Human Infrastructure 444: MCP or API, VXLAN to APs, Linux 7.0, and More

AuthorAuthor

Drew Conry-Murray & Ethan Banks
April 16, 2026

THIS WEEK’S MUST-READ BLOGS 🤓

Ryan observes that the true intent behind “we need to build an MCP server” is actually “we need to work better with AI.” And that means MCP may not be what you need in many cases. Ryan breaks down how to decide where MCP makes sense, and where you might want a different approach. - Drew 

Someone has evaluated every company that had a booth at RSA Conference 2026 and declared that just over 60% could be replaced with a couple of days of vibe coding. This tongue-in-cheek analysis also puts each company in one of four categories: Cooked, GPT Wrapper, Moat (for now), and Actually Hard. You can search by company name or see all the companies in each category, and a short summary describing why they were categorized this way. The link is good for some laughs. - Drew 

If you run Apstra in your data center and want a dedicated test center, Benjamin provides detailed instructions on how to run Apstra in Containerlab. One issue is that Apstra isn’t officially supported in Containerlab. This is not a deal breaker! Benjamin walks through how to get an Apstra VM launched using Containerlab’s vrnetlab, which is a node type for launching arbitrary VMs. He also explains how he used Claude to help with the project. 

Did it work? Benjamin shows all his work. He writes “I’m quite satisfied with the result, and I find it pretty impressive that it’s possible to run a fully Apstra-managed EVPN/VXLAN fabric consisting of four cEOS nodes on a Windows laptop with 32GB of RAM.” - Drew 

Brett writes about a recent feature addition to Arista’s Wi-Fi portfolio: it can now extend VXLAN to its APs. (If you weren’t aware Arista had a Wi-Fi product, it acquired Mojo Networks in 2018.) Why would you want to do this? Brett writes “Via VXLAN tunnels, the access network can achieve meaningful separation from the underlay network, provide predictable traffic paths and enable the steering of traffic into an administrator's choice of policy engine (Firewall, SASE, DPI node). The option brings back many of the pros of a controller based network, without additional equipment or siloed expertise.” He provides diagrams and screenshots to show how to configure this capability. - Drew  

Eva Santos shares a 2026 perspective on building a tool to assist with ChromeOS troubleshooting. It’s detailed, focusing on some commands from a 2016 post—some of which still work, and some of which don’t. To make her life easier, she vibecoded the ChromeOS Wi-Fi Troubleshooter, which you can try for yourself if you click through the link in her article. - Ethan

AutoCon 5 Workshop Details Now Available!

AutoCon is a conference dedicated to advancing the state of the art of network automation. AutoCon 5 takes place June 8 -12 in Munich. You can get hands-on automation training on site with two-day workshops. Workshop details are posted here, and tickets are now available.

And while you’re on site, you can enter a drawing to win a Packet Pushers beer stein! Just leave a business card with the Packet Pushers and we’ll choose two winners at random. Hope to see you in Munich. Prost!

TECH NEWS 📣

We’re one apocalypse away from Zuckerberg morphing into “Immortan Joe.” - Drew 

A pair of investors want Amazon to reveal more information about how the company’s data center buildout squares with existing commitments to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040: the two efforts are deeply at odds. Amazon knows this, and must feel a little embarrassed, because the board is asking shareholders to reject this proposal. 

Amazon isn’t the only tech giant making lofty promises to address its carbon footprint while dumping ever more carbon into the atmosphere. Last year, Microsoft revealed its carbon output jumped 23.4%, and Google’s green house gas emissions are up 51% since 2019. - Drew 

This article came out back in February, but it’s a well-put-together look at how and why OpenClaw went from a vibe-coded project to being snapped up by OpenAI. It also talks about OpenClaw’s architecture, has a nice chart about the many times the project changed names, and offers insightful analysis of the AI landscape. 

The article notes “The real story of OpenClaw isn't the GitHub stars, and it isn't the acqui-hire. It's what this project reveals about where the AI industry is actually heading: the battle for the agent layer. Not who builds the smartest model, but who controls the software that sits between the model and the real world, the thing that books your flights, manages your email, and runs your shell commands.” 

I think that’s the biggest takeaway. - Drew

Maine has legislated no more new data centers. And contrary to the headline, it’s just the town of Smithfield in the great state of Rhode Island that is considering a similar ban.

