Cisco Networking and Firewall Consultant
Catalyst switching, Firepower firewalls, segmentation, and VPN — designed, configured, and documented by a CCNA-certified contractor.
Most network problems I get called for are not exotic. A company grew, the network grew with it, and now everything sits in one flat segment where a single compromised laptop can reach the servers, the cameras, and the payroll box alike. Or there is a Firepower firewall carrying a ruleset that three different people built over five years, and nobody left can tell you which rules are still load-bearing and which are dead weight. Or the site-to-site VPN to the branch office drops twice a week and the workaround has become "turn it off and back on."
None of that is a reason to rip and replace. It is a reason to bring in someone who can read the running config, figure out what it is actually doing, and change it safely. I do Cisco networking and firewall work on contract — Catalyst and IOS switching, Firepower operations, VLAN and ACL design, site-to-site VPN, and network segmentation reviews — remote-first from Fort Worth, and on-site across DFW when a change needs hands on the rack.
What done looks like
Done means the network does what you can describe in a sentence. The flat network is carved into segments that match how the business actually works, so a breach in one area does not become a breach everywhere. The firewall ruleset is one you can read — named, ordered, with the dead rules gone and a comment explaining the ones that stay. The VPN comes up and stays up, with the timers and crypto settings that stopped the flapping written down so they survive the next reboot.
You should be able to hand the result to your next hire, your auditor, or your insurer and have it hold up. That means working diagrams, current configs, and a plain-language summary of the segmentation and rules — not tribal knowledge that walks out the door when I do.
How I work it, and why me
Network changes break businesses when someone types into a production switch and hopes. I do not work that way. Every change starts as a written runbook with the exact commands, staged and reviewed before anything touches the device. Each step has a validation gate — a ping, a session table, a route check — that has to pass before I move on. And I own the rollback: before I change a thing, I know exactly how to put it back, and I have tested that I can.
I have about four years of production experience running this kind of work on real networks with real users on them, not lab gear. I hold the CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) and CompTIA Security plus, so the switching, routing, and firewall fundamentals are not something I am learning on your dime. The configs and documentation stay with you when the engagement ends — you are buying a working network and the record of how it got that way, not a dependency on me.
- Switching: Catalyst and IOS configuration, VLAN design, trunking, and spanning-tree cleanup.
- Firewalls: Firepower and ASA rule review, ACL design, and ruleset consolidation.
- Connectivity: site-to-site VPN builds and stabilization between offices, data centers, and cloud.
- Segmentation: reviews that turn one flat network into segments with enforced boundaries.
If any of that sounds like the network you are trying to stop worrying about, tell me what it looks like today and what is going wrong. I will tell you whether it is a config change, a redesign, or a phone call you do not need to pay for.
Common questions
Do you work on existing Cisco gear, or only new builds?
Mostly existing gear. The common job is a network that already runs Catalyst switches and a Firepower or ASA firewall and just needs someone to clean up the VLANs, tighten the rules, or stand up a VPN that holds. I am happy to spec and build new, but I do not require a greenfield to be useful.
Can you do this remotely?
Yes. I work remote-first over a jump host, console server, or management VPN, and I do the planning, config, and validation that way. For physical changes — racking a switch, recabling, a hands-on cutover — I can be on-site in Fort Worth and the wider DFW metro, or coordinate with your hands.
Do you document the changes?
Always. You get the runbook I worked from, the before-and-after configs, and a short description of what changed and why. The documentation stays with you, so the next person — me or anyone else — is not starting from a blank page.
Have a project like this?
Tell me the environment, the timeline, and your constraints. I reply the same business day with a fit assessment and either a quote or a referral.