Will Dennis

Author Archives: Will Dennis

Parsing Junos XML with Python

I’ll admit it – I’ve drunk the “Network Engineers should learn programming” Kool-Aid. In so doing, I’m gearing up for Kirk Byers upcoming “Python for Network Engineers” course by hacking a bit of Python most every evening. Kirk has recently released a Python “wrapper” module for the popular Python SSH module “Paramiko” that simplifies connections […]

Author information

Will Dennis

Will Dennis

Will Dennis has been a systems and network administrator since 1989, and is currently the Network Administrator for NEC Laboratories America, located in Princeton NJ. He enjoys the constant learning it takes to keep up with the field of network and systems administration, and is currently pursuing the Cisco CCNP-R/S certification. He can be found on the Twitters as @willarddennis, and on Google Plus.

The post Parsing Junos XML with Python appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Will Dennis.

Ansible Rapid Development Environment using Vagrant

First off, this post isn’t a straight-up networking post; although it does contain networking content (enabling Vagrant VMs to communicate over a physical data network) it’s more about constructing a rapid development environment for Ansible. Ansible is a configuration management tool that manages nodes over SSH, and only requires that Python 2.4 or later is […]

Author information

Will Dennis

Will Dennis

Will Dennis has been a systems and network administrator since 1989, and is currently the Network Administrator for NEC Laboratories America, located in Princeton NJ. He enjoys the constant learning it takes to keep up with the field of network and systems administration, and is currently pursuing the Cisco CCNP-R/S certification. He can be found on the Twitters as @willarddennis, and on Google Plus.

The post Ansible Rapid Development Environment using Vagrant appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Will Dennis.

Kicking tires on Cumulus Linux

So, I ended my last blog post with a wish – “hopefully someday I can get a real switch running Cumulus to play with ;-)”  Well, as it turns out, that post was somewhat popular, and caught the attention of some folks at Cumulus Networks (who kindly RT’d my tweet publicizing the post – thanks!) […]

Author information

Will Dennis

Will Dennis

Will Dennis has been a systems and network administrator since 1989, and is currently the Network Administrator for NEC Laboratories America, located in Princeton NJ. He enjoys the constant learning it takes to keep up with the field of network and systems administration, and is currently pursuing the Cisco CCNP-R/S certification. He can be found on the Twitters as @willarddennis, and on Google Plus.

The post Kicking tires on Cumulus Linux appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Will Dennis.

Switching to Linux for… Switches?

Like many folks out there, I’m following the rise of “whitebox switching”, and am interested to see if (and where) it takes off. There’s many players out there who are trying to pitch disassociating the software from the hardware, and quite a few hardware manufacturers that are offering various hardware platforms on which to run […]

Author information

Will Dennis

Will Dennis

Will Dennis has been a systems and network administrator since 1989, and is currently the Network Administrator for NEC Laboratories America, located in Princeton NJ. He enjoys the constant learning it takes to keep up with the field of network and systems administration, and is currently pursuing the Cisco CCNP-R/S certification. He can be found on the Twitters as @willarddennis, and on Google Plus.

The post Switching to Linux for… Switches? appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Will Dennis.

Cisco IPsec VPN breakage on Windows 8[.1] and OS X 10.9

Oh, to be a Cisco IPsec VPN user these days… Now I know that we should get with the program and move to AnyConnect, since Cisco is EOL-ing the venerable Cisco VPN Client in 2014, but we have a large installed base, and since Cisco stopped making IPsec clients for Mac and Linux back in the […]

Author information

Will Dennis

Will Dennis

Will Dennis has been a systems and network administrator since 1989, and is currently the Network Administrator for NEC Laboratories America, located in Princeton NJ. He enjoys the constant learning it takes to keep up with the field of network and systems administration, and is currently pursuing the Cisco CCNP-R/S certification. He can be found on the Twitters as @willarddennis, and on Google Plus.

The post Cisco IPsec VPN breakage on Windows 8[.1] and OS X 10.9 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Will Dennis.

Back to the Basics…

Now that I’ve finished learning about SDN, and then studied for and passed my latest Cisco certification (CCNA Security, keeping that vendor certification path open!), I’ve gotten into the groove of studying at night (and I as I love IT, and specifically networking, it’s kinda become my hobby… I know, lame, right?) In any case, […]

Author information

Will Dennis

Will Dennis

Will Dennis has been a systems and network administrator since 1989, and is currently the Network Administrator for NEC Laboratories America, located in Princeton NJ. He enjoys the constant learning it takes to keep up with the field of network and systems administration, and is currently pursuing the Cisco CCNP-R/S certification. He can be found on the Twitters as @willarddennis, and on Google Plus.

The post Back to the Basics… appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Will Dennis.

A review of the recent Coursera SDN MOOC

Back in the springtime of this year, I saw that Coursera was going to be offering a free six-week SDN MOOC taught by Dr. Nick Feamster, an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Computer Science. As I had already been learning about and investigating this new SDN world in my free time, I thought […]

Author information

Will Dennis

Will Dennis

Will Dennis has been a systems and network administrator since 1989, and is currently the Network Administrator for NEC Laboratories America, located in Princeton NJ. He enjoys the constant learning it takes to keep up with the field of network and systems administration, and is currently pursuing the Cisco CCNP-R/S certification. He can be found on the Twitters as @willarddennis, and on Google Plus.

The post A review of the recent Coursera SDN MOOC appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Will Dennis.