I recently got an email from a viewer of my Practical Networking course who asked how the TCP/IP networking terms I used mapped to the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) model. First, a bit of background. The OSI model is a generic networking model that is supposed to describe conceptually how networks carry data. Within the last four decades or so, 99.9% of all computer networking curricula for beginners has started by rehashing the OSI model.

After years of manually upgrading my self-hosted WordPress installation, I decided it was finally time to apply some devops principles (namely automation) to this process. This site runs on an EC2 instance on AWS, so I decided to use AWS Systems Manager (aka SSM). I started out by creating the following Command Document (which happens to be in YAML format because JSON is ugly): --- schemaVersion: "2.2" description: "Download and install WordPress"

My latest course “Architecting for Security on AWS” is now available on Pluralsight! You’ll learn how to secure your data and AWS services using a defense-in-depth approach, including: Protecting your AWS credentials using identity and access management Capturing and analyze logs using CloudTrail, CloudWatch, and Athena Implementing network and instance security Encrypting data at rest and in-transit Setting up data backup, replication, and recovery Go check it out!

Puzzled by networking on AWS? Check out my AWS networking deep dive series! AWS Networking Deep Dive: Route 53 DNS Configure Route 53 for any domain name, and configure health checks and routing policies.   AWS Networking Deep Dive: Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Create secure and scalable VPCs. Implement multi-VPC topologies, build peering connections, network address translation, and more.   AWS Networking Deep Dive: Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) Securely configure load balancing for any public or private application.

Many of you have been asking for months when my Route 53 course would release. Well, it’s finally here! _AWS Networking Deep Dive: Route 53 DNS_ is now available on Pluralsight. Topics covered include: Configuring Route 53 to work with any domain name, even one registered with a different registrar DNS concepts and how Route 53 fits in with the internet’s domain name system Creating public hosted zones, health checks, and routing policies Using private hosted zones with multiple VPCs  

You probably know the popular Google DNS server IP addresses by heart: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Before those were around you might have even used Level3’s 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2. Of course, everyone else uses these too, which means these popular servers are under a pretty heavy load. Fortunately, there are faster public DNS servers out there. Much faster. 101 DNS Servers I’ve compiled a list of 101 public DNS servers (PDF), sorted in order of fastest to slowest (for me).

In preparation for my latest course in the AWS Networking Deep Dive series, I wanted to install PowerShell Core on an Amazon Linux instance to test out cross-platform compatibility for some scripts. Specifically, I wanted to see if I could use methods in the System.Net.Dns class to perform name resolution. The dnsclient PowerShell module provides some cmdlets for this very purpose, but that module is Windows-only, and I needed something that would work on across different platforms.