HN849: METER ACQUIRES PACKET PUSHERS - NOKIA CORP

Welcome to this very special episode of Heavy Networking. This is not your typical episode, as we have some very exciting and important things to announce and discuss with Ethan Banks, the co-founder of Packet Pushers, and Anil Varanasi, the CEO and co- founder of Meter. I'm Scott Robon, your friendly neighborhood guest host today. Gentlemen, it's a pleasure to speak with each of you. Let's not let any mystery linger here and dive right in. So, Ethan, I'll start with you. What is being announced today regarding Packet pushers and Meter? Packet Pushers has been acquired by Meter. And we're going to talk more about the details as we go along. But this doesn't mean that Packet Brushers will become the Meter podcast network. It means that Meter has become Packet Bushers' patron. Meter will pay our bills and will allow us to operate independently without having to rely on sponsorship. That's it in a nutshell, Scott. And patron, can you just display, it's not common terminology for most folks. um think of it this way as we've been talking about this with the meter team that one useful analogy is to think about uh artists who need a patron someone to fund their work and allow them to do what they are best at it's uh something that was followed in in times it still happens today where an artist is allowed to dowhat they do because someone who is uh has pockets and wants to support them will fund them to do that it's kind of like that yep that makes sense thanks for the clarification anil what's your view of what you're acquiring and how do you feel about the responsibility that comes with owning a platform like packet pushers whose value depends so heavily on the trust built with the community for over 16 years yeah if there weren't corporate entities i don't think we would use the word acquiring today I think for us, what's very, very important is that we think it's a special time in networking. And the community that Packet Pushers has helped build, foster, and cultivate the last 15 years does not have another match. And we think its good for networking, its good meter, and then me personally as a network engineer, we would like to see Packet pushers really shine. We think the next five to seven years are going to be some of the most critical for networking. Yeah, totally agree. And I like Shine. I like Thrive. We'll expand on that as we go. I just want to really take guest host privilege and kind of assert the audience perspective. You know, Packet Pushers has always thrived on its independence and ability to tell it like it is. I'm like, you can hear, I hear Greg Farrow in the back of my head, right? No, no filter. No, you know, I don't believe you, right, in the Will Ferrell terms today. It's got this long and trusted history in the community of networkers. I can't emphasize that too strongly. It means so many different things to so many people. different people there are many people watching and listening and wondering what this is going to look like right i've been a listener for many years and this has gotten me through some really interesting um inflection points in my career um and i happen to be a host of a show on packet pushers as well so i care very very very much about this from uh multiple perspectives you know my personal view being a part of the community and from a business perspective um ethan i'll ask you to chime in on why was acquisition the right next step and even though even though anil greatly caveated you know maybe we would call it something else but um yeah we can caveat acquisition whatever it's a term um so why was this the right time for packet bushes and meter to get together so when i started talking to meter about this possibility almost a year ago at this point. I'd have been having a lot of thoughts about how the Packet Pushers business runs. You know, Scott, we run on sponsorship. That's how that's, we're running a sponsorship model. No mystery there. Man, sponsorship is difficult. It's unpredictable. Year to year, sponsors come and go. People we work with that are in the marketing world, they get laid off. Marketing departments frequently get gutted. They're a target for reducing spend within companies if things happen and they need to do that. Budgets dry up sometimes. On the other hand, yeah, sometimes there's some big marketing push and some of that spend will find its way to Packet Pusher. So it's not all bad or anything, but it's unpredictable. And when you don't know from year to year what the budgets are going to be, it's kind of hard to run the business. So let me put this in perspective. We estimate that it costs us about $2,600 to produce a single episode. And we run a lean machine at Packet Pushers. We don't have any, there's no fluff, not like lots and lots of people or anything. Not like that. We have no buildings. We haveno big studios or anything, and yeah, if you're listening to this going, really that much? Yeah, you could run a podcast in your spare time for a lot cheaper. That's how Greg and I back in the day started this thing, and we did it cheaply, but once you scale it to producing eight or nine shows, which is the average week for Packet Pushers, and we do it in both audio and video formats, at that point, you need a team. You need tools, you need Apple Silicon, and you need accounting support, and you need a tax consultant, and a legal consultant, and all that adds up, and it's costly. So getting full backing and long-term commitment, which, Anil, you talk about more, but getting backing and long-time commitment from Meter enables us to produce content without the challenge of selling, to focus on supplying the networking community with more focused discussions and not being bound by whatever the sponsor wants to discuss, which is another piece of sponsorship. when a sponsor is paying for airtime then you we always work with a sponsor to try to create content that uh everyone listening is going to be interested in um but if there's a big push to sell a particular thing a lot of times the conversation's funneled down whatever the latest trend is in networking and you don't end up with a conversation that is educational or is as deep or goes in the direction that you want it to go because you're beholden to what the sponsor wants to talk about Um, so not having to worry about that component of, of what we do means we should be able to improve the quality of our podcasters. We're going to have time to do so instead of chasing money around. Uh, we're goingto be ableto keep the sponsored content, um, sorry, were goingto be able keep our regular content not sponsored and have the flexibility to do with it, uh, what we want to do. Um, sponsored content often challenges our production pipelines because, sponsors have particular demands and timelines that can make it hard for us to function in a regular and normal and predictable way. All of a sudden we're scrambling because a sponsor needs a favor to accomplish this. Can we move that around? Which throws our pipeline into chaos a lot of times. Those problems all go away. And when an opportunity comes up like