Routing on the CCIE Data Center Lab – How Deep Do We Need to Go?

Every time I teach NX-OS the same question often arises, “How good do we need to be at routing in order to pass the lab exam?” My first inkling is always to say ‘learn it all,’ but we all know that isn’t always possible. There is a ton of information to learn within the scope of this lab exam, so in order to fully understand this question, we need to look towards Cisco’s almighty guide, the blueprint!

They have gone pretty easy on us in terms of routing, but in their defense, they do have an entire lab dedicated to routing and switching. If we scan down the blueprint to Section 1.2, we see the category we are looking for:

Screen Shot 2015-03-20 at 2.54.17 PM

While that comprises that entire section, I would also err on the side of caution and include Section 1.4a grouped within the L3 category, those being first-hop routing protocols such as HSRP, GLBP, and VRRP.

Look at what they ask us for here, and lets analyze it. They ask for BASIC EIGRP and OSPF, Bi-directional forwarding detection, and equal-cost multi-pathing. ECMP isn’t really its own ‘protocol’, rather something that most L3 protocols support. We will see that Continue reading

iPexpert’s Newest “CCIE Wall of Fame” Additions 3/20/2015

Please join us in congratulating the following iPexpert client’s who have passed their CCIE lab!

This Week’s CCIE Success Stories

  • Mario Netuschil, CCIE #47059 (Wireless)
  • Morgan Chou, CCIE #46394 (Routing and Switching)
  • Russ Bartsch, CCIE #45792 (Collaboration)
  • Robert Hakala, CCIE #45981 (Data Center)

We Want to Hear From You!

Have you passed your CCIE lab exam and used any of iPexpert’s self-study products, or attended a CCIE Bootcamp? If so, we’d like to add you to our CCIE Wall of Fame!

Could modernized analog computers bring petaflops to the desktop?

Could updated analog computer technology – popular from about 1940-1970 –be developed to build high-speed CPUs for certain specialized applications?Researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are looking to discover -- through a program called Analog and Continuous-variable Co-processors for Efficient Scientific Simulation (ACCESS) -- what advances analog computers might have over today’s supercomputers for a large variety of specialized applications such as fluid dynamics or plasma physics.+More on Network World: Quick look: 10 cool analog computers+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Net neutrality rules: Separating fact from hype

The net neutrality debate in the U.S. over the past year has been filled with hyperbole, speculation and questionable claims, coming from both sides of the debate.Let’s look at some of the hype and compare it to what we know from the U.S. Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality order, released last week, and from other information.Four million people in favor of the rulesThere seems to be a misconception, driven as much by media coverage as actual statements by net neutrality advocates, that nearly all of the 4 million comments filed with the FCC in the proceeding were in favor of strong net neutrality rules. There’s some debate over analysis done on the final numbers, but we do know that a substantial number of comments came from people opposed to new rules.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New attacks suggest leeway for patching Flash Player is shrinking

Cybercriminals are exploiting newly patched vulnerabilities faster, a sign that users and companies need to improve their software updating habits.Researchers from both Malwarebytes and FireEye reported Thursday that drive-by download attacks using the Nuclear Exploit Kit target a vulnerability that was patched last week in Flash Player.The flaw, which is tracked as CVE-2015-0336, was fixed by Adobe on March 12. It affects all Flash Player versions older than 17.0.0.134 on Windows and Mac, 11.2.202.451 on Linux and 13.0.0.277 ESR (extended support release).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Wireless router from Huawei hints at new ways to speed up LTE

In the hunt for more spectrum to offer higher wireless broadband speeds, mobile operators and equipment vendors are showing a growing interest in a new candidate.Huawei Technologies has laid the groundwork for speeds up to 220Mbps using LTE-Advanced at 3.5GHz. On Friday, the company said it has launched the world’s first device, a wireless router, that combines the speedy network technology with that frequency band.The amount of spectrum is one of the things that determines what speeds a network can offer. The 3.5GHz band is an ideal candidate for offering high speeds because it has a lot of spectrum available, according to Huawei. What the vendor does not mention is that using the higher band also means worse coverage than what mobile operators can offer with current networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco NAT Cheat Sheet

I’ve always had a difficult time when attempting to remember how to implement the different types of NAT available on ASA and IOS devices. It doesn’t help that between the two device families, there are three different syntax versions used in the configurations. I created the PDF linked below as a quick reference sheet. It […]

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John W Kerns

John is a network and systems engineer based in the Los Angeles/San Diego area. His background is in two traditionally stovepiped skill sets; systems administration and switching/routing/security. Most of his time is spent as an implementation engineer for a medium sized SoCal VAR. You can visit his blog at blog.packetsar.com or follow him on twitter @PackeTsar
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The post Cisco NAT Cheat Sheet appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by John W Kerns.

