Ep 23 - Christmas Collab with AONE

Chris Miles: 0:00

Welcome to the Cables to Clouds podcast. Cloud adoption is on the rise and many network infrastructure professionals are being asked to adopt a hybrid approach as individuals who have already started this journey. We would like to empower those professionals with the tools and the knowledge to bridge the gap. Welcome back to a very special episode of the Cables to Clouds podcast. Joining me is Tim and Alex.

Chris Miles: 0:36

We just wanted to give you a little bit of a heads up and some well wishes for the upcoming holidays. So just first things first, a bit of an announcement. We've decided that we want to change up our delivering the some say bi-weekly cloud news, some fortnightly cloud news, whatever the hell you want to call it, semi-monthly, any of that shit. We were changing up how exactly we want to deliver that. So we want to keep bringing it to you, but we want to make sure we're bringing it to you in a format that the listeners will enjoy. So we're going to put a poll out on Twitter and we would greatly appreciate it if you could have a look for that and just vote and let us know exactly how you want that news to be delivered. We're spitballing a few ideas, so your input would be greatly, greatly appreciated there. Anything else to add on that guys?

Alex Perkins: 1:29

No, just this episode and the next one won't have the news in the beginning, and then in 2024, mid-january is when we'll start with whatever new format we end up choosing. And if you have any comments outside of the poll, feel free to reach us on Discord or LinkedIn or anywhere else as well.

Chris Miles: 1:45

Feel free to show up at Tim's house. Tell him straight to his face, it's fine.

Alex Perkins: 1:49

Yeah, please do.

Tim McConnaughy: 1:51

Yeah, please don't ring the doorbell. My dog goes crazy though.

Chris Miles: 1:56

Yeah, but as for today's episode, so we have a very special episode for you guys today. So, of the six of you out there listening that probably have not heard of the Art of Network Engineering and found this podcast by the Art of Network Engineering, we did a special holiday episode with them and we really just wanted to kind of release that on our feet as well, because it was a great thing where we were just kind of summing up the year talking about what's happened this year with both podcasts. If you haven't checked out the Art of Engineering, this is a great intro to that. I highly recommend you go out there, and they have a very large backlog of talking to people talking about network engineering stories and some of it is just great content and there's a great community built around it in the Discord as well. So please check out the show notes for that.

Chris Miles: 2:47

And yeah, I mean, before we get into the episode, just want to say thank you to everyone for a great year. We haven't really hit a year of this podcast yet, but of what we've been through in 2023, it's been amazing. Great feedback from the community. I love getting out here talking to people, having people on the show and we're just really thankful and hope everyone has a great holiday, happy new year and, yeah, any other input from you guys.

Alex Perkins: 3:14

Yeah, no, I mean you said most of it. This has been an awesome year, right, we started in March, so, like Chris said, it hasn't been quite a year, but it's been awesome seeing the feedback and the growth that we've had so far, and I expect 2024 to be even better. We got lots of cool ideas coming up that I'm sure we'll talk about in another episode. But, yes, if you celebrate, you know, merry Christmas, happy new year and we look forward to the next year with you guys.

Tim McConnaughy: 3:41

Don't have much to add there, Just you know. Happy holidays. Thanks for sticking with us, and I also am looking forward to where we go in 2024.

Chris Miles: 3:50

Happy holidays yeah, happy holidays, merry.

Tim McConnaughy: 3:53

Toyodathon For those of you who celebrate.

Chris Miles: 3:57

Yeah, exactly, but yeah, so we'll get right into the episode. So, yeah, let's get into it. Enjoy this episode, this holiday special between Cables, clouds and the Art of Network Engineering.

AJ Murray: 4:12

Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering. I am AJ Murray and welcome to our holiday extravaganza special hey, and I am joined by a 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 laptop. You are so dressed up. It looks fantastic. I love the glasses. I wish I had those glasses myself.

Andy Lapteff: 4:44

And the shirt Happy for my six year old daughter, hey AJ how are you doing, man?

AJ Murray: 4:49

Happy holidays to you.

Andy Lapteff: 4:51

Happy holidays to you, my friends. Yes, this is lovely.

AJ Murray: 4:54

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

Andy Lapteff: 5:05

So I will be super subtle, but I will say that there are challenges have presented themselves in my personal life and I just 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. But, yeah, you know, life is good, the holidays are, you know, we're here, it's exciting, we go to like these Christmas light things and s'mores party things, and I love this time of year. It's really my favorite time of year. I don't know what it is about Christmas, you know, like I just it's just a joyous, like all my happiest memories, I think when I was a kid. We're from Christmas for whatever reason and I just I've never lost that Right.

