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Category Archives for "Networking"

A Contest of Protocols: EIGRP or OSPF?

Ah, the age old question that nearly every CCNA and CCNP candidate asks of themselves and others at some point. We see a minimum of 4 routing protocols in our networking studies, more if you decide to take on the Service Provider track. What makes one routing protocol better than another? I think it’s clear why (at least mostly) these particular two protocols are different, keeping in mind that one is distance vector (yes, distance vector, not hybrid distance vector) and the other is link state.

A Contest of Protocols: EIGRP or OSPF?

Ah, the age old question that nearly every CCNA and CCNP candidate asks of themselves and others at some point. We see a minimum of 4 routing protocols in our networking studies, more if you decide to take on the Service Provider track. What makes one routing protocol better than another? I think it’s clear why (at least mostly) these particular two protocols are different, keeping in mind that one is distance vector (yes, distance vector, not hybrid distance vector) and the other is link state.

Broadview Networks Deploys Packet Design’s VPN Explorer to Manage Converged Services Network

IP Routing and MPLS VPN Visibility Increases Network Operations Efficiency, Reduces Mean-Time-to-Repair

SANTA CLARA, Calif., December 20, 2010 – Broadview Networks, a business communications service provider, has deployed VPN Explorer, an IP/MPLS VPN routing analysis solution from Packet Design, Inc. Broadview will use VPN Explorer to manage their IP network, which provides business customers with VoIP, Internet, VPN and MPLS-enabled data communications.

Broadview Networks installed VPN Explorer earlier this year to monitor its large router network, which runs the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and Multi-Protocol BGP (MP-BGP) MPLS VPN routing protocols. VPN Explorer uses a technology known as ‘route analytics’ that lets the company's network engineering staff look at otherwise hidden aspects of routing behavior – undetectable by conventional SNMP-based management tools – and understand its impact on network reliability, redundancy, and customer service delivery.

George Carey, managing director of ISP Operations for Broadview Networks, said the need for more visibility into IP and MPLS VPN routing has increased with the growth of Broadview’s service portfolio and the expansion of the network. “Our IP backbone network has grown to support many diverse services, including more than 50,000 OfficeSuite™ hosted IP phone stations, SIP trunking, Continue reading

Packet Design’s Route Explorer Integrated with Juniper Networks Junosphere Lab

SANTA CLARA, Calif., October 4, 2011 – Packet Design has integrated its Route Explorer route analytics solution with the Juniper Networks® Junosphere™ Lab cloud-based service, giving Juniper customers a way to visualize and analyze complex Layer 3 routed networks created in the Junosphere virtual environment.

Route Explorer provides real-time, network-wide Layer 3 visibility across an enterprise or service provider's IP/MPLS/VPN network, delivering an intuitive graphical view of control plane operation, including IP forwarding paths, RSVP-TE tunnels and Layer 3 VPN services. Integration with Junosphere will allow users to see a real-time topology map of their virtual network, monitor routing changes, perform in-depth analyses, including the ability to rewind network event history, and graphically depict what-if scenarios for failure analysis or to understand the impact of changes before they are deployed. Route Explorer functionality is provided free of charge to Junosphere Lab users.

Judy Beningson, vice president and general manager, Virtual Junos Business Unit at Juniper Networks , said, “We are excited to expand our partnership with Packet Design, and to bring Route Explorer’s powerful network visualization and analysis capabilities to Junosphere Lab users. Route Explorer will give users of our ground-breaking cloud-based service additional flexibility, allowing our customers to Continue reading

Quiz #10 &#8211 OSPF on CE-PE links

Company ABC has multiple offices interconnected via an MPLS provider and each office runs OSPF with a separate Area number.
In one of the offices, there is an internal router that uses VRFs. You notice that some routes are not learned. Why ?

Show 140 – Introduction OpenStack and Quantum Projects

OpenStack is progressively developing into a product that networking needs to be a part of. One way to describe OpenStack is to say it’s an API for infrastructure. OpenStack is a combination of open source plus a significant number of hardware vendors who see contributions to OpenStack as a way of growing or maintaining their own markets and customers.

Customers want OpenStack as an alternative to VMware or other commercial software - not all applications and service need to have expensive software licenses and maintenance. We need to be able to build a core of functional services that can deliver services.

In the future, it seems likely that OpenStack Quantum API will be important. We discuss Open Vswitch and how it’s changing from being a “switch” to including routing, firewall and load balancing features. If you don’t like that, you could consider using Quantum API as a way to consume load balancers from your preferred vendor - the API exists to simplify the consumption of network resources.

Author information

Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working Continue reading

Nexus 5000 QoS – Keeping It Classless Labs

I’m pleased to revive the KIC LABS series with a video on Cisco MQC-style QoS on the Nexus 5000. PLEASE read these two articles first, as they do a lot better job at explaining the structure that we’re going to be putting together in the video. Unfortunately I was not able to provide this during the video, as I was pressed for time. https://keepingitclassless.net/2012/11/cisco-quality-of-service-part-1-types-of-qos-policies/ https://keepingitclassless.net/2012/11/qos-part-2-qos-and-jumbo-frames-on-nexus-ucs-and-vmware/ Download the configuration used in this video here.

Nexus 5000 QoS – Keeping It Classless Labs

I’m pleased to revive the KIC LABS series with a video on Cisco MQC-style QoS on the Nexus 5000. PLEASE read these two articles first, as they do a lot better job at explaining the structure that we’re going to be putting together in the video. Unfortunately I was not able to provide this during the video, as I was pressed for time. https://keepingitclassless.net/2012/11/cisco-quality-of-service-part-1-types-of-qos-policies/ https://keepingitclassless.net/2012/11/qos-part-2-qos-and-jumbo-frames-on-nexus-ucs-and-vmware/ Download the configuration used in this video here.