that, Scott, you're in business too. You understand these challenges. You go after it. You see if That's a real possibility you can take advantage of. And in this case, Meter and I, we talked for a long time, along with other members of the Packet Pushers team, to finally decide, yes, this is something we can do. This makes sense. Anil, you've got to have your complementary perspective. You know, you're walking a path that you guys met in the middle. What's your view of events leading up to this in the last year making this a right thing for Meter to do? i think the reason it ended up working out is what we want out of it is the same thing and you mentioned you know some of the reasons for packet pushers to be good at what they do is one is editorial independence and two as a listener for me what's been really great is a perspective and a point of view sure um all the folks that do hosting on the packet pushers network bring a great perspective and point of you to actually push that and we are going to maintain editorial independence entirely uh if meter builds a new product i hope they will cover and they think it's worthy enough to cover on Packet Pushers. Sure. At the same time, I actually do think as the number of shows has grown, the number episodes has grown. And like Ethan mentioned, you know, we're also doing a time of consolidation and networking. You end up having to do more sponsored content. And the second thing about that perspective and point of view, I think can come back into the industry a bit stronger. we'll talk about hopefully a bit more about this what's happening with large with industry and why we think at meter this is an important time but we also as an industry haven't done ourselves that many favors of becoming like buzzwords and acronym and all these things that keep people away and it's harder and harder to entangle this web that is networking and i think packet pushers being able to sort of be that uh source of truth if you will for sure networking um is what's most interesting to me as a listener and i think it's sorely needed um as not just a voting machine with people listening but as a weighing machine by the hosts if if we're subject to um reality distortion fields um in in tech perhaps packet pushers is the reality distortion filter right you know be be able to align align things and like let the real let the RealData come through that's uh I think that's a fun way of thinking about it so if I could interject myself and Anil one thing you didn't talk about that I think is uh worth bringing up you are concerned about the number of network engineers that are leaving the field and not coming in. That's a big deal to you, right? It's a huge thing. I've been pulling some stats, and if I get some of this wrong, I'm sorry, but I'm using just as much data as we can find, we've been trying to find. 20-ish years ago, one in 10 bachelor's degrees in the United States that was computer-related was networking. One in 10. The last data from the National Economic Council was from 2021. It is two in a hundred now. And the way things are going, even since 2021, because of COVID and other things and what's happening with models and all these macro things, it's likely going to be zero very soon. We're not going to let that happen. I know we're not. You and I have talked about this too, Scott, on what is it that we can do. And this is one of the things, ways we want to do it, right? Which is, if somebody told us 15 years ago that internet would not just keep growing, but the rate of growth would increase, everything in the world is packets, yet nobody's studying networking, I think the three of us would have said, that's not possible. but it is what's happening is being taken for granted um it's exactly what's happening today yeah yeah and so one of the ways we want to help and hopefully also get credit in the patina for the community is that we want to helps us to be able to help bring the best content and i think about it sort of like um at a beginner level somebody that's maybe coming into networking for the first time like you know if you're looking for and it's for networking and more things like that then uh intermediate level and an advanced level for all parts of that cycle i think packet pushers can be sort of the shelling point for all these folks to come and build a community and learn and from experts that have built these things themselves and understand how it works but it is you know i i was i was driving here with my colleague sarah who who knows ethan really well and we're actually talking about is like man uh what a great time to be networking right um even if you look at what's happening in the united states the u.s has more data centers than the rest of the world combined and the u s is looking to double or triple the amount of data centers 15 cents of every dollar that goes into a data center equipment actually goes to networking yep the reason models exist is because the internet existed and the number of data devices and applications is just skyrocketing every day what an awesome time to be in networking and how can we bring more and more people there does seem to be some growth in in that i've been you mentioned dennis for networking and neil that's that's our that's the podcast for for the juniors and the college students and the people new to the industry that are coming into networking that has gone from uh the the neophyte bottom of the list show and packetbush's stats to fourth in our rankings as far as subs amazing we get more feedback from people that listen to that show than any of the other shows maybe more than all the other shows combined because there are young, enthusiastic people that are coming up and they're so glad they found that show. So the appetite is there, even though the stats you quoted are a little disheartening about the number of people that aren't coming into tech, but there's still a group of people that are engaged. They want their entry-level, associate-level cert to get in and find that first networking job. So that's, again, like you said, we're at an interesting time in networking, for sure. And I think the medium to the, you know, the podcast format on Packet Pushers, it's the easiest way to get new information out there so quickly. And, you Know, some people prefer to read, some People prefer to watch that some people are okay with just listening. um but you know this is a you know time to usability metric where as things are developing um so quickly and and to complement or offset you know some of the higher ed stats that you called out anil um you know that environment never changes very quickly but this medium does and it can adapt yes super quickly and we can cast a wider net you know with you know i think We can talk about the meter grants program too, and how that, that it's going to help here is helping here now and thinking, thinking much more broadly beyond the standard college pipeline. I think in, in the marketplace, we, we need to think more broadly. Um, nothing, nothing against higher ed. I did a couple of those myself. Um, I'm, I've been, I'M grateful for the experience, but, uh, you