Hi everyone, and welcome to my digital corner.
My name is Ademola Ajayi, and I’ve spent the last decade navigating the evolving landscape of the IT industry. My career began as a Graduate Trainee Telecom Engineer, working on Ericsson multi-link nodes and radio base stations. While the physical layer was fascinating, I found myself constantly drawn toward the “magic” of Internet Protocol (IP).
The Cisco Foundation
Deciding to pivot, I dove head-first into the Cisco ecosystem. After self-studying Todd Lammle’s CCNA Sybex guide and completing formal training in Lagos, Nigeria, I earned my CCNA R&S.
The momentum didn’t stop there. I immediately targeted the CCNA Data Center, which proved to be a pivotal career move. That certification landed me a role at ATB Techsoft, where I co-led a project implementing Cisco UCS for a leading Nigerian insurance company. Within six months, I was the company’s lead expert on Cisco UCS. Working at an IT services provider exposed me to a vast array of technologies, from Check Point firewalls and VMware to Cisco Unified Communications (CUCM).
Falling in Love with Junos
My transition to working for one of the world’s largest Cloud Service Providers introduced me to Juniper Networks. It was love at first sight—or rather, love at first commit.
Coming from an IOS background, the abstraction of Junos OS riding on a Linux kernel felt revolutionary. The concept of a Candidate Configuration vs. an Active Configuration, and the safety net of commit check and commit rollback, completely changed how I viewed network operations.
The Road to JNCIE-SP
I have always found that the most efficient way for me to master a technology is to follow a formal certification track. After achieving CCNP certifications in Enterprise, Data Center, and Security, I identified a gap in my knowledge: Service Provider (SP) technologies.
To bridge that gap, I moved into the Juniper SP track. Having recently cleared my JNCIS-SP and JNCIP-SP, I am now officially beginning my journey toward the JNCIE-SP. My goal is to master the complexities of:
- MPLS Traffic Engineering (RSVP/LDP)
- EVPN-VXLAN
- L3VPNs and Inter-AS architectures
- Segment Routing (SPRING)
My Learning Resources
I believe in standing on the shoulders of giants. These blogs have been instrumental in my progress:
I am also currently working through the official JNCIE-SP Self-Study Bundle.
The Lab: Where the Magic Happens
Theoretical knowledge is nothing without a place to “break” things. My home lab currently consists of two primary nodes:
- The “Agile” Node: A Proxmox-based Mini PC with 32GB RAM for lightweight testing.
- The “Beast” Node: An HP Gen-5 server with 80 vCPUs and 256GB RAM running VMware ESXi.
This setup allows me to spin up complex topologies of vMX and vQFX nodes to simulate the large-scale environments I manage at work.
I’ll be using this blog to document my technical deep-dives as I prepare for the JNCIE lab. Stay tuned for more!