About Ethan Banks

Ethan Banks, CCIE #20655, is a hands-on networking practitioner who has designed, built and maintained networks for higher education, state government, financial institutions, and technology corporations. Ethan is a host of the Packet Pushers Podcast, which has seen over one million unique downloads, and today reaches a global audience of over ten thousand listeners. Also a writer, Ethan covers network engineering and the networking industry for a variety of IT publications. He is also the editor for the independent community of bloggers at PacketPushers.net. Follow @ecbanks.

Shopping at the SDN App Store: What Enterprises Really Want?

I contributed 2 pieces to a Network World "digital spotlight" on software defined networking (SDN). SDN's all the rage with … [Read more...]

Show 147 – Avaya Fabric Connect Makes Multicast Simple (Really) – Sponsored

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For many network engineers, IP multicast routing is evil. Difficult to design, complicated to implement, painful to … [Read more...]

A Data Center Delivers Apps – So Shouldn’t We Monitor App Delivery?

Bowl is fine. Collar is fine. Floor seems okay. How come the food is not being delivered? Dunno...not my problem.

Dinner with His Toadishness, Derick Winkworth, the other night rolled into a 3+ hour discussion of avant garde ways to do … [Read more...]

Show 144 – Open EIGRP With Russ White + Cisco’s Donnie Savage

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EIGRP is a distance vector routing protocol that for many years was unique to Cisco networking environments. Created and … [Read more...]

Cisco Nexus – Port “Inactive” Status

Quick notes on the "inactive" port status seen on the Cisco Nexus platform, which was perplexing the first time I ran into … [Read more...]

CCIE Security v4 Reading List – Update From the Program Manager

Because of my personal interest in the CCIE Security program (at least the written exam the next time I'm up for CCIE … [Read more...]

Show 143 – Anuta Networks Demonstrates nCloudX Controller – Sponsored

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On March 26, 2013, the Packet Pushers held a sponsored webinar with Anuta Networks to introduce their nCloudX controller to … [Read more...]

Upgrading F5 BIGIP HA Pair From v10 to V11 – Ethan’s Notes

I recently completed a challenging upgrade on a pair of production F5 3600s running 10.2.0, going to 11.2.1 running the LTM … [Read more...]

Handling Tech Support Interaction Effectively

Network engineers deal with technical support frequently. That's the nature of the networking business: the products often … [Read more...]

Show 141 – The Pace of Change Is Picking Up – #NFD5 Discussion

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Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks of PacketPushers.net host a discussion with Dr. Peter Welcher, Brent Salisbury, and Stephen … [Read more...]

Six Things About F5 BIGIP V11 iApps

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F5 Networks' Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is my load balancer - okay, Application Delivery Controller, if you insist - of … [Read more...]

Webinar – Anuta Networks Demonstrates nCloudX – Register Now

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This past January, Anuta Networks came out of stealth at Cisco Live in London, showing off their nCloudX platform, an SDN … [Read more...]

Show 139 – Making Your Way Down the Path to Nirvana

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Regular hosts Greg Ferro & Ethan Banks are joined by Brandon Carroll, Josh O'Brien, and Tom Hollingsworth in Packet … [Read more...]

Why Would a Vendor Care About Network Field Day Events?

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I'm in San Jose, California as a member of the Network Field Day 5 delegation this week. NFD is under the Tech Field Day … [Read more...]

Show 138 – HP’s Software-Defined Networking (SDN) Strategy and Solution

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Show 138 – HP’s Software-Defined Networking (SDN) Strategy and Solution [Written by HP.] There has been a lot of … [Read more...]