Ethan Banks

Transcript is automatically generated and may contain errors.

[00:00:00] Chris: Hello, and welcome to the imposter syndrome network podcast, where everyone belongs, especially those of you who don't think you qualify. My name is Chris Grundman and I'm here with my co-host Zoe rose. Hey. This is the Ethan Banks episode. And I think you are in for a treat. Ethan is the co-founder of packet pushers, Ethan.

[00:00:31] Chris: Hi, thanks for being here. Uh, would you like to introduce yourself to the network?

[00:00:36] Ethan: Hey, Chris, as you're sitting on the co-founder of packet pushers, packet pushers.net, and we are a. Primarily a podcast network. At this point, we started in May, 2010 with the packet pushers podcast, which was all about networking and networking for nerds and 12, 13, whatever.

[00:00:49] Ethan: However many years later, this is, we're still doing it. And it's not just the heavy networking podcast. That flagship show that we started back in the day. It is also several other shows, including day two cloud with which I co-host with, uh, Ned Bevan and the network break show a weekly news show, Kubernetes unpacked, full stack journey, IPV six buzz.

[00:01:10] Ethan: Whatever else I'm forgetting Chris and Zoe, we got a lot of shows, a lot of content, uh, blog and, and other stuff, which is what I do full time. That's my job now, Chris is to like, I'm this media person. It's very odd. 

[00:01:23] Chris: That's wild. Yeah. So one thing, I mean, one thing we try to do here is kind of highlight the different roles that you can end up in, in technology.

[00:01:30] Chris: This is a very interesting one. What does a typical day look like for a professional podcaster media personality, such as your. 

[00:01:39] Ethan: Content development is the primary role that I, I play. So I'm doing a lot of reading and research. Um, I'm reading white papers. I am reviewing press releases that come out. I'm trying to keep up with the news cycle.

[00:01:52] Ethan: Sometimes I'm doing lab work because I need to prove out some technical engineering concept and preparation for a show I'm reading. RFCs. I'm scheduling. I do a lot of scheduling work with people that are going to be podcast guests on the show. I do a lot of writing. I write blog posts. I contribute to a weekly newsletter.

[00:02:11] Ethan: Um, I write feature articles. There's a lot of that. And then there's a lot of business operations in the background. I'm still a nerd. I'm still doing lots of server work and the background everything's in the cloud for us. So it's not like I have a big network that I'm dealing with these days as.

[00:02:25] Ethan: There's still networking involved, but it's not like the old days of racking and stacking switches and configure it O S P F and, uh, you know, and all that kind of stuff. But it is still, it's still that though, you know, in a very practical way now it's administrating VPSs and patching Linux and.

[00:02:41] Ethan: Optimizing web server performance and troubleshooting via, you know, parsing through logs and writing Python scripts to do automation kind of stuff. So there's all of that. That goes into it as well, as well as just daily coms with the company doing, uh, work in slack and. Some slack ops kind of stuff, you know, and so on.

[00:02:59] Ethan: There's a lot to it, man. I am, I am busy full time and that's scheduled my calendar. I'm just a, a slave to it because the content wheel never stops turning it's the next week. Gotta have another show and, uh, get it put out the door. 

[00:03:12] Zoe: All I pictured there is when you were talking about that is remembering all of the times I pinched myself with those rack.

[00:03:19] Zoe: Um, When I'm racking devices. 

[00:03:21] Ethan: Yeah. And, and cut yourself. Yeah. The little, the rack nut things you put into the square hole and yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:03:27] Zoe: So you don't have those anymore. That's nice. 

[00:03:30] Ethan: I don't have those anymore. I don't. Um, and, and that is nice. , you know, the cloud's been awesome for a lot of things. Right.

[00:03:36] Ethan: And being able to likes. Spin up and spin down VPSs on the fly. It's just amazing. I had to do that today. I had a server that was CPU bow, one of our web servers, like all right, time to up it, you know, went in there and hit the button and mag magic. It goes from one CPU and a gig of Ram to two CPUs and four gig of Ram.

[00:03:53] Ethan: And it all just happens. Yeah. The cloud is great. 

