Network freak Weekly Roundup: 2026-W43

This is the weekly Network freak roundup for 2026-W43. It collects the latest practical networking articles published this week, so the X feed can stay quiet while readers still get all links in one place.

This week's articles

• How Does a Layer 3 Switch Decide Between Switching and Routing?
• AI Voice Agent Projects That Can Make Money: Retell, Vapi and ElevenAgents
• AI Code Review Projects That Can Make Money: CodeRabbit, Qodo and Greptile
• AI Security Questionnaire Automation: Conveyor, Vanta and a Paid-Service Blueprint
• AI Customer Support Projects That Can Make Money: Fin, Zendesk and Sierra
• PIM-SM Explained: RP, Shared Tree, Source Registration and SPT Switchover
• BGP NEXT_HOP Explained: Route Reachability, next-hop-self and Troubleshooting
• AI Analytics Projects That Can Make Money: Hex, Snowflake and the Vanna Caveat
• FabricPath Explained: IS-IS, Conversational MAC Learning and Multidestination Trees
• BGP ORIGIN Attribute Explained: IGP, EGP, Incomplete and Best-Path Selection
• AI Software Testing Projects That Can Make Money: Playwright, QA Wolf and mabl
• vPC Peer-Link Explained: What It Carries and Why It Matters
• BGP Communities Explained: Policy Tags, no-export and Blackhole Routing
• AI Meeting Automation Projects That Can Make Money: Fireflies, Granola and Fathom
• VXLAN and Overlay Networks Explained for Interviews
• BGP Large Communities Explained: 4-Byte ASN Policy Tags and Routing Examples
• AI Knowledge Assistant Projects That Can Make Money: Glean, Onyx and Dust
• Spine-Leaf and Clos Topology Explained for Network Engineers
• BGP Extended Communities Explained: Route Targets, EVPN and Policy Signaling
• AI Evaluation Projects That Can Make Money: LangSmith, Phoenix and Braintrust
• Most Popular Network Engineer Interview Questions and Answers
• BGP NEXT_HOP Explained: Next-Hop Reachability, next-hop-self and Troubleshooting
• BGP LOCAL_PREF Explained: Outbound Traffic Engineering and Configuration

For topic hubs, see Start Here, Data Center Networking, AI Infrastructure & Automation and BGP Table Watch.