I Built My Own Networking Cheat Sheet. Here's Why.
"I stopped waiting for the "Ugly's Electrical Reference" of networking and built my own. When you're standing in front of a switch at 11 p.m. and need the exact Cisco IOS command, a clean Wireshark filter, or a subnet answer right now, generic documentation and endless search results are a trap.
I came up through audio, video, transmitters, and signal chains, then had to learn IP networking later while working alongside engineers who recall configs from memory. So I built a locally hosted single-page web app with AI assistance: no logins, no cloud, just a dark-mode reference with categories, quick tools, and a search bar. Subnet math, common ports, the OSI model in plain English, VLAN configs, Cisco command reminders, and broadcast-specific stuff like PTP and AES67 troubleshooting notes.
The twist: the hard part wasn't the code, it was naming what I actually needed to know. Writing better prompts forced me to identify my knowledge gaps, and editing the output turned the guide into a record of my learning. I also take on the "AI is killing fundamentals" argument, because for this use case, I don't buy it. Repetition plus a personal cheat sheet moves knowledge off the screen and into your head."
I built this thing because there was a gap. Not out there in the market, but in my own head. Up top, there's this book that electricians carry around called The Ugly's Electrical Reference. It's this beat -up, pocket -sized thing. Looks like it survived the jobsite fire. And it's got wire gauges, conduit fill tables, motor formulas, code references, just about everything that an electrician would need in one ugly little package. I kept waiting for the networking equivalent to show up. And so far, it hasn't. So I made
one myself. Sort of. This is me talking. through how I vibe coded my way into a networking reference guide. Why I needed it to learn and why I genuinely don't care if it makes a few people a little upset. Okay, so let's do a quick little background on this. I'm a broadcast network engineer which means I came up through the audio and video side of things. Transmitters, signal chains, routing,
all that. The IP networking piece came later and it's been a bit of a self -directed education ever since. And I want to be real with you for a second. I work alongside network engineers who run absolute circles around me. I'll ask a question and someone rattles off OSPF neighbor state from memory while I'm still trying to remember which layer routing lives on. I came from the field. I know some things. I know enough to be useful. enough to be dangerous and just barely enough to know what I don't know yet. The way
I learn is by doing, by repetition, by getting in there, breaking something, fixing it, and doing it again until it sticks. That works great when I'm hands -on, but when I'm in the middle of something and I just need to remember the command to pull a running config off of a switch. I can't exactly stop and teach a search engine or an AI bot how to understand my question. I just, I need the answer in about four seconds and I need, you know, and then I need to get back to what I was doing. And here's the honest thing about learning on the job in this kind
of role. When you've got a brain that doesn't love sitting still to put it gently you end up with 18 browser tabs open half a youtube video a cisco documentation page you don't fully understand and then you go make coffee and forget what you were even looking for in the first place sound familiar no cool just me all right i needed something I could actually use while I was working. Not a textbook, not a 400 page PDF. Something fast, searchable, mine. Like uglies. But for the networking
concepts I was actively bumping into on the job. The stuff my co -workers already had in their heads that I'm still building toward. I'm still learning. That wasn't it. There wasn't anything like that So I decided to build one and I was gonna let an AI do most of the heavy lifting If you haven't heard that the term Vibe coding it's basically the practice of building software by describing what you want and plain language to AI and You know irate, you know going through it in until it works without necessarily writing
every line yourself. You're more of an architect and the tastemaker than the person banging out all the syntax. And look, I want to be upfront. I'm not a developer. I can read some code. I can edit it. I've written enough scripts over the years to be dangerous, but sitting down and building a full web app from scratch, that's not where I was going to spend my weekend. So I put the machine to work. The idea was simple, a locally hosted single page web app. Nothing fancy, no logins, no cloud dependencies, runs
right off of my laptop or a little local Nginx server. in a dark theme because I'm not a monster. I can't do light mode. A sidebar with categories, a search bar I can actually hit fast, and a collection of tools and references, content that would cover the stuff I kept having to look up all the time, especially subnet math. Port numbers. The OSI model in plain English for someone who's a dummy like me Wireshark filters Cisco iOS commands the the things that when you're deep and troubles deep within a You know a troubleshooting session
at 11 o 'clock at night trying to figure out why your AES 67 stream is dropping packets you just need it right there and quickly Here's what I didn't expect The part that took the most work wasn't the code, it was figuring out what I actually wanted to know or needed to know. When you're writing prompts to generate content for a reference guide, you have to be pretty specific. Add a section about VLANs gives you something generic, but add a reference section that explains VLANs in plain English, includes a config example for a Cisco iOS switch, and shows the most common
mistakes people make, that gives you something you might actually reach for at 11 p .m. So, in a weird way, building this thing forced me to inventory my own knowledge gaps. Every section I added was basically me saying, here's a topic I understand at about 60%. Help me get to, say, 80%. And the act of prompting for it, reviewing the output, editing it to match the way I actually talk and think about things, well, that stuck. Now, I'm not saying AI made me smarter, I'm saying
the process of building a thing makes you learn the thing. The AI was just a power tool I was using. The app ended up with about 40 tools and reference sections, calculators, Cisco config generators, Wireshark filter builders, broadcast specific stuff like Studio Hub pinouts, and PTP IEEE 1588 filters because that's the world I live in. Things I actually needed, not a comprehensive networking textbook, but my comprehensive networking reference guide built by someone who's still
