Blessay: On CCIE Core Knowledge Waivers. The HP Fallout Continues. — UPDATED

I’m bet­ting that the CCIE Core Knowledge Question waivers is because of HP. Oh, and mak­ing money.

Blessay: Autonegotiation on Ethernet — It Works, It Should Be Mandatory!

EVERYONE — Autosensing on eth­er­net works just fine, and all man­u­fac­tur­ers recom­mend using auto­sensing. Why aren’t you !

Lets look at how it works and why you should be using it.

Blessay:Firewalls Are Like Noses:Everyone’s Got One.

The thing about fire­walls is that all net­works have them. Once, fire­wall expert­ise was rare and a spe­cial job focus. Now, fire­walls are like noses — everyone’s got one.

Blessay: On Stackable /​ Fixed vs Chassis /​ Modular Ethernet Switches

The debate on Stackable vs Chassis based switches has a long and proud ped­i­gree. Here is my addi­tion to the debate.

What Might It Mean if Cisco Dumps HP as Certified Partner ?

Thinking through the impact of the breakup between Cisco and HP as announced on Silicon Angle.

Designer or Engineer, Artist or Painter

Are you a painter or an artist ? Are you an engin­eer or a designer ? Can you Paint with a Hammer?

Key Change for Cisco IOS 15 — Feature Licensing and How We Work.

Welcome to IOS 15, Feature licens­ing and com­plic­ated main­ten­ance procedures.…

Blessay: Why I Think IP Telephony Is Over (and I’m Not Studying CCIE Voice)

I think that IP Telephony is over and the whole idea of in house PBX is gently fad­ing away to be replaced by Presence and Mobile phones.

Blessay: FCoE Is JUST a Transition Technology

Chris Evans believes that “FCoE” will rule the world. Hah. I believe it’s just a trans­ition tech­no­logy that drags Storage out of it’s closed, pro­pri­et­ary mind­set into the open col­lab­or­at­ive world. Data Networks can eas­ily adapt.

Blessay: Lessons to Be Learned From Nortel’s Death Throes

A couple of days ago I explained how cyn­icism and regret are valu­able think­ing pro­cesses for a Network Designer. The long fore­seen fail­ure and sub­sequent breakup of Nortel presents a oppor­tun­ity to look back with regret and learn cyn­ical les­sons for the future.

FCoE Isn’t a Replacement for Infiniband, It’s a Cheaper Copy That Customers Will Buy

There is some mis­con­cep­tion by many in the stor­age industry that FCoE is some type of replace­ment for Infiniband. My view is that FCoE is cheaper, dumber but MARKETABLE alternative.

Rant: People Are Not Valuable or Why I Don’t Attend Office Parties

I am often asked to attend parties with my co-​​workers for people who are leav­ing, Christmas or team parties. Then I real­ised how little it really mattered and got on with my life.

Blessay: Working for a Reseller or End User Is Different Like Doctoring and Parenting

Where you choose to work in the Networking Industry can come to down to a simple choice: Are you a Doctor or a Parent ?

Blessay: Sixty Five Percent — Cisco’s Gross Profit Margin

Lets be hon­est, there are many things that Cisco does well, and some things that Cisco doesn’t do well. Somebody once said that being a suc­cess­ful com­pany is to do more good things than bad.
For me, one area that is becom­ing a big­ger and big­ger design prob­lem is the price on Cisco products. Recently I took more notice of […]

Putty, the Command Line and NO Clicky Clicky

While it may be a per­sonal pref­er­ence for me, I believe that you should only use the mouse when you don’t know what are doing. If you have a repet­it­ive task, then click­ing the same thing over and over shows that you are poor engin­eer. Lets hack putty to work from the com­mand line.

Blessay:VTP Version 3.0 — Is VTP Making a Comeback ?

VTP Version 3.0  —  Is VTP mak­ing a comeback ?
I found this doc­u­ment at Cisco​.com today about VTPv3. What ? VTPv3 ? I had to dig into that.

Blessay: Designing Enterprise DMZ and Multilayer Firewall Clusters

In mod­ern Enterprise net­works, you typ­ic­ally have many clusters of fire­walls pro­tect­ing assets in your net­work. Since we use two or more lay­ers of fire­walls, we can put our DMZ for inter­me­di­ate secur­ity zones in dif­fer­ent places in our net­work. Lets gather together the dif­fer­ent options and con­sider the mer­its or not, and some­times how they ‘self-​​build’.

The Case Against FCoE and Fibrechannel — a Reasonably Complete View

A num­ber of stor­age blog­gers have been ques­tion­ing the rel­ev­ance of FCoE and why would you bother with it. Given the size of mar­ket­ing budgets push­ing FCoE and the real­ity dis­tor­tion this gen­er­ates, lets look at the case AGAINST FCoE.

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