Phil Gervasi

A Network Engineer’s Guide to Understanding the Model Context Protocol for AI Integration If you work in technology long enough, every new framework starts to sound like “yet another API layer.” The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is different. It’s not a product, and it’s not tied to any …

[NEW POST] A Network Engineer’s Guide to Understanding the Model Context Protocol for AI Integration

In this post I break down:
- What MCP is
- How the architecture works
- How MCP could be a foundational part of AI in NetOps

networkphil.com/2025/11/11/a...

Is Cisco’s Unified Edge A Step Toward Agentic AI at the Edge or Just Clever Packaging? Cisco’s latest announcement at Partner Summit 2025 introduced Cisco Unified Edge, a converged compute platform designed to bring agentic and inferencing AI workloads closer to where data is actuall…

[NEW POST] Is Cisco Unified Edge a Step Toward Agentic AI at the Edge or Just Clever Packaging?

networkphil.com/2025/11/06/i...

Cloudflare's DNS Downtime: Why BGP Hijacks Were Never to Blame On July 14, Cloudflare’s popular public DNS service (known as 1.1.1.1) suffered an outage lasting over two hours. As rumors swirled about the cause, we were the first to push back on the theory that a...

🚨Check out my latest blog post for @kentik.bsky.social:

Cloudflare's DNS Downtime: Why BGP Hijacks Were Never to Blame

www.kentik.com/blog/cloudfl...

The Network Impact on Job Completion Time in AI Model Training In large-scale AI model training, network performance is no longer a supporting actor — it’s center stage. Job Completion Time (JCT), the key metric for measuring training efficiency, is heavily influ...

Are your AI models stuck in slow motion? 🐌 It's not always the GPUs!

Our new blog reveals how the network is the hidden bottleneck impacting #AITraining Job Completion Time (JCT). Dive into microbursts, RDMA congestion & more.

www.kentik.com/blog/the-net...

Hey tech community - quick question!

For technical video training content you use for professional development, are the supplemental materials like labs, self-assessments, reading assignments, etc useful, or do you prefer to simply watch the videos and take your own notes?

LEO satellite operator Starlink currently experiencing a total outage beginning at 19:13 UTC today. #Starlinkdown

No word yet on cause of the outage.

Join me in San Francisco August 21 for the first (CA)NUG - the first chapter of the @usnua.com in that area!

I'm presenting on practical use cases & implementations of AI in network operations!

A free event with free food and drinks so register here today ----> www.usnua.com/canug-inaugu...

Telemetry News Now: Cisco Wins Lawsuit, CoreWeave’s $9B Play, Google’s New Subsea Cable, and Rackspace’s New GPU-as-a-Service In this Telemetry News Now episode, Phil and Justin cover Cisco’s big legal win, HPE’s finalized Juniper acquisition, Arista’s strategic move to buy VeloCloud, CoreWeave’s $9B play for AI-ready data c...

Networking never stops, and neither do we! 🚨

@networkphil.com & @justinryburn.bsky.social dive into HUGE stories shaping networking and cloud on the new Telemetry News Now: HPE/Juniper, Arista/VeloCloud, Google's new subsea cable, and more!

www.kentik.com/telemetrynow...
#NetOps #Cloud #AI

Telemetry News Now: AI Data Center Power Demands, Gartner’s AI Agent Prediction, AI Copyright Woes, 5G Infrastructure In this Telemetry News Now episode, Phil and Justin discuss the future energy demands of AI infrastructure, including eye-opening predictions about GPU power consumption. They discuss Gartner's skepti...

AI pushing data centers to the limit? 🤯 Agentic AI failing? Quantum networking here?

@networkphil.com & @justinryburn.bsky.social dive into HUGE network trends on Telemetry News Now! Plus, Panama blackouts & Star Wars.

Listen: www.kentik.com/telemetrynow...