Andy Lapteff: 5:51

So and now I get to do that for our kids, which is just really fun to do, isn't it fun?

AJ Murray: 5:55

Oh my gosh, I have so much fun with that now, except for the elves.

Andy Lapteff: 5:59

I don't like the elves.

AJ Murray: 6:00

Oh my God, the elf on the shelf.

Andy Lapteff: 6:02

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

AJ Murray: 6:10

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 you know, before he comes out.

Andy Lapteff: 6:27

So it's like we hear that noise, we heard the thud and like paddock.

AJ Murray: 6:31

We're like oh God we forgot to move the elf.

Tim Bertino: 6:34

The magic of Christmas is dead.

AJ Murray: 6:37

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.

Andy Lapteff: 6:48

So, anyway, it's never been busted. You've never been like why didn't the elves move Not?

AJ Murray: 6:52

yet, not yet.

Tim McConnaughy: 6:53

It'll happen?

AJ Murray: 6:55

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

Tim McConnaughy: 7:00

I'm good man. Just, you know, finishing all the holiday shopping and all that good stuff, I'm trying to trying to keep it somewhat reasonable. You know, I've been trying for years now to keep it reasonable. But yeah, we, we have the same elf anxiety, although I think I think this might be the last. This probably is going to be the last year. My, my, 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.

Tim McConnaughy: 7:28

Well, it lasted for the bittersweet, bittersweet 10 years, I think, we've been doing it yeah.

Andy Lapteff: 7:33

So let's, let's keep in mind that there may be children listening to this with their parents in the cars. So we'll, we'll play Tim, yes.

AJ Murray: 7:40

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

Tim McConnaughy: 7:45

So down with some of this, with your yes, holiday spoilers.

AJ Murray: 7:52

I would hate to get blamed for 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.

Tim Bertino: 8:04

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.

AJ Murray: 8:29

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

Tim McConnaughy: 8:38

Yeah, my condolences, yeah.

Tim Bertino: 8:41

Tim. Tim McConaughey busted that one open on Twitter. Thanks for that.

Andy Lapteff: 8:45

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

Tim Bertino: 8:52

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

Alex Perkins: 8:57

AJ taught us how to edit video.

Tim Bertino: 8:59

It was, it was fantastic, oh that was fun.

AJ Murray: 9:01

That was fun, excellent. And, uh, chris Miles from Down Under.

Chris Miles: 9:06

What's up guys? Yeah, I'm, uh, 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 deathly warm right now.

AJ Murray: 9:17

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

Chris Miles: 9:22

Yeah, that's, that's one thing that's uh kind of cool here. But also weird is having a hot Christmas, uh, so it's like the middle of the 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 beats being cold. I hate being cold.

AJ Murray: 9:41

So, yeah, I never thought about that. That's, that's crazy.

Chris Miles: 9:43

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, um comes in to your house via jet ski. I guess you know he's, he's, uh, you know adapted over yeah exactly.

Andy Lapteff: 10:01

Chris, which way does your toilet flush?

Chris Miles: 10:04

Bro, that was when I first visited Australia. That was, I had like had to do hotel quarantine because it was during COVID. Uh, I swear to God, I went in there and the first thing I did was flush the toilet, just like.

AJ Murray: 10:15

I don't know what happened.

Chris Miles: 10:17

Bro, it's, it's bullshit. The water just goes straight down, Doesn't even swirl. I was like it's an airplane toilet?

AJ Murray: 10:23

Not, really Not really that.

Chris Miles: 10:25

It's not like. It just doesn't spin, it's just like the toilets here.

Andy Lapteff: 10:29

You've never, you've never met a toilet in Australia that twirls Like they all just go straight down.

Chris Miles: 10:33

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

Tim Bertino: 10:40

He's been in Australia. Yeah, he's been in Australia. He's been in Australia. He's been in Australia.

AJ Murray: 10:44

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.

Andy Lapteff: 10:52

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 Technia Chetchnee-ish I forget how to say this.

AJ Murray: 11:03

I asked Daniel Technie.

Andy Lapteff: 11:05

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

Chris Miles: 11:09

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

Andy Lapteff: 11:12

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.

AJ Murray: 11:19

I've seen Make sure you when you do the selfie. There's like a big deuce. So we know clearly.

