IPv6 Tutorial: The overview

I will start from the beginning; two weeks ago I wrote a post claiming that IPv4 is depleting and IPv6 is coming soon; and since we are considering deploying IPv6 soon in our network, I thought it might be useful to write about IPv6 migration and transition strategies. Although, this is important but I think [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

vPC and VSS features and Comparison

Seems like other than IPv6 allot of the talk lately (in the Datacenter anyways) is about MEC, or multi-chassis etherchannel. Using something like this in the aggregation part of the Datacenter not...

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How Network Operators can cooperate: the NLNOG RING

In December 2010 I started a project with a few friends to make life for network engineers in the Netherlands better.

I noticed that there are a lot of friendly 'shell access' exchange deals between dutch network operators. This makes it easier for parties to debug network issues and troubleshoot from the outside. A point of view outside your network is absolutely essential, seeing what others see is a useful thing for a variety of network problems. Well known examples are "it works for even numbered ip address, but not for odd numbered ip address via this and this route".

The NLNOG RING tries to do this in a more organized way, basically the deal is "donate 1 machine, and gain access to all other machines in the ring". So far already 10 organisations are participating.

How useful is the ring exactly? A very nice example is executing a traceroute from ten different autonomous systems: nlnog ring example.

More information about the NLNOG RING can be found on the website we've launched today: ring.nlnog.net.

Ticket #16 – Repubished

Next ticket, Ticket 17, which will be about IGP and EEM will be published on CCIEFlyer.com, then it will be republished here again. ... • R1 is configured with redundant bidirectional connection between R3 and R4's Lo0. ... • R1 is using NAT to allow connectivity, exposing R3 as 4.3.12.3 and 4.3.15.3. 

L2 is now in the TS section

L2 is now in the TS section of the R&S lab: https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-10859 ...L2 is in the TS workbook from day one because the TS workbook was written not just to prepare the students for the TS section of the lab, but also to summarize, test and sharpen the skills of the CCIE R&S students. Please notice that although the TS section is the first section of the lab, I recommend to practice the TS section after doing technology focused labs and moc labs.

[IPv6] Subnetting – Wait, we still need to do that?

Subnetting, in short, can be thought of as an adjustable “slide rule” that tells the network infrastructure the logical size of a sub-network, or subnet. This is useful if you know how many IP addresses you’ll to suit the needs of a predetermined number of PCs, so you can plan the size of your subnets to match that requirement. With IPv4, subnet masks are used to determine how big the subnets are.

[IPv6] Subnetting – Wait, we still need to do that?

Subnetting, in short, can be thought of as an adjustable “slide rule” that tells the network infrastructure the logical size of a sub-network, or subnet. This is useful if you know how many IP addresses you’ll to suit the needs of a predetermined number of PCs, so you can plan the size of your subnets to match that requirement. With IPv4, subnet masks are used to determine how big the subnets are.

[IPv6] Subnetting – Wait, we still need to do that?

Subnetting, in short, can be thought of as an adjustable “slide rule” that tells the network infrastructure the logical size of a sub-network, or subnet. This is useful if you know how many IP addresses you’ll to suit the needs of a predetermined number of PCs, so you can plan the size of your subnets to match that requirement. With IPv4, subnet masks are used to determine how big the subnets are.

Troubleshooting OSPFv2 Neighbors (Part 1)

Tackling one of the simplest OSPFv2 adjacency problems to the trained eye. Yet, it’s really incredible how often it can escape even the most seasoned veteran. Getting right to the point,...

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New Cisco IOS releases in an RSS feed

Over the last few days we've been spending some time on an RSS feed generator which can help you stay on top of new IOS releases. It takes regular expressions as input and can be useful for a quick search or generating an RSS feed for your favorite news reader.

The database is built upon a public md5 database Cisco publishes roughly every week. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this information.

You can find the quick search & rss generator at http://snijders-it.nl/ios-rss/.