know, this partnership to spread the info quickly and far and wide, I think is extremely useful. Yeah. Some people learn listening. Some people learn reading. Some people learn doing. Some people learn watching. And some people, it's a combination. For a lot of us, it is a combination. But what is easily accessible determines how good and how fast you can learn. Sure. If your parents are astronauts, you'd think being an astronaut is a normal job. Right. It's because it's around you all the time. And I think one of the great things about podcasts is it's about it's all around you all the time. You're driving, you're going for a run you're waiting on the subway whatever and the ability to feel familiar with it enables people to come into the industry and grow into the ministry and if packet pushers can be that filter to help decipher what networking is and what this new acronym that a vendor like meter comes up with actually means right oh do you have other announcements today oh just kidding uh i think that has a deep implication of where the industry grows and what it means um and we can really push on that and look scott you you know everybody in this ecosystem there's nobody who's put in the time effort and deserves as much credit as what the packet pushers team has done the last 15 years um i second that yep so um i do like i want to spend more time on the commonality and the things where there's just super synergy here but i do want to make sure we cover off on some of the details that i know that people are are thinking about so let's talk about like how the arrangement will work what's expected of each party um you You know, Ethan, why don't you go to that? Like, what's going to happen with the sponsor ads, sponsored episodes? Sure. I got some basics and then ask more questions if I miss something that's important, Scott, here in your mind. So how will the arrangement work? There are no more ads once we work for the remainder of our sponsorship contracts. So we should have delivered all of our sponsor work that we're committed to do by the end of 2026. I think everything. I was looking at the production calendar. There might be a few things that don't get done by the end of the year, but pretty much everything will be done bythe end of 2026. And then after that, you in the audience will hear us acknowledging Meter in intros and outros for making our podcast possible. But it's going to be a light touch compared to the ads that you've been used to hearing for a lot of years, comparatively speaking. It will be a much smaller read. Another piece is budget. We have a strict budget, and we're going to coordinate with meter's finance team for our funding needs as we go along all those budgets have already been you know calculated and determined and everybody knows what's going on and there's no mysteries here uh but we we will coordinate in an ongoing basis as our needs change as things come up and maybe we got an idea for some crazy special project we want to do or some big idea that we want to try and but we need funding to pull it off then we coordinate with meter and go what do think and we see what see what works out um so that's the that's the basics of it scott okay what uh you know we we talked about the editorial firewall full editorial control um give me both of you your perspectives on what it looks like on both sides of that firewall and uh you Know we understand the firewall analogy here so you know does this stick or are there better ways to modify it yeah it's it's a good analogy um so there's so important things that were actually written in to the agreement um when for uh the i don't know if we're steering away from acquisition or what let's keep using that term but in the in the agreement there were specific governance rules that are part of it one packet pushers remains a separate company we have our own governance um we are not i'm not a media employee now scott i work for packet pusher still nothing changed in that regard so we're a separate company um we uh we are a company that to be clear we are owned by meter um but we are we remain a separate country company a separate entity and also written into the agreement was that of an editorial firewall uh meter has signed documents that state meter can't tell us as packet pushers what to cover what to say how to say it So we can and will cover meter. We will cover meteor competitors also. That's part of our duty to the community. If we didn't do that, it'd be weird. Like, oh, they didn't talk about that big announcement because they, oh right, I remember when being a meter bottom and always they don't talk about Meraki anymore. Oh, you know, no, we will keep doing the things that the community needs and expects for us to do. And you know we've had this conversation that that's what you want. That is what you were expecting to happen. It would be weird if we did not do that. and you sign the agreement in such a way that says that we can do that. Now, one important detail, we are obligated as packet pushers, we are obrigated by FTC rules, Federal Trade Commission rules, to disclose the fact that meter owns us if we talk about meter or a competitor, just like a financial analyst has to disclose if they own a stock in the company that they're talking about, that kind of a thing. I hear the Wall Street Journal podcast in my head all the time. You know, like, you know, Dow Jones Incorporated has a financial interest in. Yep. That'll become a normal part of things that'll pop up from time to time. But again, it's going to be a much lighter touch than those of you that have been listening to us for a long time. You know when there's a sponsored show, the way the conversation goes, you knowing there's an ad spot, a pre-roll and mid-roll, how that kind of interrupts the flow of the conversation. You won't have that anymore, even though a meter is going to come up either by obligation because of the FTC or acknowledging in intros and outros. And otherwise, a meter isn't involved in our production calendar or what we're going to cover. I'm not going to get hints from Anil saying, you're going cover thus and so, right? Aren't you, Ethan? Wink, right. That's not coming. That's, that's not a thing that's going to happen. It strikes me as a really trusting decision on your part, Anil. um and like you've already kind of teed up the why you think this is important but you know what's what's given you confidence in okay making this decision and letting you know the packet pushers bus do what it continues to do i think it's always the people um there's there's all these things around business and what you end up doing and things like that but usually it's because it's the right people um i think packet pushers strength comes from the folks that run it the hosts that are there the guest hosts the people that help make it happen the community and so our confidence mainly just comes from the folk that are doing it um day to day and for years now and decade plus in ethan's case and you know i think in most things in life incentives drive behavior um and our incentive is very aligned with what we want to