Tim Bertino: 11:25

I was going to say the opposite, please make sure it's.

Chris Miles: 11:28

It's just a test run.

Tim Bertino: 11:29

This is definitely.

Alex Perkins: 11:30

Chris.

Chris Miles: 11:31

Mike.

Alex Perkins: 11:31

V2 had a good suggestion, though Put that on our Tik Tok account. Yeah, that's how you gain followers.

Tim McConnaughy: 11:36

That's good content. Dude, that's content.

Tim Bertino: 11:39

Toilet humor is the one joke that's funny from birth till death.

AJ Murray: 11:43

I, yeah, Just saying Yep, yep, no doubt, no doubt. Yeah, I'm on my death bed.

Chris Miles: 11:48

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

AJ Murray: 11:54

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? I'm doing?

Alex Perkins: 12:02

great Doing great. Yeah, a lot of stuff started to be mentioned. Obviously, this is the earliest ever that we have finished Christmas shopping.

AJ Murray: 12:12

I can't even believe it.

Alex Perkins: 12:14

I can't even believe it, dude.

AJ Murray: 12:16

Like.

Chris Miles: 12:17

I've never been so ready?

Alex Perkins: 12:18

It is. Yeah, it's such a good feeling.

Chris Miles: 12:21

I know you have a lot of us that haven't started feel bad, so you should just fall down.

Alex Perkins: 12:26

Oh man, yeah. So now 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, lots of fun stuff. And, as Tim Bertino mentioned, I got to meet all you guys in Knoxville this year, so that was. That was pretty awesome. But I'm sure we'll talk about all this.

AJ Murray: 12:42

Absolutely, and that 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 you know, what the podcast means for us, what this community means for us.

AJ Murray: 12:55

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, 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, the more eye-opening ones 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, the more Andy talked to him, he was just like mind blown every couple of minutes.

Tim Bertino: 13:47

It was a fun conversation and I tell you 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, 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 tact and it just sounds like he talks to people all the time. It was. Yeah, that was a fun one.

AJ Murray: 14:14

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

Andy Lapteff: 14:18

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.

Andy Lapteff: 14:25

And then we're talking to him and he's about 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 two 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 he's cleaning it all up, thank goodness. But it just opened my eyes right. Like you're a networking for a decade. You talk to all the people and then you talk to somebody who just shows you a completely different world of networking and that, yeah, that he was amazing.

Chris Miles: 15:15

Yeah, my, my last job I did like a relatively large SDWAN 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. Like like the, like you said. There's just like the same, like IP networks reused over and over again, like the one, one, nine, two, one, six, eight, dot. One network is everywhere and then they're like oh, what do you mean? Like these things together? No, you can't do that, no way. So 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.

AJ Murray: 15:54

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?

Tim Bertino: 16:01

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 in and teach people that are in the military how to transition out 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 think that was a good one to have.

AJ Murray: 16:48

in general, 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.

AJ Murray: 17:08

So on a whim I grabbed Brittany Muset 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, there's what I think will be different for you coming from the military, and so it was a great conversation. We recorded it. 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 ready to get out within days and some were months down the road. But from that stemmed the idea 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 a great episode for sure.

Alex Perkins: 18:05

Yeah, I was mad that I could not attend that episode because, you know, 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. But 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. I agree that was a really good one.

AJ Murray: 18:28

Some other folks we've had on the show this year that you know bring out for me or just to count for me is Russ White, for one. What a fun conversation talking to Russ White earlier this year. Talk about a humble person. I mean, the man has just accomplished so much and he does so much like professionally, personally, recreationally, like he's got a ton of hobbies, he's got a ton of interests, and just having a conversation with him was just amazing. It was so much fun to talk to him and learn more from him.

AJ Murray: 19:01

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 meetings or 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 been a lot of fun. 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 certifications.

Tim Bertino: 19:48

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

Tim Bertino: 20:07

One of the ones that I wanted to call out was from fairly early in the area. I was in February. Andy and I did it, and a big reason we did this episode is because we've all kind of talked about how we're not huge fans of supporting and working with Enterprise Wireless. So we brought Roelle Dionisio on to really just give us the high level from a wireless engineering perspective. What do you need to do to plan a site for deploying wireless or to go in and do surveys to troubleshoot? And 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.