[00:03:56] Zoe: It is lovely. I think one thing that would be quite interesting to people is how did you get there? You know, you don't start out in a technical career usually saying, I want to be a podcast host, you know, I wanna create content, 

[00:04:11] Ethan: no, especially in a, in a technical field, that can be difficult because in theory, you know what you're talking about.

[00:04:18] Ethan: And so that for me came from decades of experience. So I, I started off back in the, uh, in the nineties doing Noel administration work and getting certifications and doing consulting. And over the years worked through. Whatever the hot technology was at the time where there was a lot of demand for the skillset.

[00:04:36] Ethan: So I went from the Noel world into the Microsoft world to becoming an MCSE and doing windows NT work made a lot of money, migrating people from Noel to Microsoft. As a matter of fact, there was several years of that. And then there was a job I had working in state government, I think, where there was this Cisco router thing sitting on the wall.

[00:04:58] Ethan: And it's like, I talked to my boss, what does that do? Oh, that connects us to the office downtown. It does. Huh? Huh. And I just was like, captivated by this thing, what is this thing? What does it do? And it was managed. It was, it was an outsource thing. It was managed by some other company. I couldn't really get my hands on it or figure it out, but that ended up some years later I had an opportunity to do a CCNA course, which I did.

[00:05:22] Ethan: I took, I got my CCNA and, and it, it was off to the races for me from there, you know, all the stuff I had learned about networking by doing Noel courses and Microsoft courses. Really got a fine focus, uh, really fine tuned and under the magnifying glass in the Cisco world and all of a sudden it's like, okay, now we're talking about packets and frames and VLANs and routing protocols.

[00:05:45] Ethan: And. All of that spanning tree and you know, how do you connect all this stuff up? And it was, it was IP and IPX and apple talk and, and it all goes through these boxes and that's all they do. You mean? I don't have to have file and print services coming off. This network router, all the thing does is route.

[00:06:02] Ethan: Cool. I get to focus on that. I love it. And I did love it. And I, I ended up with some jobs after that of doing land land work, and a lot of routing and, uh, and switching and security, security was always a big part of the work that I did as a network engineer. And I just kept going down the certification train.

[00:06:22] Ethan: Um, CCNA became eventually CCNP back in the day, Microsoft had a CCSP, which was their professional tier for security stuff. So I became good at Cisco picks firewalls and their IDs IPS platform, which was terrible. But I, I, I could make it go. I could make it do the thing and so on. And eventually C, C E I got a route switch, C C I E back in 2008.

[00:06:43] Ethan: And. Worked at a variety of institutions doing, doing network stuff. I mentioned state government, but I also did work in higher ed. I've done work in, uh, FinTech. I worked for a credit card payment processor, um, for four years and learned a ton there. That job was like, if you didn't walk out of there either dead or having learned what there was to learn, you know, I mean, it was one of those two options either you're gonna make it or you're not.

[00:07:05] Ethan: And, uh, and I think I, I did okay. I. Pretty well in that environment. Uh, and, and just had different jobs, supporting a variety of different shops, needing a lot of different things. You know, after I left the FinTech, I worked for a company that needed a lot of load balancing and testing support work. So I got, uh, I was already fairly competent with the, the, the F five load balancing platform.

[00:07:28] Ethan: I got better at it, you know, at this other job and tried to do a little bit more with automation and. So that's a long way to answer the question, Zoe, but that's, you know, all of those years of work in it, hands on, you know, up to my elbows in Iraq, um, we were talking about cage nuts, you know, earlier there's blood in a, in a data center in Salem, New Hampshire from me, from my finger, cuz I cut myself in one of those stupid things.

[00:07:53] Ethan: I mean, that's, that's how you get the experience. You just, you have those jobs, you do that. And you develop, if you're serious about it, you develop a certain level of expertise, especially if you're willing to, you know, take on like project leadership and technical leadership and mentoring other people around you, you can't help, but develop enough competency to eventually get behind a microphone and start talking about this stuff with, uh, some level of, of knowledge of what you're doing.