happen here is we want networking to grow we want working to be very attractive for more people to come in we think packet pushers can be a big part of that and if we get a small amount of credit to help make that happen i think that's very accretive to us and who we're trying to be established as meter in you know a very entrenched market with legacy folks that were around for decades but the disincentive is the strong mechanism here as well which is if we mess things up with packet pushers getting bad credit or getting blamed for it is just as much and it's a community that we really believe in it's community that drives our business and all sorts of things we hope this becomes even more and again as a listener what ethan just said i was so happy i didn't even think about it the way he just phrased it which is when you're listening to an episode there's not going to be a pre-roll and a cut it just clicked to me as he was saying it yeah um it's just going to be a great conversation technical commentary even just as a listener it excites me that folks that are hosting or coming on that are experts and that are passionate about what they're doing or building something and you know they spend years building a product or a feature and they're going to come talk about it and that's just a natural flow to be able to learn and listen and do that i think that's really cool yeah i um you're just to give the the the back office production staff the credit here they do a great job with the pre-rolls and the cuts and the mid-roll and all that um and like they they're awesome at it but i don't think anybody's going to call in and say they missed those um and it's not because of the great work that's been done so right um so to bring this back to some kind of more commonality you know anil you you called out you know what has taken ethan and packet pushers over 16 years here but you're um no spring chicken on this either you know you've been building meter for over 10 years and you were really quiet for a long time and i remember why you know i think about three years ago finally you know learned about you all and like why haven't i heard about this before right and i got pulled in through cellular and 5g support yes that's a longer story another podcast but uh you know I I think of you both as builders right and Neil's been building meter Ethan's been buildi ng packet pushers this has got to give you some serious battle hardening right there's super alignment on the educational and informational mission um and anneal you with meter wanting to do something very differently you know from a delivery model and from the equipment that delivers the services um i think this all drives to another you know a common point of wine to do networking well you're doing it in different ways you know packet pushers driving that through making people aware and educating um and meter driving the next generation of gear of operations and services did you find any other interesting bonds or things that like brought you together through this whole process i know it's a fuzzy question yeah trying to get put anybody in tears here i think just the product stuff honestly i think just a pro i think like product stuff protocols how things work i i think like the packet footage folks like yes uh maybe they haven't been hardware engineers and software engineers like us and doing that but the ethos is very similar on how to think about good products what does it mean to have a good network and how can that help support network engineers that are asked to do 10 000 things with like three people which is commonality in the industry yep uh that ethos has as i spent a lot of time with with ethan and you know we all had dinner together and we were talking about stuff and things like that um that became very clear to me Which is, like you said, maybe they didn't build products, but they're builders, and the ethos is the same underneath. Yeah. Yeah. Ethan, what did you discover? You know, building Packet Pushers has been interesting, Scott. I mean, we added a lot of shows in the last, say, three years, and you really grew Reach and made Packet Pushers more of a platform that anyone who's an expert and has an opinion and is willing to put the work in to bring a podcast could take some of that work away and let us do it with the editing and all of that and then reach an audience. And building that's been a lot. It's been lot of work. when you build things you you make mistakes and learn from those mistakes and then try again and uh i i made a number of them you know over the years and then had to oh we could try that again i got that wrong i mean that that's part of it that's Part of how you grow as a builder you try things and then get it wrong and then you you you deal with that and you know i know you've never made any mistakes so i'm sure you have no idea what i'm talking about but uh i don't know what it means yeah but it those things that you do that are um you end up building something stronger as a result scott you know from that and something that means something more to you because it was hard to make it and uh when i figured out the meter business model like emil you explain to me you how you actually sell it it hit me i was like oh as soon as i figured it out it's like i get it you know i don't know how many iterations it took you to get to that get to the way you guys sell and do what you do but it hit мне that this is this is going somewhere this is fruit of a lot of labor and thought to get into the business model that you have um and and i felt like to be able to be a part of that would be pretty interesting you know pretty cool uh to do so i don't know if i'm answering the questions guys i just feel like i'm getting wandering rambling no you're good but until then i'll bring it been back in right here ethan um so to to you know channel anil a little bit here i i came into this conversation a firm believer in this it absolutely is an incredibly exciting time in networking and everything that you've both touched on you know networking is only going to become more important networking is only becoming more important for just about everything that we do um the ai moment is a driver for it but it's not just the ai movement um i can't ask you to take out your crystal ball or your palantir um be careful with the palantire um but what do you what doyou see in the next 9 12 15 months that you don't think we're paying enough attention to right now that that this new you know super friends combo team can help put more emphasis on and help help make us even more aware how does the you know one plus one equals three um on on what's coming down the pike in the next year um maybe one answer uh that's a little bit short term another one that's a little more long term where the foundation is set but on the short term one i um mentioned this earlier but it's unprecedented the amount of data centers that are getting built in the next 12 to 24 months you know more more compute is coming online in the next few years than we have total right now that we built a lot in the last five years so I'm imagining so I am imagining