Blog

Practical, long-form writing for engineers: troubleshooting walkthroughs, architecture trade-offs and field notes from running production infrastructure.

• AI Copilots for Network Engineers in 2026: What Actually Works — A field report on where AI assistants save real time in Cisco, Fortinet and cloud networking work — and where they still hallucinate. (2026-07-01)
• FortiGate vs Palo Alto vs Cisco Firepower: 2026 Buyer's Guide — The three enterprise firewall giants, compared on features, licensing, TCO and where each one actually shines in 2026. (2026-06-24)
• Windows 11 25H2: What Changed for IT Admins — The new Copilot integration, Passkey improvements, deprecations, and everything you actually need to plan for. (2026-06-10)
• Supabase vs Firebase vs PlanetScale: A Practical 2026 Comparison — Three developer favorites, three very different bets. Where each one shines and where it hurts. (2026-05-27)
• Kubernetes Cost Optimization: 8 Levers That Actually Move the Bill — Stop paying for idle nodes. A field guide to the cost levers that matter — Karpenter, VPA, spot, and the boring ones nobody talks about. (2026-05-14)
• Going Passwordless in the Enterprise: What 2026 Actually Looks Like — Passkeys, FIDO2, Entra ID + Windows Hello, and a realistic 12-month rollout plan for an org that still runs legacy apps. (2026-04-30)
• Self-Hosting Postgres in 2026: Still a Good Idea? — RDS, Aurora, Neon, Supabase, or your own EC2? The honest tradeoffs for teams considering leaving managed Postgres in 2026. (2026-04-08)
• Zero Trust for the 50-Person Company: A Realistic Blueprint — You don't need a Fortune-500 budget to run a zero-trust network in 2026. Here's the actual stack — and what to skip. (2026-03-18)
• TypeScript in 2026: The Features That Actually Move the Needle — Skip the changelog theater. Here are the TypeScript features that changed how we write code in 2026 — and which ones are still hype. (2026-02-25)
• The AI Search Shift: What It Means for Technical Content in 2026 — Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT search — the traffic curve has bent. How to write content that actually earns citations, not just clicks. (2026-02-04)
• How to Troubleshoot a Fortinet VPN That Won't Connect (Step-by-Step) — A systematic, command-by-command workflow for diagnosing FortiGate IPsec and SSL VPN connection failures — from phase 1 negotiation to policy matching. (2026-09-08)
• Cisco IOS Configuration Commands Cheat Sheet for Network Engineers — The essential Cisco IOS commands every network engineer uses daily — interfaces, VLANs, routing, NAT, ACLs and troubleshooting, in one copy-paste reference. (2026-09-07)
• Common Fortinet Firewall Errors and How to Fix Them Fast — The FortiGate errors that fill support queues — conserve mode, certificate warnings, session drops, HA splits — with the exact fix for each. (2026-09-06)
• Cisco vs Fortinet: Which Firewall Is Right for Your Network? — An honest, engineering-level comparison of Cisco Secure Firewall and FortiGate — throughput, licensing, management, VPN and total cost. (2026-09-05)
• 5 AI Tools Every Network Engineer Should Know in 2026 — From config generation to log triage — the AI tools that are genuinely saving network engineers hours per week, tested in real production work. (2026-09-04)
• How to Debug Cloud Security Misconfigurations Before They Become Breaches — A practical audit workflow for AWS, Azure and GCP — finding the public buckets, overly broad IAM and open security groups before someone else does. (2026-09-03)
• Full-Stack Debugging: A Practical Guide for Backend + Frontend Errors — A repeatable method for tracing errors across the whole stack — browser console, network tab, API logs and database — without guessing. (2026-09-02)
• Cisco Switch Not Passing Traffic? Here's How to Diagnose It — A step-by-step diagnostic ladder for Cisco switch forwarding problems — from physical layer to STP, VLANs and MAC table issues. (2026-09-01)
• Fix "The Network Path Was Not Found" (Error 0x80070035) in Windows — A structured fix for error 0x80070035 on Windows 10, 11 and Windows Server — from SMB versions and name resolution to firewall rules and NTLM policy. (2026-08-26)
• FortiGate SSL VPN Certificate Errors: Every Cause and How to Fix It — Why FortiClient shows certificate warnings on SSL VPN, and how to deploy a trusted certificate, fix chain issues and stop the "unable to verify server" prompt for good. (2026-08-24)
• How to Reset a Cisco Switch to Factory Defaults Safely — Step-by-step factory reset for Catalyst and small-business switches, including password recovery, VLAN database removal and the mistakes that brick a production reset. (2026-08-21)
• Windows Server DNS Not Resolving: A Step-by-Step Fix Guide — Diagnose and repair DNS failures on Windows Server — forwarders, scavenging, secure dynamic updates, cache poisoning symptoms and Active Directory replication issues. (2026-08-18)
• Site-to-Site IPsec VPN Down? A Universal Troubleshooting Checklist — A vendor-neutral method for fixing IPsec tunnels that will not come up or keep dropping — phase 1 versus phase 2, mismatched proposals, NAT-T, MTU and rekey problems. (2026-08-15)
• How to Read Wireshark Captures: 10 Filters Every Engineer Needs — Stop scrolling through 400,000 packets. Ten display filters and a repeatable method for finding retransmissions, resets, DNS failures and slow handshakes fast. (2026-08-12)
• Microsoft 365 Email Going to Spam? Fix SPF, DKIM and DMARC Properly — A practical deliverability fix for Microsoft 365 tenants — correct SPF records, DKIM signing for custom domains, a safe DMARC rollout and how to read the reports. (2026-08-09)
• Linux Server High CPU: How to Find the Cause in 10 Minutes — A disciplined triage path for Linux CPU spikes — load average versus utilisation, user versus system time, iowait, steal time and the tools that identify the guilty process fast. (2026-08-06)
• Running AI Agents in Production in 2026: What Actually Works — Tool calling, context windows, evals, cost control and guardrails — a practical architecture for shipping LLM agents that survive real traffic. (2026-09-12)
• Platform Engineering vs DevOps in 2026: What Changed and What Didn't — Internal developer platforms, golden paths, Backstage alternatives and the metrics that prove a platform team is worth its headcount. (2026-09-10)
• Cloud Cost Optimisation in 2026: FinOps Moves That Actually Cut the Bill — Where cloud spend really goes — egress, idle capacity, over-provisioned databases and GPU hours — and the reductions that survive the next quarter. (2026-09-07)
• Zero Trust in 2026: A Practical Rollout Plan for Real Networks — Identity-first access, microsegmentation, device posture and phasing out the flat VPN — what to do in what order, without breaking production. (2026-09-04)
• AI-Assisted Coding in 2026: Getting Real Speed Without Wrecking the Codebase — How senior teams use coding agents day to day — review discipline, test strategy, context files, and the failure modes that create long-term debt. (2026-09-01)
• Postgres or a Specialised Database in 2026? Vectors, Queues, Time Series and Search — When pgvector, LISTEN/NOTIFY and full-text search are genuinely enough — and the scale signals that mean it is time to add a dedicated system. (2026-08-29)