Routing & Switching
Layer 2 and Layer 3 networking guides covering VLANs, trunks, routing, switching, DNS, DHCP, troubleshooting, and design tradeoffs.
Bufferbloat for Gamers: Why More Mbps Does Not Fix Ping Spikes
A gamer-friendly bufferbloat guide explaining latency under load, SQM, CAKE/FQ-CoDel, and why more bandwidth does not always fix ping spikes.
Why Your Gigabit Ethernet Is Stuck at 100 Mbps
A practical troubleshooting flow for gigabit Ethernet links negotiating at 100 Mbps because of cables, ports, terminations, or hidden old devices.
Cat6 vs Cat6A in 2026: What to Run, What to Avoid, and When Fiber Makes Sense
A practical home cabling guide for Cat6, Cat6A, DAC, multimode fiber, single-mode fiber, PoE, and what to avoid in walls.
MoCA Explained: The Best Upgrade for Homes With Coax but No Ethernet
A practical MoCA guide for turning existing coax into Ethernet-style wired backhaul for APs, consoles, PCs, and streaming devices.
Mesh vs Wired Access Points: The Home Network Decision Tree
A practical decision tree for choosing mesh Wi-Fi, wired access points, MoCA backhaul, and PoE APs in a real home network.
Cisco Catalyst C9550 vs C9350: Choose the Right Campus Role
Map C9350 access requirements and an incumbent C9500 design to a C9550 model, then verify software, optics, licensing, failure tests, and rollback before migration.
Ubiquiti Site Magic Routing: A No-Nonsense Beginner Guide to Routes, Route Injection, and Software-Defined Wide Area Network Fabric Design
A practical Site Magic routing guide covering UniFi site-to-site VPNs, route injection, subnet overlap, firewall policy, and branch troubleshooting.
Campus Segmentation Design: From VLANs to Unified Fabric
Campus segmentation should evolve from VLAN sprawl toward a hierarchy of VRFs, virtual networks, SGTs, and group-based policy that operations teams can actually manage.
Designing an AI-Ready Campus Network After Cisco Live 2026
An AI-ready campus network needs segmentation, telemetry, resilient wired and wireless design, cloud access, identity integration, and a change workflow that can support agentic operations.
Cisco C9550 Smart Switches and the AI-Ready Campus Core
The Cisco C9550 Series points campus core and aggregation design toward higher uplink density, stronger telemetry, hardware-rooted trust, Live Protect, and post-quantum readiness.