About SwitchFirewall
Practical networking and security knowledge — written by people who actually do this work every day.
What Is SwitchFirewall?
SwitchFirewall is a free resource for network engineers, security professionals, and IT admins. We cover the day-to-day tasks that come with managing real networks — things like configuring switches, upgrading firmware, hardening firewalls, and troubleshooting common issues.
We believe good technical documentation should be clear, practical, and free. No paywalls, no fluff — just step-by-step guides that help you get the job done.
What We Write About
Our articles focus on the topics that come up most often in real network environments:
- Switch Configuration — VLANs, trunk ports, STP, port security, and more across major vendors.
- Switch Upgrades — How to safely upgrade IOS, firmware, and software on managed switches.
- Firewall Best Practices — Rule cleanup, zone policies, NAT, and upgrade procedures for common firewall platforms.
- Network Security — Hardening guides, certificate management, SSL/TLS configuration, and security auditing tips.
- Troubleshooting — Real-world problems and how to fix them, explained clearly.
Free Online Tools
Alongside our articles, we build free tools that make daily network and security tasks faster. No sign-up required, no data stored — just open them and use them.
- SSL Certificate Decoder — Decode PEM, DER, CRT, CSR files and check live SSL certs from any URL.
- Subnet Calculator — Quickly calculate network addresses, broadcast, host ranges and CIDR notation.
- Password Generator — Generate strong, random passwords for devices and services.
- DNS Lookup — Query DNS records (A, MX, TXT, CNAME, NS) for any domain.
- IP Lookup — Find geolocation and ASN information for any IP address.
- And more — We keep adding tools based on what the community finds useful.
Why We Built This
Every tool and article on this site exists because we needed something like it ourselves at some point and couldn't find a clean, simple version. We built them, cleaned them up, and put them online so others don't have to start from scratch.
The goal is simple: save you time. Whether you're decoding an SSL cert at 2am or trying to remember the exact syntax for a trunk port configuration, SwitchFirewall should be the place you come to get a quick, accurate answer.
Get in Touch
Found a bug, have a suggestion, or want to request a topic or tool? We'd love to hear from you. Head over to our Contact page and drop us a message.