Author: Kenneth Nnorom
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The T-Shaped Engineer: An Engineer’s Guide to Law in Nigeria
Your technical skills as an engineer might be adeqate but might not be enough. You can design the most brilliant systems, but those systems live in the real world, one that’s governed by contracts, regulations, and human rights. This is exactly where the idea of the T-shaped engineer in Nigeria comes in. It’s no longer…
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The True Cost of Cheap IT for Nigerian SMBs
In my experience, especially with Nigerian Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs), there’s a common “cost-saving” strategy that is, quite frankly, a persistent and dangerous fallacy. It’s the idea that minimizing upfront IT procurement costs is the same as saving money. This approach, born from very real capital constraints and a tough macroeconomic environment, directly results…
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Cumulus Linux: A Guide to L2 Data Centre Fabrics
In an era where infrastructure is code, some aspects of networking still feel like a black box? Proprietary networking platforms, such as Cisco’s IOS, Juniper’s Junos, etc have controlled the switch market. That closed grip on hardware and software created real vendor lock-in and inflated costs. I see Arista making a play with a Linux-based…
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Smartphone Design Philosophy: How Apple, Google, and Samsung Differ
In the high-stakes world of smartphones, three titans, Apple, Google, and Samsung, have taken starkly different paths to innovation, each with its own smartphone design philosophy. This has created a vibrant market where every approach has its place. This diversity gives us, the users, a real choice. Apple’s Hardware-First Smartphone Design Philosophy First, let’s discuss…
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Network Point of Failure: A Definitive Guide to HSRP and STP
Imagine you’ve built a sleek, high-performance network, only for a single router or switch to fail and bring the entire thing down. The silence is deafening. As network engineers, that’s not just a bad day; it’s a catastrophic design flaw. Building networks that don’t crumble under pressure should be the standard. In building a resilient…
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Outsourcing & Consulting in Nigeria: A Security Engineer’s View from the Inside
As a Network Security Engineer, my day-to-day is a fight against cyber threats. I work with firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and the precise logic of network traffic. It’s a technical world. But my time at ICS Outsourcing, a leading business consulting and outsourcing firm in Nigeria, dropped me into a completely different arena. Suddenly, I…
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OSPF Routing Protocol: Part 3 – Multi-Area OSPF
In this part of our OSPF troubleshooting series, I redesigned the topology to include three areas: Area 0 (the backbone), Area 1, and Area 2. This setup demonstrates how multi-area OSPF helps reduce LSA flooding and keeps routing tables lightweight by organizing routers into smaller, efficient segments. To follow along, download the new Packet Tracer…
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OSPF Routing Protocol: Part 2
To make this lesson easier to follow, I’ve included the Packet Tracer file for download. Use it to relate to everything discussed so far. In the last article, we set up OSPF in our network. Now, we’ll test our configuration by sending ICMP packets across the network to confirm if routing works properly. We’ll also…
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How To Configure Firewall Rules On Pfsense
Having installed the pfSense firewall, it’s crucial to establish firewall rules that safeguard your network’s perimeter. Understanding how these rules are configured on pfSense is essential for robust network security. In this post, I will share a sample setup I designed using GNS3 for demonstration purposes. THE SETUP Our network architecture includes a pfSense firewall…
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Budget-Friendly Cybersecurity Tips for Small Businesses in Nigeria
The landscape of global threats is ever-evolving, with cyberattacks becoming more frequent and sophisticated. The progression of artificial intelligence is expected to further complicate these security challenges. A study often cited by the World Economic Forum anticipates cybercrime costs to soar from $8.44 trillion in 2022 to $23.84 trillion by 2027. While there may be…
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