Author Archives: Tim Bertino

The NFD26 series of posts are my commentary from specific presentations held for Networking Field Day 26, a virtual event presented by Tech Field Day. Before getting started, I want to put some high-level definitions on some terms used throughout this post. MistAI: Juniper’s cloud hosted platform that aggregates analytical data from a customer’s JuniperContinue reading “NFD26 – Experience First Networking w/ Juniper”

I am honored to have been invited as a delegate the the virtual Networking Field Day 26 event from September 14th – 16th. What is Networking Field Day (NFD)? NFD is a series of events put on by Tech Field Day with the purpose of getting network-minded technical individuals in front of the sponsoring vendorsContinue reading “Networking Field Day 26”

Bandwidth is infinite and we never need to worry about congestion, slowness, and packet drops, right? Of course, the answer to this is “no”. Networks transport many different kinds of data, and the different types may need to be handled in different ways to provide the best user experience during times of congestion. When IContinue reading “ENCOR Journey Series – Quality of Service”

In the last post, we covered the background of multicast. What it is, and why it’s leveraged in networks. In this article, we will dig deeper into multicast operation and routing. When we think in terms of unicast, we think about delivering data toward the destination. We have a destination IP address that belongs toContinue reading “ENCOR Journey Series – Multicast Operation”

Unless otherwise specified, I think it is easy to go into a routing scenario or situation assuming that the traffic flows are unicast. What do I mean by this? Unicast traffic flows are what I will call the “typical” end user type communications in a network. One device needs to talk to another device. TheContinue reading “ENCOR Journey – Multicast Background”

The title of this post really says it all. I want to become a more automation/programmability minded person and to kick off this journey, I decided to start by getting a familiar with Python. As time permits I am going through Al Sweigart’s “Automate the Boring Stuff with Python” book and Udemy course, and planContinue reading “Automation Journey – Python: The Basics”

It’s time. Time that I make a conscious effort to start learning concepts and leveraging tools to dive into network automation. I have heard a lot of advice for a while now that a great way to become a better network engineer is to automate repetitive tasks so that you can spend time providing valueContinue reading “Automation Journey – The Beginning…Again”

In the last installment of this series, I keyed in on the STP feature of PortFast. In this post, I wanted to highlight two more STP features, or “add-ons”, that I think are very important for controlling and securing the Layer 2 domains. Those two features are BPDU guard and root guard. Both features areContinue reading “ENCOR Journey – STP Features”

Podcast: ZigBits Network Design Podcast Episode: 70 – Demystifying the Role of the Network Engineer with Ethan Banks For a while now on the podcast, Zig has been doing a series of “Demystifying the Role of the Network Engineer” episodes with various guests. In this episode, Zig sits down with Ethan Banks to get hisContinue reading “Podcast Review – ZigBits Episode 70”

I have been going through Spanning-Tree Protocol study for the last week or so and wanted to highlight a key part of the portfast feature that had not really hit me (and stuck) until now. I’ve known that a big reason and benefit of the portfast feature is to move interfaces (typically access ports) toContinue reading “ENCOR Journey – STP Portfast”