Review: Best smart switches for under $500

Smart switchesSmart switches offer functionality found in managed switches, such as VLANs, port mirroring, and link aggregation. However, smart switches are typically targeted towards small and midsized networks that don’t need the complete management capabilities and fine-tuning offered in fully managed switches. We looked at switches from six vendors, the same vendors from our recent small business router review. So if you’re building an SMB network, reference both reviews to find a matching router and switch that meets your needs. Vendors include the big-name Cisco, popular home and business brands D-Link, Linksys, and Netgear, and also lesser-known names DrayTek and UTT Technologies. We setup and evaluated each switch and in this review we compare product in regards to price, features, and user-friendliness. Read the full review.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dual Carrier MPLS VPN Design

For the purpose of high availability, critical locations of company A – a customer of VPN service provider – is connected to two different carriers. However, this connectivity requires an important design consideration. Figure-1 In the network design shown above, customer AS 64512 is connected to two different providers: AS100 and AS200. Since this site is critical to the […]

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OSPF in a Full-Mesh Topology Design

Flooding in full-mesh topology is a big concern for network-design experts, especially in large-scale OSPF deployments. When the link or node fails in an OSPF network, failure information is flooded everywhere in the same area. If Flat OSPF network design is used, then the problem gets bigger. Each router receives at least one copy of the new information from […]

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OSPF in a Full-Mesh Topology Design

Flooding in full-mesh topology is a big concern for network-design experts, especially in large-scale OSPF deployments. When the link or node fails in an OSPF network, failure information is flooded everywhere in the same area. If Flat OSPF network design is used, then the problem gets bigger. Each router receives at least one copy of the new information from […]

The post OSPF in a Full-Mesh Topology Design appeared first on Network Design and Architecture.

My Getting Things Done Setup, Circa Early 2016

Almost six years ago I shared my (then) current Getting Things Done (GTD) setup, in which I described how I used various tools, techniques, and applications to try to maximize my productivity. I’d been toying with updating that post, but I wasn’t sure that anyone would find it useful. However, a recent e-mail from a reader indicated that there probably is some interest; with that in mind, then, here’s an update on my GTD-like setup, circa early 2016.

Before I dive into the details, a couple quick notes:

  • First, I call this a “GTD-like” setup because it doens’t necessarily strongly adhere to all the tenets of Getting Things Done. I’ve adapted the system to fit my particular role and responsibilities, which is something I strongly encourage every reader to also do.
  • Although I’ve previously discussed moving away from OS X (and this is something that I continue to evaluate and explore), this is—for now—a decidedly Mac-specific system. It’s probably possible to emulate a similar system on other platforms, but I leave that as an exercise for interested readers.

If you read the 2010 post, you may recall that I think of my workflow as having three “layers” of applications:

orhanergun.net 2015 review

I’m proud to be the owner of the best computer network design blog and get positive feedbacks from users all over the world. In recent times, I have observed that everybody has been reading this blog. Because of this, I owe all the readers of this blog my achievements. Indeed, your comments and post views have encouraged […]

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Microsoft roundup: The Windows 7 threat, notifying nation-state targets, Bing censorhip

When checking around for what’s been happening with Microsoft, it seems like the company is following its normal pattern of gaining ground and then shooting itself in the foot. Here are a few examples:At the end of 2015, Microsoft announced that it will start notifying users if the company believes “your account has been targeted or compromised by an individual or group working on behalf of a nation state.” Scott Charney, Microsoft’s Corporate VP of Trustworthy Computing, added: We’re taking this additional step of specifically letting you know if we have evidence that the attacker may be “state-sponsored” because it is likely that the attack could be more sophisticated or more sustained than attacks from cybercriminals and others.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Single Vs. Dual Carrier Design

Companies don’t always have high availability. What’s more, there is always a concern of budget and complexity with the high availability even though a number of factors need to be considered during network design. If the applications of the company do not require high availability, dual carrier or two links to the same carrier is not […]

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Doing 2016 Write

 

calendar

It’s the first day of 2016 and it’s time for me to look at what I wanted to do and what I plan to accomplish in the coming 366 days. We’ve got a busy year ahead with a leap day, the Olympics, and a US presidential election. And somewhere in the middle of all that there’s a lot of exciting things related to tech.

2015 In Rewind

Looking back at my 2015 goals, I think I did a fairly good job:

  • Writing in Markdown – Read about it all here
  • Blog themes – I really did look at quite a few themes and tried to find something that worked the way I wanted it to work without major modifications. What I finally settled on was a minor font change to make things more readable. For me, form has never been more important than function, so I spend less time worrying about how my blog looks and much more time focusing on how it reads.
  • Cisco Live Management – Didn’t quite get this one done. I wanted to put up the poll for the big picture at the end and I managed to miss it this year! The crew Continue reading

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For January 1st, 2016

Hey, Happy New Year, it's HighScalability time:


River system? Vascular system? Nope. It's a map showing how all roads really lead to Rome.

 

If you like Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability then please consider supporting me on Patreon.
  • 71: mentions of innovation by the Chinese Communist Party; 60.5%: of all burglaries involve forcible entry; 280,000-squarefoot: Amazon's fulfillment center in India capable of shipping 2 million items; 11 billion: habitable earth like planets in the goldilocks zone in just our galaxy; 800: people working on the iPhone's camera (how about the app store?); 3.3 million: who knew there were so many Hello Kitty fans?; 26 petabytes: size of League of Legends' data warehouse; 

  • Quotable Quotes:
    • George Torwell: Tor is Peace / Prism is Slavery / Internet is Strength
    • @SciencePorn: Mr Claus will eat 150 BILLION calories and visit 5,556 houses per second this Christmas Eve.
    • @SciencePorn: Blue Whale's heart is so big, a small child can swim through the veins.
    • @BenedictEvans: There are close to 4bn people on earth with a phone (depending on your assumptions). Will go to at least 5bn. So these issues will grow.
    • @JoeSondow: "In real life you Continue reading
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