tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79983121681155315772011-08-07T10:12:25.960-04:00Networking, technology, and the like...Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.comBlogger401100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-59710030725303566242011-07-23T15:52:00.006-04:002011-07-23T16:28:37.725-04:00

Well, it's been a while since I've updated this blog, but my CCIE studies continue, and I'm always on the lookout for new and exciting advances in the networking arena. Today marks the official 'release' or ratification of the new protocol TRILL (also known as Routing Bridges or RBridges). Here are the RFCs that were just released that relate to TRILL:Routing Bridges (RBridges): Base Protocol

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-87554124161489263322011-04-12T10:53:00.003-04:002011-04-12T11:05:50.762-04:00

So finally Cisco has released their coveted IOU (IOS On Unix) that has been internal only to Cisco for many years. In a nutshell, it is an emulator that can run any normal IOS code as it would on actual equipment.The catch now is that they are releasing it under Cisco Learning Labs, and you can't just download the software yourself to use, you must rent labs like you would for an actual rack of

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-72653316068898710502011-02-08T13:22:00.003-05:002011-02-08T13:59:44.555-05:00

Well the IEEE Task Group for 802.11ac has been making good progress, and has recently announced that they hope to have a draft completed by 2011 and products supporting the draft standard by 2012.The new 802.11ac standard is the next upcoming WiFi protocol that will support speeds up to 1Gig speeds. From what I can decipher so far, it appears to be achieving the high throughput utilizing 256-QAM

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-16343811664848138902011-02-05T16:58:00.003-05:002011-02-05T17:04:54.382-05:00

I recently stumbled across this gem while randomly perusing networking forums. This guide, created by Krzysztof Załęski at http://inetcon.org/blog/, uses a technique called 'mind mapping', and I'm a fan of it for quick technology refreshing.Check out his blog for updates to the guide, or download the guide here:http://inetcon.org/study/CCIE_RS_Quick_Review_Kit.pdf

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-22253241832471646802011-02-02T17:42:00.002-05:002011-02-02T17:57:19.452-05:00

Well as made pretty clear from the media recently, the shortage of IPv4 address space is getting close to 'no more' IPv4 address space. Within the past week, APNIC requested the last two available /8 networks to be distributed in its region. The five remaining /8's are now about to be distributed equally (per an ICANN policy) to each of the five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), which are

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-83908925421058093412010-11-09T16:55:00.002-05:002010-11-09T17:03:10.205-05:00

Well I'm not sure how 'hot-off-the-press' this actually is, but I received an automated email from Cisco that the new Cisco Product Quick Reference Guide for 2010 (August) has been released. It can be downloaded for free here (of course after signing up through another form): http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/qrg/index.html.According to the PDF details it was last modified on October 22, so its

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-59444258295746708592010-10-20T12:21:00.004-04:002010-10-20T12:55:38.137-04:00

Well I've got some great news from yesterday, I passed the CCIE Routing and Switching written exam on the first attempt! I spent pretty much the entire past month constantly reading whenever I had the chance, including most of my free time on the weekends, and it paid off!I have to say though, about a third of the way through the exam I felt like I was bombarded with these strange L2 switching

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-63833014317972833112010-09-28T22:31:00.002-04:002010-09-28T22:39:50.545-04:00

Well its been a month since I've posted here, but after I finished up my CCIP, I went ahead a took the CVOICE exam (for the CCNA Voice certification) and passed. Certainly some good news there, although nothing that great :P.As for the past couple weeks now, I've been hittin the books hard for the CCIE R&S Written exam. I ended up purchasing the INE Written Video-On-Demand series to help speed

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-10573338112099761952010-09-28T22:18:00.002-04:002010-09-28T22:31:10.268-04:00

It was just announced to day by Kundra, the new 'Federal CIO', that ALL Federal agencies have native IPv6 connectivity to public services, including Web, Email, DNS, and their Internet gateways. Equally interesting is the fact that the Federal agencies have 2 years to comply with the 'due date' of September 30, 2012.Quite the game changer when it comes to IPv6 adoption, which has been painfully

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-87697320106417840982010-08-31T14:39:00.003-04:002010-08-31T14:49:18.488-04:00

Some more good news today, I passed the MPLS exam which completes the requirements for the CCIP certification. I had actually taken the exam last week, but failed 780/1000 (passing score of 790 needed). I was actually quite shocked that I had failed since I considered the exam fairly easy by the time I had finished. Basically I spent a bit too much time on some questions that didn't matter,

