OS X:Using Web Kit for HTTP, Website Analysis and Network Testing

Safari (or Webkit) has a neat debugging feature built in. It is available in both OS X and Windows versions. When testing performance of websites through application inspection on firewalls or load balancer it can be a useful tool to get visibility. Read more

Domain Tasting Looking Dead - at Last ICANN Is Doing Something

ICANN posted today that AGP deletes are down 84% which means that abuse of the so-called “domain tasting” system is looking dead.

ICANN | AGP Deletes Down by 84%

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Using the Wrong Date Formatting and the Global Problem - ISO8601

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. Read more

Rant: SecureCRT - Too Expensive - Alternatives Putty, Tera Term ?

SecureCRT is a common choice for SSH Client for MS Windows. I want to buy SecureCRT but its too expensive. Way too expensive. Or is it just me ? Read more

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 ? Read more

TCP SYN Cookies - DDoS Defence

A TCP SYN Cookie is typically used in DDoS engines and load balancers to create another level of protocol security for Denial of Service attacks. Lets take a quick dive through the technology. Read more

Rant:Managing Is Easy Compared to Technical Life

Not everyone will be a good manager, but very few people will ever be a good, I mean _really_ good, technician or engineer. You should be willing to pay for that.

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Blessay: IT Training Lessons From the Olympics

While the current Olympics is about as interesting as reviewing firewall rules, the current success of first world nations shows that money CAN buy you success. I’m hoping IT Managers can learn training lessons from this. Read more

How to Make a Network Cable - wikiHow

Found this guide, which is well done. Everyone who works in networking should make a cable at least once to understand. It builds tolerance of the cabling guys.

How to Make a Network Cable - wikiHow

Upgraded to 320GB HDD in My MacBook Pro

I just upgraded the disk drive in my Mac Book to 320 GB (from 160Gb) and it could not have been easier.
I can’t believe how simple this was using Mac OS X. No restore or data migration, just a simple backup and then install the drive. Boot and back in business…… Read more

IOS: Setting the TCP Timeout on IOS

One of my favourite default commands on IOS is “ip tcp synwait 5″. Lets look into this command and why you might like to use it as well.

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Cisco Security Manager - Shortcut to Restarting Services

If you work with CiscoWorks, you often need to restart services for changes to take effect. This tip shows how to chain the stop and the start together on Microsoft Windows. Read more

CSM, IDSM, ADSM Performance Problems or Memory Errors ? Increase Java Memory.

I have been getting out of memory errors in Java when running CSM and ASDM clients on MS Windows platforms. Here are some tips for improving Java performance, and letting you run more than one Java program / applet at the same time. Read more

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.

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Catalyst 6500 Serial Number - Where Is It ?

Simple but sweet, this just shows you how to get the serial number for all the modules in your Catalyst 6500 switch. Read more

Serial Console on OSX

Serial Communication in OSX Terminal

I knew it had to be possible to view serial data in the OSX terminal window, but I’m not enough of a unix geek to figure it out. Finally, a little googling told me what I needed to know. Here’s how to read and send serial data from the terminal in OSX. (just like hyperterminal on windows)

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Blue Coat ProxySG VIP and Cisco Switches Need Multicast Enabled

You have a pair of shiny new ProxySG boxen that you want to setup in active / standby for high availability. You configure it up and everything seems to work, and then it doesn’t, or other equipment on the same network experiences random problems.

What you are having is a Multicast problem with your Ethernet switches, most likely your Cisco switches, that has the problem. How to understand and solve the problem after the jump.

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IOS CLI: Show Run Linenum

You probably know this one already, but I have been typing “wr t” for a long time and never stopped to look. Puts a line number at the side of the config so you can say to the person on the other end of the phone, see line 10……….

r2#sh run linenum
Building configuration…

Current configuration : 3057 bytes
1 : !
2 : upgrade fpd auto
3 : version 12.4
4 : service nagle
5 : no service pad
6 : service tcp-keepalives-in
7 : service tcp-keepalives-out
8 : service timestamps debug datetime msec localtime show-timezone
9 : service timestamps log datetime msec localtime show-timezone
10 : service password-encryption
11 : service sequence-numbers
12 : !
13 : hostname r2
14 : !
15 : boot-start-marker
16 : boot-end-marker
17 : !

They think of everything these days. I suspect that cheap and large flash in your routers means that useful commands are now possible. I must start looking for them more often.

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