[00:08:18] Chris: Yeah. So you mentioned certifications and, and kinda the certification journey as part of your career journey. Would you say that that was instrumental and kind of maybe why if it was, or, or was it something that if you had to do it over again, you wouldn't pursue all those certifications. Where do you, where do you land on certs 

[00:08:34] Ethan: twofold?

[00:08:34] Ethan: Uh, for the certs early on, that was the way to advance the career because it helped separate you from the 50 other people applying for the same job, if you would assert and a bunch of other people didn't maybe that kept your resume on the pile. Also because I was in consulting early on, it was helpful because as a certified human, you could help that partner, Microsoft partner, Cisco partner, navel partner, maintain discounts or whatever that they wanted.

[00:09:02] Ethan: And so it was helpful to have a certification when working for a partner as a consultant. It also, when you do certifications, you have a body of knowledge. You were expected to have a command of, you must know when you're on the job, you probably don't use all the features that a product might have. You use what you need to solve a particular problem for your organization.

[00:09:24] Ethan: Certifications force you to learn everything that there is to know everything that at least that the vendor wants you to know. And it exposes you to things that you wouldn't have otherwise learned. So I am a big fan of certifications for those reasons, especially early on, if you take it to an extreme CC, I E I mean, there's stuff I didn't know, were things that I was exposed to going through that route switch program.

[00:09:48] Ethan: It took me about 18 months to get through the program. And there were things it's like, I'm looking at the blueprint to start. I was like, man, I'm already a CCMP and I've never heard of some of the stuff that they want me to know for. CCCA what what's going on here. I thought this was gonna be. I know it pretty well.

[00:10:02] Ethan: And now I just gotta Polish up a few things and I can go do the C, C I E lab, and I'm gonna crush it. Yeah, no, no. It was like so much more involved with, again, technologies that I didn't even know were things. So I I'm a big fan of certs, particularly early on. Now that I'm, you know, 20 odd pushing into 30 years of a career in it, it's a different thing for me.

[00:10:23] Ethan: I use them differently, you know? So, so Kubernetes, for example, I spent about a week locked up in a hotel room just to get away from life and everything I was doing. So I could focus on learning something about Kubernetes. Cause it was a big part of what I do in my job. As a podcast host for day two cloud.

[00:10:41] Ethan: Did I pass the certification test? I didn't even attempt it. I didn't even go after the CKA the certified Kubernetes administrator, cuz it's nothing that is particularly useful to me. But going through the certification program in that structured way, helped me to learn the material that I needed to learn again with that structure and expose me to things I didn't know that were things and so on.

[00:11:00] Ethan: So I still find them helpful. Even if it's not especially beneficial for me to take an exam or, you know, hold a certification right now with my current job. 

[00:11:09] Zoe: That's a really interesting point. I, I agree with you in the early in industry or starting out, it's a great way to stand apart for me. I viewed it as a way of validating.

[00:11:19] Zoe: I knew what I was talking about. Mm. It was that, you know, external validations, somebody else thinks I'm smart. So I must be, do you ever feel like there's ever situations where maybe early in your career, or maybe later in your career when you're not as hands on. You kind of look for ways to validate. Do I actually know what I'm talking about?

[00:11:38] Zoe: Am I full of rubbish? Did I . 

[00:11:42] Ethan: I mean, always right. We're we're humans. We always want that. And when you are in a technical discipline, Every new technology is intimidating. What's gonna happen when I type in this command or make this change in the gooey, or, you know, send this new policy through and apply it.

[00:11:59] Ethan: What's gonna happen. There's always that concern that the thing you change is gonna blow something the heck up. And all of a sudden people are gonna be like, what's going on? Why is the network down? What's going on? When you go through a certification yeah. That can help you with that validation, for sure.

[00:12:14] Ethan: Because you now, it, it, it gives you, if you do have self doubt, imposter syndrome, whatever you wanna say. It can give you that confidence, like, yeah, I'm doing it and I'm doing it right. I'm doing it the way the vendor wants me to do. And, and, and I do know what I'm doing. I do. I went through all the work and I've been doing this in the labs and I've been doing this hands on, on my day to day job.

