CCIE Security v4 Reading List – Update From The Program Manager

Because of my personal interest in the CCIE Security program (at least the written exam the next time I’m up for CCIE recert), I asked Nat Timms if there was an updated CCIE reading list. This list was recommended to me by Nat in her role as CCIE Security program manager; a big thanks to […]

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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 3M 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 CCIE Security v4 Reading List – Update From The Program Manager appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

Building a Ghetto WAN Emulation Network

I wanted a way to do some controlled tests of WAN acceleration products, using a production network. You can buy or rent commercial WAN emulators, but for my purposes it seemed like an improvised solution would suffice. I had a couple of Cisco 2800 routers, a switch, and an ESXi box in my lab that I could press into service, so I built a test network that looks like this:


R1 acts like the WAN router at a branch site. It has a QoS policy with a "shape average" statement on its "WAN" interface to change the bandwidth to whatever we want to test.

R2 simply NATs the test traffic onto an IP address in the production network, since I didn't feel like configuring a new production subnet just for the test.

The ESXi box is where the fun part lives: I created two vSwitches and connected one physical NIC to each. I then spun up a simple Ubuntu 12.04 VM with eth0 and eth1 connected to each of the two vSwitches, giving me a separate network connected to each Cisco router. I then enabled routing on the Linux VM and created the appropriate static routes to enable the Continue reading

Install Raspbmc without a Keyboard or Mouse

Once I had got my iTunes library downgraded to 10.7 and liberated some of my DRM'd media I thought it would be awesome to use my Raspberry Pi as an Airplay Receiver...

Head over to http://www.raspbmc.com/download/ and follow the instructions to download and install Raspbmc. Once you've prepped your SD card, popped it in your Pi hole and got it booted it should start the installation… at this point you can grab a coffee

In older versions of Raspbmc you had to SSH in and enable the web server in /home/pi/.xbmc/userdata/guisettings.xml

In the latest version this was already enabled, so I just picked up my phone, downloaded the official XBMC remote app from the Android marketplace (or iTunes store if you are that way inclined).

A couple of points of note when adding your host in the XBMC remote app. If you don't know your IP address and your Pi is not automatically found you can find this from your local router. The HTTP port is 80 by default in Raspbmc (not 8080) and the password is blank, although I configured username xbmc and password xbmc and this works just fine!

Once set up it Continue reading

Downgrading from iTunes 11 to 10.7 on OSX

I decided to downgrade my iTunes from 11 to 10.7 for a number of reasons, top most was the fact the the new UI drives me barmy!

I followed the great instructions at http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/03/how-to-downgrade-from-itunes-11-to-version-10-7-on-your-mac/ and found that I couldn't open my iTunes library after the upgrade.

Since I didn't make a library backup before the iTunes 11 upgrade I thought I would be stuck, but to my surprise I found a Previous iTunes Libraries folder in my ~/Music/iTunes

Restoring was as easy as taking my swapping iTunes Library.itl with the file in the Previous iTunes Libraries folder from December and everything worked fine...

One thing I noticed was that my new iTunes purchases didn't show, but this was a minor inconvenience. Now I have the old iTunes back and I'm happy… for now...

Tales from the Road

As I reflect on the myriad of conversations I had over the past few weeks, (most with network admins of leading enterprise and service provider customers), there is a consistent theme that has emerged and is worth sharing. Immediacy, agility, and granular control are terms, desired concepts really, that I hear over and over again and frankly seemed to hold more importance than any other topic.  A great example of this came at the end of the second day keynote panel at World Wide Technology’s (WWT) 8th annual Geek Day event. The last question an attendee asked the panel of leading technology CIO’s: If you had one dollar to spend on IT where would you spend it? Half of the panelists answered, “network agility”.  

I came to Embrane via a leading cloud service provider and I was looking to validate the idea that speed in IT was as, if not more, important on the networking side of the fence as it was on the server and storage side.  After three months in the chair, without question, I can confirm that the “network guys” continue to  keep up at cloud speed or to match the pace of Continue reading

OSPF external E1, E2, N1, N2…Who is the winner?