Orange Money deal with Airtel in West Africa part of expansion plan

Orange’s move to work with Airtel to offer mobile money transfer between the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso is just one step in an effort to expand its services throughout Africa.Orange Money customers in the Ivory Coast can now send and receive money to or from Airtel customers in Burkina Faso. Orange Money has over 13 million customers in 12 African countries, including Jordan. The partnership with Airtel, which runs its Airtel Money service in 16 African countries, is likely to trigger more internetwork and mobile money transfers.In West Africa, Orange Money International Transfer already serves users in Senegal, Ivory Coast and Mali, but the pact with Airtel fills a gap in the region.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Yahoo’s reported willingness to pay $11M for ‘insurance’ was the real March Madness

You may recall that last year around this time Yahoo, Warren Buffett and Quicken Loans teamed up to offer this challenge: If anyone could pick the winner of every single game in the NCAA’s 64-team, six-round March Madness basketball tournament, he or she would win a billion dollars.No one met the challenge, or came close. In fact, the tournament wasn’t even half over before the final perfect bracket sheet was no longer perfect. This came as no surprise to anyone, in large part because the odds against completing the challenge successfully were one in 9 quintillion or one in 128 billion, depending on who’s doing the math, according to this explanation in Slate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Remote port-mirroring in Junos

Information on remote port mirroring on Junos routers doesn’t seem to be very easy to come by for some reason – there is quite a lot of information about doing this on EX switches (a bit like RSPAN in Cisco’s IOS), which wasn’t what I needed.  Various other sources of information (such as Cluepon) say this can be done using a GRE tunnel, but that the capturing device needs to be a server that terminates the GRE tunnel – which all seemed a bit complicated.

I needed to remotely mirror a port on an MX to a second MX where a windows-based Wireshark was connected, so getting GRE working to a Windows host sounded like a non starter.

So I had to work it out myself – and hopefully this write-up will prove useful to someone else in the future.

An additional requirement for the customer was that the captured interface should be in a VRF, so the test-bed I set up below has production traffic flowing through a VRF, and the mirrored traffic in a GRE tunnel which is running in the global routing table.

Here’s the write-up I did for the customer:

Remote port-mirroring using GRE Continue reading

Kenya becomes second country in East Africa to enjoy free Wi-Fi

Kenya has become the second country in East Africa after Rwanda to offer free Wi-Fi to the public, thanks to an initiative by Liquid Telecom and the Kenyan government.As in Rwanda, the free Wi-Fi connection will give users open access to the Internet with the exception of unlawful activities such as streaming or downloading offensive content or content that violates copyright.The move is expected to raise the demand for Wi-Fi-enabled handsets in the country. In Southern Africa, only South Africa so far is enjoying free access to public Wi-Fi, also provided by Liquid Telecom.In Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa, Liquid Telecom has put in place outdoor nodes designed to withstand harsh climatic conditions to offer uninterrupted connectivity and stable bandwidth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

All major browsers hacked at Pwn2Own contest

Security researchers who participated in the Pwn2Own hacking contest this week demonstrated remote code execution exploits against the top four browsers, and also hacked the widely used Adobe Reader and Flash Player plug-ins.On Thursday, South Korean security researcher and serial browser hacker JungHoon Lee, known online as lokihardt, single-handedly popped Internet Explorer 11 and Google Chrome on Microsoft Windows, as well as Apple Safari on Mac OS X.He walked away with US$225,000 in prize money, not including the value of the brand new laptops on which the exploits are demonstrated and which the winners get to take home.The Pwn2Own contest takes place every year at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, Canada, and is sponsored by Hewlett-Packard’s Zero Day Initiative program. The contest pits researchers against the latest 64-bit versions of the top four browsers in order to demonstrate Web-based attacks that can execute rogue code on underlying systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Data centers in Iceland? Yes, really!

Companies in search of stable, inexpensive energy to power their data needs are looking beyond the borders of their own countries these days. Those willing to look really far might consider harboring their strategic assets in Iceland.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

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