a network engineer on their way driving to a data center they're going to help build and they're listening to heavy networking and it's about some architecture or some new thing that helps them refine what they're doing i think that's huge in being able to do that um i thinkthat has a lot of implications that's like a very short-term thing and then i i do think a long term that's getting set in the next 12 to 18 months is Whether it's right or wrong, I don't have strong opinions. But everybody is being told that all jobs are going away. Especially all software jobs. Right? That's the rhetoric that's around. Networking is a great place to learn great technology, build a career that will continue to grow. it has hardware it has systems it has architecture it has software it has protocols it has durability so i do think if we get a bunch of things right over the next 12 to 15 months in the time frame you're asking scott it's possible we could kindle the right thoughts and folks that are thinking about where their career goes yeah and that too has good long-term implications on many things yeah scott i i think there's uh it's hard to know how how this this trend is going let me try to get my thoughts out here there is a a move in my head to begin thinking about networks truly as a system this is something that's been driven by automation because you have to end up thinking about networking as a system as a whole and stop the way you and i came out through the system where it was much more about individual boxes i'm going to log into this switch or this router and reconfigure it and do the thing. No, now you're going to manage the system as a whole. And it's not just the wired configuration world now. Now it's that, plus it's the firewalls, plus its all the access points, plus it may be some other pieces that are all integrated into a whole so things in networking that used to be specific disciplines and certifications that were built around specific disciplines. And now like that's you can try to specialize, but you got to kind of know something about everything and how all of that works together to truly deliver a transport system that is secure, that is resilient, that has fast, that as efficient and that you can troubleshoot, you can observe. You need to do all of those things at once. Oh, and by the way, we're going to have it all be automated and covered with AI. That's how you're going to run your modern operating system. So the kind of the network engineer that you need to be to run that means not only do you need know fundamentals, you've got to know you've gotta know the same protocols that, again, that we came up with. You start learning about VLANs and spanning tree, and then you start adding routing protocols and so on, and you build and build and build. And maybe you get to specialize if you find things that you really like. Oh, don't forget radio theory. You've got to know some Wi-Fi and radio theory and antennas and so on and so and so. Now you've got to layer on governance on top. You know, your show, Total Network Operations, has been a lot about that. The Network Automation Forum has talked deeply about that and then AI is coming in swinging hard where we can talk to an LLM, the configurations aren't the interesting part anymore. Now it is systematic, system-level thinking. How do I, as a network engineer, understand end-to-end a system that I've built that is going to deliver the packets reliably and robustly, and so that I don't have to think about it anymore as a business owner? It just works. That is, to me, a modern network engineer that's emerging. And as the old guard fades out, those of us with gray in our beard retire. Those of us with gray in our hair, for the ladies out there who don't have a beard, as you're retiring, then we got to have people coming in to take our place. And the way you're going to have to think and understand to be successful means you've got to Have all these skills and know how they mesh together. And it's just, it's a different way of thinking than it was even 10 years ago, in my opinion, Scott. I would, I would amplify everything you said, and I would couch it in terms of not just need, but also opportunity. I would say that the network engineer has, and the IT stack has always been in the best place to understand everything that's happening across that system view. I need to know what the application behavior is doing. I need To know how this OS treats the network. I actually have to care about getting stuff to and from storage. The AI moment is only making that even more important with automation for coordinating this dance of 8,000, 16,000 or more GPUs all working together and you can't do that without automation, right? And that's never, it's never not been true on some level, everything you just said. Yep. But it's amplified now. The stakes have been raised. Exactly. It is critical now. It is amplified. You can no longer live in your silo. And networking is maybe uniquely poised in that, that the more you understand as a network engineer, the more valuable you are to the business. Yeah. The more, if the deeper you understand protocols and, uh, and what's actually running over your wires and the way the network is, uh. Is built the more valuable you are. Uh, it's again, so much is converging on that skillset that it's, uh... If you have them, you're incredibly powerful, uh as a, uh of a resource to the business that you're supporting. I, I'll, I've, I throw into the mix too that, uh this, the arc of my career. I actually gave a presentation to my undergraduate program, Rochester Institute of Technology, go RIT Tigers. You know, I was, I graduated almost 40 years ago from my undergrad. And as an industrial engineer and thinking about end-to-end workflows, we call them processes then, but they were workflows and how it all comes together. This has been a, you know, a circle of life story for me. So I couldn't agree with you more on all that. And I think, too, if you can just up your being curious quotient, you know, your CQ, your curiosity quotient. You have an opportunity in this day and age to learn about the whole system. And with the catalog of stuff that Packet Pushers puts out and will continue to put out. And with help of LLMs that can be patient tutors, you can learn anything today. um and i think that's like i'm a kid in a candy store on on that front um i know anil you've got a certain level of curiosity here too i'll give you an opportunity to comment on any of that i i think um as networks get incredibly complicated this is the way um you know you You can have one person that needs to manage thousands of servers and thousands of locations and tens of thousands of computers and other things that are on the network. It's been the way in computing the entire time, right? You went from writing assembly to compilers to then languages and then compile languages and then type safe languages and that is the only way to grow a system as the needs change and needs evolve and more is needed from it um i think there's some fear in the ecosystem when i talk to folks of like is this thing going to take my