In the recent weeks, J. Michael Metz from Cisco entered a ****ing contest with my friend Greg and decided to prove that the FCoE standards are done.
Blessay: On Stackable / Fixed vs Chassis / Modular Ethernet Switches
27 February 2010 By 17 Comments
The debate on Stackable vs Chassis based switches has a long and proud pedigree. Here is my addition to the debate.
Nerdgasm: OmniGraffle on the iPad [the Omni Mouth:iPad or Bust!]
30 January 2010 By 2 Comments
Is This the Year of 10 Gigabit Ethernet in the LAN ?
6 January 2010 By 6 Comments
A number of switch vendors have announced (and they are certainly hoping) that 10Gb Ethernet is the THING for 2010. Really ?
Cynicism and Regret Are Powerful Design Tools
30 November 2009 By 7 Comments
Cisco, EMC, VMware – Living Together Isn’t the Same as Married
4 November 2009 By 2 Comments
What the Letters on 802.1 Ethernet Standards Stand For
3 November 2009 By Leave a Comment
Rant:Why Is the IEEE All About Secrecy ?
23 October 2009 By Leave a Comment
Blessay:VTP Version 3.0 – Is VTP Making a Comeback ?
10 August 2009 By 8 Comments
Blessay: Designing Enterprise DMZ and Multilayer Firewall Clusters
2 August 2009 By 17 Comments
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’.
Network Diagrams:Zones on a Diagram With Visio Shape Union
31 July 2009 By 6 Comments
Network Diagrams: Drawing Freehand Curves (and Then Fixing Them)
23 March 2009 By 5 Comments
Continuing on with absurdly popular posts about making diagrams in Visio. Lets draw a line in freehand. It will be broken, because we aren’t artists so lets talk about how to fix it.
Network Diagrams: Drawing the Background Shape
6 March 2009 By 11 Comments
This post looks at how to draw the background shape and shaping following my previous posts on drawing network diagrams.
Design: Lack of Choice Improves Client Outcomes
8 September 2008 By 1 Comment
One of the prime criteria for a design process is to search for and evaluate design choices. But research suggest that excessive choice actually produces negative outcomes, its hardwired into the human brain. Therefore a Network Designer needs to ensure that they are overriding their natural instinct.
Configuring Windows 2003 / XP SP2 to Use IOS NTP Server
10 June 2008 By 7 Comments
In certain networks, it is difficult to get the time on your servers to be exactly the same as the NTP time on your network equipment. In this case, you want to force the Windows servers to use the same NTP Network time source as your routers and switches. But Microsoft Windows doesn’t understand NTP [...]
Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) – Introduction and Comparison With F5
25 January 2008 By 15 Comments
My new interest of the moment is the Cisco Application Control Engine or ACE module. I have just received a pair of them and planning on starting the configuration in the next couple of days. So perhaps some discussion on the ACE is in order, and why I am considering using both F5 LTM AND the Cisco ACE in this network.