Why the bans? People have been reading about noise pollution. Of course, power requirements are a concern. News headlines have made governments take notice of these problems and choose the simple solution. Just say no!

Is that the right way to go? I don’t think so necessarily. There’s tax money for cities and towns they might be leaving on the table with a blanket ban. What about smaller data centers requiring less real estate, making less noise, consuming less power, and interconnected to other smaller facilities with high-speed fiber? I know that’s an increasingly viable architecture that AI compute folks have designs for. - Ethan

Here’s a summary of various organizing putting up satellites, how many and when. It’s not just Starlink and Amazon Kuiper constellations. - Ethan

From the article. “That said, for networking professionals Linux 7.0 includes a host of enhancements that are noteworthy. Key improvements include:

  • Accurate Explicit Congestion Notification (AccECN) now default

  • UDP performance boost

  • IPv6 enhancements

  • CAKE MQ (Common Applications Kept Enhanced) network scheduler integration”

Click through to read more details about these improvements. - Ethan

MORE NEWS

FOR THE LULZ 🤣

Shared on the Packet Pushers Community Slack by Adam.

RESEARCH & RESOURCES 📒

Technologists and economists alike are thinking about the repercussions of widespread AI adoption. Economists at the University of Pennsylvania and Boston University, consider this scenario: 

If AI gets so good that it can replace human workers at scale, and businesses lay off huge numbers of workers while still increasing productivity, at some point there won’t be enough consumers with an income to buy stuff. This problem is compounded by the fact that individual businesses have a financial incentive to shed workers, but the aggregate outcome for everyone is that “firms automate their way to boundless productivity and zero demand.”

The authors review a number of instruments for how to address this outcome. Their preferred instrument is a Pigouvian Tax, which the paper defines as “a per-unit charge set equal to the marginal external cost, so that every agent’s private incentive aligns with the social cost.” They argue that, depending on how the revenue from this tax is shared out, this tax could shrink as the labor market adjusts, workers retrain, and new occupations arise. 

I’m not an economist and I don’t know if this is a valid response to this scenario, but I’m glad someone’s thinking about it. - Drew

WLPC 2014–2026 - All 1,027 talks organized & searchable
https://wlpc-reviews.vercel.app/

On LinkedIn, Keith Parsons noted, “Hats off to Victor Gatuna who saw a need, and then designed, produced, and published the results for the entire community to share!

This is an online, searchable, visual database of ALL previous Wireless LAN Professional Conference video presentations.

If you want to learn about Wi-Fi, Wireless LANs, WLPC community - this is a great place to go and learn!”

Thanks, Victor! - Ethan

MORE RESOURCES

UPCOMING LIVE EVENTS 🍕🍻

A curated list of near-future meatspace events of interest to network engineers. Sometimes a Packet Pusher or two will be there (noted below).

Subscribe to events.packetpushers.net in your calendar software.

APRIL 2026

Wi-Co Toronto
22 April | Toronto, Canada

Wi-Co Frankfurt
29 April | Frankfurt, Germany

MAY 2026

Extreme Connect | Extreme Networks
4 - 7 May | Orlando, FL (Packet Pushers attending)

NLNAM Meetup 2 | NL Network Automation Meetup
13 May | Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands

Wi-Co Brussels
21 May | Brussels, Belgium

(NH)NUG | New Hampshire Networking User Group (USNUA)
27 May | TBD, NH (Ethan co-organizing)

Wi-Co Memphis
29 May | Memphis, TN

Cisco Live US
31 May - 4 June | Las Vegas, NV (Packet Pushers likely)

JUNE 2026

Wi-Co Oslo
3 June | Oslo, Norway

AUTOCON5 | Network Automation Forum
8 - 12 June | Munich, Germany (Packet Pushers attending)

Wi-Co North Carolina
11 June | Jamestown, NC

HPE Discover
14 - 19 June | Las Vegas, NV (Packet Pushers possible)

INDUSTRY BLOGS & VENDOR ANNOUNCEMENTS 💬 

Lightyear is offering to buy lunch for network engineers to celebrate National Networker Day, which is April 23rd. If you click the link above and fill out the form, Lightyear verifies if you’re a networker and then emails you a $20 DoorDash gift card. Lightyear says there’s no catch and no pitch; they just want to say thanks to network engineers whose work often goes unnoticed and unappreciated. The offer is good until April 27th. - Drew  

Yvonne Jouffrault reports, “This release introduces file objects as first-class data, automatic resource allocation from templates, and stronger branch lifecycle controls, alongside preserved change diffs, simplified Git repo updates, and Kubernetes-ready backup support.

