Cisco Tech Stories

Tech Stories

A podcast by Cisco CX (TAC) experts in the form of a technology true crime storytelling. Learn about technologies, troubleshooting stories from various experts from Cisco.

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20 episodes
monthly
Avg 50 min
English

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#37
August 1 · 43 min
37 - Summer break
For the summer break, we come back on the best moments of our 3 years of this podcast and share our top 10 (or 11) episodes.
July 1 · 49 min
36 - Smooth Sailing Network Overhaul
In today's episode, Cisco CX engineers and architects reveal how cruise ship networks are built and upgraded: everything from door locks and cameras to navigation and guest entertainment runs over the same segmented, secured infrastructure, and internet connectivity depends on intermittent satellite links so content must be stored locally. We follow a high‑stakes dry dock upgrade on a large cruise ship — with tight timelines, complex staging, and on‑the‑fly design changes to handle issues like NAT, multicast/PTP, MTU and firewall integration — and learn how planning, testing and rapid problem‑solving kept the ship sailing.
S1 · E35
May 31 · 41 min
35 - CCIE with a twist
In this episode, we interview Sheikh Habeebul Haq who is the first visually impaired engineer to ever pass the CCIE exam. He tells us how the exam has been for him and how he helped develop accessibility in the CCIE exam. What about you ? What's your excuse for not going for CCIE ? :-)
#34
May 1 · 45 min
34 - Kubernetes Networking : the new fabric ?
In this episode, we interview Marcos Hernandez who tell us about the Isovalent products and integration. From Live Protect, to Cilium which allows kubernetes container networking with the same level of abstraction, mobility and security as fabric networking.
#33
March 31 · 47 min
33 - Rice and Shine of eBPF
In this episode, we interview Liz Rice, a contributor to eBPF. She tells us what this technology means for the linux kernel but also for future security app, for kernel observability and last but not least for container networking. A technology so good it's even coming to Windows.
March 1 · 44 min
32 - Open Source Pizza Boxes in the DC
In this episode, we interview Jean Christophe Rode, principal engineer working in the IOS-XR engineering team. He also specalizes in SONIC support. He explains how this open source operating system is gaining ground and what are the difference with Cisco proprietary IOS-XR. No blue Hedgehogs are mentioned in this episode
February 1 · 31 min
31 - Hardening the Core with Resilient Infrastructure
In this episode , Tristan takes us through a tour of what Cisco is doing to make all network devices more secure, not just the new products. Security concerns are not just about security vulnerabilities, your base configuration has the biggest impact actually ... Resilient Infrastructure overview: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/trust-center/resilient-infrastructure.html#~overview Feature Deprecation details: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/doing_business/trust-center/docs/cisco-resilient-infrastructure-feature-deprecation-and-removal-details.pdf Alternatives: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/doing_business/trust-center/docs/cisco-infrastructure-resilience-feature-removal-and-suggested-alternatives.pdf Additional links on threat landscape in 2026: https://blogs.cisco.com/news/doubling-down-on-resilient-infrastructure https://blog.talosintelligence.com/salt-typhoon-analysis/
S1 · E30
January 1 · 52 min
30 - The day Obama didn't learn my name
In this episode, Kristopher Gabrielsen, Principal Engineer in Switching technologies tells us about his most critical and high-pressure situations and we talk about the future of LAN switching.
S1 · E29
Dec 1, 2025 · 46 min
29 - Rack and Roll - Scaling AI DCs
In this episode, Venkat Kirishnamurthy, a principal Architect at Cisco, explains what are the ins and outs of designin an AI datacenter. How is it different from another datacenter ? What kind of scale are we talking about ? What is the throughput required to connect 1000 GPUs together ? Learn more about CX Services and how we can help you design your datacenter: https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/services/index.html
Nov 1, 2025 · 1 hr 5 min
28 - Qubit the bullet - quantum entanglement
In this episode, Tim Szigeti, Distinguished Engineer talks to us about Quantum computing, the latest progresses and what are the potential impact and opportunities it creates. We also discuss what is Cisco doing in the Quantum field.
#27
Oct 1, 2025 · 49 min
27 - Crypto Key insights
In this episode, Frederic Detienne, a Distinguished Cisco CX Engineer takes us through the evolution of cryptography in IT, the latest changes and challenges as well as the quantum problem and post-quantum cryptography.
S1 · E26
Sep 1, 2025 · 50 min
26 - Kendra's SD-WAN war stories
In this episode, Kendra Dodson, CX Technical Leader in the RTP TAC, tells us about the SD-WAN technology and her personal troubleshooting stories : counter overflow, packet over-fragmentation and sudden config loss. We also discuss the future of WAN technologies
Aug 1, 2025 · 53 min
25 - Ransom Where ? PSIRT adventures
In this episode we interview Roberto Petrillo who works for Cisco Product Security Incident Response team. He works on and assesses vulnerabilities on all Cisco products. He tells us about his career in TAC support web security and his move to PSIRT, working on vulnerability disclosures.
Jul 1, 2025 · 48 min
24 - Snoop Dogged - NexusOS Crisis
In this episode, Brandon tells us about the time a critical problem surfaced the day before the Cisco Live US event started and how the clock started ticking to find an acceptable solution for the next day. We also discuss how he prepares the event network for Cisco Live.
Jun 1, 2025 · 51 min
23 - Dead Air
In this episode, we host Dimitar Dimitrov a Collaboration expert in Webex Calling who tells us a story about dead air. All calls are working fine except sometimes, people can't hear each other at all. From a classic problem description, they end up troubleshooting the whole network hunting after the lost packets. Dimitar also works with AI and tells us about his role in shaping the future of Cisco AI Tech Support
S1 · E22
May 1, 2025 · 54 min
22 - Breaking (CX) Lab
In this episode, we receive Regis Baudin, Technical Leader for the CXLabs department in Europe. He is responsible for the operations of the biggest lab of the continent (Cisco has bigger labs in the US and Bangalore) and explains to us what are the challenges of hosting a gigantic lab where hundreds or thousands of engineers come to reproduce customer issues
Apr 1, 2025 · 1 hr 4 min
21 - It's a hard NOC life (Cisco Live)
A special Cisco Live EMEA Amsterdam episode where Nico interviews NOC team members on how they manage to deploy an entire network in a matter of days.
S1 · E20
Mar 1, 2025 · 55 min
20 - Asynchronous secrets and pythonic powers
In this episode, we interview Jonathan Slenders, lead python developer at Cisco who takes us on adventure along his automation tools developped before and during his Cisco tenure. We discuss how terrible networking engineers are at coding and how we can reconcile both worlds.
Feb 1, 2025 · 1 hr 10 min
19 - Richards' time machine rollercoaster
Richard Yates, Service provider Technical Leader, tells us about his career story. Starting from the air force and analog phone switchboards through all the wireless technologies like CDMA, 3G, WiMAX to 5G. This long episode covers life lessons, technology anecdotes, insane stories and much much more.
S1 · E18
Jan 1, 2025 · 54 min
18 - Splunk around and find out
We interview Devon Herron, a Splunk support engineer based in the UK. Devon only handles network down P1 situations and he has seen a few doozies during his career. He takes us through storage troubleshooting, hypervisor shenanigans and of course automation going bananas. Follow us on this journey to discover Splunk and how it can change your life as a network engineer.

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