This week we learn how Cisco Live runs a network and NOC 🧐; ponder on disabling 2.4 GHz in the Enterprise 🤔; watch the CDN coup in Italy 👀; don’t need a CCIE to build a network… until we do 🤪; hide malware in DNS TXT records 😏; rethink CLI interfaces for AI 🤖; make small changes to make stand-ups more useful 🪑 and lament AOL’s dial-up shutdown 😭. Let’s dive in; ⬇️
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NetEng 🔧
The Network and NOC PNLNMS-1035 from Cisco Live details the Network and Monitoring setup for Cisco Live EMEA with some solid gold around real-world findings for mass-attendance, dense-coverage Wireless 🛜
Should You Disable 2.4GHz Radios in Enterprise Wireless Deployments? we vote yes, but apparently they are some times when you should not, even if older 802.11 protocols aren’t your concern 😕
Bandwidth is Dead. Long Live Latency agrees with a thread we’ve concerned for a while; consistent end-to-end QoS is hard (near impossible with the variety of hardware platforms and OS in the wild today), and the real differentiator in a mobile-first world is actually not speed anyway 🫓
Italy’s CDN Coup: Telecoms Hijacking the Open Internet smells like net neutrality all over again, but this time with the real linchpin of the modern Internet; the Content Delivery Network providers 🍽️
You Don’t Need a CCIE to Build a Network - Until You Do and that moment normally comes faster than you think if you’re working for an expanding company undergoing lots of M&A activity, IP Addressing is easy… until it suddenly isn’t 🤔
Malware in DNS is unfortunately now a thing; careful what those FQDNs and TXT records are doing, it might actually be a clever C2 protocol using DNS to get through all your “rigorous” Enterprise security 🔥
ASICs at the Edge is an interesting dive into how Cloudflare does real edge networking with custom gear, and goes over some old topics like CAM vs TCAM, RAM and other parts of Switching you may have forgot 🎛️
Videos, Tools and Papers 🎓⚒️
🏦 Cisco U - Free CE Credits
💡 Re-certify your CCNA or CCNP with these free Cisco U courses.
Cisco U: Introduction to Network Simulations with CML (CMLLAB)
(Course, 6 CE Credits, 8h 30m)Cisco U: Understanding Cisco Network Automation Essentials (DEVNAE)
(Course, 16 CE Credits, 28h 40m)Cisco U: Managing Cisco Network Operating Systems (CNIOS)
(Course, 37 CE Credits, 37h 15m)
🎓 Free Network Engineer Learning
Inside Google Peering: Trends, Recent Policy Changes, And Future Direction
(Video, 25 mins, IXP)ICMP Reachability Checker is a script to check reachability into a HTML report
(Script, GitHub, Python)Decentralized and Dynamic Zero-Touch Provisioning of Leaf-Spine EVPN Data Centers
(Paper, IEEE, Data Centre)
Hiring 💼
📢 The Reload in 10 Jobs Board is here 🥳, with a hand-picked selection of awesome Network Engineering, NetDevOps and Network Automation jobs.
It’s also free to list a job if you’re hiring and want to let us know 👂
🔥 This week’s Hot Hirings
🇮🇳 Senior Network Engineer @ AMMEGA, India, Remote
🇮🇪 Network Development Engineer @ xAI, Ireland, Dublin
🇮🇪 Senior Network Engineer @ Google, Ireland, Dublin
🇦🇪 Senior Network Engineer @ Emirates NBD, UAE, Dubai
🇬🇧 Network Engineer @ TikTok, UK, London
🇬🇧 Network Support Engineer @ Meter, UK, London
🇬🇧 Software Developer (Python) @ OpsMill, UK, Remote
NotEng 🤔
Rethinking CLI interfaces for AI pushes on the NLX thread and proffers that the future isn’t going to be a ChatGPT-style, OG Google Search “what you want to do today?” search box and submit button 👋
Coding with LLMs in the summer of 2025 (an update) updates an earlier article with findings of real-world use of LLMs for assisted coding, shortcomings, unexpected wins and avoiding gotchas ⛏️
How to tell when AI is lying to you is probably the most essential skill going forward to maintain velocity without idiocy 🥶
Professional Artifice is not just how you present yourself online, but how you present yourself in life; in the modern attention economy, how you’re perceived is nearly as important as what you actually do 🧐
Small Changes That Made Our Daily Stand-Ups More Useful and none of them include “sitting down” or “not turning up to it” 😅
Blind to Disruption - The CEOs Who Missed the Future reminds us strategy is sometimes more important than execution; nobody wants a USB MP3 Player anymore, no matter how long their battery life might be 🎹
Events 📅
🤜 Meet-ups
NetLdn, London, Monthly, Every 2nd Thursday
NetMcr, Manchester, Every Monthly, 2nd Thursday
NetBCN, Barcelona, See schedule
📢 Conferences
🎩 Hat-tip to the wonderful Pete Crocker @ OpsMill for the help
AfPIF African Peering Forum, Lagos, 19 - 21 August 2025
Open Source Summit, Amsterdam, 25 - 27 August 2025
AusNOG 2025, Melbourne, 3 - 4 September 2025
European Peering Forum, Bucharest, 15 - 17 September 2025
Cambridge Tech Week, Cambridge, 15 - 19 September 2025
FutureNet Asia, Singapore, 16 - 17 September 2025
Juniper AI-Native NOW, Copenhagen, 23 September 2025
Enterprise Tech Leadership Summit, Las Vegas, 23 - 25 September 2025
BalticNOG 2025, Vilnius, 24 - 25 September 2025
NLNOG, Amsterdam, 30 September 2025
DTX London, London, 1 - 2 October 2025
Network X, Paris, 14 - 16 October 2025
OpenInfra Summit Europe, Paris, 17 - 19 October 2025
RIPE 91, Bucharest, 20 - 24 October, 2025
ESNOG, Barcelona, 30 - 31 October 2025
DENOG 17, Essen, 9 - 11 November 2025
EMEA Arista Cloud Builders, Munich, 13 November 2025
AutoCon 4, Austin, 17 - 21 November 2025
CoNEXT 2025, Hong Kong, 1 - 4 December 2025
Industry 🏭
NIST Releases Test Tools to Accelerate Adoption of Emerging Route Leak Mitigation Standards and they’re slightly different to more MANRS or rules to follow ⤴️
MadeYouReset: An HTTP/2 vulnerability thwarted by Rapid Reset mitigations is yet another flaw in HTTP/2 and QUIC which exploits the way it pipelines requests for no good intent 😈
Cloud Network Traffic Data: Empowering Network and Security Operations in the Hybrid, Multi-Cloud Era is a series of findings by EMA Research about modern Enterprise Networks 💰
VodafoneThree activates network auto-switching on more than 600 sites so if you’re on either network in the UK rejoice, for technically local roaming will set you free (Three?) from coverage issues 📶
Nvidia trumpets European AI infrastructure push and partners with lots more players, positioning itself in the middle of the next-equivalent to the old FC ecosystem that Broadcom now dominates ♟️
AOL is shutting down dial-up internet after 34 years and we’re sad, like “you’ve got mail” sad and AIM buddy sad, just sad we’ll have to shut our second PSTN phone line off now ☎️
Cisco discloses data breach impacting Cisco.com user accounts but luckily it’s been so complex through several CCO transformations, even the hackers are several TAC requests away from gaining access to your old work profile 💊
That’s all for this week, but if you have any tip-offs, blogs, events or job posts you’d like us to feature then please feel free to let us know at newsletter@reloadin.net 📮 and we’ll see if we can add them in 💬.