job type thing i think that's actually the right time in my opinion to learn the fundamentals more and know how this whole thing works because the people that know how it works are going to be the ones that determine where it goes yep so there's just no other path other than this ai will augment a capable network engineer as opposed to replace the capable engineers might take i haven't seen anything to convince me otherwise at this point i i think there's also a fundamental effect here of why the majority of people fear new technology introduction it's very very easy to see how this will impact what i do today and that means i need to change i need you grow um i need to do things differently um and if you can take that and view that as an opportunity versus viewing it as a threat um you you can insulate yourself from you know the change that's coming. And by the way, if you chose a career in IT, you chose a path of disruption, period. And if you're crying no fair at this next wave of disruption I'm sorry, I can't really help you other than point you to how do you continue to grow your skills and grow your knowledge. You can. There's nothing in the information environment we live in today, there is nothing stopping you. So, sorry for that rant. Hashtag sorry not sorry. this is a real thing I think we're all on the same page on this front Anil there's one other factor I want to throw out there that I know you need to be thinking about your right to call out you know what's happening with data center growth and what's already on the books versus how it will continue to grow but I think we're going to see even to add on to that growth at the edge and distributed resources for AI inference in addition to the large centralized. And whether those inference resources are in base stations in a mobile network operator network or in a couple racks in the back of your favorite big box retailer or in the Back of New Pulte homes. Yes, NVIDIA is working with Pulti to put GPUs in theback of new homes. Or they're in space. Don't laugh at me. They will be in space, too. I don't want to get single-threaded on any one of those locations. I want a stable, available platform for the inference requests that are coming in. And guess where all those locations need, Anil? Networking. Networking, that's right. And, you know, talking to satellites, right? Free space optics, radio protocols. There's so much opportunity to learn there. What is it going to look like to do this over PON in neighborhoods? You've got the opportunity to keep learning and keep growing. and and uh you know i'm still gathering data on this and hopefully we'll have even more concrete evidence over the next year about this but preliminary thing that we're seeing is when a model does a task or people use models to do anything um they end up consuming a lot more packets than manually doing it because they have to go gather context they have to pull context constantly so a data center loop to a pop exactly through the carriers at the edge i think all of it will need to be refreshed in the next decade as this continues to grow because you're talking about three four five x more packets i think protocols will have to change i think architectures will haveと change i think topologies will have то change um there's just so much to do and even determining what those should be right the internet was basically an accident the fact that it works and yes it is dns's fault every time the fact that it worked is a miracle but if we knew that this is how big it would be and we had another chance to do it it's possible there's some great things that'll come out of it um because every time you go and type in anything in a browser the fact that it works is nearly a miracle just incredible uh but it can be better systems better protocols architecture topologies and i think the next decade two decades networking will drive a lot of that what's possible the internet's only possible because networking got better yep yeah it continues to evolve yep that that theme will continue all right if you'll allow me to just put the the skeptic hat on one last time here um you know we i know we've got a listener or a watcher out there you know who's hearing all of this and says look i appreciate everything you guys are saying but i'm gonna judge you by what you publish yeah what that what's that person gonna expect ethan um the thing that we won't have to be concerned with i mentioned earlier when a sponsor comes on we need to talk about what the sponsor wants to talk about because that's it's a marketing engagement and that's that's what they're there to talk about and some of those shows are good some of them aren't but it disrupts structure that is i cannot be as intentional on my shows about what i want to talk About what a sponsor is involved so if i'm doing a series on something and then a sponsored episode pops up i got bills to pay we talk about that um so one of the one of goals i have and i'm hopeful for is that we'll be able to do longer and more in-depth series on various topics that get into nuts and bolts of how things work, help people model in their minds how to design a system that accomplishes something, helps them understand, like, maybe they've never run BGP EVPN. We bring on the right group of people and do a four or five-part series walking through all the different route types and what your architecture looks like and expectations for what an ASIC that's in a switch that does all the things you wanted to do should be, and so on. And it takes time to cover those things in depth, and it's very hard to deliver with the way we've had to pay the bills in the past. This enables us to do those sorts of things and just focus on, I really think it would be good. Another thought that I'd had, Scott, was audience requests. People say, I want a show about X. great you know we can dig in find a subject matter expert if we don't have the knowledge ourselves bring that person on and talk about that audience request because they wanted to deep dive on whatever the topic is or things that they want us to explore so i think in general you should hear more of what we've been doing but hopefully you know deeper another thing for me personally scott as a business owner for the last bunch of years i look at some when i look in my calendar there might be holes in my calendar. That doesn't mean I can fill it in with more content or more stuff to do because my brain can only accomplish so many tasks in the course of a week. And if a lot of those, my brain's ability to focus is taken up with operating a business, which is considerable work, I'm limited by what I can do. And I am hopeful that once we get through the transition, Anil, and we get all the particulars of how all this settles out and we're done that part, i'll be able to focus on some other things scott for years i've wanted to build courses for example and we've talked about this so many times yeah yeah ah and and i know i have that ability um but not the time and not the focus required because i'm distracted by so many i have been distracted by some of the other things yeah um so it you know