[00:12:34] Ethan: And yeah, I don't suck at this. I'm good at this. So yeah, I think you make a good point, Zoe. Definitely.

[00:12:39] Chris: So speaking of, you know, folks popping into your cube or, or office or wherever you happen to be sitting now, I guess, onto your slack channel. Cause everyone's sitting at home and, and asking why the network's down.

[00:12:49] Chris: Uh, have you ever screwed up at work? 

[00:12:53] Ethan: no, Chris, I have a perfect track record, buddy. I'm a thousand for a thousand. Crushed it every time. Oh dude. I mean, have I ever broken something? Yeah, haven't we all? Oh, my word. 

[00:13:04] Chris: What's the most embarrassing mistake you made, you know, while, while you're out there doing the network engineering thing.

[00:13:10] Ethan: So the, the most embarrassing I've told this story before on some other podcasts. So if you're listening and you've heard this story before, I, I apologize, but there again, go back to my state government job, big campus supporting several thousand state employees and the. The wide area network was set up across the city in a triangle fashion.

[00:13:27] Ethan: We had three major campuses within the city. This is the capital city conquered New Hampshire. And one of the office campuses was connected with a 72 0 6 VXR router T3 connection. This is, this goes back some years, but back in the day, T3 was like, oh baby, you're serious now. 45 megabits per second. Oh, feel the power kind of thing.

[00:13:50] Ethan: and it had a problem. I don't remember what the issue was. I was on with T I was kind of new at the job still, you know, not a lot of years of stick time behind me with the, the Cisco gear and the TAC engineer told me, okay, we gotta figure this thing out. I want you to do debug IP. And I'm like, oh, oh, okay.

[00:14:07] Ethan: You sure I should do that? Cause that's I know, I knew it was gonna log all the packets and I was like, that seems pretty intense. Are you sure? And, and he was like, yeah, yeah, this is the thing. This is what we gotta do. I'm like, oh, okay. So middle of the day hit the button, killed the router. I mean, cuz we were logging, not just to, I mean it's 70, 72, a six B.

[00:14:25] Ethan: If anyone knows that box, it wasn't exactly overpowered with CPU in the control play. This was not, not what this thing was designed to do. I was like, oh, okay. I hit the button and you know, the router just goes dark. I can't, I got no console response anymore. No nothing. And there was no out of band management.

[00:14:43] Ethan: I didn't have an out of band management network to get at this thing at this point. These are, this goes back again. A lot of years where before a lot of this stuff that was standard practice was standard practice. Steve a IP packet crushed this poor thing, cuz it was logging not just to the local CPU, but also out the serial port, which was causing so many interrupts.

[00:15:01] Ethan: The thing was just dead. So now I've got a campus with 30, I think it was about 3,500 people that were out there sitting behind this thing, not able to connect anything. And most of what they needed was across that pipe. There were a lot of client server apps that were sitting in a data center where I was in a different part of the city than where they.

[00:15:18] Ethan: Popped into my boss's office, getting the car right now, gotta go over to state office park south. I will be right back, gotta reboot a router. They are down. I'll explain later, you know, go in the car, get across, down and running the office, you know, unlock things, punch codes, you know, eyeball scans. I don't remember whatever I had to do to get into the room, power it down, power it back up.

[00:15:37] Ethan: Wait, wait, look at my watch weight. This is not a device that reboots quickly. It takes time. It it's really gotta think about it. And finally, it's up. It's moving tra. Ooh. Okay. And then I go back to my boss, head hung, low going. I killed a router. I did something the tack told me to do, cuz they told me to do it, but I kind of knew I shouldn't have done it, but I did it anyway.

[00:15:58] Ethan: And I'm sorry. And it won't happen again. but there's nothing worse than having thousands of people down, not able to get any work done because all their apps live across the wire that you just killed. So things like that, that sucks. You know, it sucks. 

[00:16:13] Zoe: Bringing back so many memories. not that I've ever done anything like that.

[00:16:20] Zoe: You know,

[00:16:23] Zoe: has it ever been a situation where, I mean, it sounded like, because you were able to talk to your boss and say, oh, I messed up. It sounded like potentially that was an okay. Relationship there. But has there been a situation where it's like, you have a really terrible boss and it's just making everything so much harder.