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-54957341077233296362010-08-11T15:52:00.002-04:002010-08-11T15:58:06.308-04:00

Another one down! This one was fairly easy, a few 'Cisco centric' type questions which I know I didn't get right (why I scored below my goal of 900+ points), but overall was a decent exam. Simulations in this guy were very straightforward, no surprises there.Onto the MPLS exam now (the last one remaining in my CCIP quest). Already scheduled it for 2 weeks out (August 25th), and don't expect

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-91795344457413126042010-07-21T14:49:00.004-04:002010-07-23T12:51:36.505-04:00

Well I just got back from taking the 'Configuring BGP on Cisco Routers' exam, and I passed! I attended the Global Knowledge class for this exam, and I used that material mainly for studying. The class and instructor (Al Friebe) were pretty good, however it was really just a basic review for my current knowledge level (filled in a few cracks here and there).Overall the exam was decent, it wasn't

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-90649867412528539582010-06-18T12:21:00.003-04:002010-06-18T12:25:26.835-04:00

Pretty good read about the research that has been done by Merit and U of Michigan on the effects of advertising the 1.0.0.0/8 network into the public Internet. And of course there's lots of misconfigured systems and other garbage data to that network, which is amounting to 130-150Mbit/s of traffic!APNIC, who has been allocated this range by IANA, is going to have fun dishing this one out, hah!

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-22116528875309633172010-05-17T22:48:00.004-04:002010-05-24T12:49:29.699-04:00

Last week I attended a Global Knowledge course CVOICE (passing the exam gets you a CCNA Voice, and it's also apart of the CCVP curriculum). Overall it was a pretty good class, and I had a great teacher (Patrick Le).The class went over a lot of the basics, giving a broad overview of POTS telephony and VoIP. We started out going over the basics of POTS, and configuring T1 CAS and ISDN PRIs. We

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-57881427511749674782010-05-06T11:54:00.002-04:002010-05-06T11:59:57.463-04:00

Some news about Cisco's OEQ section of the CCIE R&S and Voice Lab exams has just started circulating the blogs this morning. It appears that Cisco is removing them from the lab altogether. Comes as a relief to many because of their ambiguity and weight on the exam.Not exactly surprising as not too long ago there was a bit of an uproar over Cisco's announcement that their 360 training program

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-85261719479759173252010-04-05T00:05:00.002-04:002010-04-05T00:28:08.343-04:00

So my blog posts have been a bit scarce lately, but that will be changing soon. Part of the reason is I've been spending an enormous amount of time researching the latest and greatest computer parts for a new build I'm working on. The good news is that I'm finally finishing up the top-end computer build (it'll be able to handle loads of GNS3/Dynamips processing). Build details:- Intel Core i7

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-2812543920694334022010-03-15T21:49:00.002-04:002010-03-15T22:00:56.446-04:00

I just came across this amazing blog post from Scott Berkun (www.scottberkun.com) titled "The Cult of Busy" (http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2010/the-cult-of-busy/).It's the perfect description of some of my own thoughts about how people manage their time; who's good at it and who isn't; and why the 'busy' people aren't necessarily who you want/should associate with.It's unfortunate that most

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-84716983414413263272010-03-10T10:15:00.002-05:002010-03-10T10:30:56.208-05:00

Just a couple quick news updates... Cisco's 'big announcement' yesterday was about the CRS-3 (3x the speed as the CRS-1): http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/prod_030910.html. A lot of people were surprised and let down by the news of this, as it doesn't apply to anyone except for the large IXCs. Considering that the carriers who could afford this beast already knew about it months ago (and AT&T

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-15032756010478566182010-01-28T20:32:00.002-05:002010-01-28T20:46:03.980-05:00

Another very interesting Internet Draft was posted today:http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-l3vpn-2547bis-mcast-10In todays MPLS VPN networks, multicast isn't natively supported, but there are some duct-tape workarounds to get it to work (MDT with GRE). Finally a more permanent solution is coming, albeit at the cost of some pretty complex functionality (luckily only in the SP network).A bit

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-26667498626584453782010-01-06T21:44:00.002-05:002010-01-06T21:52:15.582-05:00

Extending ICMP for Interface and Next-hop IdentificationThis is quite the interesting draft that was just posted. Starting out my career from an Operations standpoint, I can definitely tell the authors of this draft are also quite familiar with the struggles of Operations. Seems as though there are so many folks in the IT/Networking field that just don't understand the hurdles there in