again for me personally i'm hopeful that i'll able to lead some efforts coordinate with more people for deeper content richer content. Things that people can use to augment their studies for certifications, for example. To educate people who are considering and need deeper technical knowledge to make a decision about whether to implement a particular technology in their environment. I've heard about this. Whoa, Packet Pushers just published a five-part series on X. Cool. I'm going to listen to that because that will help them decide that is the right thing for my company or that is not the right thing for my company in fact um because we'll be able to deliver more of that information to help them make those decisions um so again if for the skeptic out there is like i'll judge you by what you publish i i think you'll be happy you know in the long run give us a little time to work through the transition and uh and then ramp up because building heavy content like that takes time it takes research it takes planning and coordination and there's a lot there to to be done to get that kind of content out the door um but that's where we're headed that is definitely the intention we've already been talking about this internally as a team uh what are our content maps going to look like for 2027 we've got ideas and we'll begin solidifying things in the next coming weeks yeah i think immediately we'll hopefully see results of no ads no sponsorships being able to focus being able think about content but that comes in um you know i think that's the way people should judge this on how it's going um and you know it's like uh better ingredients better pizza so it'll be really good for for packet pushers team to just focus on the right ingredients to produce things that are way better for the community what yeah and you and i sat in a conference room with you various members of our two teams chatting about this. And one of the things that you said and was repeated multiple times in various ways is, yeah, we want to be careful not to make people feel like this is the meter show and we're clobbering people over the head with meter all the time. That would be weird and awkward. We don't want that. And again, the idea is, yes, you want people to know that you're backing packet pushers. Of course you do, but without beating them over thehead with it all the time, so for that skeptic, that's fearful. This is going to be, like I said, near the top of the show you know the meter podcast network it isn't that's not where we're going at all and we're all engineers why would i ever do that to an engineer right it will only have adverse effects like there's no incentive that would drive something like that yeah right and neil can't get on the network for some reason um i wonder wonder who locked him out that's right um well look you know we've always been really good on across the packet pusher shows on soliciting feedback um asking people for what they think if people have questions about this what are what are the right packet pushers channels and what are the right meter channels for coming and asking questions so from the packet versus community there's a few ways i'm in the packet pushes community slack group if you go to packetpushers.net slash community and join there and if you want to DM me any questions about this or express your concerns or your outrage or your support or whatever you're feeling, feel free to do that. Another way, if you're not a Slack person, packetpushers.net slash follow-up offers a form where you can anonymously, if your wish, submit to any of your feedback to us about that. Of course, LinkedIn, if You're on LinkedIn, I'm there as well. I'm happy to receive your direct messages and have a discussion about that, all of those ways are there for me and I pay attention to all of those channels I don't always respond instantly because you know I got a schedule but yeah I'll be happy to engage you and talk with you about anything that's on your mind and any meter specific channels you want to call out and you'll email me directly I care about this anil at meter.com uh oh literally email me anytime yep no I'm very good and you've you've been pretty bold about handing out your email address before and You know, that's awesome that you're willing to do that. I think it's nothing better than actually talking to people like they're people. Couldn't agree with you more. Yep. That's why I do this on Packet Pushers. I get to talk. I'm not the smartest person in the room. I haven't been ever, but I getと talk to the smartest person in a room and get that out to other people. So let me just throw a couple of fun questions at you before we're done. I've got to try it. And then Neil, I'm going to put you on the spot. But, you know, if I forced you to pick your favorite Packet Pusher show, which one would it be? And I know that's a false. You don't have to have just one. There's this guy who's a host. He's hard to deal with in person, but he has a really good show. It's called Total Network Operations. That was not a setup for that, but I appreciate it. I appreciate that. honestly where the world is going it's one of my favorite shows um and yes i've been doing networking for a long time but i just adore ns for networking um i think it's so cool that it even exists and i i see it as the future of so many things that i think the packet pushers team can do yeah that's really grown too like it started out good and now it's great um just to see how your co-host um holly has has just grown into that role ethan and uh i know that you love it with your you know your education mindedness and it comes across in every show that you do like you can hear um the joy that you have and i use that word very intentionally my heart is with the young people trying to make sense out of networking right now i knew you were going to trigger me before this started scott and uh oh i'm not done i'm not done but my heart is with those those juniors and those people trying to get their university degrees and trying to getting their ccna or whatever it is that they're working on and get that first networking job because man the landscapes change it was hard to get those certs 20 and 30 years ago when i was working on them all the time and now it's just so much harder there's so much more that gets thrown after that you're expected to synthesize in your head and and figure out how it all works. So when you hear me and Holly on NS for Networking, I'm dumping my guts out. I'm trying to give you everything, not just about how to understand the protocol, but put it in context of the wider world of networking and then try how you apply it in real life by sharing anecdotes and getting Holly's feedback and her observations. And people are out there listening to it. And we've gotten a number of stories from people that have been like, I had given up on my CCNA and I started listening to NS for networking and I went back and I studied again and I passed. I have heard that story several times now. Again, that stuff's a big deal. That stuff matters that we can do that and impact the community in that way. You may have