[00:16:42] Zoe: What did you do about it? 

[00:16:43] Ethan: I haven't had any quote, unquote terrible bosses in that way. Oh, that's good. Not like that. Where it's like, oh, if I take this to my boss, I'm gonna get fired. I was never worried about that. I've had bosses I've had to look out for, because they would think nothing of, you know, backing the boss up over their team, if that's what they needed to do to save themselves.

[00:17:06] Ethan: I've had bosses that in a moment of crisis would disappear. Okay, no lie. I, we had a hard down network situation of some sort, and it was affecting a lot of people. There were a lot of calls coming inbound to the help desk and a lot of calls from like other department heads calling in going, what, what is going on?

[00:17:25] Ethan: What is going on in it? What are you guys doing? This boss took his phone off. The ringer locked himself in the room would not talk to anybody at all. And we were left defend for ourselves. So the I've had that kind of a boss. 

[00:17:40] Chris: That is amazing. I can't, uh, even imagine. 

[00:17:43] Zoe: Amazing. I think we have different definitions of the words, but yeah, 

[00:17:47] Ethan: I, I I've never seen anything like it, it was, I couldn't get over it.

[00:17:51] Ethan: And you know, the rest of us are just left trying to field calls and, you know, set up our own command center and, you know, just try to work our way through this difficult situation. I, I, I had a boss who, something, something happened bad in a network maintenance, I think was the scenario. It was an approved maintenance.

[00:18:08] Ethan: Everything was done, you know, the way it was expected to, to be done. So we didn't break any rules. Everything was done appropriately, but it didn't go well, whatever happened during the maintenance didn't go well. And in the post mortem, after. The boss just threw certain people on the team under the bus.

[00:18:27] Ethan: Uh, you know, I told him not to do that. I said it shouldn't, we should have done this other way. It was, it was all just bull crap. You know, it was, he was just trying to save himself because he felt as the leader of the teams, the manager of the team, he looked bad because the team's effort during this maintenance window didn't go well.

[00:18:42] Ethan: So I've had that kind of a. But to go back to, I think the root, your question, Zoe, I mean, I've always tried to be open with my bosses about what's going on. I've had some bosses that have been technical and some not so technical. So for a, not so technical boss, I would try to explain what's going on and not obfuscate with details, you know, because if they don't understand, they, if they don't come from an engineering background, you know, you gotta give them the information.

[00:19:08] Ethan: They need to make decisions they need to make for the business or to relay to the business. What is important to know. So I've always tried to main be good with communications and expressing things like, okay, if we don't do this, the risk is X. If we do do this, the benefit is this. And the other risk is this.

[00:19:27] Ethan: And, you know, help them make business oriented decisions and, and just be a good communicator, be an effective communicator to them that goes a long way to buying yourself a lot of, um, Well, they'll take you seriously. You know, as an employee, they'll see that you're engaged, they'll see that you think the right way about the business.

[00:19:45] Ethan: And when you do inevitably screw up, because we all do it can buy you some grace because they understand you're not some hack, you're actually being conscientious and thinking about the business and trying to communicate effectively and all of that stuff. So if you have a relationship with your boss, having a relationship with them matters, it can really.

[00:20:07] Ethan: Benefit you, if you're willing to take the time to do it, which some people just aren't, they just wanna, they just wanna sit behind the keyboard and do their thing and not have to talk to any humans, especially their boss, if they can avoid that. 

[00:20:18] Zoe: That's literally what you just said is the reason I went into tech because I wanted to get away from people and it's a hundred percent over my career.

[00:20:26] Zoe: I learned what you just said is actually being in tech means you have to work with people and it's so important to have that relationship. Mm. So I can relate to all of the people that are like, oh, rubbish. I have to at people now oh yeah, no, that's interesting. I guess I, from the way you're saying it, it's almost like managing upwards, you know, working.