AJ Murray: 20:52

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 listeners, so if you're just joining and listening to the podcast, the three joining us tonight Tim McConaughey, chris Miles and Alex Perkins are the co-hosts of our other podcast, cables to Clouds, which we were very excited to put together and launch earlier this year, and so we kind of sneakily brought them onto the show to talk about hybrid cloud networking and its presence. Clearly it's here to stay. And then we quickly followed that episode up with an announcement of their podcast 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 when you're launched. It was what? January of this year you guys approached me about doing the podcast and I think we actually launched it in March.

Tim McConnaughy: 21:45

That's right yeah.

Chris Miles: 21:46

Yeah, I think that's right. I think it was early March. Yeah, I think I'm looking at when that episode came out. Yeah, it's been quite a year. I think we've all learned that 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 been worth it. Man, it's just like being able to get recognition. And even have people come on and want to talk to us is just an amazing feeling, because I just like sitting around and talking shop with people that want to talk, so it's been a great outlet for me for sure.

Alex Perkins: 22:20

Yeah, thanks to you guys. We wouldn't be where we are if you guys didn't agree to let us come under your umbrella and AJ man with all the editing tips, like Tim was calling out at Knoxville. 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 Awesome man, you guys, thank you very much.

Tim Bertino: 22:46

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

AJ Murray: 22:53

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

Alex Perkins: 23:07

I'm just doing one. I can only imagine.

AJ Murray: 23:11

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

Andy Lapteff: 23:27

And kudos to you guys. 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 AJK and me and like, hey, you know, 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 past, 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 has just been such a phenomenal thing to watch.

Andy Lapteff: 24:02

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, in my, in my fintech job 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 this and the show cables to 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 episodes so far, I loved, I love a Vaughn right she was. That was just a fantastic episode. And then the Pete Lombus episode. I think that dropped not too long ago.

Chris Miles: 24:47

That was the last one.

Tim McConnaughy: 24:48

Yeah that was all last one.

Andy Lapteff: 24:49

Yeah, I listened to both of those multiple times and not to say the other ones weren't great, but just some grabbed me and the Vaughn 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, you work at it and so it's just been so cool to watch you guys grow in your show and you're 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, yeah, you know, these maniac kids are yours right now I got to go do the thing and make this sausage right. So you guys just doing a great job. Thank you, I'm really enjoying the show.

Tim Bertino: 25:30

And we and we appreciate all the royalties that are coming to us.

Tim McConnaughy: 25:35

Because we all know there's a lot of money in tech podcasting.

Tim Bertino: 25:39

But I do want to. I want to echo what Andy was saying. I think the biggest thing that I appreciate about what you were 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 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.

Tim Bertino: 26:23

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, a live lab episode where you guys were testing different models, ai models, things like GPT and and Feeding it, feeding it data and saying you know, design a network for for different, different use cases, and seeing how the different ones stacked up. That was so much fun. That was such a cool idea.

Chris Miles: 26:56

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

Andy Lapteff: 27:12

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, 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 a you know you're in the matrix or 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 of nobody's is?

Tim McConnaughy: 27:58

anybody gonna listen to anything.

Andy Lapteff: 28:03

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

Tim Bertino: 28:10

Put the damn guitar back on.

AJ Murray: 28:13

He kind of looks more like Flava Flav with like the Christmas Flava Flav.

Tim Bertino: 28:17

Oh, it is the okay.

Alex Perkins: 28:19

I was a green chain. Well we'll forgive him for that.

Chris Miles: 28:25

Says the past fan uh, who's it?

Andy Lapteff: 28:27

I won't even don't get me started. I. Have a couple favorite episodes, unless somebody wanted. I don't want to step on anybody how we doing anybody have no.

Chris Miles: 28:36

Yeah, I just want to take a second to say that we we greatly appreciate that comment from 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 if traditional networkers have been doing it for a long time, you know we want more people to be into this shit, right? So that's kind of like why we started this to try to, you know, brids that gap and get more people involved, because that's the thing.

Chris Miles: 29:05

Cloud is it? 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 other, modernization, 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.

Andy Lapteff: 29:34

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's like wait, what? Like, what is this stuff Somebody built, 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 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 things you can do in it.

Andy Lapteff: 29:59

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's go for data centers that I knew where everything was and where it should be going. Now I have GCP and AWS and Oracle, whatever, and and there's Different things living in different places, and you get a call at 3 am Like somebody's pissed. Where do I even start in this mess, right, like you know.

Andy Lapteff: 30:31

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, 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, it's just so helpful, I think, for anybody in hyper cloud, which I'm guessing is almost all of us Right if you're managing a network, we'll be there soon.

Tim McConnaughy: 31:17

if you're not there yet, I mean yeah.

