapologetic about it .

Speaker 3 46:29

And that's what I love Like she's she's gotten super into layer one and layer two and she's really found a passion for learning about that , and I've seen stuff on social media where people just give her crap , like , why do you care so much about that ? It's not important , and it's like , well , actually it is , and don't crap on people for trying to better themselves , learning something . That's in fact , she led , planned and led an episode with somebody that she knew about Ethernet . That that took us on a deep dive of it . Now it was really cool and she was super excited about it and it went really well . And , yeah , she's done a lot for us Over time and I agree with your sentiment . I can't wait to see what she does next tim .

Speaker 2 47:11

That a reverent , I don't give a shit attitude , is the reason , I think one of the main reasons that , like I probably watched most of her study streams like , yeah , the very least early on , like at least 10 , 12 of them . I mean I have never in the history of my

Yearly Reflections and Community Gratitude

Speaker 2 47:25

life and I probably never will ever again sign in and watch somebody study , right , like it doesn't interest me . But she just made it so entertaining , like if you can take an rfc or an 800 page ethernet book and like make it entertaining . You know yelling at syscopress for those typos and like just I don't know , man , it was really . Uh , she made ethernet interesting . I don't know how she did that , it's just it's definitely a gift , you know absolutely .

Speaker 1 47:53

Um , I just want to mention a couple more things before we transition to the next part of the show . You know , one is we can't not talk about Knoxville . So the , the Knoxville technology council , reached out to us earlier this year and they said hey , we want you to be a part of our in-person events . Uh , and so long story short is we came up with a good plan of what we were going to do and we got to go Down to Knoxville hang out with with the whole crew here , uh , uh , andy was there , dan was there , tim was there , I was there , uh , and Alex joined us for a few days . Uh , and we got to meet a lot of our our listeners , which was just a crazy experience because we had some folks that drove like nine hours away To come up and and hang out with us .

Speaker 3 48:37

Uh , and some people . People get on planes .

Speaker 1 48:39

Yeah , I was just gonna say , some people you know booked , booked flights and came down and joined us and uh , it was just a really surreal yeah yeah , and it was just kind of a surreal experience .

Speaker 1 48:49

You know , like it's one thing to record the show and I can see the download numbers but actually interacting with people who listen to and appreciate the content that we put out , it's it really hits home and and it makes me , you know , firmly believe , like this is this is why we're doing it exactly . So , uh , it was really fun to to get together and meet everybody in Knoxville , um , and then , lastly , our listeners . I want to thank our listeners . You know we wouldn't be doing this without their support , uh , we , we hear from people from the community all the time . I'm very excited that we're bringing back the wins in our short , firm content . So , if you have a win , go to the winning channel , drop it in there . We released the first one , uh , last week , as we're recording this anyway , with last week and , um , already I've seen a ton more wins get dumped into the discord channel , so clearly people want their wins . Read again , yep , uh .

Speaker 4 49:41

Uh , you know .

Speaker 1 49:41

I , I , I regret pulling it out of the show . It just it , really . You know , I wanted the wins to be timely , right , like if you Achieve something you want to hear it pop up on the next show , and it just became really hard to be able to edit that content In timely fashion . Oh boy , he's loading the guitar up . I can't wait , uh , and then Um , to be able to bring those back in the short form content it's . I think it's going to be something we're going to go forward with . So that's , that's very exciting . Um , now I want to kind of pivot a little bit to the cables , to clouds crew , and hear from you guys on what were your favorite moments , uh , from from this year , and Maybe a little bit about what she got coming up on the show .

Speaker 4 50:21

Uh , yeah , I guess I guess I'll take that . Um . So , yeah , I think we kind of went over some of our favorite episodes already from this year . We've already had some amazing guests , um that you know , like A lot of people from like that we literally wrote down on the paper like day one when we started the podcast , like the people that we knew we wanted to have on . So that was that was huge for us . Um , happy to say that upcoming soon we have even more of those people that we uh , um , that we wrote down day one . We've already recorded a couple this year that were released early next year . Um , that we're super excited about . Um , you know , I think , our numbers let me pull up the Stats here we didn't crush anything , but we , we , we hit about 13 000 plus downloads , which I think is just the fact that anyone wanted to listen to us 13 000 .

Speaker 2 51:10

Are you poo pooing 13 000 ?

Speaker 4 51:12

I'm not poo pooing it , but you just said 600k , bro , so it's like Well that that's nine months , versus what three years They've been .

Speaker 5 51:20

Yeah , I've been at it a little bit longer .

