
About this episode
Nate Foster is a professor at EPFL in Switzerland in the Networked Systems Abstractions Lab, and a visiting researcher at Jane Street on the Networking team. In this episode, he and Ron consider what happens when you bring a software mindset to network engineering. Can you use programming language theory and formal methods to realize the dream of software-defined networks? Along the way, they discuss how hyperscalers have shaped networking hardware; the return (or not) of multicast; the ways ML workloads are reshaping the networking layer; and the success Jane Street has had using an early Internet protocol, BGP, together with a more declarative high-level specification language.
You can find the transcript for this episode on our website.
Some links to topics that came up in the discussion:
Get every episode summarized
Each time Signals and Threads publishes, we email you a written briefing from the transcript — the topics, who appeared, and any specific claims, with the ad reads skipped.
Email me new episodesFree for 3 shows. No card needed.
Hosts & guests
No transcript yet
This episode has not been transcribed. Request it and it moves to the front of the queue.
More episodes
More from Signals and Threads

Wrestling the world into rows with Eric Mannes
Signals and Threads

Building a data warehouse from scratch with Jacob Baskin
Signals and Threads

Why Testing is Hard and How to Fix it with Will Wilson
Signals and Threads

Why ML Needs a New Programming Language with Chris Lattner
Signals and Threads