[00:20:46] Zoe: Managers, whether they're technical non-technical and speaking the language that they speak. So be it the language of risk, if they're not technical person, and that's kind of where kind of sets you apart from somebody else, because you've got the relationship of trust. You're speaking in a way that they understand and not being condescending, jerk mm-hmm

[00:21:04] Zoe: So that's really interesting. I think, I think that's a skill that you have to learn on your own, you know, it's not something. For most people comes natural. 

[00:21:12] Ethan: And, and for engineering folks that live in deep down inside of reading RFCs and, uh, you know, having to focus on minute details and command line switches to get our jobs done, it can be difficult to step away from that and kind of abstract that information and package it in a way that's useful for someone who's not technical.

[00:21:30] Ethan: Like you are to be able to understand and make decisions around. It really is a skill. You gotta work. 

[00:21:36] Chris: So speaking of communicating, I wanna ask a question. I think I know what the answer is, but I could be totally wrong. So maybe you'll surprise. What's the, the greatest achievement of your career. So far 

[00:21:47] Ethan: biggest achievement of my career.

[00:21:48] Ethan: So achievements come in different forms, Chris. I mean, it can be, you know, a big project that you completed that you had had your hand in, you were involved in that big project in some way, it can be things like, you know, certifications. It can be attaining some job that, uh, some title, I guess, or, you know, compensation package that you really wanted.

[00:22:09] Ethan: So I guess when you say achievement or is this an open ended question or is. How do you mean achievement?

[00:22:14] Chris: Yeah. I'd love to, from, from your perspective. Right? Of, of, of all those different things that, uh, you count in the, in the wind column, which one, right. Is the cream, right? Which one floats up to the top there for you?

[00:22:24] Ethan: That's, that's a difficult question. Uh, because I don't think about what I've done in that way. I look at my career as like one big thing. That's been a path, you know, I've just been along the path. I don't look at individual things that stand out as much. I look at, I've been working towards a goal for a very long time, and I'm still working towards that goal, you know, and for me, that goal has always been independence that is being able to work for myself.

[00:22:50] Ethan: Maybe eventually being financially independent. There's a fantasy, a lot of us, uh, clinging to, you know, some of us it's the term retirement I'm gonna retire someday. And so on. Now I, that doesn't mean I can't look back at my career and look at things that I consider to be achievements. You know, I was, you know, at that FinTech, we did a big data center migration.

[00:23:10] Ethan: We moved from one facility to another, across the street, interconnected by fiber. And we had to piece mail pick up the running data center that was in the old facility. Basically pick it up and move it over a period of months into the, a brand spanking new facility. And no downtime, cuz of course no downtime.

[00:23:29] Ethan: So how do you do that? How do you do that? And I was one of many people that were involved in a, in a very complex project with a lot of moving pieces and long story short, we got it done. And when we were done, we went from a data center that had so many years on it and had so many iterations and generations of it that had gone before it that when you picked up a tile, the guy stick your head under the raise floor, it was nothing but an ocean of cables about a meter.

[00:23:53] Ethan: It was like a history lesson down there. Oh, here's some old serial cable from when we had that mainframe and here's, you know, an on and on and. The new data center was this pristine thing, just beautiful with everything in cable Raceway, where it should, should go. And every cable was labeled. Then, you know, the patch panels were all beautiful.

[00:24:10] Ethan: And, you know, I got to work on a team that was headed by a data center manager who was O C, D to a, I was gonna say to a fault, but I, I found no fault in, uh, his style of managing the data center. It was glorious. So to be a part of that team and, and help get that network migrated over and to. In a way that there really wasn't any significant downtime and to help write the procedures to stage new switches and routers as they came up in the new data center and, you know, put in a lot of the, the code and mentor some of the engineers that were there that needed to do their part to get this stuff done.

[00:24:45] Ethan: I mean, that was, uh, it's a highlight. I don't know if it's an achievement, but it was a highlight for sure. Something. I, I learned a lot during it and I'll remember for most of my life, all of that predated. All of the cool automation tools we have now. And there was no Z TP and stuff like that. I feel super old right now, guys.

[00:25:02] Ethan: I just wanna point that out. 

