Cisco — My EtherealMind

Rant: Who Is Cisco’s Customer ? Me or the Reseller ?

28th July 2011 By Greg Ferro 7 Comments

I resent the fact that Cisco partners get more information than Customers on Cisco’s website. Shows you who Cisco thinks the Customer really is.

What special powers do resellers have that makes them more effective ?

How does withholding information from Customers give a better outcome ?

Me ? Many resellers are not competent enough to be business and need a headstart to be useful to customers. Without some sort of “special needs” assistance, they wouldn’t be in the race.

Too harsh ? IBM and HP don’t rely on resellers to win business. Why does Cisco ?

Filed Under: Opinion, Outbursts, Rant Tagged With: Cisco, industry, Rant

Cisco C6500 Service Modules – Not My Choice, Now.

19th June 2011 By Greg Ferro 10 Comments

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.

Filed Under: Blessay, Cisco, Design Tagged With: Cisco, Design, network design

Basics: Cisco IOS Native VLANs

9th June 2011 By Greg Ferro 10 Comments

Cisco IOS and Native VLANs – some brief notes to myself.

Filed Under: Basics Tagged With: Cisco, IOS

Cisco Nexus Power Supplies | Lots of Flexibility

6th June 2011 By Greg Ferro 3 Comments

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.

Filed Under: Blog, Cisco Tagged With: Cisco

Cisco IOS: What Is VLAN 1002 – 1005 Used for ?

5th June 2011 By Greg Ferro 11 Comments

Why does a Cisco IOS SX switch not let you use VLANs 1002 − 1005 ?

Filed Under: Basics, Cisco Tagged With: Cisco, Operation

EIGRP Goodbye Message

29th May 2011 By Greg Ferro 2 Comments

Found this in the Cisco IOS 15.1M manuals today

IP Routing: EIGRP Configuration Guide, Cisco IOS Release 15.1M&T

Goodbye Message

The goodbye message is a feature designed to improve EIGRP network convergence. The goodbye message is broadcast when an EIGRP routing process is shut down to inform adjacent peers about the impending topology change. This feature allows supporting EIGRP peers to synchronize and recalculate neighbor relationships more efficiently than would occur if the peers discovered the topology change after the hold timer expired.

Filed Under: Blog, Operation Tagged With: Cisco, Operation

IOS Memory Tables Removed From Documentation

28th May 2011 By Greg Ferro Leave a Comment

From IOS 15.1M&T release notes at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/15_1/release/notes/151TFEAT.html Memory Recommendations The memory recommendation tables have been removed from the Cisco IOS Release 15.1M&T release notes to improve the usability of the release notes documentation. The memory recommendations that were provided by these tables are available through Cisco Feature Navigator. So the only way to check the [...]

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Cisco, IOS

Show Ip Eigrp Topology All

22nd May 2011 By Greg Ferro Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Cisco, Operation Tagged With: Cisco, cli, IOS, Operation

EOL/EOS for the Cisco NAC Network Module (Clean Access) – Cisco Systems

18th May 2011 By Greg Ferro 5 Comments

Makes me wonder if Cisco’s commitment to Network Modules is a thing of the past. I would think that the cost of appliances is cheaper and easier to build (because of merchant silicon/commodity hardware whereas the ongoing development of the modules would be relatively difficult.

Filed Under: Blog, Opinion Tagged With: Cisco

Fate Sharing, Failure Domains and Why VTP Is Awesome

20th April 2011 By Greg Ferro 34 Comments

A lot of people regard Virtual Trunking Protocol(VTP) as nothing but trouble. Indeed, it’s hard to find many people who will implement it on their network. I find this baffling – it’s a great tool that dramatically reduces time, errors, and troubleshooting is something that we should all embrace and use wherever we can. Naturally, with great power comes great evil. So, lets be clever instead.

Filed Under: Blessay, Blog, Design, Operation Tagged With: Cisco, Design, Operation