IOS: Reverse SSH Console Access

I recently needed to secure the reverse con­sole access using Cisco IOS router. Now for many years, we have been doing this over tel­net and the con­fig­ur­a­tion has been straight­for­ward. But con­fig­ur­ing it to sup­port SSH instead of tel­net is a little bit dif­fer­ent, awk­ward in fact.

Network Dictionary — TLA and eTLA

TLA is a recurs­ive acronym for Three Letter Acronym.
Which is pretty funny.
eTLA   —   eXten­ded Three Letter Acronym  —   used to describe four let­ter acronym.
Which is even fun­nier.
Note the use of best mar­ket­ing prac­tice with dropped ‘e’. Very kewl
Who said nerds don’t have any humour.

Article: The Future of Storage — Seven Fundamental Reasons Why FCoE Will Fail

An art­icle I wrote on con­cerns about FCoE adop­tion has been pos­ted at The Future of Storage and reviews seven reas­ons why FCoE might not achieve crit­ical mass in the mar­ket­place.
Feedback appre­ci­ated. Is any­one con­sid­er­ing using FCoE in real life ?

iSCSI Network Designs: Part 5 — iSCSI Multipathing, Host Bus Adapters, High Availability and Redundancy

This Post is Part of a Series  —  click for list on iscsi» In iSCSI Part 3  —  Server Side  —  iSCSI Host Bus Adapters and IP Performance I looked at how server side issues would affect the traffic gen­er­ated on a per server basis. I recom­men­ded that you use iSCSI HBAs for high intens­ity serv­ers to meet the high levels of per­form­ance.
The next […]

Aid to Seven Layer ISO Model

Over the years I have mem­or­ized the IOS seven layer model. But some­times I need to double think myself to check and I found this on Wikipedia

Network Dictionary — ASAi

ASAi  —  (ass-i)  —  The cor­rect plural term for more than one Cisco ASA fire­wall appliances.

Don’t Tell Me iSCSI Is Complicated if Fibrechannel Looks Like This

I am work­ing my way through the next couple of art­icles on iSCSI Network Design. Its get­ting com­plic­ated is some ways. I noticed this art­icle todayhttp://​vinf​.net/​2​0​0​8​/​0​4​/​0​9​/​h​o​w​-​d​o​e​s​-​a​n​-​h​p​-​f​i​b​r​e​-​c​h​a​n​n​e​l​-​v​i​r​t​u​a​l​-​c​o​n​n​e​c​t​-​m​o​dule-work/ explain­ing how Fibrechannel fail­over work for a HP Fibrechannel Virtual Connect in a blade server chassis. It is all rather con­fus­ing, and seem­ingly no more com­plex that the iSCSI net­work design. […]

iSCSI Network Designs: Part 4 — Fibrechannel Integration

This Post is Part of a Series  —  click for list on iscsi» , iscsi» Its pos­sible that you would already have some Fibrechannel in your estate. Perhaps the cost of Fibrechannel for some new serv­ers is too much when you cal­cu­late the HBA and Fibrechannel switch port costs, or you don’t need the com­plex­ity of Fibrechannel for […]

Nerdgasm: Cisco ACE Web Application Firewall Announced

Cisco announces the Web Application Features for the ACE module

Determine Which SFP Is Installed in Your Cisco Line Module

I needed to work out whether a SFP was installed into a C6500 line card today. (OK, so I don’t do this kind of thing very often) and it took me a few minutes to real­ise where I would get this information.

Network Dictionary — Pixen

pixen  —  (picks-​​​​sen)
The cor­rect term for a group of PIX fire­walls. I have decided that the cor­rect term is Pixen after banging my head on the desk for much of the day.
PIXen  —  derived from the term Vaxen The plural canon­ic­ally used among hack­ers for the DEC VAX com­puters
Terms deprec­ated as a res­ult of this advisory  —  

pixes
just looks naff

pix­ies
not usable in a cor­por­ate settings

pix
The plural […]

iSCSI Network Designs: Part 3 — Server Side — iSCSI Host Bus Adapters and IP Performance

This Post is Part of a Series  —  click for list on iscsi» I have been research­ing iSCSI impe­ment­a­tions on the server to try and under­stand the dffer­ence between them and to come to grips with how they work. This art­icle looks to com­pare the vari­ous meth­ods of con­nect­ing to a iSCSI net­work.
It seems that many people do […]

Network Dictionary — iSCSI

iSCSI  —  (eye-​​​​scuzzee)
 – a pro­tocol designed to trans­port SCSI block data across an IP net­work thus allow­ing a single net­work infra­struc­ture.
 –  a pro­tocol used by net­work­ing teams so they don’t have to under­stand stor­age (thanks to Jeff Darcy at Pl​.atyp​.us)
com­pare with Fibrechannel

Network Dictionary– Human Remorse

Human Remorse
Descriptive name for Human Resource depart­ment of any com­pany. Remorse means a sense of guilt or dis­tress for past wrongs, and that pretty much how you feel after deal­ing with them. Having to deal with Human Resources just feels wrong.

Data Networks — More Reliable to Than Storage Networks ?

I was par­ti­cip­at­ing in a stor­age design dis­cus­sion and a Storage per­son threw up their most com­mon com­plaint about net­work­ing  —  “we don’t know how to build reli­able net­works”. Let me take a shot at that.