Speaker 4 51:22

Yeah , uh , we had um . Just to run through the list that we made here , we had , uh , about 14 guests come on Um , including the . I think we've recorded with 14 guests Is . I don't think we've actually released all of them yet , but um , probably one of the coolest , like the first , like really cool moments for us . Whereas , um , we talked with Tim matt from uh learning at Cisco , reached out to you and see if we wanted to have hank preston on the show to talk about this new cloud connectivity Cert that they were putting out , and we were like the fucking a we do , like absolutely .

Speaker 6 51:55

That's like uh , that was like a pretty cool moment for us , um , you know , we had Something real quick about this , because I have to call out hank here , because I specifically asked on the episode multiple times Are there going to be other specialties in the other tracks ? Oh , you know , I can't really say anything . And then , like a week later , they started announcing all the other tracks . Man .

Speaker 4 52:20

I was so mad . That's . That's how it works , man , you can't say what an NDA is right .

Speaker 3 52:24

Yeah right , I know , I know .

Speaker 1 52:27

Alex you know what I could tell you right now ?

Speaker 4 52:30

Nothing , nothing at all but that was that one was super cool . I remember we were seeing , like either it was like a webinar or something from Cisco where , like they plugged the , the podcast and that was like our first time seeing it as like someone externally like referring to it Albeit , cisco , that was . That was really cool . Um , you know , we've gotten we've had guests on from aws to talk about like things like cloudwin and vpc lattice . Um , alexander weed as and justin davies were on talking about vpc lattice and we , like we had this idea . We're like , oh , we're gonna , we want to record , you know , an episode about vpc lattice and then we'll do a demo with you guys and we'll Put that out . And they were like , how about we just provide you some exclusive content that's only available internally and we'll let you release it under your own channel , and things like that , which was like yeah , we're like whoa , we were like not to like .

Speaker 4 53:18

You know , pat ourselves on the back too hard or anything , but that was , that was just a cool moment . It was if the like have something exclusive felt crazy to me .

Speaker 6 53:27

Um so , that was , yeah , the , the vpc lattice want to get . Sorry , I gotta jump in here . Talk about being star struck man Like I . It's unbelievable to me that we just started this podcast this year . Like we're all Diving further into cloud networking and we got like alexander weed as and like just way higher people at aws to come on and talk to us about a brand new product . Like it still just blows my mind . Yeah , that that's actually like a real thing to happen .

Speaker 4 53:54

That was a super cool moment for me , and Justin actually did a presentation just at reinvent a couple weeks ago and I remember at the end of his presentation he like called it out . He's like you can pair this with the cables to clouds podcast and get more information on vpc lattice .

Speaker 5 54:07

It's so cool . Yeah , it was . It was very cool .

Speaker 4 54:09

The thing someone was standing on a stage talking to like a few hundred people , like mentioning us . I was like Fuck man .

Speaker 5 54:15

That's Well , and it's , it's . It's on there , I mean it's recorded right . So , like anybody who watches the accession , from now on We'll see that yeah absolutely , that's pretty cool .

Speaker 4 54:25

But , yeah , I mean , we've already said it once , we'll say it a thousand times we're just so grateful for , you know , not only a one , but the community involved . And you know , yeah , I think , I think that's the thing is like you . You think like , if you hear these numbers , that like how many people listen to a One , it sounds like there's just like so many people . If you think about the amount of people that go to sysco live , you're like man , there's network . Engineering is big . It's not that big man . It's like , no , you , you find out . You're like , it's like you're too rungs away from someone at any given time , like everybody knows everybody . And it's like it's everyone's so accessible , everyone's so nice and , and you know they , they probably be more willing to work with you than you'd ever anticipate . So you know , always just like , reach out and talk to people , have conversations . It's uh , I think it means the world to me and it means the world to a lot of us .

Speaker 6 55:14

Oh , yeah , yeah , and you know it's crazy . I think we've mentioned this before , but the three of us me , tim and Chris like we actually all were together at what the hell's it called .

Speaker 4 55:27

Cisco Live in San Diego in 2019 .

Speaker 6 55:30

And it's like we weren't like talking regularly , we weren't hanging out or anything . So it's crazy that just a couple years later , like we're all together doing a podcast . So it's just funny how things worked .

Speaker 5 55:41

I think we're all like people , don't ? I like to say that , like you know the whole six degrees from Kevin Bacon it's like two and a half max for network engineering , and you know everybody . You just don't . You know you're like one degree from everybody , but and they're all one degree from you and they don't know it . Like that's , you just run into this person or like have one mutual and all of a sudden you realize how close you are to everybody else . It's very , very good .

