Panel: Network Automation Isn’t Just About Configuring Network Devices!

Описание: Abstract

You couldn't be blamed for thinking that network automation starts with deploying configs, the internet is full of tutorials.The most successful companies don't start there though, they start by building a solid baseline of knowledge about their networks, and with tooling that can tell them when something has gone wrong. All of this means orchestrating off your various systems.

Ethan Banks:
Ethan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and spent over two decades as an IT practitioner. He supported verticals including government, education, healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing as an infrastructure specialist. He’s been a CNE, MCSE, CEH, CCNA, CCNP, CCSP, and CCIE R&S #20655.

His major focus has been on large enterprise network design for campuses, data centers, and global WANs. He held roles as a team member, technical team lead, and group manager focused on engineering and architecture.

As the co-founder of Packet Pushers, Ethan focuses on integrating all parts of the IT stack together. He researches leading open source projects, hybrid cloud, HCI, distributed systems, infrastructure telemetry, data analysis, and software-defined everything.

One result of that research is "Computer Networking Problems And Solutions: An innovative approach to building resilient, modern networks," a book co-authored by Ethan with Russ White.

You might like his personal blog at ethancbanks.com.

Justin Ryburn:
Justin Ryburn is the Field CTO & VP of Global Solutions Engineering at network observability company Kentik. He has 25 years of experience in network operations, engineering, sales, and marketing with service providers and vendors. Justin contributed content to Cyber Forensics (Auerbach Publishing, 2007) and authored Day One: Deploying BGP FlowSpec (Juniper, 2015). He has also spoken at numerous industry conferences on the topics of network observability and security. Justin currently lives in St. Louis with his wife and two kids. His blog is at ryburn.org and you can follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Chris Wade:
Chris Wade is Co-Founder and CTO of Itential, responsible for guiding the innovation and development of the company’s flagship infrastructure orchestration platform. He co-founded Itential in 2014 to accelerate network automation adoption and transform how enterprises operate complex infrastructure. Chris is a long-time advocate of automation and is now focused on the next evolution: agentic operations, where AI agents can reason, plan, and act while changes remain trusted, governed, and auditable. Under his technical leadership, Itential is advancing agentic orchestration that blends reasoning intelligence with deterministic automation to safely scale outcomes across cloud, network, and hybrid environments. Learn more at https://www.itential.com/.

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