Network design, architecture, thinking, working. Tech.
There is a significant numbers of ASA5110 chassis that have been reworked to look and act like ASA5520 or ASA5540 firewalls. Refer this bug toolkit for more details.
Why does Nexus NXOS use ‘switchto’ instead of ‘changeto’ for the CLI ?
In recent months I seem to have hit a lot of bugs in Cisco software. Across the board on the main software releases of IOS, NX-OS or IOS-SX I seem to be hitting a wide range of bugs, and some of them are pretty stupid. And I’ve realised that, in recent years, it has become so commonplace, so accepted that we actually plan our projects with time to test, locate and check for bugs. And that’s become an expensive and time-consuming problem.
Why do we put up with this ?
It’s not common knowledge that Cisco Press publish errata on their website that list the errors in their textbooks. And especially the more complicated textbooks, its reasonably easy for mistakes to get introduced between the author, reviewer and editor and the publishing process. You can find the errata like this:
Recently I noticed that Cisco is selling “Fabric Ethernet Transceivers” for the Nexus switch family. Some research shows that these are replacements for 10GBaseSX SFP modules. Importantly, it’s cheaper to install new cabling than to buy 10BaseSR SFP+ modules.
These all suggest that the time for planning and designing Service Modules is over. There are no suggestions that service modules for the Nexus 7000 will be developed that I can see. I can prognosticate that it would slow down the development of the core switch / route / performance functions, and it will be some years before those core capabilities is complete enough that service modules would become viable product development tasks — they might be in development, but not much chance of going into production. [^1]
Do I sound bitter about Service Modules ? A bit. I’ve had a number of hard to solve problems that lasted months before code fixes arrived. I’ve been fan of the NAM but the price is now far removed from it’s practical value. USD$30K List is way over priced for its capabilities and even with a 30% discount, you can buy a lot of network management systems that deliver much better functions and features for that price.
When you first receive a router from a Cisco warehouse, it comes with a complete collection of IOS add ons. A common question is whether these files are used for anything ?
In years gone by, power supplies for chassis switches were notoriously complicated. Some work with 110V only, some with 240V. Couldn’t be combined with other power supplies – all models identical. This led to lots of piles of spare power supplies in the corner of the data centre somewhere hoping they could be reused one day.
So it’s refreshing to see the flexibility of the power supplies for the Nexus 7000.
Why does a Cisco IOS SX switch not let you use VLANs 1002 − 1005 ?
Once upon a time the command was “show ip eigrp topology” to show EIGRP topology, now it’s “show ip eigrp topology all” and the old command show only Feasible Successors.