[00:25:04] Zoe: I'm young. And I remember doing all of these things, so , I, I just like to say that, you know, for the really young people listening, uh, a lot of the older. Infrastructure takes a long time to migrate, especially governments. Oh yeah. I worked at casinos, uh, years ago, many, many years ago, which where I worked was owned by the government.

[00:25:24] Zoe: So you can imagine how old that was and, uh, migrating to new solutions. It wasn't like, you know, oh, everything's already virtualized. So converting that to, this is simple. It wasn't that, so don't feel too old. Mm. Because I am still young. We're, we're claiming that , 

[00:25:43] Ethan: there's one thing I, I wanna highlight about, you know, talking about a data center migration and really any of the big projects any of us has done over the years.

[00:25:49] Ethan: None of us did those projects by ourselves. They were always team efforts. And when you do a big project, You pull together with your coworkers in a way that nothing else really pulls you together. It's it's like you all went through something together. Remember when we did that big migration, you know, remember when we did whatever it was.

[00:26:08] Ethan: That's special. And I think if I were to go back and highlight all these quote unquote achievements, um, they would be underscored by that. It was a chance that I got to work with other awesome people and do something cool. Do something big and unusual. We weren't in running maintain mode. We were building something new.

[00:26:28] Ethan: And you feel like again, a unification with your fellow man, because you did something together as a team and built the thing and you're, you're, you're bonded. You're friends. Because of that or, or you hate each other, I guess that's also a possibility, but , I mean, I, 

[00:26:44] Chris: it can turn out either way to depend on who you're working with and what you're doing, I guess.

[00:26:47] Chris: Huh? 

[00:26:47] Ethan: Yeah. This friends, I still talk to, to this day because of some of what we went through together in the it trenches, building a thing and making, making something new, bringing it to life and then operating it and. And upgrading it and teaching other people how it works and running a business on it.

[00:27:01] Ethan: You know, that all of those things are highlights. 

[00:27:04] Zoe: Yeah. I think it's that it's, it's funny. Cuz like I said, when I started my career, I was trying to get away from people. And then I realized people are important, but a hundred percent it's, it's the people in the relationships that you remember. It's not, yeah.

[00:27:17] Zoe: I set up that server or I maintain this server. It's, you know, I completely screwed up and work together with this person to rebuild that server, you know? yeah, that's really awesome. 

[00:27:30] Chris: Well, we are running up on time here. So I want to take a minute to thank you, Ethan, for, for being on and, and sharing your story with us and, and your journey.

[00:27:39] Chris: And also thank everybody from the imposter syndrome network. Who's listening in for doing that. And, uh, if you can like, and, uh, do the ratings and, and all the things you're supposed to do, that would be great. But, uh, before we wrap up Ethan, I, I, I'm curious, right. I think, you know, in this, you know, 20 plus year career where you've kind of wove through, you know, finding your, your, your passion in network engineering and then moving on.

[00:28:02] Chris: You know, quite different, although the same subject matter, uh, job of being a celebrity in some circles, , I'm really curious as to, along that path, right? How did you learn what you're good at or, or what you wanted to be doing next? 

[00:28:16] Ethan: Some things you just have to try. So when it comes to podcasting, I had a little bit of skill in that area.

[00:28:24] Ethan: And I kind of knew that because I had done audio work in the past. And I, I knew some things about that. I had done some teaching in the past where I was up in front of a classroom doing instruction in, uh, you know, firewalls and VPN and a plus. And I forget what other odds and ends I taught over the years.

[00:28:40] Ethan: And sometimes those opportunities are presented to you and you're like, oh, I don't know if I can do. Just do it, give it a shot. Yeah. Maybe you suck at it. And you know, that's not your thing, but, uh, maybe, you know, like for me, being able to stand up in front of somebody and teach was something I found, I really liked.

[00:28:55] Ethan: And based on feedback I got from students, it's like, okay, I, I don't suck at this. People got some value out of it. They like being in the classroom with me. Cool, cool. Which add that, add to that writing where I was doing a lot of, you know, blogging and writing over a period of years about networking. Kind of lent itself.