Together, these make Infrahub a more complete and reliable platform for infrastructure automation.”

The post continues, explaining in more detail each of the updates. If you don’t know much about Infrahub, look for some Packet Pushers content explaining it including a video demo (coming soon) that we’ve made with Damien Garros, Opsmill co-founder & CEO. Infrahub has a fully functioning open source version if you want to take it for a drive as part of your network automation solution. - Ethan

RtBrick, which makes a network OS for whitebox platforms, has announced it can run on Broadcom’s Qumran2c+ BCM88840 chipset. It also announced that its OS and the Broadcom chip are now available on the Ufispace S9610-46DX whitebox. From the press release: “With the Broadcom Q2c+ chipset, RtBrick’s network operating system triples multiservice edge routing throughput from 2.4 Tbps to 7.2 Tbps in a compact two Rack Unit (2RU) form-factor, providing the performance needed for modern service provider networks. The switch platform provides six 400G network interfaces alongside forty 100G ports. As a result, operators can deploy higher-capacity uplinks and preserve dense 100G connectivity for aggregation connectivity.” - Drew 

Network to Code’s Nautobot 3.1 release includes brand new commercial applications: the first, OS Upgrades, provides a structured workflow to upgrade multi-vendor network OSs. The second, Operational Compliance, lets you validate network state before and after you make changes, and detect drift. The company says “The launch marks an important step in the company's product-led growth strategy, extending Nautobot with commercial software while preserving the flexibility of its open source core.” 

Nautobot now offers four tiers of Nautobot: Community, Professional, Enterprise, and Cloud. The newly launched commercial applications are only available in the Enterprise and Cloud tiers.

It seems like the network automation market is entering its platformization phase, in which vendors are beefing up their offerings to displace complimentary products by providing a full suite of capabilities, from source of truth through operational applications, all with a healthy dose of AI.  - Drew 

It’s a team-up of homegrown companies in Finland as communications provider Cinia inks a partnership with Nokia around DDoS protection. Cinia, which runs Finland’s national backbone and submarine cable system, is now offering DDoS protection as a managed service using Nokia Deepfield. Deepfield is a software platform that analyzes IP telemetry and can be used for network observability and to spot DDoS attacks. Cinia customers can sign up for round-the-clock DDoS detection and mitigation underpinned by Nokia technology. Should we call this a win-win or a Fin-Fin? - Drew 

MORE INDUSTRY NOISES

  1. What’s New at Kentik: Platform Updates for April 2026 - Kentik Blog

  2. Introducing Itential Skills for Claude Code: Now Available in the Anthropic Marketplace - Itential Blog

  3. Keeper Security Launches Enterprise-Grade Approval Governance and Real-Time Visibility for Endpoint Privilege Management - PR Newswire

  4. Making AI Trustworthy and Observable in Real-Time: Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Galileo - Cisco Executive Platform Blog

  5. Building a CLI for all of Cloudflare - Cloudflare Blog

  6. End of Maintenance Support for Ansible Automation Platform 2.4 - Red Hat Blog

  7. Planning your upgrade path to Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 - Red Hat Blog

  8. NetBox Community Hits 20,000 GitHub Stars - Netbox Labs

  9. Quad9 Enables DNS Over HTTP/3 and DNS Over QUIC - Quad9 Blog

  10. VyOS Networks Sets a New Standard for High-Performance, Automated, and Sovereign Networking with VyOS 1.5 LTS - VyOS Networks Press Releases

  11. Optimizing data transfer costs when using AWS Network Load Balancer - AWS Networking & Content Delivery Blog

  12. Amazon to Acquire Globalstar and Expand Amazon Leo Satellite Network - Amazon News Press Center

DYSTOPIA IRL 🐙

LAST LAUGH 😆

Found on Bluesky, but the account that posted it has since been lost in the infinite scroll. My apologies for not giving credit. - Drew