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.

Interesting Switch Designs for Data Centre Racks From Juniper

I was review­ing the Juniper Virtual Chassis Technology and there are some very inter­est­ing designs pos­sible with their spe­cific stack­ing technology.

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.

The Ten Networking Commandments

If you run a Network team using these as a basis for busi­ness plan­ning and oper­a­tional excel­lence then you won’t go wrong.

Is EEM Ready for the Big Time ?

Can I use Embedded Event Manager as a tool for High Availability networking ?

Cisco Releasing Spam RFCs? And Discovery on IETF Informational RFCs

Why is M Foschiano from Cisco releas­ing Informational RFC’s to no real pur­pose ? Is this RFC Spam or some evil mar­ket­ing plot ?

Notes on Cisco Catalyst 6500 Architecture. (Or What Does 720 in Supervisor 720 Mean ?)

What does the ‘720’ in the Supervisor 720 stand for ? Or, what do you need to know about Cisco C6500 switch architecture.

Can You Learn Anything From Google or Facebook Data Centers ?

Google and Facebook have been puff­ing them­selves up about how clever they are at solv­ing tech­nical prob­lems. Is it just cheap mar­ket­ing, and is there actu­ally any­thing that Enterprise com­put­ing can learn from what they have shared ?

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.

What the Letters on 802.1 Ethernet Standards Stand For

A recent post from a mem­ber of the IEEE stand­ard finally tells us some­thing use­ful instead of keep­ing everything a secret.

Rant:Why Is the IEEE All About Secrecy ?

I’m not happy that IEEE hides much of the meet­ing and dis­cus­sions that pro­gress the stand­ards that affect all of us. Why does it have to be a secret ?

Mibi Mega Kibi Kilo — Decimal and Binary Prefixes

A mega­bit can be 1,000,000 bits or 1,048,576 bits depend­ing on whether you using decimal or bin­ary defin­i­tions. Standards have been defined to help — are you using the mib­i­b­yte and kib­i­b­yte in your documentation ?

Cisco IOS Order of Operation — Updated, Again

I often need to refer to the IOS order of oper­a­tion when I start stack­ing mul­tiple func­tions in an IOS configuration.

Design: Cisco Firewall Services Module Virtualization Design Traps

The Cisco Firewall Service Modules (FWSM) has a design lim­it­a­tion based on its abil­ity to dis­crim­in­ate packet for­ward­ing between mul­tiple con­texts. It also applies to ASA/​PIX soft­ware. Lets review this in detail and learn the evil consequences.

Cisco IOS Load Balancing for Blue Coat SGOS

Some time ago I used IOS SLB fea­ture on a C6500 to load bal­ance a pair of Blue Coat ProxySG. Here the con­fug­ur­a­tion and some notes.

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’.

Early Death of Cisco VPN Client Forces VPN License Fees

Cisco has ceased devel­op­ment on the IPSec VPN cli­ent, and shif­ted to push­ing the SSL VPN cli­ent. But that costs up to USD$125 per VPN cli­ent. Is that good for customers ?

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