[00:29:13] Ethan: All of that work lent itself to, uh, to podcasting. I had some skills with audio engineering. I had some skills as a communicator and I liked doing all of that stuff. And then the podcasting thing just worked out. So, um, give it a shot. You don't know till you try and if in your brain you're going, oh, I could never do that.

[00:29:31] Ethan: Maybe, you know, but, but, but you don't, you genuinely don't know till you make the. And some skills are just learned. I hope I've gotten better as a podcaster over the years. I've recorded well over a thousand shows at this point. And, uh, hope that I've learned something along the way about how to write a script and how to interview people and how to communicate myself and so on.

[00:29:52] Ethan: And so it's okay if you try something and maybe it wasn't the best thing ever, you know, at your first swing, but keep swinging. And, uh, over time, you figure out how to take that swing and you can get better at it as you go and become, you know, very good at it. If, uh, if you put the effort. 

[00:30:11] Chris: I love that.

[00:30:12] Chris: That's great. I think that's a great place to end it. Um, but before we totally close out, Ethan, are there any cool projects that we should check out that the network should take a look at? I know you've got a book out for a few years now. Uh, what else? And, and where can they connect with you? 

[00:30:26] Ethan: Yeah. So that book you mentioned is computer networking problems and solutions.

[00:30:29] Ethan: I wrote that as a co-author with, uh, Russ white Russ wrote two thirds of the book. I probably contributed a third. If I'm being generous with myself, uh, Russ is an amazing author. He's authored 12 or 13 different networking books. And he invited me along for the ride. And we put that book out in 2018. It's not one of these books that is.

[00:30:47] Ethan: Very time sensitive. So you still get plenty of value, uh, from it. Now it takes you through common problems that you find in computer networking and how they are solved. And it's designed to give you a framework so that when some new technology comes along, solving a problem, you know how to frame it up and solve that problem yourself.

[00:31:03] Ethan: And you can find that on. Amazon. And, uh, it's a, it's a Pearson publication, uh, book. So I believe you can find it up on safari as well. Again, computer networking problems and solutions was that book. You can follow on me on Twitter at EC banks, and I have a blog see banks.com, but mostly you're gonna find me running around@packetpushers.net.

[00:31:21] Ethan: I'm a co-host of the heavy networking podcast. I co-host the day two cloud podcast. And then I guest appear on, oh, like this morning I recorded a network break podcast. Normally that's my co-founder Greg, uh, with, uh, with drew Conrey. Our director of content, but, uh, but I got to step in place of Greg and record one.

[00:31:38] Ethan: So you find me doing that and, and other podcast within the network from time to time again, that's all@packetpushers.net, which by the way, is all free content there@packetpushers.net. We got a lot of stuff up there. And it doesn't cost you anything to subscribe. And we have no idea who you are. So if you're like one of these privacy conscious individuals, yeah.

[00:31:55] Ethan: All we see is like a download number. Someone downloaded a podcast, so you can subscribe and we pay for it all with, uh, with sponsors, you get to hear from the vendors with whatever the new thing is that they put out the door that they want you to buy. Well, we interview 'em about it and get snarky and cynical with 'em about it too.

[00:32:10] Ethan: So. 

[00:32:10] Chris: Nice. I know when I transitioned from the service provider world into the enterprise world, the packet pushers podcast network, which was much smaller than, than it is now was, was, was pivotal. I think, you know, to catching me up and kind of getting me into some of the topics that I didn't know about coming from just hardcore core networking into enterprise, where I had to touch so many more things.

[00:32:29] Chris: So, anyway, thank you for that originally, that was, uh, instrumental in my career. So I really appreciate that. 

[00:32:34] Ethan: Yeah. Yeah. You're welcome. And, uh, and we, we still try to do that. Keep the engineers abreast of everything that's going on in the industry. And, and a lot of folks give us the feedback that, because of that kind of like your story, Chris, they, uh, they're like I keep up.

[00:32:44] Ethan: And when I'm in a conference room where we're looking for a solution, I sound like the smartest person in the room, just because I listen to questions and I'm keeping up, it's like a, you know, a shortcut to get your homework done.

[00:32:53] Chris: Exactly.