27 August 2010

The Ancient and Noble Art of Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting, it’s something we all do. It may be your parents Internet connection, the company photocopier, your kid’s car or the core network of a medium sized bank. However, troubleshooting is not like that, it’s more like football, years of watching and playing does not guarantee to make you a superstar. However, with troubleshooting, just like football, it does teach you enough so you have an opinion on how it should be done.

Capturing VLAN Tagged Packets and Microsoft Windows

Turns out the Windows Network driver implementation are so loose and uncontrolled that there is no consistent behaviour when capturing packets with VLAN tags.

Always Fill a Rack From the Bottom Up

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Safety Tip that you may not have thought about when installing new kit into racks.

Maximum Number of Insertions for GBICs

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Ever thought about whether a GBIC has a maximum number of insertions into a transceiver ? Surprising answer follows…..

Why Buy Dual Supervisors on Cisco Nexus 7000 ?

One reason you’ve never thought of for buying dual supervisors for the Nexus 7000, or even the Catalyst 6500.

Control CPU Usage in GNS3 / Dynamips With Process Lasso

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have been a user of Dynamips/GNS3 for several years now and I can’t imagine what I would do without it. I use it for doing Proof Of Concept work and for Studying. This tip looks at managing CPU utilisation on Windows.

Sharing Ideas – GLBP and HSRP

John McManus kicks off writing at EtherealMind with a look HSRP and GLBP First Hop Redundancy Protocols.

How to Create a Strong Yet Memorable Password.

We’re often told ‘make sure you use a good password’. When we change our passwords at work we’re often forced to add random characters into it to make it more complicated. This can have a detrimental effect on how how easy it is to remember. For a rant on the importance of passwords being memorabl

Best Technique for Date Formatting and the Global Problem – ISO8601

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When working in a global company, a major problem is the way that some countries use the wrong date formatting. Say hello to ISO8601, standard for date formats.

Network ZEN: OSPF or EIGRP

Network Zen on choosing OSPF or EIGRP routing protocols

Google: Meet Skipfish, Our Automated Web Security Scanner. Security Industry – You Failed.

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Google releases Skipfish into open source for automated web security scanning. The fact that this exists is an inditement on IT Security and their failure to address threats.

Average IP Packet Size | Slaptijack

“Yesterday, I calculated the average packet size for one of the networks I work on using data from 263986M “

Review: robtex.com – DNS and Peering Tool

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An astonishing resource that provide a lot details on BGP AS, IP addressing, ownership, whois, DNS checking and much more.

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.

Security: ASA Version 8.3.1 Released

Cisco releases ASA Ver 8.3.1. Major changes to NAT and memory upgrade needed.

The Ten Networking Commandments

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

Rant: Which of These 10GB Adapters Is Not the Same ?

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Look at the these network adapters. One for Server, and one for a Cisco firewall. One costs five times more than the other. Can you pick which one ?

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?