LISP + GETVPN as alternative for DMPVN+OSPF+GETVPN

Originally LISP was developed to address the issues and concerns raised by the growth of the internet routing table, but LISP turns out to possess appealing features that can be of interest to Service Providers like my friends at InTouch.

At the Cisco NAG2010 conference in San Jose I talked about using LISP as a transport mechanism instead of regular manual GRE tunnels or a DMVPN design. I believe that provisioning and debugging a LISP based virtual private network will be easier and simpler than current approaches.

Some fair warnings are in order here: this setup runs on beta IOS and NXOS images, this design and the configuration syntax are very likely to change a little with every IOS release, for Cisco's LISP implementation is under very active development. The most important aspect of this design is that it's not a multi-tenant architecture. Multi-tenancy will probably be available in a few months, after which I'll post an updated version with more comments on the specifics.

View the slides online at slideshare: LISP+GETVPN or download the PDF from my website: Job_Snijders-InTouch-LISP_GETVPN.pdf.

libvirt & KVM & unnumbered bridge setup

This is an ubuntu/debian recipe to use an 'unnumbered bridge' to save on the amount of IP addresses needed to connect your virtual machines on a libvirt host to other networks.

I'm assuming you want the host to be a router between the VM's and the external network. The advantage of this is that you can firewall traffic between the virtual machines and other networks on the host.

A setup like this can be used if your ISP provides you with a /29 and you want to be able to use every IP address out of that /29, and not waste IP's on the network, broadcast and gateway address.

This image shows the various elements involved:


The /etc/network/interfaces file on the host: 
auto virbr0
iface virbr0 inet manual
  bridge-ports none
  bridge_stp off
  bridge_maxwait 1
  post-up ip route add 10.10.10.0/29 dev virbr0
The above configuration will configure a bridge interface without an IPv4 address and route the /29 that was assigned to you by your ISP to that interface. This will force Linux to ARP for every IP from that /29 on this particular virbr0 interface.

The following virsh commands will remove the default network settings, you can Continue reading

Ticket #15 – Repubished

I am reposting here Lab 15, which was published on ccieflyer.com. Next ticket, Ticket 16, which will be about IP services will be published on CCIEFlyer.com, then it will be republished here again. ...The network was configured with multicast-helper to transport the RIP broadcast over the multicast network to R6.

T-Minus One Week!

That’s right, I’m taking the 640-802 exam from Cisco to attain my CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) certification in one week! The last four weeks have been quite eventful, although I’m ashamed I didn’t really start studying REALLY hard until about 3 weeks ago. Regardless, I’ve learned a lot! I’ve been following the book “31 Days Before Your CCNA Exam”, which is essentially a daily planner for study topics regarding CCNA material.

T-Minus One Week!

That’s right, I’m taking the 640-802 exam from Cisco to attain my CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) certification in one week! The last four weeks have been quite eventful, although I’m ashamed I didn’t really start studying REALLY hard until about 3 weeks ago. Regardless, I’ve learned a lot! I’ve been following the book “31 Days Before Your CCNA Exam”, which is essentially a daily planner for study topics regarding CCNA material.

Cogent (AS174) does not have a full ipv6 table yet

As of date Cogent (AS174) still has not entered into a peering agreement with Hurricane Electric (AS6939), resulting in significantly less prefixes than most IPv6 transit providers will give you. I've compiled a list of prefixes that are missing in Cogent's table.

Most IPv6 transit providers will give you roughly 3500 prefixes, but Cogent only carries around 2500 prefixes.

If you want to be reachable from all over the world over IPv6, it's best to get a second and third IPv6 transit provider that give you a full IPv6 routing table. In other words, avoid having a Cogent-only network.

txt file: ipv6-prefixes-that-cogent-misses-as-of-27-Oct-2010.txt
1 … 3,017 3,018 3,019 3,020 3,021 … 3,024