learning it for someone who's still learning it now let's let's talk about focus for a second i said earlier that i struggle with focus and i think that's actually at the core of why this tool exists in the first place generic Documentation is not built for people who lose the thread easily It's built for people who already know roughly what they're looking for and just need the specifics the details if you're Someone who reads three sentences and then your brain goes okay, but what about the other thing and You're suddenly
four links deep and have no idea where you started standard docs for people like me, it's a trap. And the AI and Google problem is real. Look, I like both of those things. And in IT, you use Google a lot. They're useful, but when I'm standing in front of a switch and I need to know the exact syntax for show running dash config, I do not, I don't want To type a paragraph into a chat box and wait for a response I don't want three blue links and a featured snippet. I want my thing My way already organized the way my brain
works Ready to go and one keystroke What I needed was a tool that was narrow on purpose a Tool that said Here's the things relevant to your job organized the way your brain actually navigates with a search bar you can hit in under a second Control K by the way muscle memory in like two days no rabbit holes no adjacent links pulling you sideways just the answer to the question you actually asked and then Next time I need that same command And the time after that, I've
got it now. That's the repetition part. That's how it eventually moves from the app into my head. That brain, that squishy thing up top, where it belongs. Hi Zach, you wanna join my podcast? No? You're just gonna stand there in the door and look at me? Okay. Don't eat your brother, please or the dogs That's what ugly's guide does for electricians It doesn't try to be the NEC codebook It tries to be the thing you reach for when you're standing in a and a panel room And you just need to confirm a number
And when you're the person in the room who came up through the field and is Still struggling to catch up that fast focus reference matters more than it probably does for someone who Already already has all of this stuff memorized now Here's the part that complicates the whole story my oldest He's just anti AI Full stop he's still standing by the door. No, I think he left He doesn't like the idea of it. He doesn't trust where it's going, and he definitely isn't thrilled that I used it for this project at all. From
his perspective, the fact that I leaned on AI to help build a networking reference tool is part of a bigger problem, not some clever shortcut his dad found. And I know he's not alone. If this ever makes it into a comment section somewhere, on Reddit probably, I can already hear the the complaints. This is how the world ends. Nobody learns the fundamentals anymore. Everyone's outsourcing their brain. We're doomed. All because I vibe coded a little local network cheat sheet to help my very human, very distracted brain remember how to show a running config on a switch at 11 o 'clock at night. To those people, all I can
say is I don't give two shits. Because this isn't a product launch, it's not a SaaS, it's not a course, it's not ten times your networking skills with my AI -powered toolkit. It's a weird, custom, slightly janky tool I built for me to bridge the gap between the engineer I am right now and the engineers I work with who can rattle off configs from memory without second -guessing without blinking like you know knowing it like the back of your hand I Learned by doing by repetition by seeing the command using it seeing it again and eventually not needing to look I'm starting to memorize some of this stuff. It's just it.
You know it takes time This app is just the in -between layer, it's the It's the training wheels. It's the thing that lets me stay in the in the work instead of getting lost in search results every time I blank on some config or a flag I need to add to something. If that offends your sense of technological purity, that's fine. You don't have to touch it. You don't have to use it. But I'm going to keep using every tool available to me, including Yeah, AI To get better at the job. I actually do in the real world. It's a
tool and if that looks like the end of days from the outside Maybe that says more about the the discourse than it does about what's actually happening on my screen late at night If you've got a knowledge domain your actively working and still learning. And especially if you're surrounded by people who already know it better than you. You don't have to wait for someone to hand you the right resource. You can build it yourself now, even if building it yourself means describing it to an AI bot until something useful comes out of the other side. You don't have to be a developer. You don't have to know
what you need. Be willing to describe it clearly. And even if you can't describe it clearly, dump all your thoughts in there and tell it to organize this and then use that to build off the next step. It's useful. And be willing to edit what comes back until it actually sounds and feels useful to you and makes sense. The version I'm running is live at tools .tylerwoodward .me. It's up to about 40 something tools and I keep adding things. Every time I hit a topic I have to stop and look up or someone at work says something
and I go home and realize I kind of only half understood what the hell they were talking about. I come back and add a section for it. It's a record of my own learning, I guess, honestly. Which is a weird thing to say about a web page, but here we are, you know. If I ever do a deeper dive episode on this, I want to dig into broadcast specific networking pieces. You know, AES67, NMOS, PTP, because that's the corner of IP networking that doesn't get nearly enough plain language coverage. For now, this little vibe -coded cheat
sheet is my version of Uglies. It fits my brain and that's enough for me. If you want to follow me for more stuff at TylerWoodward .me on Instagram and threads, you can also visit TylerWoodward .me for all the past episodes, show notes, links to all the various things and to support the podcast if you feel so inclined. You can also rate and review the show. I keep hearing that apparently works and helps things. I don't know. I've got three five star reviews on Apple Podcasts if you want to add to it. Cool. If not, well, thanks for listening anyways if you made it this far. I'll catch you next week.
