Beyond the Prompt Series: Large Language Models – The Autoregressive Engine
Manny FernandezHow next-token prediction became the core of applied AI, and the 2026 shifts (MoE, reasoning, long context) that actually matter...
Read More
How CDNs Operate: A Practitioner’s Guide to Edge Caching, Request Routing, and Cache Control
Manny Fernandez1. Executive Summary Objective. This guide explains, at the DNS-record and HTTP-header level, exactly what happens when a Content Delivery...
Read More
Deploying FortiGate cFOS: From a Docker Image to a Kubernetes Firewall Pod
Manny Fernandez1. Executive Summary Objective: This guide takes a Fortinet-supplied Container FortiOS (cFOS) image, validates it standalone in Docker, then promotes...
Read More
FortiGate ADVPN: Classic (1.0) vs. Edge-Discovery (2.0) for Dynamic Spoke-to-Spoke SD-WAN
Manny Fernandez1. Executive Summary Objective. This guide explains what changed between ADVPN 1.0 and ADVPN 2.0 on FortiGate, then walks two...
Read More
Securing the Open SSID on FortiGate: Deploying Enhanced Open (OWE) for Encrypted Guest Wi-Fi
Manny Fernandez1. Executive Summary Objective: This guide replaces the legacy "open" (no-encryption, no-authentication) guest SSID with Enhanced Open, the Wi-Fi Alliance...
Read More
FortiGate Local-Out Routing: Controlling the Traffic the Firewall Sends Itself
Manny FernandezEvery FortiGate is two devices wearing one chassis. One of them is a firewall: it inspects traffic that arrives on...
Read More
The Complete FortiGate execute Command Reference
Manny FernandezEvery FortiGate admin knows execute ping. Most know execute backup config. Almost nobody knows what else is sitting in that...
Read More
Is your FortiGate vulnerable to Management Access when using a FortiToken Push Notification
Manny FernandezEvery few months the same question lands in my inbox. A scanner report flags TCP/4433 open on a customer's WAN...
Read More
Securing the Purdue Model: A FortiGate OT Reference Architecture
Manny Fernandez1. Executive Summary Objective: This guide provides a production-grade reference architecture for retrofitting Fortinet OT security controls onto an existing...
Read More
Deep Dive QUIC Explanation
Manny FernandezExecutive Summary Objective: This guide breaks down QUIC (RFC 9000/9001/9002) at the wire-format level, showing exactly how the transport establishes...
Read More
The Cisco Engineer’s Guide to FortiGate: A Side-by-Side CLI Rosetta Stone for IOS Veterans Landing on FortiOS
Manny FernandezYou have twenty years of muscle memory. You type conf t before your coffee finishes brewing. Then someone hands you...
Read More
Cisco Packet Tracer equivalent in FortiGate Firewall?
Manny FernandezI deployed thousands of ASA firewalls when I was with the different partners. One of my favorite features on the...
Read More
Using host file equivalent on the FortiGate Firewall
Manny FernandezHave you ever wanted to do some testing on a FortiGate using an FQDN verses an IP address? While FortiOS...
Read More
The Different Types of Networks: A Practitioner’s Field Guide
Manny FernandezAsk ten engineers to define "a network" and you will get ten answers that are all correct and none of...
Read More
Demystifying FortiAuthenticator: Deploying FortiAuthenticator as an LDAP Server for Centralized FortiGate Authentication
Manny Fernandez1. Executive Summary Objective: This guide turns a FortiAuthenticator (FAC) appliance or VM into a standalone LDAP directory that other...
Read More
Need to know information about FortiBleed
Manny FernandezDISCLAIMER: Please see link above for the official Fortinet response on "FortiBleed" as of this writing 20260703 FortiBleed, in short:...
Read More
Is your FortiGate vulnerable to Management Access when using a Let’s Encrypt Certificate
Manny FernandezThe underlying assumption that Let’s Encrypt requires you to expose your FortiGate's management console or administrative GUI via plain HTTP...
Read More
Building Custom Application Signatures on FortiGate
Manny FernandezFortiGate ships with thousands of built-in application signatures, but eventually you will hit traffic it does not recognize: an internal...
Read More
iTerm2 Deep-Dive Configuration Guide for macOS
Manny FernandezA practitioner-grade reference for configuring iTerm2, with emphasis on the powerful and rarely-documented features that separate a default install from...
Read More
Deploying FortiGate Dynamic Device and OS Identification for Network Visibility and Asset Inventory
Manny Fernandez1. Executive Summary Objective: This guide walks through enabling and operationalizing FortiGate's Dynamic Device and OS Identification (device detection) so...
Read More
