Archive for 2023
Hedge 180: Network Operations Survey with Josh S
What has been happening in the world of network automation—and more to the point, what is coming in the future? Josh Stephens from Backbox joins Tom Ammon, Eyvonne Sharp, and Russ White to discuss the current and future network operations and automation landscape.
Hedge 179: The State and Future of SONiC with Michael V Dvorkin
SONiC is a long-standing open source network operating system. While it cannot (quite) compete with a full-blown commercial network operating system, SONiC+FR/R can solve a lot of the problems network operators face today. Mike V Dvorkin joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to talk about the current state and future of SONiC.
Hedge 178: Defined Trust Transport with Kathleen Nichols

The Internet of Things is still “out there”—operators and individuals are deploying millions of Internet connected devices every year. IoT, however, poses some serious security challenges. Devices can be taken over as botnets for DDoS attacks, attackers can take over appliances, etc. While previous security attempts have all focused on increasing password security and keeping things updated, Kathleen Nichols is working on a new solution—defined trust transport in limited domains.
Join us for this episode of the Hedge with Kathleen to talk about the problems of trusted transport, the work she’s putting in to finding solutions, and potential use cases beyond IoT.
You can find Kathleen at Pollere, LLC, and her slides on DeftT here.
Hedge 177: Mike Dvorkin and the Cloud

On this episode of the Hedge, Mike Dvorkin joins Russ White to talk about the cloud, tradeoffs, rethinking the cloud value proposition, and the road to becoming an architect. A key point—it is harder to fix hardware in production than it is to fix software in production.
Hedge 176: OpenAI, ChatGPT, and the Cost of a Data Center

It’s time for the April Hedge roundtable! This month Eyvonne, Russ, and Tom are talking about OpenAI, the hype around AI, the “pause letter” and the lack of a real conversation, and the rising costs of building and operating a data center. As always, let us know if you have topics you’d like to hear us talk about, or guests you’d like to hear.
Thanks for listening!
Hedge 175: Mike B on Personal Superpowers
When the economy starts contracting, career advisors start talking about the importance of “soft skills.” What are “soft skills,” exactly—and why are they “soft?” Mike Bushong joins Tom Amman and Russ White to talk about why these skills are important, why they are not “soft,” and how we should talk about people skills instead. They are superpowers,” and there isn’t anything “soft” about them.
On the ‘net: Privacy and IPv6 Renumbering
One of the biggest advantages of IPv6, from a network administration perspective, is the ease of renumbering. While IPv4 networks can be renumbered using DHCP, the process of changing the address of every device on a network is always fraught with unexpected challenges. People (like me) have a habit of manually assigning printers and network attached storage devices a fixed address so they will be easy to find and use.
