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# Virtual Networks Are Air Gapped
- URL: https://www.bitsinflight.com/virtual-networks-are-air-gapped-nfd37/
- Published: 2025-04-15T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-16T16:00:43.000Z
- Description: Several vendors at NFD37 described their products as air gapped. The delegates had questions. A Tech Field Day Podcast on what the term should mean, why "isolated" is the better word, and how to hold vendors to it.
- Author: Jason Gintert
- Tags: media, podcast, video, NFD, nfd37, security

*Tech Field Day Podcast, recorded at Networking Field Day 37\. Published 15 April 2025\. Host: Tom Hollingsworth, with fellow delegates Carole Warner and John Osmon.*

The premise came straight out of the event. Several presenting companies told us their solution was air gapped, and what they meant was that traffic went down a different wire, or a different VLAN. The delegates pictured Tom Cruise dangling from the ceiling at Langley and had some questions.

## Air gap means there is air in it

My position was the plain-reading one. The term implies a physical gap: a separate environment, not a virtually separated one, and a degree of security that comes from that physical isolation. We already have perfectly good words for the virtual version. VRFs, VLANs, segmentation. Air gap is not one of them. Carole made the practical point that the equipment can be confused into leaking between virtual contexts, so unless there is actually air between the systems you cannot call it a gap. John was more forgiving: a storage network no routing process can reach is effectively isolated even on shared infrastructure, but he also admitted he had been using the term wrong himself, because the sexy word wins.

## Who actually needs it

Tom's challenge was that given enough money he can build a network nobody can get into, and at that point you might as well turn it off. John's answer was that it is not only secrets that need isolating; it is anything intrinsically valuable, like the algorithm that changes a market. The conversation wandered through Novell frame-type trickery, acoustic side channels, SCIFs, and the fact that Snowden and Manning walked data out on iPods from systems that may well have been air gapped. Tom listed a dozen controls, from disabled USB ports to laptops that wipe themselves when they miss a check-in, that raise security enormously without isolating anything. Air gap is the first thing people reach for, and it is rarely the thing they need.

## Military-grade encryption

That is what I compared it to. Air gap has become a nebulous term like military grade or cloud, something marketing latched onto to imply security without the original meaning attached. So my recommendation was to be wary of it and dig in. When a vendor says air gapped, ask precisely what that means in their architecture, because the term on its own no longer tells you. John's version: hold them accountable, accept "isolated" or "secured", and reserve air gap for the dictionary definition. Tom's version: you know a vendor is lying when their lips move, and our job as practitioners is to make the sales lies come true.

The serious close was Justin Warren's line that words mean things. Policies exist to keep careless mistakes from becoming disasters, and precise terminology is part of that. Tom's less serious close: next time someone asks for an air gap, hook them into a harness and lower them into your server room.

[Watch on YouTube →](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=143z8EbJ9w4&ref=bitsinflight.com)