Alex Perkins: 31:19

No, that's the number one thing we say all the time right as hybrids gonna be the future, so yeah network engineering will be hybrid.

Tim McConnaughy: 31:26

No, I really appreciate all that I mean and and honestly, I feel like we're just doing for the cloud network pieces what you guys have been doing for the network side of the house. For you know, for years now already, like we're obviously for Far behind the the trend, but you know, 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 like you know, I just started I don't I think I had just Connected with any guys on Twitter and you were like hey, like 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, one like out of nowhere, right, like it's the industry so small like this?

Andy Lapteff: 32:08

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

Tim Bertino: 32:23

Like you around, he's like sure, 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.

Chris Miles: 32:41

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

Andy Lapteff: 32:48

Like I start honestly, tim, I've 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 I'm 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.

Tim McConnaughy: 33:08

Yeah, no, no, I was helping people yeah.

Tim McConnaughy: 33:12

Yeah, chris got it right. I just never do anything. I just I just have horrible ADHD so I just look for things to distract me from from from things I should be doing. No, I mean, but but the finish. Thank you, I appreciate all those words, but yeah, no, it's. It's been a great year for 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 us, like help us and and and be our cheerleaders and 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.

Chris Miles: 33:51

That's the thing. We certainly could have started something on our own, but you know, we wanted, like we posed at the AJ like hey, we want to start a podcast. How do we do this? Like, how do you do it? Tell us how you do it. You know what, what do we do? And then, you know, we kind of flooded it like would you want to help us with it? And AJ was immediately like yes, let's do it. Yes, and then like we, because, like you guys have done all this work, you've built a community, you know, you've 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.

Andy Lapteff: 34:33

Man, it's, 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 AI overlord, so jokes on you.

Tim McConnaughy: 34:57

I hope that never actually happens. I the definitely the futures hybrid. So yeah, I'm, I'm excited for both of the worlds. Let me think for, oh, 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 a couple that I was able to record, because I have so much content that I can't even remember what was this year.

AJ Murray: 35:25

That makes yeah, I had to go back and actually look at all of our episodes. Okay, what do we release this year?

Andy Lapteff: 35:32

So yeah, getting of the episode. When AJ was talking, I was scrolling through Same thing like it's just so much, right.

Chris Miles: 35:40

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

Tim McConnaughy: 35:48

Yeah, so yeah, no, I mean that we yeah, there was just so many, so many good ones this year. You guys have such great guests that it just it makes the almost stressor. Really it was really good. Like you, I think somebody already said that one right, that was a really good one.

AJ Murray: 36:05

Honestly, you know you join us for you and Chris join us for a CCA panel along with Erica.

Tim McConnaughy: 36:14

That was a good one too.

Andy Lapteff: 36:15

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

Tim McConnaughy: 36:19

But I Love.

Andy Lapteff: 36:21

Erica, she was so like, I loved her.

Chris Miles: 36:28

No bullshit.

Andy Lapteff: 36:32

She said the things I'm afraid to say publicly Exactly.

Tim Bertino: 36:35

I don't know how many times that she would. She said something and immediately said I'm gonna get in trouble for this, but I don't care.

Tim McConnaughy: 36:43

No, yeah, absolutely she's great. Yeah, no, that's that's it, and then maybe on for for hours. I had to really this one rise I struggled with cuz. You know, I guess maybe it's. I don't know if the Perspective is different when you're the one recording or whatever, or when you're the one recording it and whatnot and 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 yes yeah, that was our first guess.

Tim McConnaughy: 37:10

Yeah, absolutely, steve was our first guess 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 Yvonne Yvonne is always a pleasure to listen to and talk to. Yeah, so that's that's me. Can we pause?

Andy Lapteff: 37:31

there, goddamn it.

Andy Lapteff: 37:32

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 Yvonne does everywhere, same with Pete on all the different shows and the hedge and this and that and the other thing, and Yvonne was 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 you know, like I wish I was as smart and as eloquent as is and as an effective communicator as 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 you guys is just me, am I totally crazy? There's just some people who are like they just get it. Like Pete on your show Broke down the entire problem in networking, like so crystal clear and like better than anybody I've ever heard.

Andy Lapteff: 38:26

You know, like the problem with networking quote, unquote, right, 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.

Andy Lapteff: 38:51

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.

Chris Miles: 38:56

I think, I think if, on some of those people where I'm like, just because 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, 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, because 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.

Chris Miles: 39:41

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.