Speaker 2 56:06

Well , speaking of which , if anybody talks to Roddy Parlman , have her call me , because I have been after Roddy to get to get on the show and she's she's a busy , busy lady for sure . But if we're all that connected , somebody get Roddy over here , because I remember that one talk I think I shared with you guys and she just she's another one of those like just so honest and irreverent and snarky and smart . I'm like man , I can't wait to talk to her . So I'm working on it . But yeah , if you know anybody who knows anybody , let's make it happen next year .

Speaker 5 56:40

Yeah , goals . I was looking for it , but one of the very first networking books I bought I think the first one might have been an art and route was somebody's CCNA study guide , not the , not the , a Cisco press one . But the second one I bought was interconnections , volume two , from that ready bit that I had wrote , and you're right , reading the book , so much of who she is comes across .

Speaker 2 57:03

Oh my god , it's such a great book . She calls like the IEEE . Like just a bunch of buffoons , right , like a bunch of drunken fret boy buffoon I don't know if it's the atrope , but whatever like standard body . It was that , you know . I mean just things I've never heard before . Like she's like yeah , I was there , I know it's all ridiculous . She's like Ethernet's terrible Spanning trees awful . She's like when I wrote it I never thought 30 years later , people still be running this awful thing . Like , oh my god , I love her , right , she's so funny .

Speaker 5 57:31

Yeah , her book is really good and she covers all of that in the book too , which is also very funny . And it made me , when I was and of course I didn't know shit from Shinola right , I was barely studying , starting to learn and to read all of that like how about ? Like she wanted layer three , like all the way to the host , for example like you know , there's so many little things and it was such an eye opener about the industry and like what I was getting into .

Speaker 1 57:57

Could you imagine like a slash , 30 on each port to every host IPv6 , bro ? No problem , oh man .

Speaker 4 58:08

Any other thoughts ? Oh God , sorry , yeah , I was gonna say that , but that's pretty much it from us . You know , we kind of just got started . You know , I'm really thankful for the people out there that are still listening from like day one where we didn't really have our feet set pretty , very well , we learned that . You know , recording audio is a fucking bitch If you don't get it right the first time .

Speaker 1 58:28

So , that's .

Speaker 4 58:30

That's a painful thing , but I'm really thankful for just every if anyone's ever reached out , everyone's ever listened to anything at all Like it's just . You know , it means the world to us . I hope we appreciate it and it's been a great year , and we hope that 2024 is just as fruitful and even better than 2023 . So let's make it happen .

Speaker 1 58:50

You guys have any plans for 2024 ? You want to sneak out of the bag .

Speaker 4 58:55

I guess . I mean we did just record one Just the other day with with Duane Lightfoot , which is one one is a guy that we like . Like I said , one of those guys we wrote down day one like we knew we wanted to have him on .

Speaker 4 59:10

He just came on and he shined just as great as he always does and you know it's . We're really excited to put that one out . So that'll be out in probably next

Plans for 2024 and Collaboration Updates

Speaker 4 59:20

, next month sometime . So we'll be on the lookout for that . And yeah , we've got some other collaborations in the works and hopefully those will , those will get ironed out over the next few weeks and yeah we'll . We'll just keep expanding , you know .

Speaker 2 59:32

I'm looking forward to that . Duane's another one of those people that I just listened to every time he's talking , he's . And he's such a kind guy too we had him on he's just such a nice , kind man that just just so smart . And I love Duane . I can't wait to hear that . That'd be awesome .

Speaker 4 59:45

Yeah , I think I've learned . One of the number one things that I respect in this community is all the humility . Right , that's just it's . It's . When you find that it's like really hard to deny it and then be attracted to those people , you know it's , it's , it's great . So , yeah , really stuck to put that one out .

Speaker 1 1:00:03

Awesome . Well , it's definitely been a fun year . I appreciate you guys taking the time to walk down memory lane . I know we have a lot of exciting stuff planned for the coming year . We have already got some great guests lined up . We've already got a ton of content recorded this year that we're going to release next year . So I'm looking forward to that and , with that buffer , I think that will give us the opportunity to perhaps explore some additional content that we can create and put out to the world . So lots of fun things to come in 2024 .

Speaker 2 1:00:32

Are we going to get together next year ?

Speaker 1 1:00:34

I hope so . I wish I could tell you we had something planned , but but we don't yet at this point , but we didn't at this point last year . So you know anything can happen and I'm sure it will happen . I hope that we get another group interested in put in Pull party at .

Speaker 6 1:00:52

Andy's .

