In this post, I worked on collecting a code that works with Jinja template. the nice thing in working with Jinja is that you can have baseline configs that will be used to all devices and also have variables that will be changed according to your need. for example: in each device which can be a router, you will have: 1. southbound links to switches and let's assume an interface used for this G1/0/48 2. you have NTP servers to be configured on these routers 3. hostnames 4.routing protocol .......etc. all these can be variable in Jinja template which we can use along with python to gene ..read more

  Code below can be created using shell script on a Linux or MAC machines, you can use it to ping list of IP addresses, and you can also add some other features like running the script from time to time and email the result to your business email. I like using Bash scripts because they require nothing but a Linux machine, unlike Python which requires the installation of the Python and knowledge will be required to know how to write/run the code. steps: Open Terminal and use $vi pingtool.sh #!/bin/bash #this a ping tool that sends 1 icmp packet to remote host and return is host is up or ..read more

 In this post we are going to talk about how to login to the firewall using public key generated from your Linux machine (Network Jumper box) which can be useful in case you want to push scripts to the firewall without the need to authenticate with username and a password, let's go: 1. generate the key samer@Samers-MacBook-Pro ~ % ssh-keygen Generating public/private rsa key pair. Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/samer/.ssh/id_rsa): /Users/samer/.ssh/id_rsa already exists. Overwrite (y/n)? y Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): press enter Enter same passphrase again: p ..read more

 you can use curl from your terminal for example: samer@Samers-MacBook-Pro ~ % curl -X GET 'http://192.168.1.250/api/?type=op&cmd=<show><system><info></info></system></show>' -u "api:password@199" note that the -u the two words api and password@199 are username and password to authenticate the session while trying to fetch data from firewall while using CURL. or, you can use the Postman app ..read more

 This is going to be very short post. simply, when you login to the FTD and you see the command prompt as ">", issue the following command. > system support diagnostic-cli after this, you will be changed to the classic command prompt of Cisco ASA ..read more

 In this post, I will be talking about a problem that you may face with PaloAlto Networks Firewall. the problem can be seen with log that is generated by the Firewalls while trying to send telemetry file and failing: 10>Dec 6 23:40:04 FMC-PA-820-PRMARY 1,2021/12/06 23:40:04,0120010412345,SYSTEM,device-telemetry,2561,2021/12/06 23:40:04,,send-failed,,0,0,general,critical,"Failed to send: file the problem above is informing us about the existence of an issue in sending telemetry file to PaloAlto cloud. what does this means? The firewall collects and forwards different sets of teleme ..read more

 In this post I will be configuring Cisco Call manager to allow users to join a phone call to make a conference. follow the following steps: 1. Login to CM Administration page 2. Go to Call Routing > Conference NOW 3. Add new > and configure something similar to the following: Add a number that you will be dialing to join a conference like (*3000) select the route partition, and choose the Music on Hold option if want to. now note that for the number that you want to dial a conference with, it must have the following configs under End User. Go to > End User > search ..read more

 Ansible proved to be a very useful tool that can make our life easier. today, I am writing about my learning experience using Ansible and what my baby-steps toward the automation and programmability world of networking! let's start with mentioning that Ansible has two ways (as I know) of configuration to interact with network devices or servers. 1. the short way > ad-hoc 2. the more advanced way > ansible playbooks Ansible ad-hoc provides an easy and fast access to devices from your terminal and enables you to execute commands faster then the usual process, and also can help you ac ..read more

 What is Ansible? Ansible is a Network Automation tool, it works with YAML to push or get configs from a network device or group of devices or hosts. Ansible works with SSH, which means you need to have NETMIKO or PARAMIKO installed along with your Python in order for Ansible codes to work. how to Install Ansible? simply by typing this command into your terminal (linux or MAC) $pip install ansible you can then check your installed version using the command $ansible --version like below: Since we already mentioned that Ansible work with YAML as data modeling language, then this mean ..read more

 It has been almost two months since I decided to start my studies to get my first certificate into the DEVNET path. things were really confusing at first because honestly I knew nothing about the programming in general, I studied languages like Pascal in University, but that was longtime ago and lots has changed since then (2005-2009). Knowing that studying programming in University does not necessarily means you are going to be able to make codes or become a programmer per se. anyway let us talk about the networking world these days and how Cisco is contributing into making th ..read more