Eric Marquez

https://ebmarquez.github.io/Eric MarquezPrincipal Software Engineer Lead at Microsoft. Writing about data center networking, AI-assisted automation, and infrastructure. 2026-05-06T16:47:17-07:00 Eric Marquez https://ebmarquez.github.io/ Jekyll © 2026 Eric Marquez /assets/img/favicons/favicon.ico /assets/img/favicons/favicon-96x96.png Stop Trusting Your AI Blindly: A Simple System That Tells You When to Verify2026-05-06T00:00:00-07:00 2026-05-06T00:00:00-07:00 https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/stop-trusting-your-ai-blindly-confidence-scoring/ Eric Marquez

AI assistants are confidently wrong all the time. This portable custom instruction forces them to self-score every response — so you know when to ship and when to verify.

Working With AI When It's Frustrating: Lessons from a VXLAN Investigation2026-04-23T13:00:00-07:00 2026-04-23T13:00:00-07:00 https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/working-with-ai-when-its-frustrating-vxlan-investigation/ ebmarquez

What a multi-hop PXE failure taught me about managing AI as a troubleshooting partner — not a magic solution.

I Told Copilot to SSH Into My Switches So I Didn't Have To2026-04-14T00:00:00-07:00 2026-04-14T00:00:00-07:00 https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/i-built-an-mcp-server-for-ssh/ ebmarquez

I was checking switch cabling and thought — why am I doing this manually? I asked GitHub Copilot to do it. That question led down a rabbit hole of credential backends, hanging regex loops, and an AI that admitted it was being dumb.

Here's a /26 — Figure Out the Address Plan2026-03-31T00:00:00-07:00 2026-03-31T21:22:12-07:00 https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/heres-a-25-figure-out-the-address-plan/ ebmarquez

I handed GitHub Copilot a /26 subnet and told it to plan IP addressing for a two-switch iBGP fabric with spine uplinks. Then we deployed it. Here's what happened.

Hey Copilot, Can You SSH Into a Switch?2026-03-30T12:00:00-07:00 2026-03-30T12:00:00-07:00 https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/hey-copilot-can-you-ssh-into-a-switch/ ebmarquez

What happens when you point an AI at two factory-fresh SONiC switches and say 'figure it out' — a real-world experiment in AI-assisted network discovery.

EVPN and VRFs: The Security Architecture Your Data Center Actually Needs2026-03-27T13:00:00-07:00 2026-03-27T13:00:00-07:00 https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/evpn-vrf-security-windows-virtual-switch/ ebmarquez

How EVPN with VRF isolation extends from the physical fabric to the Windows Hyper-V virtual switch — and why it's a real security upgrade over VLANs.

What Are VRFs and How They Work2026-03-27T12:00:00-07:00 2026-03-31T16:53:19-07:00 https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/what-are-vrfs-and-how-they-work/ ebmarquez

A practical, no-nonsense guide to Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) for engineers who know networking but haven't clicked with VRFs yet.

Future-Proofing Your Fabric: How BGP Unnumbered Makes IPv6 a Config Change, Not a Redesign2026-02-16T00:00:00-08:00 2026-02-16T00:00:00-08:00 https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/bgp-unnumbered-ipv6-future-proofing/ ebmarquez

BGP unnumbered already uses IPv6 under the hood. Adding IPv6 routes to your fabric is activating one address family — not redesigning your network.

BGP Unnumbered: The Network Simplification You Didn't Know You Needed2026-02-15T12:00:00-08:00 2026-02-15T19:11:19-08:00 https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/bgp-unnumbered-network-simplification/ ebmarquez

How BGP unnumbered with loopback peering simplifies spine-leaf fabric operations at scale.

Building nrecon-mcp: From Idea to Design in One Night2026-02-09T00:00:00-08:00 2026-02-09T00:00:00-08:00 https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/building-an-ssh-mcp-server-from-idea-to-design/ eric

The origin story of nrecon-mcp — an open-source MCP server that lets GitHub Copilot SSH into network devices and explore them autonomously — designed entirely in a single Copilot conversation.