DevCentral's Featured Member for December - Mohamed Kansoh

Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and our Featured Series gives you some insight on some of our most engaged folks. F5 Community Member Mohamed Kansoh is our DevCentral Featured Member for December! He's been helping many other members with some great tips so let's catch up with Mohamed!

First, please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it is important.

Mohamed: Well Firstly, thanks for this appreciation. This is Mohamed Kansoh, I’m Egyptian and I’m 26 years old, I’ve earned my bachelor’s degree in “Communications and Electronics” from Faculty of Engineering Menufia University since 2019. After that I worked on myself by taking more online trainings in networks and security field to be more qualified in Labor market.

I started my career at the beginning of 2020 at BARQ Systems Company where was my first time to deal with F5 Products and other security Solutions.

I started working with Firewalls then F5 Technologies such as BIG-IP LTM and ASM which I have found it more interesting and powerful to know and work with Specially with troubleshooting in network and security issues.

At BARQ SYSTEMS I implement new F5 projects from Scratch and support our customers in their technical issues until resolved.

DevCentral: You’ve been an active contributor in the DevCentral community.  What keeps you involved?

Mohamed: Yes, I see that F5 Community as a third hand for anyone who works with F5 technologies. When I get stuck with issues with F5, implement a new service or have any concern, I used to search for an adequate workaround, I find the clue or ideal solution at F5 Community.

Also, it’s not fair to see F5 users need help or have technical concerns and I know a proper solution for them and do not reply, indeed! it’s a disappointment to see issues or technical concerns with no answer or reply even if a reply as a matter of thinking out loud.

F5 Community expands my scope of knowledge, I learn much from it specially iRules and technical Articles, F5 Community adds to me every day and it keeps me updated.

F5 is the closest network solution to my heart and I hope to reach the expert level with All of F5 Technologies one day! I value it and its role in networking, especially with troubleshooting, Also F5 gives you a clear vision throughout your whole network.

My word to our customers “if you want a rich, secured and a high-quality network, you must implement F5 to offload your applications.“

DevCentral: Tell us a little about the technical expertise you have.

Mohamed: After almost 3 years of working experience in network and Security Field, I have got experience with:

• Routing, switching and network design.
• Multiple Vendor Firewall Solutions such as:
• Juniper SRX Firewall.
• Palo-alto Firewall.
• Fortigate firewall.
• General knowledge with Forcepoint.
• General Knowledge with Cisco FTD.
• Web Applications Firewall (F5 ASM).
• Application Delivery controller (ADC F5 LTM).
• General Knowledge with Global load balancing (F5 GTM).
• General Knowledge with Infoblox (DNS, DHCP, IPAM) “DDIP Certified”.
• General knowledge with Symantec ProxySG. (Forward Proxy).

DevCentral: You are a Network and Application Security at Barq Systems. Can you describe your typical workday, how you manage work/life balance and the strong support of F5 solutions? How has the recent pandemic impacted your work?

Mohamed: In normal days, I engage with our customers who require to implement new services, have an issue, and need troubleshooting until it solved, start new projects from scratch (implementing, Configuring F5 appliances) till Lunching the targeted production services.

Nowadays, I engage with “Telecom Egypt “Company one of the biggest ISPs Companies in Egypt, I support them in a project related to F5 Advanced WAF, I have finished the implementation and Configuration of F5 appliances and now it serves production services.

In my free time outside of my work, I pass this time with my wife and my laptop beside me to check the  DevCentral Community periodically. I want to see if anyone has inquiries or technical concerns and my wife sees what I do and how I’m happy when I help someone. She becomes thrilled when someone accepts my solution and she loves the right marks ✔! 😄 She encourages me so much to help others.

If there are no technical concerns in the community, I study to complete my F5 certification path or reading more technical Articles.

I used to play Football when I was a child, but I have given up playing football at college ☹ but still enjoy watching football matches till now.

Due to Covid-19 pandemic I have worked much more from home, maybe pandemic does not affect so badly with persons who works in IT field because they can proceed in their work tasks remotely. But it impacts badly with people in other fields which they do all of their work tasks physically with their hands.

I hope safety for each one and hope the world to be cleaned from this Covid-19 pandemic.

DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career?

Mohamed: Yes, I’m a certified technology specialist in Advanced WAF, I passed F5 (101, 201, 303) exams, and now I am preparing for the rest of 3xx exams specially (F5 301a and 301b).

Then I target to start studying F5 GTM, APM, AFM and BigIQ.

Really, it’s a disappointment to see questions in F5 Community and I can’t reply or give any solutions related to (APM, GTM or BIGIQ), I still need to be more qualified in other F5 modules.

To be honest, F5 Certification improves my understanding, knowledge and self-confidence, there is a noticeable difference in my quality before and after studying and taking exams. I do not think you can support strongly F5 without reading, studying, taking notes, working alone, searching, and organizing yourself in general.

Certification has made a difference in my technical personality and self-confidence when dealing with our customers, even in my work promotions! I appreciate the certifications very much and my hope is achieving the expert level of certification path one day.

“Sometimes technical certificates speak instead of you and give a very good impression about you!“

DevCentral: Describe one of your biggest Customer challenges and how the community helped in that situation. (Does not necessarily have to be DevCentral)

Mohamed: I do not remember a specific challenge because DevCentral Community has helped me many times, but my biggest challenges were with iRules. With navigating Devcentral community, I can say that my level in writing codes has been improved by detecting my errors in them and solve them quickly.

Sometimes you don’t find your technical needs in F5 articles, and you find it easily with DevCentral so I am grateful to this community which includes helpful people.

DevCentral: If you weren’t doing what you’re doing – what would be your dream career? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

Mohamed: I aimed to be an engineer and I’m lucky to achieve my childhood dream which became my destiny, so I think that I am on the right way in my career and doing my best rather than thinking of another one.

DevCentral: What are You a Force For?

Mohamed: I am a force for my wife. I’m grateful to her and my parents as well. I am a force for rejecting racism and I believe in a decent life for all.

---Thanks Mohamed! The DevCentral Community really appreciate your willingness to share with our Members.

Connect and Follow on Social:

• Mohamed on LinkedIn
• BARQ Systems on Twitter
• BARQ SYSTEMS on LinkedIn
• BARQ Systems Website