About

What this site is all about

The purpose of this site is to explore interesting, caveat and quirky scenarios that make Network Engineering interesting and fun. Blogs will be posted as and when I can and will share a variety of scenarios with a focus on an Internet Service Provider perspective.

A secondary function of this site is to share knowledge. This includes study notes, general information, lab topologies, scripts and the like.

Site Layout

This site is laid out into the following sections:

• Posts – My main page where I blog about quirks that I come across. Posts will either discuss a general topics of interest or specific quirky scenarios. When discussing a quirk, I’ve sometimes divided the topic into 3 parts: the quirk (an explanation), the search (for a solution) and the work (to implement said solution). Other blogs have a more free form format.
• Notes & Cheat Sheets – My documentation, including study notes, how-to documents and config guides.
• Labs – Preconfigured GNS3 and EVE-NG topologies for download.
• IOS vs XR – A like-for-like comparison of Cisco IOS and IOS-XR CLI configuration for a range of topologies and scenarios.
• Scripts – Contains scripts that are kept on GitHub. These scripts will usually be python based and will aid in areas like network automation.
• Quick Reference Tables – Tables detailing the timers, election processes and default values of various protocols.
• Acronym Index – Just what it says, a list of networks acronyms sorted by topic. To be updated over time.
• NetLdn – Links related to presentations I have given at NetLdn – a monthly London meetup for Network Engineers

About me

My name is Steve Crutchley and I’m a Network Engineer living and working in central London. Originally from New Zealand, I currently work as a Senior Network Engineer on both Enterprise and Service Provider environments.

As I have progressed through my career I’ve come across a lot of unique scenarios that have helped me grow and learn. I believe it would be beneficial, both for others and myself, to share some of these scenarios. In addition to this, I have made a plethora of study notes and on the job documentation throughout my time as an engineer. My colleagues have frequently commented that these notes would be handy to have access to and should be useful for others too.

My experience includes an array of Networking technologies. From Routing and Switching, Voice, ASA/Juniper Firewalls, Python and Java programming and more. From a CLI perspective, I’ve largely dealt with Cisco, but have experience in Junos, Palo Alto and Arista as well.

I hold the following certifications:

• Bachelor of Science (University of Auckland) – Majoring in Computer Science
• Bachelor of Arts (University of Auckland) – Double Major in Logic & Computation and Philosophy
• CCIE Service Provider #69245
• CCNP Enterprise
• ITIL Foundations version 3

I’ve also been a Cisco Champion since 2020.

This is the first blog site I have ever made, so I imagine it will change and grow over time. I will do my best to make the information I share interesting and informative. I hope you enjoy the read.

On a more personal note, I’m an ethical vegan, play guitar, am an avid runner and a die hard fan of Indiana Jones.

Where you come in

In the hopes of finding out what works and what doesn’t, I would be very interested in getting feedback on which blogs and features are useful and which are not. If there is a topic, lab or script that you’d like to see, let me know. Perhaps most crucially, if you believe I have made a technical error please feel free to hit me up about it. I’ve done my best to make the information here as accurate as possible but mistakes happen.

The best way to get in touch is through the contact page.

Disclaimer

I should note that whilst some of the ideas and blogs on this site are drawn from my own experience, they do not necessarily reflect the specific scenarios, configurations or design solutions of any company I have worked with or their customers.

It should also be pointed out that notes and documents will reference public IP addresses. This is not a reference in any way to the holder of that public IP and any such implication is entirely unintentional.