Nexus 5000 QoS – Keeping It Classless Labs

I’m pleased to revive the KIC LABS series with a video on Cisco MQC-style QoS on the Nexus 5000. PLEASE read these two articles first, as they do a lot better job at explaining the structure that we’re going to be putting together in the video. Unfortunately I was not able to provide this during the video, as I was pressed for time. https://keepingitclassless.net/2012/11/cisco-quality-of-service-part-1-types-of-qos-policies/ https://keepingitclassless.net/2012/11/qos-part-2-qos-and-jumbo-frames-on-nexus-ucs-and-vmware/ Download the configuration used in this video here.

What’s Next for OpenFlow and Open Source?

One year ago, the Open Networking Foundation was setting a blistering pace of standards development. Though their process is closed to outsiders, word had leaked out that not only were they on track to produce version 1.3 of the OpenFlow standard, but 1.4 would follow before the end of 2012. At some point that plan […]

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Bill Owens

Bill Owens

Bill has had his hands in networks since 2400 baud was fast, but lately he thinks that things like DNS, IPv6 and OpenFlow are more fun. During the day he helps take care of a statewide optical/IP network. You can find him on Twitter as @owens_bill and lurking around lots of different network-related mailing lists.

The post What’s Next for OpenFlow and Open Source? appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Bill Owens.

What’s that % sign after ipconfig IPv6 address?

How does the internet work - We know what is networking

I see a % ## in my IPv6 address… what is it?? Because all Link-Local Addresses share the same network identifier (fe80::), you cannot determine which interface an LLA is bound to merely by looking at the address. Therefore, if a computer running Windows has multiple network adapters connected to different network segments, it distinguishes the networks by using a numeric zone ID following a percent sign after the IP address.

What’s that % sign after ipconfig IPv6 address?

Cisco Exams

This started off as a company email but I wanted to share it, since I’ve been asked before. Below is opinion and opinion only. I’m more interested in how this compares with your study methods and Cisco exam experiences, so please let me know your thoughts in the comments. Cisco exams….let’s face it, they suck. (In a good way though) I’ve taken exams from all kinds of vendors, and Cisco is really good at creating exams that vet you technically, but also require that you understand the practical reasons for the technologies we work with, not just memorizing maximum values, or configuration steps.

Cisco Exams

This started off as a company email but I wanted to share it, since I’ve been asked before. Below is opinion and opinion only. I’m more interested in how this compares with your study methods and Cisco exam experiences, so please let me know your thoughts in the comments. Cisco exams….let’s face it, they suck. (In a good way though) I’ve taken exams from all kinds of vendors, and Cisco is really good at creating exams that vet you technically, but also require that you understand the practical reasons for the technologies we work with, not just memorizing maximum values, or configuration steps.

Catalyst MLS QOS – part I

This post represents the solution and explanation for quiz-7. The junior network administrator tried to update the configuration on a switch by enabling mls qos and immediatelly created an outage. See what happened !

Tough Questions To Ask Network Vendors When Evaluating Products

Introduction In my previous post, I proposed investing in careful planning to extract the maximum value from your vendor meeting. But what happens when the presentation begins? In this post, I’ll outline a few high-level questions and lots of in-depth questions to help you get a better understanding of the ‘real’ product that’s being sold. High-level […]

Author information

John Harrington

John is an experienced data center engineer with a background in mobile telecoms. He works as a network test engineer for a large cloud service provider, and is gradually accepting that he's a nerd. He blogs about network technology and careers at theNetworkSherpa.com. You can reach him on twitter at: @networksherpa

The post Tough Questions To Ask Network Vendors When Evaluating Products appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by John Harrington.

RADIUS server Infrastructure

How does the internet work - We know what is networking

In short RADIUS means Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service server or proxy.  This is the best technology and as far as I know the only technology for all centralized accounting and authorization for connecting to networks. It is a standard. This technology will help you control who will be able to connect to your network and who will not […]

RADIUS server Infrastructure

EIGRP Filtering with Offset-list and Delay

EIGRP Offset-list is usually used to increase the metric of routes being advertised over a link, but can it be used to filter EIGRP prefixes?

I thought about using offset-list in RIP to filter specific routes and thought how about doing the same thing in EIGRP? I haven’t run into any examples or blog posts of using Offset-list in EIGRP to filter routes so I thought about labing it out to see if that’s possible.

To test it, I went to the handy GNS3 with the following topology.

Three routes R1, R2 and R3. R1 advertises a Loopback0 subnet 10.1.1.1/32 which I will use to test filtering using offset-list. As you can see in the diagram, I changed the Delay for each interface to 1 just to make things easier for metric calculation (including loop0 interface). I also set the EIGRP metric weight to only consider delay and not to look at bandwidth for metric calculation, again to make things easier.

My goal is to set an offset-list on R2 to filter routes to R3 using Delay and offset-list commands only. Theoretically, if I know the max metric of EIGRP routes and I apply an offset-list with Continue reading

Vendor Certifications: A Career Jump Starter

“…I’d love to share how certifications have propelled me into a mid-level networking position. I can share my own personality, thoughts, and views on the subject… as long as I’m doing self-study. I don’t like having a teacher and same goes with a job, I personally really enjoy being my own technical lead, which I […]

Author information

Joey Lucero

Joey Lucero

Joey's a fairly recent college grad on the verge of a promising new career in networking. No matter how much he learns, it's never enough... So he spends the majority of his free time studying, labbing, and blogging.

The post Vendor Certifications: A Career Jump Starter appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Joey Lucero.