This lab focuses on route selection mechanism of OSPF external routes. The complexity of OSPF selection process is due to its inherent hierarchical structure. The following selection order should be familiar to you: intra-area (O) inter-area (IA) external routes OSPF provides more flexibility for external routes by manipulating the following criteria: Regular areas or NSSA […]

Show 143 – Anuta Networks Demonstrates nCloudX Controller – Sponsored

On March 26, 2013, the Packet Pushers held a sponsored webinar with Anuta Networks to introduce their nCloudX controller to our networking community. In the webinar, the Anuta team covers the following: A bit about their background, the problems they are going after, and how nCloudX addresseses these challenges. An explanation of the nCloudX architecture, […]

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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 3M 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 Show 143 – Anuta Networks Demonstrates nCloudX Controller – Sponsored appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

Programming 101 for Network Engineers – Why Bother?

Is this you perhaps? You’re the king of the network. You know it all inside out (your company and its processes too). You have every CLI mastered, you know the RPs you use in-depth, you’ve seen and used all the big management platforms, and you even know a fair bit about a few critical applications. […]

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Steven Iveson

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 Programming 101 for Network Engineers – Why Bother? appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Steven Iveson.

Upgrading F5 BIGIP HA Pair from v10 to v11 – Ethan’s Notes

I recently completed a challenging upgrade on a pair of production F5 3600s running 10.2.0, going to 11.2.1 running the LTM module. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been a challenging upgrade, but that was due to the things I learned along the way. Lessons Learned License reactivation. The upgrade document doesn’t say much about this. […]

Author information

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 3M downloads and reaches over 10K listeners. With whatever time is left, Ethan writes for fun & profit, studies for certifications, and enjoys science fiction. @ecbanks
TwitterGoogle+LinkedIn

The post Upgrading F5 BIGIP HA Pair from v10 to v11 – Ethan’s Notes appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

The Importance of QoS in a Converged Infrastructure

I’ve done quite a few posts on Quality of Service, particularly on it’s basic concepts, as well as specific implementation details in a Data Center environment. Many of these concepts can be applied to really any use case, since QoS is QoS - just depends on how you classify traffic. But what do we gain by implementing QoS, especially in a context like Data Center, where a modern core layer is typically at least 10GbE and network congestion is rarely seen?

The Importance of QoS in a Converged Infrastructure

I’ve done quite a few posts on Quality of Service, particularly on it’s basic concepts, as well as specific implementation details in a Data Center environment. Many of these concepts can be applied to really any use case, since QoS is QoS - just depends on how you classify traffic. But what do we gain by implementing QoS, especially in a context like Data Center, where a modern core layer is typically at least 10GbE and network congestion is rarely seen?

Fabricpath Design, Think it Through! – part 1

Designing fabricpath? Deploying fabricpath? Read on! summary: FabricPath is a Layer-2 routing architecture (yes L2 routing), using ISIS to build shortest path trees to destination bridges...

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DCI: The Need for Stretched Layer 2

In the previous article in this DCI series (Why is there a “Wrong Way” to Interconnect Datacenters?) I explained the business case for having multiple data centers and then closed by warning that extending Layer 2 domains was a path to disaster and undermined the resiliency of having two data centers.

Why then is stretching Layer 2 a) needed and b) a go-to maneuver for DCI.

Let's look at it from two points of view: technology and business.

No Experience is Irrelevant

So you’ve recently changed jobs, and you have a very extensive linux skillset. Your new job doesn’t include or require this skillset. Does that mean that experience will not serve you in this new role? Absolutely false. The most valuable thing these experiences give us is perspective. The ability to see things from a unique point of view makes you a unique and valuable addition to any team. This is a strong reason for my advocacy of the Unified Skillset.

No Experience is Irrelevant

So you’ve recently changed jobs, and you have a very extensive linux skillset. Your new job doesn’t include or require this skillset. Does that mean that experience will not serve you in this new role? Absolutely false. The most valuable thing these experiences give us is perspective. The ability to see things from a unique point of view makes you a unique and valuable addition to any team. This is a strong reason for my advocacy of the Unified Skillset.
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