Being Last to Network Field Day 23 is Actually a Good Thing

Being the last one to something is not always a bad thing. Case in point: I was just contacted to be a delegate for Network Field Day 23 (#NFD23) and it is only next week. As this is a virtual event I do not have to travel anywhere. Fortunately, my afternoons happen to be open enough that I can attend almost all of it. So, why is it good that I am the last person invited? Because compared to all the other delegates I have the least amount of time to be looking forward to the event.

Tom Hollingsworth (@NetworkingNerd) reached out to me about attending and, since my calendar has enough openings, I was able to say yes. Today, I spent some time handling the prerequisites for delegates. This included completing some online forms and answering some emails.

Then I looked at the companies that are going to be speaking. There are some big names that I am really looking forward to hearing from. Cisco, Juniper, and Palo Alto are on the list. I have heard some great presentations from these vendors before, so I expect something great from each one. Cisco has a huge array of products and I am curious which of their products they are going to be speaking about. At NFD22, I heard from both Palo Alto Networks and CloudGenix on their SD-WAN offerings. Since then, Palo Alto Networks has acquired CloudGenix. Could there be an update on how these two SD-WAN offerings are working even better as one? I used to work on Juniper products years ago and they are one of the bigger names in networking so it will be good to hear their current direction.

There are two chip manufacturers coming to speak: Intel and Broadcom. I heard from Broadcom at NFD 22 and even wrote about it: http://www.itsecdef.com/broadcom-processors-are-blazingly-fast/. Their presentations were technical but in a good way. I had to re-watch them just to absorb most of it. I am really hoping that the Intel team watched those, too. If they took notes, they could deliver a powerful presentation considering their product line.

The remaining companies may be smaller but they have some good topics. There are some companies working with intent based networking such as Apstra, Arista, and IP Fabric. Others are working with analytics and performance management such as Catchpoint and PathSolutions. The last one is Airvine, which claims to be working on the “next frontier of millimeter-wave wireless communications” but their website has no details except that they are in stealth mode. Could this be their big unveiling?

The only way to find out about these presentations is to watch next week. Head on over to the NFD23 site (https://techfieldday.com/event/nfd23/ ) to learn more and see information about all the delegates (including me). My wait time is less than a week so not much time to go. If you have any good questions for these companies, feel free to reach out to me.