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-78413352083862942922009-12-28T13:02:00.003-05:002010-01-06T21:55:01.477-05:00

A few days ago there was a IETF draft posted about the future of Internet routing architectures, and their recommendation (still in draft, so there is no written recommendation yet). It's a pretty good read, and very interesting to see what ideas are out there for a more secure, reliable, and scalable Internet routing architecture. The link to the draft is below:Recommendation for a Routing

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-72719388168742640402009-12-11T10:45:00.003-05:002009-12-11T11:17:46.045-05:00

There have been a couple pretty big announcements in the past few days about new wireless standards currently in the works, and are steadily on track *fingers crossed*. First off the new 802.11 standard 802.11ac is the next-gen WLAN standard that is working to achieve speeds of 1+ Gigabit/s. It's still fairly early in the standardization process, but it will be using the 5ghz spectrum (the

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-19422883726812608562009-11-17T11:54:00.003-05:002009-11-17T12:02:18.545-05:00

Well I just took the last of 4 exams for the NP today, which was the ISCW for me, and I passed 924/1000! Finally got it out of the way after a couple hiatus's the past 1.5 years (mostly work related). Looking back, it seems like it wasn't all that difficult, and I should have pushed myself harder to get it finished sooner. But now I think I'll go for the CCIP, and I'll be sure to not give

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-25945832500214628342009-11-09T16:26:00.004-05:002010-03-04T12:10:06.944-05:00

Routers“sh ip wccp” – Displays counters related to redirected packets“sh ip wccp 61[62] detail” – Displays redirect packet counts, and WCCP connection uptime“sh ip wccp 61[62] view” – Displays other known WCCP devices in the LAN“sh ip wccp int counts”- Displays redirected packet counters per interface“service-module Int1/0 session” – Creates console connection to NME-WAE“no ip wccp 61[62]” –

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-29270799916430232522009-10-04T21:29:00.002-04:002009-10-04T21:41:04.442-04:00

Seems as though Cisco quietly released the new major code version from 12.4 to 15.0.http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/15_0/15_0_1_m/15_0_1_m_newfeatlist.htmlTime to get testing with it, and from the looks of CCO, all the code versions for the different ISRs are available for download. Also about the different code version downloads, listed are 1900, 2900, and 3900 series routers. Looks like

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-70040213528034801232009-09-12T17:31:00.002-04:002009-09-12T17:37:26.612-04:00

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/091109-80211n-approved.html?hpg1=bn7 years later, 802.11n is officially a standard. Hopefully they didn't miss anything!

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-77564102895904460732009-08-20T23:12:00.007-04:002009-08-21T00:53:35.070-04:00

A new RFC was just released: Dynamic Hostname Exchange Mechanism for OSPF - RFC 5642A nice little addition that hopefully will make it into the future code versions of Cisco/etc devices. Much like the ISIS protocol that can pass along the hostname of the neighboring device, this RFC proposes the same concept for OSPF. Will be nice to not have to rely on DNS (often can be outdated, etc [at least

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-88044216728917870672009-08-20T10:05:00.003-04:002009-08-20T10:11:55.741-04:00

Came across another article about networking in space. This time it's NASA showing off that they have more bandwidth to the moon than I do at my house! 100Mbps speeds from a microwave amp made by L3 Comm and NASA, unbelievable! It will be able to transfer 461GB per day of images and data from the Moon back to Earth. That's a lot of Moon data!Here's the link to the article: http://

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-11887077031230506142009-08-01T18:33:00.004-04:002009-08-01T18:48:32.602-04:00

Been slacking lately with posting here, but in good reason I believe. A couple weeks ago I was promoted to the network design group, and have been tasked with researching WAN optimization products for our customer. Had to put my ISCW studying to the side for a bit while I get up to speed with WAN optimization.Hopefully soon I'll have some good info about the intensive testing/evaluation I'm

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-17675351600907655392009-07-14T23:56:00.003-04:002009-07-15T00:09:30.224-04:00

This article is a few days old on the IEEE Spectrum webpage, but it's about NASA testing the Delay Tolerant Network protocol that has been developed for space communications and is currently being tested (link: Interplanetary Internet Tested). Pretty fascinating about the challenges the engineers are working with when it comes to inter-networking in outer space. According to the article, eight