just answered the next question I wanted to ask you, but I was going to ask you for what's a significant event in the life of building packet pushers that you'll never forget? Besides today's announcement, of course. um the team that uh i have been able to build uh with pack of pushers over the years um is is a long-running event uh where the team that we have now and i've talked to you about this scott you know how i feel about every individual i'm awestruck by who they are and their willingness to uh to put everything they have into packet pushers talented talented people um you know i got i got two two people i'll name specifically um robin who you know robin young she was on our the state of packet push show that we did uh earlier in this year um you don't hear her voice often but um the life of packet pushers packet pusher doesn't have a life without robin um she you don'T know it if you're a listener to the show because she's not a podcast host, but she made it happen. Greg and I were able to bring her on in 2015 at a time when we were so desperately overloaded with our consulting work and trying to do Packet Pushers, and we were ableto bring her on to help us. We don't grow. Packet pushers does not exist without her. And Drew, a similar kind of a story. Drew got laid off from UBM. He was driving the uh the network computing um interop the interop conference and got laid off as that conference began to to disappear and we had a chance to to work with him full time he took a chance on us and uh he's been with us ever since again packet pushers doesn't exist without the dedication of those two and then more folks that we've been able to hire in the last three years that have turned out all three of the additional folks you know somerset and daniel and uh and nathan are have turned OUT to be literally world-class folks with their their areas of expertise in what they do and what they're bringing to the table so an event from the life of packer birds never forget yeah it's not about me and it's NOT about greg when greg was here and it'S NOT about you know a lot of it it'S about the people in the back end that allowed us to do what we do um that is an extraordinary experience that i've been privileged to uh to enjoy over time now you said fun questions you know and you ended up triggering me in a different way well i said fun or memorable right so i i i couched it in a way um but i mean there's some ethan and greg stories that go back a ways that uh that we can talk about at some point but maybe not now yeah we'll do another episode on that there'll be there's gonna be an anniversary date something i'm sure we can uh you know i greg's names come up a bit and those have been with packer bushes a long time um you know him well and know his voice and know him uh his candor and so on i talked to him this morning you know and let him know that uh you thought all this was happening and he was kind of aware and uh he he wasn't yeah how did he feel you might be wondering he was congratulatory he was ecstatic he was thrilled as i described the relationship with meter he was like that mate he called me is it mate that's that way you couldn't ask for anything more you couldn'T ask for anything better fully in support cheerleading um you know he's not no he's NOT returning to the microphone or anything but uh but he was fully supportive and enthusiastic about all this going on and and he and I for anyone that cares you know continue we chat frequently you know we we keep up all the time we're still friends that's awesome and Neil, I wanted to poke on the same thread with you. And again, that builder view of meter. Have you got something that's been one key event that you'll never forget in the growth and development of the company? Boy, what a tough question. There's a reason I didn't prep you for it. Yeah. You know, when we started, we knew that it would take a really long time to build the entire rack building power routing switching wireless security the hardware the operating system the firmware the GPU systems the apis the applications it's not for the faint of heart but i think um a couple years in it became immensely clear to us that we would do this for decades um and i think that's been sort of pivotal and not just meter but in how i think about my career and my life and where my time goes and how much time i end up spending just like working because it's really enriching for me and feels great for me but i think this idea that you can build something that can last decades um it's one of the reasons to even do something like this with packet pushers is to take that long view what does it look like for networking uh not just a year from now, but three and five and 10 and 15 years from now. Like, how cool would it be if, you know, 10 years from Now, new network engineers are coming in, because they learned everything on the packet pushers network. Everything, you Know, they listen to a podcast, they watched a video on particular thing. And they came to a conference and tinkered on some hardware, are there with maybe somebody that's a senior network engineer that's been doing it for 20, 30 years, and they help them because that's the community that's there. So I think mainly it's just the commitment to do things for a really long time, taking the long-term view. And as, you know, incongruous as it is, trying to think in decades rather than in days. That's a great man-like drop moment from you. And it's, it's harder and harder to take that view because we all feel like we're trying to catch up and we're so overwhelmed by, you know, the next set of protocols and architectures for AI and whatever's next. So I'm writing that down. So, um, look, this has been a real honor to talk to you both, uh, through this. I consider you both friends. i love what i learn from each of you in your organizations you know i i listen to some part of almost every um you know packet pushers podcast i don't listen to all of them all the time because i also have to earn the living that'll be a full-time job yeah more than a full time job but every host i learn something style wise and information wise from every host um and i'll tip the hat to drew drew as drew as the mr objective like when when i want to really focus on something it's like i need to channel drew here um so drew shout out to you brother um and as i've gotten close to meter and you know in line with you've you've talked about anil thinking about it for the long term and re i didn't get it at first right this isn't a business model comment like you know ethan made earlier it's Like why does he want to reinvent all this and now i kind of understand why you want to reinvent all of it so um i thank you both right um thanks for your time here your commitment to keeping the voice of packet pushers growing and thriving and vibrant and doing what you're doing to advance networking you know networking needs networkers we're we're in this together i appreciate each of you very much uh beyond excited to see this come together and i think we can all agree that too much networking is never enough thank you both very much. Thank you, Scott.