Cisco Podcast Network

This week, Kat is speaking Spanish, Ian is preparing to run an ungodly number of miles, and they’re both making fun of men with guitars—so naturally, it’s time to talk about onboarding. With Ian’s new hire starting this week, he shares his plan for helping her learn the role, navigate Cisco, and survive the truly unreasonable number of acronyms that Cisco has.

They get into what actually makes someone feel supported in a new job: shadowing everything, meeting the right people, documenting processes, and knowing when to step in versus letting someone figure it out. Kat shares what worked when she joined field marketing, Ian explains his “I do, we do, you do” approach, and they somehow compare onboarding a new employee to coaching a gym class, raising a child, and teaching a dog to sit—all with varying degrees of success.

Your usual chaos and coupled with career advice - just another 404.

Give us a click, please: https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/solutions/small-business/index.html#tabs-9da71fbd27-item-1288c79d71-tab

In the pluggable optics industry every next generation is led by countless presentations and proposals at standards bodies meetings along with lots of lab development and testing behind the scenes. Right now the industry has its sights set on 3.2 terabit transceivers with 400 Gb per electrical lane. All those meetings and all that testing are happening as we speak.

Today I am joined by John Calvin, Strategic Planner and Datacom Technology Lead at Keysight.

John has been bridging the measurement science gaps of emerging telecom and datacom development efforts for 20 years. He has chaired multiple physical layer interoperability working groups and is currently serving as a contributing member to IEEE 802.3, OIF-CEI, InfiniBand, and PCIe development efforts. John holds a BSEE from Washington State University, and his graduate level studies are in signal processing from Stanford University.

In Episode 65 we continue our conversation with John. We get into the tradeoffs between IEEE standards, MSAs, interoperability, and the race toward 3.2-terabit Ethernet.

John has very generously made himself available for your follow-up questions. You can find him at IEEE 802.3 technical forums or you can email him at john.calvin@keysight.com.

Please follow the Cisco Podcast Network on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! Better yet, leave a review on Apple podcasts. Remember you're listening to the Cisco Optics Podcast, which is part of the Cisco Podcast Network where you can find other great Cisco podcasts too.

If you want to listen on a website, go to optics.podcastpage.io.

We also have educational videos on youtube. Just go to youtube.com and search on Cisco Optics.

Related links
Cisco Optics-to-Device Compatibility Matrix: https://tmgmatrix.cisco.com/
Cisco Optics-to-Optics Interoperability Matrix: https://tmgmatrix.cisco.com/iop
Cisco Optics Product Information: https://copi.cisco.com/

Additional resources
Cisco Optics Podcast: https://optics.podcastpage.io/
Blog: https://blogs.cisco.com/tag/ciscoopticsblog
Cisco Optics YouTube playlist: http://cs.co/9008BlQen
Cisco Optics landing page: cisco.com/go/optics

Intro music
Music by Sergio Prosvirini from Pixabay

Outro music
Dreamers by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.com
Royalty Free Music by https://www.free-stock-music.com

In this episode Robin Olds interviews Tom Footitt, Cisco Senior Director of Product Management for Crosswork Assurance, about how AI — especially agentic systems and faster LLMs — is changing network traffic patterns and why observability and assurance are critical.

They discuss new KPIs like time-to-first-token and inter-token latency, passive behavioral analysis of encrypted traffic, predictive AIOps, and the importance of security, sovereignty, and performance for service providers offering AI services.

Our best friend (and career coach) Sammy Brenner is back with a new role, a new language to learn, and approximately six months before she’s ready to teach any of it to us (her words).

Sammy and Kat share what it’s really like to start over in a new part of the business: drinking from the fire hose, rebuilding trust, and reminding yourself that you were hired for a reason, even when doubts creep in.

They also get into how to know when it’s time for a change, why networking should start long before you need a new job, and how to advocate for yourself without feeling like a professional kiss-up.

Sammy shares her best advice for building genuine relationships, creating an “About Me” deck, and approaching your first few months with equal parts curiosity and blind optimism. Meanwhile, Ian bravely attempts to lighten the mood with a story about his Chrome tabs and learns no one cares.

You know the drill, give us a click! https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/solutions/small-business/index.html#tabs-7edb32179e-item-d43da2dc1e-tab

This episode explores how AI agents, network sensors, and cloud-managed Meraki solutions are transforming workplaces across industries—from stadiums and events to critical infrastructure.

Leaders share real-world use cases on security, hybrid work, real-time visibility, and practical deployments that balance automation with human oversight.