Forum Going Away – But New Things Are Coming

Roughly a year ago, we built forum.packetpushers.net. This was a forum site built on vBulletin. The idea was to give the community another place to exchange ideas, share information, and help each other with challenges. After considering the matter for a couple of months, Greg and I are going to shut the site down. For […]

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Ethan Banks

Co-host at Packet Pushers

Ethan Banks, CCIE #20655, has been managing networks for higher ed, government, financials and high tech since 1995. Ethan co-hosts the Packet Pushers Podcast, which has seen over 2M downloads and reaches over 10K listeners. With whatever time is left, Ethan writes for fun & profit, studies for certifications, and enjoys science fiction. @ecbanks

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The post Forum Going Away – But New Things Are Coming appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

Masterclass – Tcpdump – Interpreting Output

This Masterclass article series aims to provide in-depth technical information on the installation, usage and operation of the classic and supremely popular tcpdump network traffic analysis program including alternatives, running tcpdump as a process, building expressions, understanding output and more. I’ve covered the Basics, Parameters and filter Expressions previously; last up in the series is […]

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Steven Iveson

Steven Iveson, the last of four children of the seventies, was born in London and has never been too far from a shooting, bombing or riot. He's now grateful to live in a small town in East Yorkshire in the north east of England with his wife Sam and their four children.

He's worked in the IT industry for over 15 years in a variety of roles, predominantly in data centre environments. Working with switches and routers pretty much from the start he now also has a thirst for application delivery, SDN, virtualisation and related products and technologies. He's published a number of F5 Networks related books and is a regular contributor at DevCentral.

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The post Masterclass – Tcpdump – Interpreting Output appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Steven Iveson.

Making an E1 circuit on a Nortel TN4XE

Lovely user interface this isn’t.  Here’s the command to make an E1 circuit on a Nortel TN4XE where the E1 card is in slot 13.  (The first character should be a tilde rather than a hyphen):

~C N C S6-1-J1-K111&S8-1-J1-K111 S13-1

S6 and S8 are the slots where the aggregate cards are.  J1 says to use the first VC4.  K111 tells it to use the first VC3, the first TUG2 and the first VC12.

Within an STM-4 there are four STM-1s which equate roughly to VC4s.  Within each VC4 are three VC3s. Within each VC3 are 7 x TUG2s.  Within each TUG2 are 3 x VC12. 

Confusing…

IT’s Not Just About Technology

There’s a lot of great blogs and resources that get really deep into specific areas of tech. While it may sound really strange, this site is decidedly not one of them. The focus of The Tech Interview is quite different. Instead of focusing on the bits and bytes of technology, we look at the un-tech […]

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Paul Stewart

Paul is a Network and Security Engineer, Trainer and Blogger who enjoys understanding how things really work. With nearly 15 years of experience in the technology industry, Paul has helped many organizations build, maintain and secure their networks and systems. Paul also writes technical content at PacketU.

The post IT’s Not Just About Technology appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Paul Stewart.

Announcing Labkeeper

It's been nearly a year since I had to take the community lab offline to relocate my home, and I still get frequent emails asking when it will be returned. Sadly, my plan to host it with my current employer didn't pan out, and I'm still searching for a suitable host in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina area. (If you might be able to give the lab a good physical home, please let me know!)

I also get a lot of emails asking if I can share the scheduling application I used to make the lab available. In short, no, I can't. Not because I don't want to or because it's secret, but simply because that code was written specifically for the packetlife.net site and is not in the least bit portable. But these requests got me thinking: A lot of people obviously would like to be able to share their labs, they just need a platform. Maybe I could rewrite and improve upon the scheduling application to spin it off as its own service.

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have caught one or two references to a new project recently. Indeed, this is exactly Continue reading

Virtual Networking and the Concept of Abstraction

Virtual Networking and the Concept of Abstraction

Show 160 – Palo Alto Networks and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Next-Gen Firewalls – Sponsored

Palo Alto Networks are big fans of the show and they are excited to geek out about next-generation firewalls in this podcast. What you’ll hear about on this show is the unique technologies that help you deliver visibility, control and safe application enablement of applications in your network. This show was specifically planned to have zero […]

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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 as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus.

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The post Show 160 – Palo Alto Networks and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Next-Gen Firewalls – Sponsored appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

Not All IP Addresses are the Same

Book Review: Software Defined Networks

Software Defined Networks Thomas D. Nadeau and Ken Gray If you’ve been trying to find a good, solid, introduction to network programmability, you need look no farther than Software Defined Networks. While the authors do include a good bit of information that’s outside the field of network programmability, overall this is about the best overview […]

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Russ White

Principle Engineer at Ericsson

Russ White is a Network Architect who's scribbled a basket of books, penned a plethora of patents, written a raft of RFCs, taught a trencher of classes, and done a lot of other stuff you either already know about, or don't really care about. You want numbers and letters? Okay: CCIE 2635, CCDE 2007:001, CCAr, BSIT, MSIT (Network Design & Architecture, Capella University), MACM (Biblical Literature, Shepherds Theological Seminary). Russ is a Principal Engineer in the IPOS Team at Ericsson, where he works on lots of different stuff, serves on the Routing Area Directorate at the IETF, and is a cochair of the Internet Society Advisory Council. Russ will be speaking in November at the Ericsson Technology Day. he recently published The Art of Network Architecture, is currently working on a new book in the area Continue reading

Automation : Not Just Marketing Fluff

Regardless of where you stand on the future of data networks and SDN and the prevailing idea that dust made from ground up rainbows will be powering our pipes – there is something that I believe is being overlooked and should definitely be addressed. There is a rate of unprecedented change going on in the […]

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Edward Henry

Edward Henry is currently employed with a regional optical network concentrating on Research and Education within the communities of Connecticut. Along with his day job, Edward is an avid techy and has been working toward advancing his career with all things nerdy. Also follow Ed on Twitter : @NetworkN3rd and at his personal blog : https://networkn3rd.wordpress.com

The post Automation : Not Just Marketing Fluff appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Edward Henry.

