Bryan Steele

God | Husband | Father | Leader ✝️ 💻🧑🏼‍💻🎹🍳 Network Engineer by trade. Tech tinkerer, piano player, and home chef by passion.

MPLS

Just Wanted Basic Connectivity — Here's What Actually Happened

Built a lab to test pings. Ended up debugging design. Turns out, not reaching the destination was exactly what was supposed to happen.

Juniper

When the Interface Looks Clean: How Customer Policing Causes Invisible Packet Loss

Clean interfaces don’t always mean clean service. This lab shows how customer-side policing silently discards traffic, creating invisible packet loss without provider-side errors or drops.

JunosOS

🧯 The Most Underrated Junos OS Command: rollback 1

One command. Instant relief. Learn how rollback 1 in Junos OS can save your config—and your nerves—when things go sideways.

AAA

🔐 Understanding AAA, TACACS+, and RADIUS: The Backbone of Secure Network Access

AAA isn’t just about logging in — it’s about knowing who’s on your network, what they’re doing, and proving it later. This post breaks down AAA, TACACS+, and RADIUS in plain terms, with real-world use cases and configuration examples you can actually use.

Raspberry Pi

🏠 Turn Your Raspberry Pi into a Networked Media Drive (NTFS-Compatible!)

Learn how to turn your Raspberry Pi into a powerful, NTFS-compatible media drive using Samba—perfect for streaming to Apple TV with Infuse.

Leadership

Leadership Without Understanding Is Just Administration

Real leadership isn’t about titles—it’s about staying close enough to the work to earn trust, communicate clearly, and serve with purpose.

Bash

🖥️ Automating the Basics: A Hands-On Intro to Bash Scripting

This guide walks you through what Bash scripting is, how it’s used, and when to graduate to a programming language like Python.

Docker

🧱 Docker on a Pi – Phase 3: From SQLite to PostgreSQL with Flask

In Phase 3, we go from SQLite to PostgreSQL — adding a real database, Docker networking, and .env config to our Pi-powered stack.

Docker

🧱 Building with Docker – Phase 2: Volumes, Logs & Docker Compose on a Pi

We’re past “hello world.” In Phase 2, we build a real service stack: persistent logs, volume mounts, and multi-container Docker.

Docker

🐳 Installing Docker on a Raspberry Pi and Building Your First Container

Learn how to install Docker on a headless Raspberry Pi and build your first custom Flask container—perfect for homelab, self-hosted, and dev projects.

Raspberry-Pi

🔌 How to Flash Raspberry Pi OS Lite and Set Up Headless SSH (macOS)

A step-by-step guide to flashing Raspberry Pi OS Lite and enabling headless SSH access from macOS—perfect for Docker labs, homelabs, and remote setups.

SSH

🛡️ SSH Host Key Has Changed? Here’s How to Fix It

Ran into an SSH warning after reimaging your Pi or server? Don’t panic — here’s how to safely fix host key mismatch errors on macOS.

MPLS

🚦Understanding LSP and Troubleshooting Label Switched Paths Like a Pro

LSPs don’t break. They misbehave when something upstream changes — and understanding how to trace and interpret those changes is what makes us better engineers.

MPLS

🧠Phase 4 – Ring Around the Backbone: Simulating a Protected Transport Core

In Phase 4, I expanded the MPLS lab into a fully redundant core ring, enabling end-to-end VPN reachability and real-world fault tolerance testing.

MPLS

Delivering Services with MPLS L3VPN — Building the Backbone: Phase 3

In Phase 3 of the Service Provider Lab Series, we bring the backbone to life with MPLS Layer 3 VPNs. Using VRFs, MP-BGP, and LDP, we deliver private, isolated routing across a shared MPLS core — and troubleshoot real-world issues like label resolution, inet.3 quirks, and OSPF integration.

NNI

🧵 Triage Like a Pro: Essential Commands to Troubleshoot NNIs & Trunk Circuits

A practical guide for service provider engineers to quickly triage NNI and trunk circuits using proven CLI commands on Juniper, Cisco IOS, and IOS-XR gear.

BGP

🚀 Scaling BGP with Route Reflectors: Building the Backbone, Phase 2

Build on your BGP foundation by introducing Route Reflectors with Juniper vMX and Cisco IOS. Phase 2 adds OSPF and loopback peering.

BGP Featured

🚀 Service Provider Lab Series: Building the Backbone

Start your journey into Service Provider networking with a hands-on lab that builds the backbone using BGP, MPLS, and multi-vendor routers.

Cisco

E-LINE Using VPWS on Cisco IOS: A Hands-On Lab Using EVE-NG

This guide walks you through building an E-LINE VPWS lab using Cisco IOS. Learn how to configure MPLS, LDP, and xconnect for point-to-point Ethernet services.

Pi-hole

Gravity-Sync Alternative –- Nebula-Sync: The Next Best in Pi-hole Replication

Gravity-Sync is archived, but your Pi-hole replication doesn't have to die with it. In this guide, I walk through replacing it with Nebula-Sync using Docker on a Raspberry Pi—complete with cron scheduling, VLAN tips, and real-world configs.

Linux

Common Linux Errors and How to Fix Them🔧

A no-fluff guide to common Linux errors, why they happen, and how to fix them—with real-world examples and commands that actually work.

tcpdump

📡 Hands-On with tcpdump: Capture, Filter, and Understand Network Traffic Like a Pro

Learn the basics of tcpdump with clear examples to start capturing and analyzing network traffic in your Linux environment or homelab.

ITLife

Only Type 𝒃𝒓𝒆𝒘𝒖𝒑𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒆 to Update Everything on Your Mac.

A one-liner to update Homebrew, casks, and Mac App Store apps—plus cleanup. Add it as an alias for fast, efficient macOS maintenance.

LabLife

🚀 Troubleshooting RSVP-TE in an MPLS Core Lab (EVE-NG)

Diagnosing and fixing RSVP-TE signaling issues in an MPLS core lab with EVE-NG. Step-by-step commands, lessons learned, and key takeaways.

SDCard

How to Clone a Bootable SD Card on Linux & macOS for Backup 🖥️💾

Back up your Raspberry Pi or embedded system by cloning a bootable SD card using simple terminal commands on Linux or macOS.