“match-vip enable” inside Firewall Policies
Manny FernandezThe Problem This Solves FortiGate matches policies referencing a VIP (a Virtual IP, i.e. destination NAT) with higher precedence than...
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FortiGate Quick Tip: Restoring the Two Free FortiTokens After a Factory Reset
Manny FernandezRan execute factory reset on a FortiGate and now the two free FortiToken Mobile licenses are gone from User &...
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FortiGate Wildcard Addresses: The IP Kind, Not the FQDN Kind
Manny FernandezObjective: a working reference for creating and using the wildcard address type in FortiOS, the IP-plus-wildcard-netmask object, and drawing a...
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IANA Reserved IP Address Space
Manny FernandezExecutive Summary Objective: give practitioners a working reference for the IANA IPv4 Special-Purpose Address Registry, with a deep dive on...
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FortiGate Route-Tag Address Objects: Firewall Rules That Follow Your BGP Table
Manny FernandezIf you run FortiGate site-to-site VPNs with BGP, you already know the appeal. The remote side can add, remove,...
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RFC 6598 Explained: The Shared Address Space Behind Carrier-Grade NAT
Manny FernandezIf you have ever run a traceroute on a customer connection and seen a hop sitting at 100.64.x.x, you have...
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Linux Partition Types Explained: What they do, checking size, consistency and health
Manny FernandezExecutive Summary Objective: Give a practitioner-level walkthrough of the partitions and mount points you'll find on a typical Linux system,...
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Canceling Federated Upgrade on FortiGate
Manny FernandezRan into a scenario where one of my customers wanted to immediately upgrade one of their FortiGates however the FortiGate...
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Anatomy of a FortiGate VPN: Every Option available in P1 and P2
Manny FernandezContents Phase 1: The IKE Security Association Gateway identity and interface binding Authentication Cryptographic proposal, DH groups, and post-quantum key...
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FortiGate Port Reference: Every Port for FAZ, FMG, RADIUS, CAPWAP, and the Rest of the Fabric
Manny FernandezEvery FortiGate deployment eventually runs into the same wall: a firewall change request, a cloud security group, or an MSSP's...
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“diagnose hardware deviceinfo nic”: The Complete Field Reference
Manny Fernandezdiagnose hardware deviceinfo nic: The Complete Field Reference No fluff. Just the config that works. Executive Summary Objective: diagnose hardware...
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What Your Optics Are Trying to Tell You: A Deep Dive into `get system interface transceiver`
Manny FernandezThe command nobody reads until something breaks Every FortiGate with SFP or SFP+ cages ships with a diagnostic command that...
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FortiDebug Builder Preview
Manny FernandezI created an app named FortiDebug Builder. The idea is to create cli commands for use with troubleshooting FortiGate firewalls. ...
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Tuning the FortiOS IPS Socket Buffer: A Deep Dive into socket-size
Manny FernandezExecutive Summary Objective: Explain, in real operational depth, what the FortiOS ips global socket-size setting actually does, why it exists,...
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FortiOS Automatic Restart of Node.js to Prevent Conserve Mode
Manny FernandezThis enables automatic restart of FortiOS's Node.js process (the "node" daemon), which handles things like Report management, FortiView, Security Fabric/CSF,...
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Troubleshooting IPSec VPN tunnels in FortiGate Firewalls 2026 Version
Manny FernandezThis is an updated, expanded version of an older Quick-Tip. Same goal as always: get a VPN tunnel talking again...
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Deploying OpenSpeedTest on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for Internal Network Speed Testing
Manny FernandezExecutive Summary Objective: This guide walks through deploying OpenSpeedTest, a free and open source, self-hosted HTML5 network speed test, on...
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NAT64 and NAT46 on FortiOS: Building a Production IPv6 Transition Gateway
Manny FernandezExecutive Summary This guide walks through deploying both NAT64 (IPv6 clients reaching IPv4 resources) and NAT46 (IPv4 clients reaching IPv6...
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macOS CLI Networking Cheat Sheet
Manny FernandezIf you troubleshoot Macs on a network for a living, you already know the GUI only gets you so far....
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Disabling the FortiConverter Nag Message on Enterprise Bundle FortiGates
Manny FernandezAs you know, the Enterprise Bundle includes the following (IPS, AI-based Inline Malware Prevention, DLP, App Control, Adv Malware Protection,...
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