Chris Miles: 40:05

I'm from Kentucky as well, so I think she speaks to me so much, so much better, and that just Worms.

Tim Bertino: 40:11

My heart bless your heart. I used to.

Andy Lapteff: 40:16

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, too, is just such a fantastic thing.

Chris Miles: 40:39

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

Andy Lapteff: 40:42

side of the planet.

Chris Miles: 40:43

How are we supposed to see you?

Andy Lapteff: 40:45

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

AJ Murray: 40:53

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

Tim Bertino: 41:30

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

AJ Murray: 41:37

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

Andy Lapteff: 41:40

I got to tell you seeing and I got to meet Drew Kamari Murray not too long ago at a 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?

Alex Perkins: 41:55

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

Andy Lapteff: 42:00

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, because 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.

Andy Lapteff: 42:33

Yet 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 Right form style, short form there was like an extra thing.

Andy Lapteff: 43:03

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 like we see you, we like what you're doing and we'd like to work with you. It's, 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, every 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, 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.

AJ Murray: 43:35

Like you wouldn't believe this guess who just called.

Andy Lapteff: 43:38

I don't know.

AJ Murray: 43:39

I got super tickled about that, and it wasn't because they're my employer, right, it was just.

Andy Lapteff: 43:43

You know, they're one of the big dogs in the industry, right? And they Knocked on our door.

AJ Murray: 43:47

I thought that was wild yeah, yeah, no, I can agree with you more. I mean, we've had a lot of great sponsors over the years, but juniper networks is by far the largest, and 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 for 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 going to phrase that To try to, you know, figure out how do we do this, the short form content marketing stuff for for a company where you know you're Trying to advertise something without directly advertising it, right. So that was a good challenge. We also had some other great sponsors can take, 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 were on, and so it's. It's great to be able to make those kind of improvements in the quality of our content and is in where it gets released.

AJ Murray: 45:24

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 twenty Twenty four here, since we're wrapping up the year, downloads wise, we have smashed through six hundred and sixty thousand all time downloads. I do predict if the trends continue, maybe we'll hit the one million mark next year. Yeah, yeah it's, 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 you know 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.

Andy Lapteff: 46:21

Yeah, she was great to have on the show. I really enjoyed her from the beginning. We had what was the not not Knoxville, you know, the first event we had. Oh, asheville, asheville, yeah, thank, you, asheville, and it was just so nice to like 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.

AJ Murray: 46:43

She was like rocket girl, right which is really cool to watch her like.

Andy Lapteff: 46:47

I think she was at the knock at the time and 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, 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 and here she is working on the network, that's, you know, gonna freaking launch payloads to like Mars. Like are you kidding me?

Chris Miles: 47:21

like how cool is this industry.

Andy Lapteff: 47:23

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 gonna be an astronaut and they're gonna like fly or Just just because, like see right, like she's gonna be in a rocket someday shit birds and Crimpin cables on the moon at some.

Andy Lapteff: 47:48

It wouldn't surprise me. I just I don't see any, any limit to like where she's going. Just such a, such a cool story. So anyway, somebody, you know, somebody that went from hate my career starting over moving home to like Not that long later.

Andy Lapteff: 48:02

Like look at it now 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 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. Like so, it's great.

AJ Murray: 48:15

I have just a couple more things that I want to mention. Sounds like, tim, you want to add more. Yeah, I was just gonna say I mean she.

Tim Bertino: 48:21

She always finds something that she wants to do and learn more about and is completely unapologetic about it that's what I love like she's.

Tim Bertino: 48:30

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, don't crap on people for trying to better themselves, learning something. That's, in fact, she lead, planned and lead 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.

Andy Lapteff: 49:10

Tim, 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.

Andy Lapteff: 49:20

At the very least early on, like at least 10, 12 of them. I mean I have never in the history of my 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 Cisco press for those typos and like just I don't know man, it was really she made ethernet interesting. I don't know how she did that. It's just, it's definitely a gift, you know absolutely.

AJ Murray: 49:53

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. 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. Andy was there, dan was there, tim was there, I was there and Alex joined us for a few days 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. Yeah, I was just gonna say some people you know booked, booked flights and came down and joined us and it was just a really surreal yeah yeah, and it was just kind of a surreal experience.

AJ Murray: 50:49

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 it was really fun to get together and meet everybody in Knoxville. And then, lastly, our listeners. I want to thank our listeners. You know we wouldn't be doing this without their support. 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. But we released the first one last week, as we're recording this anyway with last week and already I've seen a ton more wins get dumped into the discord channel. So clearly people want their wins. Read again, yep.

