HN833: The State of Packet Pushers 2026

Ethan Banks (0:00)

Today's episode is sponsored by METER, delivering a complete network as a service offering, wired, wireless, and cellular in a unified solution. Find out more at meter.com/heavynetworking.

Welcome to Heavy Networking. Today's episode is gonna be a bit unusual in that we're gonna talk about the state of packet pushers before we take a bit of a summer break. We're gonna get into this in a minute here, but first of all, I am Ethan Banks, along with a whole group of people who work behind the scenes to bring you the podcast videos we publish each week. Also, Drew Conray Murray, and Drew, you're the co-host of Heavy Networking, but you're also behind the scenes, because you have a, what is your fancy title? You're the Editor-in-Chief and Industry Analyst, correct?

Drew Conry Murray (0:42)

That is my fancy title, yes. I try not to use it because it's too fancy, but yeah.

Ethan Banks (0:46)

Yeah. Well, you picked it. I think we said, what would you like to be?

Drew Conry Murray (0:50)

It's my fault. I shot for the stars. What can I say?

Ethan Banks (0:55)

It is in fact an accurate description of your role here. And joining Drew and I today, we've got Robin Young. Now Robin, you're the CEO.

Robin Young (1:03)

I am.

Ethan Banks (1:04)

You are. Yes. Okay. We got Nathan Jackson has joined us. And Nathan, we're calling you audio engineer, but audio sweetener, I think, is another title we've kicked around.

Nathan Jackson (1:15)

There's been a few. There's been a plethora of them.

Ethan Banks (1:18)

Yes. Yes.

And then Somerset Bank says, Somerset, my wife is also the production manager. Well, is that your title still? I know we've kicked around more titles for you, too.

Somerset Bank (1:31)

Production manager.

Ethan Banks (1:32)

Production manager. Okay, okay. That may morph into creative director or other things as time goes on here. So all of you listening, you're meeting people behind the scenes, and that's important because as we talk about the State of Packet Pushers, all the folks that you just met, and Daniel Mudge, who could not make the recording today, have very important roles to play.

We're going to talk through a lot of what's going on here at Packet Pushers and what happens behind the scenes. We're doing it on Heavy Networking because Heavy Networking is the podcast that started at all at Packet Pushers back in 2010, when we didn't have a podcast network, but we were just a podcast. We called it Heavy Networking, and this channel, this RSS feed that some of you have been subscribed to since 2010, is still here. It's still this one, it's still this thread.

Okay, we're going to have some opening comments about what we've been doing at Packet Pushers, and then address several of your questions that have come in to the follow up channel, packetpushers.net/follow up, or emails or direct message comments that we've seen, or was in the audience survey that many of you just filled out and talked through it that way. So I hope you guys will find this interesting. I know it's not the usual sort of content we have here, but understanding what Packet Pushers is as a company and as a podcast network and so on, is kind of a big deal and something we'd like to do every now and again. Well, let's start at the beginning, guys. As a group, as a company, one of the things that we've talked about is we need to invite a younger audience to join the networking community, and we want to play a role in that. Drew, maybe you've got some thoughts here because this is something we've been working really hard on.

Drew Conry Murray (3:21)

Yeah. I feel like based on our audience survey and some other surveys we've done, we know our audience tends to be at the senior level, which also tends to mean you've been around for a while. We are missing out folks who are early career, who we think might appreciate all of the learning that goes on here at Packet Pushers. One of the ways to reach them is video.

We are an audio podcast and we will always put audio first, but we realized the younger generation doesn't necessarily know about Packet Pushers in part because they're consuming things through Instagram and TikTok and YouTube. We realized we need to move to video.

Ethan Banks (3:59)

Yeah. Okay. The move to video has been a big thing. We started this last fall. We're recording this in May, 2026 and we started kicking this as an idea, like September, October last year, 2025, and we've begun moving the many podcasts in our portfolio, one podcast at a time, over to the video format to help us get to where the younger audience is. Those of us with the gray beards in the audience aren't dominating the conversation where we want to be more accessible to everyone. Drew, as you said, we're never going to abandon the audio formats. It really matters to us.