#Networking #AI #TechNews

Networking for Schools and Colleges In this episode of Telemetry Now, Jason Gintert and Philip Wightman join the show to look inside SLED networking (State, Local, and Education). We talk about the unique challenges, goals, and realitie...

🎧 Telemetry Now, "Networking for Schools and Colleges," featuring Jason Gintert and Philip Wightman, is now live!

This episode examines the realities of SLED network budgets, operational goals, and challenges.

Tune in here: www.kentik.com/telemetrynow...

#SLEDNetworks #EdTech #NetworkEngineering

SpaceX Falcon 9 prepped and ready on pad 39A a few hours before last night's launch.

So apparently there's only one form of weather left in the US northeast.

Rain, followed by more rain, and when the rain finally lets up, rain.

well that goes without saying!

For formal technical training videos that you'd actually pay for, other than video of the instructor in the intro, do you care about seeing the instructor in the corner during the actual lesson?

What do you prefer for the format? Is the talking head important at all if the training content is good?

A group of black ants is arranged in a perfect circle, each ant facing forward along the curve. One lone ant is positioned outside the circle, facing toward it. The background is transparent.

New Post: MCP Is Unnecessary

I can’t think of any strong technological reasons for MCP to exist. There’s a lot of weak technological reasons, and there’s strong sociological reasons. I still strongly feel that, ironically, it is necessary.

timkellogg.me/blog/2025/04...

Tune in tomorrow to watch our day-long live streams of #GoogleCloud ☁️ presentations at #AIIFD2! @TechFieldDay.com
🟣 Learn More 👉 buff.ly/jKlupi8

AI That Matters: Driving Real Outcomes in Network Operations AI can be a transformative tool in network operations — but only when it’s tied to clear, measurable outcomes. Rather than chasing hype, IT and NetOps teams should focus on solving specific operationa...

Whether it's the application of predictive analytics or the latest agentic solution, AI is not useful as an end unto itself

The goal of AI in NetOps is to produce operational outcomes & drive business decisions

Read more in my post on @kentik.bsky.social 👇

www.kentik.com/blog/ai-that...

Introducing GPT-4.1 in the API Introducing GPT-4.1 in the API—a new family of models with across-the-board improvements, including major gains in coding, instruction following, and long-context understanding. We’re also releasing o...

Big AI news! OpenAI has released three new models: GPT‑4.1, GPT‑4.1 mini, and GPT‑4.1 nano which (according to what I read so far) offers major improvements in coding, instruction following, and long-context comprehension

Yes, the next model after 4.5 is 4.1 😆

Read more openai.com/index/gpt-4-1/

The Llama 4 herd: The beginning of a new era of natively multimodal AI innovation We’re introducing Llama 4 Scout and Llama 4 Maverick, the first open-weight natively multimodal models with unprecedented context support and our first built using a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architect...

Llama 4 is here!

From Meta's website, "The Llama 4 herd: The beginning of a new era of natively multimodal AI innovation"

ai.meta.com/blog/llama-4...

Into the RIB again
Same old path it was back then

So I made a big mistake
Routing on an overlay

#AliceInChainsSongsForEngineers

Cisco HyperFlex is Here YouTube video by Cisco

Anyone still remember this gem?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRlh...

I'm reading three books on AI, listening to one, following 12,619 blogs, subscribed to 912,629 YouTube channels, and always looking for time to mess around in the home lab...

Current state of trying to keep up with AI

Movin’ to the country
Gonna route a lot of packets
Movin’ to the country
I’m gonna route me a lot of packets

Packets route on a LAN
Sometimes headed for the WAN
In a colo space downtown

If I had my little way
I’d route packets every day
Finding shortest paths in the shade

The deadline for submissions for presentations & workshops for #AutoCon3 this May in Prague is Feb 28!

If you have an idea for a talk or a workshop, submit today!

🎤 Call for Speakers: networkautomation.forum/call-for-spe...

🖥️ Call for Workshops: networkautomation.forum/call-for-wor...