Show Notes
BGP isn’t just “the internet’s protocol”—it’s the most flexible policy engine in networking. In this episode of The Art of Network Engineering, Andy Lapteff and Jeff Clark sit down with Kevin Myers (aka StubArea51) to unpack Border Gateway Protocol from the ground up: why BGP replaced EGP, how policy differs from IGP topology, and where iBGP shines inside modern enterprises. You’ll hear practical patterns for BGP communities (standard, extended, and large), how to tag and filter at scale, and...
More from The Art of Network Engineering
What does new technology have to prove before you trust it with your network? Scott Robohn joins Andy Lapteff for a conversation about earning trust, from Ethernet interoperability and vendor bake-offs to network automation and AI. Recorded at Networking Field Day 41, they explore how explicit testing, clear permissions, error handling, and human judgment help engineers decide when a system is ready for more responsibility. Scott revisits a four-vendor evaluation at Bell Atlantic and describe...
AI can write code, troubleshoot systems, build applications, analyze telemetry, and increasingly take actions on our behalf. So what happens to humans? In this episode of The Art of Network Engineering, Andy sits down with Ryan Booth to explore what becomes more valuable as AI gets better at doing the work humans do. The conversation starts with systems thinking. Everyone from technology leaders to engineers is talking about the need for systems thinkers, but what does that mean? Are network ...
Everyone says network engineers need to automate. Learn Python. Learn Ansible. Build a source of truth. Learn Git. Test your changes. Stop doing everything manually. There’s just one problem: When? At AutoCon 5 in Munich, Andy Lapteff sits down with Dutch network automation consultants Bart Dorlandt and Bart Smeding for a conversation that starts with Python and eventually lands somewhere much more interesting: time. Automation can turn three hours of work into three minutes. But getting ther...
How does an English major with no technical background become one of the most recognizable voices in network engineering? Drew Conry-Murray didn't start his career configuring routers, chasing certifications, or working in a NOC. He started as a copy editor who barely understood the networking articles crossing his desk. Then someone threw him into a technical interview with a firewall vendor. He had to figure it out. That moment became part of a career spanning Network Computing, Interop, Pa...
John Capobianco is back, and this time the two of us are sitting in Munich building a subnetting game from scratch, live, with spec-driven development. I've been vibe coding automations for the show for about six months. Some of it works. A lot of it falls over, and I've spent too many late nights chasing bugs in software I couldn't rely on. John wanted to show me a more structured way to build with an LLM: a constitution first, then a spec, then a clarify step where the model comes ba...