Keeping you up to date
I need to catch you up on my training journey. Last I mentioned anything about next steps and what to do after passing CCNA, I announced that the next dedicated study would be the Cisco ENAUTO. Well, that was three weeks ago, and I have finished the last of the training videos on the topic and have found a few practice exams to take. It has been a slow and enjoy able process and yet way faster than the prep for CCNA. I can’t help but think that there must be something missing in my preparation.
While the material for the exam melds in my brain after giving concentrated focus to learning it, I am going to shift gears as a strategy. The idea is that upon revisiting the ENAUTO material to brush up on it before exam day, it will be easier to clearly differentiate the things exam topics that have actually worked their way down into my soul from those points that are just floating around in RAM so to say.
In the meantime, I have been given a study resource to enhance both my marketability and my value to my future team. There is so much more I want to say about that tidbit, but it will have to wait until there is more concrete news. Sufficed to say, it seems as though my professional network for network engineering is expanding, and I am finally meeting contacts willing to point me in the right direction (for which I am ecstatic and deeply grateful).
Enough with the suspense
“Fortinet [per Wikipedia] is a cybersecurity company with headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and sells security solutions like firewalls, endpoint security and intrusion detection systems.” Their big claim to fame is the development and inclusion of something called an SPU (security processing unit), an ASIC (application-specific integrated chip), that allows hardware to handle the heavy lifting for packet forwarding decisions. In short, it is hardware that makes the Fortinet security appliances efficient and speedy.
My Einstiegspunkt into the to world of official firewall study is the NSE 4 FortiGate. Fortunately, training is available for free on the fortinet website, however the certification exam has a current price of $400. There are a host of websites similar to mine with tutorials on the NSE 4 specifically and already a few youtube channels I have found. I am going to take my time and make sure I understand everything with those materials before scheduling the exam.
In the meantime, be looking for updates on my site as I document my learning through some virtual labs I will deploy in the coming days. It is high time I demo my lab environment anyway.
That is it for now. I’ve not gotten much work done today, because my daughter passed me her cold and added a bit of fever. It’s off to bed for her now, and I will soon follow suit.
Happy networking! And as the [mis]quote goes, “Don’t let your schooling get in the way of your education!”—stay curious, friends (and don’t use Telnet).