Tim Bertino: 51:40

I.

AJ Murray: 51:41

Regret pulling it out of the show. I 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 a timely fashion oh boy, he's loading the guitar up. I can't wait and then To be able to bring those back in the short-form content it's. I think it's gonna be something we're gonna go forward with, so that's that's very exciting. 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 from this year and maybe a little bit about what she got coming up on the show.

Chris Miles: 52:20

Yeah, I guess, I guess I'll take that. 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 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. Happy to say that upcoming soon we have even more of those people that we that we wrote down day one. We've already recorded a couple this year that were released early next year that we're super excited about. 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 it 13,000.

Andy Lapteff: 53:08

Are you pulling 13,000?

Chris Miles: 53:10

I'm not pooping it, but you just said 600k bro, so it's Well that's nine months versus what three years?

Tim McConnaughy: 53:19

Been had it a little bit longer.

Chris Miles: 53:21

Yeah, we had Just to run through the list that we made here. We had about 14 guests come on, including the. I think we've recorded with 14 guests is I don't think we've actually released all of them yet, but Probably one of the coolest, like the first, like really cool moments for us. Whereas we talked with, tim Matt from 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.

Alex Perkins: 53:54

That's like that was like a pretty cool moment for us, you know we had, 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.

Chris Miles: 54:19

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

Tim Bertino: 54:26

Alex, you know what.

Alex Perkins: 54:27

I could tell you right now Nothing, nothing at all but that was that one was super cool.

Chris Miles: 54:33

I remember we were seeing like either it was like a webinar or something from Cisco where, like they plug the the podcast, and that was like our first time seeing it as like someone externally like referring to it. It'll all be at Cisco. That was. That was really cool. You know, we've gotten, we've had guests on from AWS to talk about like things like cloud win and VPC lattice. Alexander Weed as and Justin Davies were on to talk 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.

Chris Miles: 55:13

Which was like yeah, like whoa, we were like not to like you know, pat ourselves on the back to our anything, but I was. That was just a cool moment. It was if the like half something exclusive felt crazy to me, so that was, yeah, the VPC lattice one again.

Alex Perkins: 55:29

Sorry, I gotta jump in here that 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 that happened.

Chris Miles: 55:52

I think just 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'd like call it out. He's like you can pair this with the cables to clouds podcast and get more information on VPC lattice.

Tim McConnaughy: 56:06

Oh yeah, it was very cool.

Chris Miles: 56:08

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

Tim McConnaughy: 56:15

That's, it's on there, I mean, it's recorded, right. So, like anybody who watches the session, from now on we'll see that. Yeah, absolutely, that's pretty cool.

Chris Miles: 56:23

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.

Chris Miles: 56:32

I think that 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 Cisco 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 I think it means the world to me and it means the world to a lot of us. Oh yeah.

Alex Perkins: 57:14

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 house.

Chris Miles: 57:26

Cisco live.

Alex Perkins: 57:26

Cisco live in 2019 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 to do in a doing a podcast. So it's just just funny how things work.

Tim McConnaughy: 57:39

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, yeah, and and you, you know Everybody, you just don't. You know you're like one degree from everybody, but and they're well, 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.

Andy Lapteff: 58:05

Well, speaking of which, if anybody talks to Roddy a parlman, have her call me. I have been after Roddy and again 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 a reverent and snarky and smart. I'm like man, I can't wait to talk to her. So I'm working on it. But yeah, you know anybody who knows anybody.

Tim McConnaughy: 58:38

Yeah, goals, I was looking for it, but one of the very first networking books I bought Well, I think the first one, what might have been an art and brew, it 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 yeah, that right, that right. A bit that had wrote, and you're right. Reading the book, so much of who she is comes across.

Andy Lapteff: 59:03

Oh my god, it's such a great book she calls like the atripo Lee. Like just a bunch of buffoons, right, like a bunch of drunken fret boy buffoon I don't know if it's atripo 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.

Tim McConnaughy: 59:25

Like oh my god, I love her, right, she's so funny yeah her book is really good and she covers all of that in the book too, which is also very funny. And and it made me, when I was and of course I didn't know shit from Shinola right I was, 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.

AJ Murray: 59:56

Could you imagine like a, like a slash, slash, 30 on each port to every host. Ipv6, bro, no problem, oh man any other thoughts?

Chris Miles: 1:00:07

Oh good, 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 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 so.