A Networking View of the VMware NSX Platform: Right Problem. Wrong Answer

More Snowden Media Douchebaggery

I previously wrote a post in response to an article that equated Snowden’s CEH certification to James Bond’s “license to kill.” Well, it looks like some technically-challenged media types are at it again. They’ve called Snowden “brilliant” for his ability to “impersonate” users on various systems in order to obtain certain documents and I felt […]

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Mrs. Y

Snarkitecht at Island of Misfit Toys

Mrs. Y is a recovering Unix engineer working in network security. Also the host of Healthy Paranoia and official nerd hunter. She likes long walks in hubsites, traveling to security conferences and spending time in the Bat Cave. Sincerely believes that every problem can be solved with a "for" loop. When not blogging or podcasting, can be found using up her 15 minutes in the Twittersphere or Google+ as @MrsYisWhy.

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The post More Snowden Media Douchebaggery appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Mrs. Y.

Securing a DMVPN spoke – Part 1

For organizations that have many remote offices a DMVPN solution is a great option. You can purchase a cheap DSL or cable modem based solution then establish a dynamically built encrypted tunnel back to the corporate office or Data Center(s). The hubs should be located in a DMZ behind a firewall at the Data Center […]

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Charles Galler

Charles is a network and UC engineer for a mainly Cisco reseller. He has worked in the networking industry for about 13 years. He started as a network administrator for a small CLEC (carrier) where he did it all in IT and worked on the carrier network. After the CLEC, Charles went to work for a large healthcare organization in the Houston area and stayed with them for about three and a half years. Now he works for a reseller in the professional services part of the organization. He is currently studying for his CCIE in Routing and Switching and plans on passing it before the end of 2014. You can find him on the Twitter @twidfeki.

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The post Securing a DMVPN spoke – Part 1 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Charles Galler.

You Don’t Have To Hit The Ball Out Of The Park To Hit A Home Run

When planning your career you need to make several path choices. A career direction, the right attitude, respect for co-workers are all easy. Some people forget that everyday work is part of taking a single step down that path, tomorrow you will take another couple of steps and again the day after. But some people […]

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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 as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus.

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The post You Don’t Have To Hit The Ball Out Of The Park To Hit A Home Run appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

Turning BIND DNS Management Into A Walk In The Park

DNS needs no introduction in today’s inter-networked, connected world. Though it could be a service the end-users are least aware of, it is one that the network administrator needs to keep an eye on and requires constant monitoring and management to ensure uptime and connectivity. It is DNS servers that help with resolving those easy-to-remember […]

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Sponsored Blog Posts

The Packet Pushers work with our vendors to present a limited number of sponsored blog posts to our community. This is one. If you're a vendor and think you have some blog content you'd like to sponsor, contact us via [email protected].

The post Turning BIND DNS Management Into A Walk In The Park appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Sponsored Blog Posts.

The Battle for the Top of the Rack

The Battlefield between Sysadmin and Netadmin

The fight for control between sysadmin and network admin has been going on for decades but the boundary line had been pretty static. Anything that ran a full OS and was a end node was is a server is under server ops while anything that connected the servers together was a network device and was under the control of network operations.

If you look at the progression of the two side through the last two decades, you will realize that the server and server OS have gone through change after change with new software packaging system, virtualization, density of servers per rack, and so on while the networking technology has remained pretty static other than speed and feeds and some tagging protocols. While the server admin kept reinventing himself through open source, virtualization, six nine uptime, the network got split into three distinct category (forgive me Gartner for gross simplification):

• The Datacenter Networking: The heavy lifting being done by the server ops and running applications and virtual machine the most critical need, the network admin tended to come in the way and exerted control via IP address and VLAN management. The network services which Continue reading

Video interview: Network Virtualization and VMware NSX

Administrative Distance for Static Route is 1 or 0?

How does the internet work - We know what is networking

There are different documents and books which are claiming that Administrative distance for static routes configured using exit interface is 1 and for the static route configured using next-hop IP address Administrative distance is 0. R1(config)#ip route 20.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 10.10.2.1 R1(config)#ip route 20.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 fastEthernet 0/0 This is not true. Both of them are having AD […]

Administrative Distance for Static Route is 1 or 0?

Difference between defining static routes with next-hop address or exit interface

How does the internet work - We know what is networking

There were a bit of confusion in my head about this case. It was not clear to me what is the difference between setting the static route using next hop interface IP address or using exit interface syntax. It seems that both methods are the same and that you have basically two different ways to […]

Difference between defining static routes with next-hop address or exit interface