This week we avoid the Hero Trap in Network Engineering 🦸; automate a Network Lab with an MCP Server 🦾; peer into your future AI Network with Google 🧙use the 13 Software Engineering Laws for Infrastructure good 😊; do a LLM Course to go from fundamentals to LLM Scientist 🧑🔬 and realise we know less about valid email than we thought ✉️. Let’s dive in; ⬇️
Poll 🗳️
Are we covering the NetDevOps and Network Engineering content you want to see? Vote now to shape the Reload in 10 Newsletter to be more relevant to you:
NetEng 🔧
The Hero Trap in Network Engineering: How It Undermines Scale, Velocity, and Sanity details the negative impact of Hero Culture in Network Engineering, and why it might sometimes be better to wear your underpants under your trousers instead 🦸
Automating Network Lab Tasks with an MCP Server and LLM Assistance (Chapter 2) runs through using Containerlab to experiment with MCP to literally talk to your Lab Network in natural language 🎙️
Azure ExpressRoute Gateway and Public IPs explains what the Public IP does on a private network ExpressRoute Gateway, and how this works with AZ affinity in the underlying Azure hypervisor architecture 🚥
What Are the Key Stages in the Wireless Network Lifecycle? is just like an 802.11 preamble frame, short but sweet in covering the end-to-end 🛜
Google is already using the future AI Network you might get in 2028 is certainly food for thought if SyncE, NTP, PTP, epoch and Daylight Savings Time are things you’ve ever had to worry about - but now for our AI overlords too 🤖
Routing & Connectivity in AWS, Part 1 - A Guide for Network Engineers explains Cloud Networking concepts in a very approachable way for Network Engineers more used to Enterprise and on-prem deployments 👍
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)
🎓 Network Engineer Learning
NetAuto-Bootcamp is a hands-on program for learning network automation
(GitHub, Repo, Network Automation)LLM Course from Fundamentals to Scientist then Engineer
(GitHub, Repo, AI)Event-Driven Data Centre Automation with Grafana and NetBox
(Video, 10 mins, Intermediate)vCons Shipping Containers
(Video, 6 mins, NotEng)
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
🇩🇪 Network Security Research Architect @ NVIDIA, Germany, Munich
🇮🇳 Senior Network Engineer @ Google, India, Bengaluru
🇮🇪 Staff Network Development Engineer @ ServiceNow, Ireland, Dublin
🇳🇴 Network Engineer @ Mastercard, Norway, Oslo
🇬🇧 Senior Cloud Network Engineer @ Flatiron, UK, London
🇬🇧 Networks Architect @ Harbour Energy, UK, Aberdeen
🇺🇸 Network Automation Engineer @ SpaceX, USA, WA
🇺🇸 Network Site Reliability Engineer @ NVIDIA, USA, CA
NotEng 🤔
Tips For Better Interactions will help you build valuable soft skill muscle memory to let the important technical discussions flow 💪
The 13 software engineering laws also apply to Systems Thinking, Network Engineering and all IT Infrastructure undertakings in general 👮
Prompt Caching is a Must! How I Went From Spending $720 to $72 Monthly on API Costs essentially breaks down that it isn’t just HTTP workloads you should be worrying about
Cache-Controlconfiguration for if you want to save money and be more efficient 🤑Email is Easy is a small quiz of 21 questions that proves you know less about a valid email address than you think you do 📧
Leading Intelligent Networks: From Hero Culture to High Performance details the human and operations cost of managing distributed Networks in a legacy way 💀
Minimum Viable Infrastructure is a slightly different take on the traditional MVP or PoC route that software goes through 🧐
Quit Pleasing the Machine isn’t just an essay on freedom, it’s questioning what it actually means to be alive in a consumerist society at all, deep 🪔
Events 📅
🤜 Meet-ups
London Network Automation Meetup, London, 9 October 2025
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
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 🏭
The intruder is in the house: Storm-0501 attacked Azure, stole data, demanded payment via Teams in a pretty sophisticated attack which zapped through various security-in-depth layers; this is more likely than trying to get via your L4-only Firewalls 💥
How Cloudflare runs more AI models on fewer GPUs: A technical deep-dive is interesting reading if you’re not yet embroiled in the burgeoning world of AI Fabric Networks 🤔
Work set to begin on new Northumberland data centre in a scenic (and handily, very cold and windy) part of the UK 🇬🇧
BGP’s security problems are notorious. Attempts to fix that are a work in progress and ROA is only about half-way there, if Bon Jovi did BGP updates… 🎸
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 💬.