Chris Miles: 1:00:28

That's. That's a painful thing, but I'm really thankful for just every. If anyone's ever reached out ever, and anyone's ever listened anything at all Like it's. It's just, you know, it means the world to us. Hope we appreciate it and it's. 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.

AJ Murray: 1:00:48

You guys have any plans for for 2024. You want to sneak out? I.

Chris Miles: 1:00:53

Guess. I mean we did just record one just the other day with With Dwan lightfoot, which is one Dwan is a guy that we like. I said one of those guys we wrote down day one like we knew we wanted to have him on.

Chris Miles: 1:01:08

He just came on and he shined Just as 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, and probably next next month sometimes. So yeah, and look out for that. Yeah, we've got some other collaborations in the works and hopefully those will those will get Ironed out over the next few weeks. Yeah, well, we'll just keep expanding, you know.

Andy Lapteff: 1:01:30

I'm looking forward to that. Dwan's another one of those people that I just listened to. Every time he's talking, he's yeah 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 Dwan. I can't wait to hear that. That'd be awesome, yeah, I think I think I've learned.

Chris Miles: 1:01:45

One of the number one things that I respect in this community is 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.

AJ Murray: 1:02:01

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 gonna release next year. So I I'm looking forward to that and 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.

Andy Lapteff: 1:02:30

Are we gonna get together next year?

AJ Murray: 1:02:32

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 Pull party at Andy's yeah totally You're that.

Andy Lapteff: 1:02:55

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.

Andy Lapteff: 1:03:05

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 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, and then and and Then we all go home and it Starts to fade and I'm like, oh, 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 basically got to find money right like a sponsor, or we all go to some conference.

Andy Lapteff: 1:04:00

When is when? Is Cisco live June?

Alex Perkins: 1:04:03

June.

Andy Lapteff: 1:04:04

June yeah so that was really sure the conference right, everybody seems to go to, so maybe when?

Alex Perkins: 1:04:10

where's it gonna be this year, I think it's again still.

Tim Bertino: 1:04:14

Vegas, yeah, yeah I believe in a Vegas.

Andy Lapteff: 1:04:17

It is gross, as I think it is.

Chris Miles: 1:04:19

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

Tim Bertino: 1:04:24

For about as long as. Cisco live it's, it's, it's cool.

Tim McConnaughy: 1:04:27

Yeah, you'll be fine for that period of time, yeah you'll understand why people are leaving early.

Chris Miles: 1:04:32

Whenever they are Last day, you're like I shouldn't have stayed this entire.

AJ Murray: 1:04:38

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. You know. If the podcatcher 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 when we're on Twitter, we're on tiktok or x, I'll give in and I'll call it x. And then you can always find all of our content on the art of network engineering, comm, and that includes Some of the cables to cloud stuff as well. I think in 2024. Maybe we get you guys your own website. We should work on that.

Chris Miles: 1:05:45

I.

AJ Murray: 1:05:45

Shiny new website for you guys.

AJ Murray: 1:05:48

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 gonna take the show out in a little bit different way tonight. Are you ready to do that?

Andy Lapteff: 1:06:14

Do you, do you want to do? Want to say good night, aj, or anything, and then we'll just finish with the song or what? Before, this wasn't that sounds good.

AJ Murray: 1:06:22

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 a1.

Tim Bertino: 1:06:31

You might want to turn it off now, yeah.

Andy Lapteff: 1:06:35

One and two, I'd say.

Chris Miles: 1:06:39

Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle.

Andy Lapteff: 1:06:42

Bell Jingle. Bell yourativo, oh.

Tim McConnaughy: 1:06:58

Dashing through the snow.

AJ Murray: 1:07:00

In a one-horse open sleigh, all of the dreams. We know I can't breathe all the way.

Andy Lapteff: 1:07:09

That was so fucking disappointing.

Chris Miles: 1:07:10

They can't get rid of us by.

Tim Bertino: 1:07:13

What fun it is to laugh and sing a sleigh In such a tight night.

Tim McConnaughy: 1:07:21

Oh, jakeo, bells, jakeo bells jakeo bells, what?

Andy Lapteff: 1:07:25

fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh.

Tim Bertino: 1:07:32

Hey, jakeo bells, jakeo, bells, jakeo bells.

Andy Lapteff: 1:07:35

I know this is going to end with me just singing by myself In a one-horse open sleigh.

AJ Murray: 1:07:41

Oh my god, merry Christmas everybody.