The Hedge

Mar 28 2025 50 ep. 43 mins 255

The Hedge Podcast artwork

A wide ranging network engineering podcast. The Hedge covers technology to life as a network engineer, Internet wide issues to small scale networks.

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Hedge 264: Documentation and Tech Debt

Mar 28 2025 40 mins

On this episode of the Hedge, Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ talk about topics near and dear to every network engineer's heart--documentation, legacy, and tech debt. What should our philosophy of documentation be? What are legacy, end of life, and tech debt, really? https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-264.mp3 download

Hedge 263: NFTs

Mar 21 2025 45 mins

How do Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, impact value and the future of all things digital? How are they different from--and similar to--blockchain? Jaime Schwarz joins Russ White and Tom Ammon to talk about what NFTs are, how they work, and how they might impact the future. https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-263.mp3 download

Hedge 262: Stealthy BGP Attacks

Mar 13 2025 42 mins

Many providers count on detection in the global routing table to discover and counter BGP route hijacks. What if there were a kind of BGP hijack that cannot be detected using current mechanisms? Henry Birge-Lee joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss a kind of stealthy BGP attack that avoids normal detection, and how we can resolve these attacks. To find out more, check th

Hedge 261: The NTIA, Spectrum, and Broadband

Mar 01 2025 41 mins

In the United States, the National Telecommunications and Infrastructure Administration manages spectrum and researches the current state of Internet connectivity for policy makers. Henning Schulzrinne joins Tom and Russ to discuss the role of the NTIA, spectrum management, and broadband management. You can read the NTIA's reports here. https://media.blubrry.com/hedge

Hedge 260: The State of the DFZ

Feb 21 2025 38 mins

Trends in the global BGP table--the Default Free Zone (DFZ) table--can tell us a lot about the state of the global Internet. Is the Internet growing? Is IPv6 growing, or are we still in a world of "all things IPv4?" Geoff Huston joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to review the state of the routing table from 2024. https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-2

Hedge 259: Architecture and Process

Feb 14 2025 38 mins

We often try to "institutionalize" things that work into repeatable processes—and most of the time, it doesn't work. The process ends up becoming unwieldy, eventually failing to prevent failures and stifling innovation. How can we get out of this rut? Differentiating between architecture and process. Far too many IT shops try to replace architecture with process. Our second t

Hedge 258: pyATS and Testing Through Automation

Feb 07 2025 36 mins

We often think of network automation as a configuration tool, but automation can also be used for one-off, integration, and even continuous testing. Dan Wade joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to talk about pyATS and the concept of automated testing. To find out more about pyATS, check here. https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-258.mp3 download

Hedge 257: Gaining Experience in IT

Jan 31 2025 41 mins

Every recruiter and hiring manager wants people with five years of experience, but you cannot get experience without being hired into a position. How can you break this conundrum? Daniel Dib joins Tom and Russ to talk about how folks just coming into IT, or even those with lots of experience who are trying to shift their focus, can gain experience. https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/

Hedge 256: The Impact of Your First Language

Jan 24 2025 38 mins

Richard Wexelblat published an article in 1980 titled: "The consequences of one's first programming language." We've all seen C code written like Python, or Python code written like C, so it's obvious a coder's first language has a long lasting effect on their style. What about network engineers? Are there times and places where the first of anything a network engineers encounters

Hedge 255: Open Multi-perspective Issuance

Jan 17 2025 47 mins

One of the various attack surfaces in encryption is insuring the certificates used to share the initial set of private keys are not somehow replaced by an attacker. In systems where a single server or source is used to get the initial certificates, however, it is fairly easy for an attacker to hijack the certificate distribution process. Henry Birge-Lee joins us on this episode o