Speaker 2 1:00:56

Totally . That's my , that's one of my goals for 2024 is I'd love to get together somehow , whether it's you know us , or at a tech conference or I just there's .

Speaker 2 1:01:07

I don't know what it is . You know , like I complained about being in the office years ago and then I was so happy to work from home and after like five years working from home , it's so nice to like get around people when I do and go to the office . So I've I've learned about myself that like I really thrive with like human , like in person , human interaction with people , and when I get together with this team , with you guys , everybody here , I don't something changes for me , something happens and I just I get really excited and really into one of my and and then we all go home and it starts to fade and I'm like oh .

Speaker 2 1:01:44

I kind of miss those guys . So I don't know . There's just , there's some kind of synergy , magical thing that happens when we're together , and I wish we could do it more often , but we got to get together in 2024 , somehow that's . I'll put that on me , I'll try to figure out how to do that . I mean , we basically got to find money right , like a sponsor or we all go to some conference . When is when is Cisco live ?

Speaker 1 1:02:04

June .

Speaker 4 1:02:05

June .

Speaker 2 1:02:05

June yeah . So that was like the conference right , everybody seems to go to , so maybe uh where ?

Speaker 6 1:02:12

where's it going to be this year ? Does anyone know ?

Speaker 4 1:02:14

I think it's still in Vegas .

Speaker 2 1:02:18

I've never been to Vegas . It is as gross as I think it is .

Speaker 4 1:02:20

It's fine for about three days that is so accurate .

Speaker 3 1:02:26

For about as long as .

Speaker 5 1:02:27

Cisco live it's , it's , it's cool .

Speaker 4 1:02:28

Yeah , you'll be fine for that period of time yeah , You'll understand why people are leaving early . Whenever they are Last day , you're like I shouldn't have stayed this entire last day .

Speaker 1 1:02:38

Oh yeah , absolutely , absolutely . I want to remind our listeners if you do want to support the show , you can do that in a number of ways . The easiest way to do that is to subscribe , like follow all of those good things . Uh , you know , if , if the pod catcher that you're using , such as Apple or Spotify , allow you to leave some sort of review for either of our shows , please go ahead and do that , and that that really helps out the the mojo that is social media networking and podcasting . And then , of course , make sure you follow us on all of our social media . We are in just about every place that you you social these days , right ? Uh , where we're on Twitter , we're on Tik Tok or X . I'll give in and I'll call it X . Oh , how dare you ? No , all right .

Speaker 4 1:03:27

All right .

Speaker 1 1:03:28

All right , all right , I take that back then , and then you can always find all of our content on the art of network , engineeringcom , and that includes , uh , some of the candles , the cloud stuff as well . I think in 2024 , maybe we we get you guys your own website . We should work on that .

Speaker 4 1:03:45

A shiny new website .

Speaker 1 1:03:47

Shiny new website for you guys . But no , this has been a great conversation . Thank you all so much for joining us on the live stream . For those of you that decided to jump in and hang with us , we do appreciate it . You can find us live streaming most Thursday evenings . We start around 8 30 PM Eastern time and we try to post links on our social media accounts so you can join us . So we'd love to have a crowd as we do this . Andy , I think we were going to take the show out in a little bit different way tonight . Are you ready to do that ?

Speaker 2 1:04:16

Do you , do you want to do ? You want to say good night , aj , or anything , and then we'll just finish with the song or what ? We've never done this before . This wasn't planned . I don't know that sounds good .

Speaker 1 1:04:23

That sounds good . All right , we will see you next time on another episode of the art of network engineering podcast . Happy holidays from all of us here , at a one you might want to turn it off now , yeah .

Speaker 2 1:04:36

And one and two , let's see .

Speaker 4 1:04:41

Jingle bells , jingle

Holiday Singing Mishap

Speaker 4 1:04:44

bells .

Speaker 2 1:04:44

Jingle oh guys , oh my God .

Speaker 4 1:04:47

Wait , wait , wait , wait , stop , no , no , no , no , we were real .

Speaker 1 1:04:51

Hold on .

Speaker 3 1:04:52

Stop , you said . You said we were going all the way . I was starting it dashing through the snow .

Speaker 5 1:04:57

That's true , that is the song . Oh yeah , that's true , that is the song .

Speaker 4 1:05:15

That is the song .

Speaker 3 1:05:33

I knew I should have brought harmonica .

Speaker 2 1:05:36

I know this is going to end with me just singing by myself and I want to open this place .

Speaker 1 1:05:42

Oh my God , Merry .

Speaker 5 1:05:45

Christmas everybody .