On this episode, Mike “MJ” Joseph, who manages the infrastructure network engineering team at Meta, joins Ciena's Mark Bieberich to discuss innovation in out-of-band (OOB) management networks, which are essential for initial device commissioning, disaster recovery, remote troubleshooting, and secure lifecycle management. MJ and Mark explore Meta's decision to adopt passive optical networking (PON) for OOB management, highlighting the collaborative effort with Ciena to create an ultra-scalable, cost effective PON-based solution. They also discuss the positive outcomes Meta has achieved by streamlining and automating its OOB network operations in the data center—and the lessons learned along the way.