HN831: The Sum, Not Just the Parts: How and Why to Think Holistically About Your Network

Ethan Banks (0:00)

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Welcome to Heavy Networking from the Packet Pushers Network of Top Shelf Podcast for your professional career development. Barrel-aged since 2010, heavy networking goes down easy and finishes smooth, leaving you with the warm taste of bufferless transmission, low latency, and no jitter. I'm Ethan Banks with Drew Connery-Murray. We are your co-hosts that see you by the keyboard, the automation platform, and the orchestration engine, bending the network to your will and empowering package to perform perfectly, delivering applications on time and in line with business expectations and executive machinations. Follow us on LinkedIn, where we make networking noises from wherever we are in our minds and around the globe as we travel to events. On today's episode, we discuss the importance of thinking about the network as a whole with our guest Jason Gintert. The big idea is that your network is an interconnected system, so what you change in one device has consequences beyond that network device. Therefore, to do your job well, you must think about the network as a whole. We've known Jason around here for many years. We count him as a friend. Jason has done lots and lots of things in the networking industry and currently serves as the co-founder and president of the United States Networking User Association, a group that Drew and I are both a part of. So Jason, before we start with this network as a whole idea, give us an update in the USNUA, man. What's going on with the United States Networking User Association here in 2026?

Jason Gintert (1:46)

Yeah, happy to. And by the way, thanks very much for having me on Ethan and Drew. It's good to be here as always. So yeah, the USNUA.

I took over the organization full-time at the beginning of the year, and we have lots of big plans. So we're approaching around 40 groups. So we might hit that number by the end of the year, might be somewhere close to that. And they're scattered from the East Coast to the West Coast now. So go to usnua.com and see if there's one near you. If you haven't been to one before, we obviously welcome you with open arms. But just a little background, USNUA is a bunch of networking user groups across the country where network engineers can get together, talk about their days, the new technologies they're playing with, challenges they're facing, and just pal around with other network engineering folk. So yeah, they're fun. And as both Ethan and Drew have mentioned, they're deeply involved and I appreciate their participation. But we're expanding, growing, but we're always looking for sponsors. We're always looking for volunteers to help run these events. So if it sounds like something you're interested in, we'd love to have you. We're also looking for presenters. So if you've got a topic you think would be cool to talk about in front of about, you know, anywhere between 30 and 60 network engineers, we'd love to have you. Also there's opportunities for panelists. So we have panel discussions at a lot of these events. So if any of that sounds cool to you, go over to usnua.com.

Check out members and get involved at the top there, and submit something in what we call a call for papers. So we're always looking for people to get involved in any way you'd like to.

Drew Conry-Murray (3:34)

It's not just like sitting and hearing a presentation, there's actually human interaction. You can chat with peers, you can meet folks, you can workshop and all that. So it's not just like absorbing information, there's also a social element. There's usually food and drink involved too. So yeah, it's a really, it's a fun time.

Jason Gintert (3:51)

It is, yeah. I definitely enjoy them. We started them in Ohio a long time ago and I'm so happy to see that model spread out to many different places. One thing I want to add is we like to call it a sales-free zone.

That's true to some degree there are sponsors involved and they do have a presence in the room, but there's no real product pushes or services that anybody's really pushing on you. It's about the tech, it's about open standards, it's about career and advancement and all of those things. We try to have it be a cool, neutral environment for people to come hang out.

Ethan Banks (4:31)

One of the nice things about these events, there's usually a, hey, anybody hiring? Hey, anybody need a job? That's a good way you can make career connections. A lot of you guys will write into Packet Pushers and go, hey, I'm new, I'm trying to figure out how to break into the industry, how do I do it? Go find the USNUA group near you and go attend, see what's going on. Starting letting people know that you're out there and you're looking for work. It's a good way to network with people and find out who the companies are that are hiring and what kind of things that they're looking for.