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-41994722556545048712009-06-29T13:10:00.002-04:002009-06-29T13:17:25.923-04:00

Cisco just announced today a new certification, the Cisco Certified Architect (CCA). Requires a valid CCIE and CCDE, and picked through an application process. Sounds pretty intense, but it should be interesting to see what kind of results the new track churns out. Some initial feedback from current CCIEs seems to be a bit melancholy since they are no longer 'at the top'.I better get crackin

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-60692901354484740332009-06-22T10:01:00.002-04:002009-06-22T10:17:13.721-04:00

Pretty interesting read over at the WSJ about the Internet to Iran, and how they are blocking/censoring/inspecting packets: Iran's Web Spying Aided By Western Technology.I was a bit appalled at the fact that the Siemens and Nokia joint venture that created the solution for the Iranian government to do DPI on the entire Iranian Internet connection. But as the article quotes from a spokesperson

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-77484144271569739592009-06-22T09:37:00.005-04:002009-06-25T23:29:19.873-04:00

I recently found a new trick that was posted in Shivlu's blog on how to eliminate OSPF External routes from entering the domain: http://shivlu.blogspot.com/2009/06/eradicate-ospf-external-routes.html.The idea behind this method is to create a virtual loopback interface that has the same IP subnet of the customer network beyond the connected interface. You then apply the 'ip ospf network

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-20834907649974073682009-06-11T12:23:00.005-04:002009-06-22T11:01:32.660-04:00

There are multiple ways to limit or cut off an OSPF autonomous system from sending or receiving updates. There are a couple ways to stop updates from being sent out an interface, and there’s the concept of stubby areas that have varying levels of limiting LSAs.Some of the reasons why a network engineer might want to enable these features are: stopping updates from being sent out an interface

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-20765826431353027662009-05-14T17:06:00.000-04:002009-05-14T17:30:33.885-04:00

Here are some more EEM scripts that I had saved up from a while ago, might be useful to someone else...### This applet will configure a new 2nd Generation VWIC card (upgrading from a 1st gen VWIC) after the box is powered back on (after the tech has inserted the new card). IOS version 12.4(10.8)T or greater is needed for the 'pattern' command, in line 1.5, to work. ### event manager applet eem-

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-9623255067656372072009-05-13T15:51:00.000-04:002009-05-13T17:26:52.659-04:00

This is just sort of a quicky post on EEM...I deal a lot of multicast at work, and if you've ever tried managing a multicast network you'd understand the pain and complexity it takes to manage it. Not too long ago I came up with an EEM script to monitor a multicast stream, and to send a syslog notification if it ever drops below a certain threshold:event manager applet eem-LoBW-MulticastSender

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-63412852907998098012009-05-13T15:45:00.000-04:002009-05-13T15:49:58.536-04:00

I just took the BCMSN test a couple hours ago, and passed it with ease! Pheeeww, just the ISCW left for my CCNP... here I come!!The two things that apparently tripped me up according to my score was configuring dot1x port authentication (ok, I can understand this since it isn't apart of my everyday life), and inter-vlan routing, which I completely don't understand as there must have been

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-58033701678205226092009-04-28T20:49:00.000-04:002009-04-28T20:52:09.122-04:00

Very interesting news today about Cablevision announcing their new service that will support 101Mbit down/15Mbit up speeds for (a cheap by US standards) $99:http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/cablevision-101mbps-for-9995-102133?nocomment=1Now only if we could get up to speed (and price) with Japan and South Korea...

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-54175163185910940402009-04-28T20:25:00.000-04:002009-04-28T20:42:10.417-04:00

Don't fret, I'm still waiting on getting a new desktop computer to really get running w/ GNS3 for some good material. But as of now, my laptop that I was using died, so I'm stuck on my netbook (believe me it's no powerhouse) and work computer (don't exactly have much time to blog from work :). Here's some topics I plan on writing about soon:Multicast - Anycast RP and MSDP (maybe some about MDT

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7998312168115531577.post-17460278431568171042009-04-19T19:31:00.000-04:002009-04-19T19:42:04.030-04:00

Hi World! My name is Mark Lah, I'm a network engineer at a high-tech communications company in Melbourne, FL, and there's this thing called 'The Internet' that I kinda like.For a while now I've been addicted to reading other networkers blogs, which I often learn new things everyday from, and I figure why not start my own professional blog that others might learn from me about technologies,

Mark Lahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08120330348299480457noreply@blogger.com0