AI
AI Inference Doesn't Need New Data Centers
Training does. Inference can live in buildings we already have.
12 Sep 2026 · 14 min read
Author
Jason Gintert
Thoughts about emerging technology and trends in the networking industry.
media
TNO072: Connectivity and Community
Scott Robohn had me on Total Network Operations to trace the path from a Commodore VIC-20 to a dial-up helpdesk in Cleveland to the US Networking User Association, including the day I locked myself out of 34 DSLAMs.
11 Sep 2026 · 3 min read
media
Making AI (net)work: Six Fundamentals for a Successful AI-Integrated Network
A talk at a Selector event on why most AI-in-networking projects stall, and six things to get right before you pick a model. Most of them are about people and data, not technology.
24 Aug 2026 · 2 min read
media
The Sum, Not Just the Parts: Thinking Holistically About Your Network
Ethan Banks and Drew Conry-Murray had me on Heavy Networking to talk through a blog post of mine, The Network as a Whole. Why one VLAN change can end in Wi-Fi complaints, why certs do not teach design, and why you should break your labs on purpose.
12 Jun 2026 · 2 min read
media
Tech Careers Are Built on Relationships, Not Resumes
Recorded in person with Andy Lapteff at Networking Field Day 40. How the USNUA went from fifteen people in a Cleveland restaurant to 33 chapters, and why getting in the room still beats anything you can put on a resume.
6 May 2026 · 3 min read
NFD
Lightyear @ NFD40: Buying Bandwidth Shouldn't Suck
Every network engineer doing this work for any length of time has a telecom procurement horror story. The circuit that took six months to install. The carrier that
5 May 2026 · 11 min read
Writing
Arista @ NFD40: Modern Fabrics for AI
AI networking, much like everything else in the space, is developing very quickly and has what feels like a new acronym per day. Between UEC, ESUN, NCCL and
24 Apr 2026 · 10 min read
media
Bridging Silos with AI and Telemetry
A short clip from the Tech Field Day Podcast at NFD40. Yes, networks need more telemetry, but only if the data is clean and you look at the whole system rather than the network in isolation.
13 Apr 2026 · 1 min read
media
Networking Needs More Telemetry
A Tech Field Day Podcast panel ahead of NFD40 with Tom Hollingsworth and Scott Robohn. Modern gear can finally give us all the telemetry we want. The harder problem is what to do with it.
7 Apr 2026 · 2 min read
media
Why "People Connector" Is the Ultimate Superpower in Tech
Bob Slevin asked what my superpower is. The answer is connecting people. We covered the USNUA, why certs still matter early on, the retailer who built their own router for 1,600 stores, and the punk-rock skate-rat path from a movie theater to network engineering.
1 Apr 2026 · 3 min read
career
The Network as a Whole
In 1980, a quantum physicist named David Bohm published a book that had absolutely nothing to do with network engineering. Wholeness and the Implicate Order argued that reality
25 Mar 2026 · 7 min read
AI
AI Adoption in Networking
I recently joined Greg Bryan to talk about the real state of AIOps in network management. What's working, what's hype, and where engineers should
5 Feb 2026 · 2 min read