Category: Networking

Trouble shoot with TDR

Reading Time: 5 minutes

This article is another example of trouble shooting by putting multiple pieces together. While it relies upon existing knowledge of the environment in which the article is based it should prove to be a good example of a trouble shooting process that will hopefully be able to spark some creative thinking the next time you have a problem that needs to be resolved.

The scenario starts out with a user ticket stating that the phone isn’t working. After some fact gathering the below details and possible solutions were outlined.
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Apps for a Network Engineer Part 1: MAC

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MAC for Network Engineers

I am not going to play bias in anyway towards any particular apps. I’m surely not going to get into the debate between Windows or Apple as a primary computer. In fact, I’ve spent the last 4 years using Windows exclusively for work due to work issued laptops and the lack of support for Mac in the companies I have worked with. However, I recently purchased a new Mac to get back to what I personally like best, with that, I had to rebuild my app repetoir for doing my job on a Macbook. This took some digging and searching to find apps similar to what I used on Windows. I’m still searching for all the app alternatives but I figured I could make this into a working document of my favorite apps in terms of network engineering.

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Tracked Static Default Route

Reading Time: 6 minutes

As common place in today’s networks redundancy is key. Applications are the key components to business obtaining revenue. More and more applications are becoming SaaS and ecommerce is here to stay. With that being said, many companies are moving to redundant connections to the internet. These connections could be through two different ISPs, or both connections to the same ISP. Often times these connections will be of different speeds to save on costs. The key to these connections is to maintain internet connectivity.

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Cisco OSPF MD5 Authentication

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Continuing with our OSPF and interior gateway protocols we will not look at an MD5 implementation utilizing OSPF on a Cisco router. We will again continue with our 3 router topology as used in both the EIGRP MD5 example and the OSPF plain text example. There are very few changes that will need to be made to our earlier OSPF example using plain text. The topology is as follows.

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Cisco OSPF Plain Text Authentication

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Continuing with our interior routing protocol discussion on authentication we are going to look at Cisco OSPF implementation of plain text authentication. While this isn’t the most widely used model for authentation with OSPF it is a viable option. The topology we are going to use is the same topology from the EIGRP authentication example. The steps may feel familiar as well.

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Router on a Stick

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The scenario looks like this. You’ve got a branch office with a single router connecting to your corporate office over the WAN. In your branch office you have a single layer 2 switch and a desire to separate traffic into multiple broadcast domains. Maybe you want an easy way to allow only HR computers to connect to a very specific branch office server and the only place for any restriction of traffic is on that branch office router. Here is where your router on a stick comes into play.

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Cisco DHCP Configuration

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DHCPTOPOLOGY

Cisco routers are capable of doing many more things than simply routing packets. In fact, it can operate as a small DHCP server when needed. By no means is it a replacement for your enterprise, centrally managed DHCP server but it does have its applicable scenarios. Lets say you have a branch office that has its own server for any particular reason. Maybe it is a local file share for an engineering departments CAD program and rather than having all file traffic from opens and saves traverse the WAN during the day, you simply run backs of that server across the WAN at night. Continue reading

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Static Routing with Cisco

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Routing is at the core of the network infrastructure. Routing is what ultimately lets you get from point A to point B not only in your own network, but also across the entirety of the world wide web. Routing in its simplest form tells your network devices the path to get to another network device located on another network. This was originally handled by creating static routes to the required destinations.

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Cisco HSRP Example

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Todays enterprise network is heavily focused on providing as near to 100% uptime as possible. Newer technologies such as virtualization and server clusters have been a focal point in achieving this level of service for some time now. However, an often missed opportunity to provide that level of service exists in the core of your infrastructure. Many medium size organizations will implement a server monitoring resource to measure and track the uptime on their core applications and infrastructure servers such as DHCP, DNS, SharePoint, Active Directory, and so on. Often times this monitoring server is located within the data center, and likely on the same subnets as the servers themselves. This can quickly skew your uptime numbers in the sense of “can my users reach the servers?”. While true, the uptime of the servers may be near 100% from the standpoint of the monitoring system, that does not indicate the ability for your users to reach the servers, or in the same concept, your servers to reach your users. Enter default gateway redundancy.

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Cisco OSPF Virtual Link Example

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In my chase for CCNP I came across virtual links while studying for the CCNP ROUTE exam. When I first read through the concept I was slightly lost during the description. However, upon a couple of runs through a lab it became clear on how easy the were. Before I list the condensed two step (or focus points if you will) to look at let’s look at what a virtual link is and why we would use it.
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