From Ethernet to AI: Earning a Network Engineer’s Trust

What does new technology have to prove before you trust it with your network?
Scott Robohn joins Andy Lapteff for a conversation about earning trust, from Ethernet interoperability and vendor bake-offs to network automation and AI. Recorded at Networking Field Day 41, they explore how explicit testing, clear permissions, error handling, and human judgment help engineers decide when a system is ready for more responsibility.
Scott revisits a four-vendor evaluation at Bell Atlantic and describes lessons from Lumen’s approach to automating workflows. Andy shares a less comfortable example: software he built with AI that helped him get work done while failures went unnoticed.
The conversation also explores AI adoption pressure, the value of critical thinking, and why a read-only troubleshooting workflow can be a useful first step toward building confidence in a new tool.
Listen for a practical discussion of how trust develops in network technology, and what AI still needs to earn.

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