The year 2009. I remember as a young kid watching the movie 2010 and thinking; man alive! by 2009 we will be so advanced! Bases on the Moon and maybe Mars, cures for everything, no traffic jams and certainly an answer on how to unify transport fabrics in the data center. OK, I am just kidding around about the whole traffic jam thing. Read more
Have you ever watched a movie that you thought was fall down hilarious when you wore a younger person's clothes, now? I watched Hollywood Knights last night and man when I first saw that movie I laughed so darn hard I could hardly hear the dialog. I set my wife up for how funny this movie was... but we didn't laugh as much. She hardly did at all. Although it was still funny and much better then, The Muppets Christmas, it was kinda dated humor. Read more
Besides networking, I am a huge lover of astronomy. I grew up in the hills of Tennessee and I practiced one of the oldest and most reachable of all the sciences every night; I looked up. We had virtually no light pollution so the view was...man it was amazing. I always wanted a telescope as a kid. Now looking back I am glad I never got one until I was older. A poor telescope is something that can damper your spirits like service pack 2 on NT4. If you are looking to pick up a scope this year for a smokin' hot Christmas present, here are a few tips on the stuff I learned along the way. Read more
Ah yes, another year down. Seems like when I find the best fishin' baits; winter hits, the lake freezes over and then I am back at it again. That must be why I love network security so darn much! 'Bout the time I have it figured out, it all changes overnight. Read more
As I mentioned in a previous blog, I was in the Silicon Valley last week. I Love being out there, not for the technology, but the food. The food is awesome! Around every corner is a great place to eat. There is a great Thai food place called A-Marin (they don't serve beer, but the food more then makes up for it) it was there I met up with an old pal of mine. He has been working with Universal Serial Bus technologies longer then Madonna has been a skank. Read more
I am out in San Jose this week taping the next TechWiseTV show. We were requested to do a show on Green. That sounded about as appealing as going to my mother in laws for a week without beer. I fought this idea hard because we already did a show on this AND I just do not see a technical angle as much as I see a political one.
Then I met Rob Aldrich. Read more
I just finished up a lunch meeting with a couple of engineers. Robb and I are starting to work up show ideas for TechWiseTV. We always plan to make the show fresh and field ready so to do that we have to always be in the field. To that, I was meeting with some folks for some very fresh security content. The location had a bunch of TV's turned up full blast broadcasting everything from Dr. Phil to the 1958 Giants-Colts game. Read more
When I logged into my sensornet this morning I excitingly saw the following info in my logs:
-> PASS D3&hh* Read more
-> USER CC-5644 * 0 :IMP1
-> NICK [T11|USA|51932]
<- :sv2.bothost.net 001 [T11|USA|51932] :
<- :sv2.bothost.net 002 [T11|USA|51932] :
<- :sv2.bothost.net 003 [T11|USA|51932] :
-> JOIN ##tshuab l3a9
<- :sv2.bothost.net 442 [T11|USA|51932] ##tshaub l3a9
<- :sv2.bothost.net 443 [T11|USA|51932] ##tshaub 6h057
<- :sv2.bothost.net NOTICE [T11|USA|51932] :*** You were forced to join ##gt
I was at a customer site the other day and we were going back and forth on MTBF numbers like George Costanza trying to split a check for lunch. Reading MTBF numbers is kinda like believing you can actually catch fish with the Ronco pocket fisherman. Wow!! According to my Mean Time Between Failure data, my network gear will last for 30 years!! Sorta like a furniture store going out of business...for five years. Normally, most folks look at MTBF data like this; "Hmmm, a year contains 8,766 hours. My switch has a MTBF score of 292Khrs. Now, lets convert that to years. Read more
In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words: "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…" Read more
This has been an interesting week. Sometimes you just have to deliver the bad news to folks. I try the old; "Don't shoot the messenger" routine and although no shots are fired, folks sure want to throw down sometimes. Especially if it relates to a field like computing that folks think if I know how to config route reflectors for BGP peers then, I should be able to do work miracles like Mr. Scott can repair a warp drive with three paper clips, a folding chair and a half eaten po-boy sandwich. Can I get a witness!! Read more
My 12 year old son asked me the other day what does data sound like. Being asked a computer science question, no, more like a networking based question caused me to break out the hanky I reserve for those times when I find out my backup copy was a incremental instead of a full. I thought about the whistles of the old modems of yester year, the whirl of 8mm backup tapes, 2600 MHz tone of a phone switch, the capacitor start fans in a large router or switch (I have Goosebumps…) So with sage like wisdom of my 18 years in Information Technology I said, “Go ask your Mom” Read more
I like watching those real life crime shows like American Justice and City Confidential. It is amazing to see how folks can take a torn piece of toilet paper and solve a crime with it. The smallest clues can make the biggest differences. I also like seasons 1-3 of Sponge Bob Square Pants but I will save that cliffhanger analogy for my upcoming blog on packet sniffing...
Chances are that sometime in our IT career we are going to be faced with few choices: Read more
- Sushi or In-Out Burger?
- Reformat a machine or gather evidence to prosecute a hacker.
Most hard core networking geeks out there today avoid buzzwords like I avoid health food, sushi and light beer. Buzzwords are not technologies that I can go out there and deploy per se, they are terms to make analyst sound smarter then they actually are. Web 2.0 has really taken on a life of its own in the kingdom of buzzwords. I use Web 2.0 to help me move gear and get management behind projects they normally would not. For example: Read more
It's kinda funny to see how folks 'tudes change when things go from great to worse. For example; I always used to laugh when folks told me how great their Chiropractor made their back feel. I thought they were just a Western version of a witch doctor with newer magazines. Until I hurt my back on a business trip... A Sales Rep drove me to his Chiropractor for help. I was hurtin' so much I would have sacrificed a chicken myself to feel better. This Dude made me a believer and I added him to my Christmas Card list! Read more
Last night, I wanted to grill up some beer can chicken. If you have not had any, it ranks right up there with going to watch Time Trials at Indy as a must do. My wife loaned out my stand to some goober neighbor and she was out shopping or something another with my daughter so I couldn't ask her where it was. She told me, but I was in CodeMode(tm) and taking in that information would have caused a buffer overflow. Read more
I really dig writing code. I always have since I wrote my first "Hello World" I was hooked like a Bass on someone else's rod-reel. I have been a huge fan of Cisco AXP for awhile now. The AXP is a module that fits in the ISR and gives a code jockey a Linux environment to develop applications in. It supports C,JBoss,Java,Python,Perl so we have quite a few opinions to code in. But REAL coders code in C... Read more
You can learn more at http://www.cisco.com/go/axp
Wireless is more fun then fishing for Bass while drinking a Bass. Open your home pantry and you have a wide range of homemade antenna options. What can you do with some of those older WLAN cards stuffed in a office drawer behind the "Must Read" stuff from Human Resources? Read more
I love Germany. How can you not like a country that has no speed limit and awesome beer. I could move there and not miss a step. Of course the food sucks, so I reckon that is the trade off. I love speed and performance. A couple years back I purchased a couple of Go-Peds for my kids but that was not enough...I had to soup those little dudes up squeeze a another ounce of horsepower out of them. I put on a header, bigger carb, manufactured an intake and advanced the timing as well as changed the splines, man those dudes could really fly!! Read more
Planning for a branch office roll out is like going to your inlaws family reunion. You just know in the end there is going to be trouble... It is difficult to find a good formula that addresses the needs of the branch. The bean counters look at the branch from a low port count point of view and push non managed devices or even hand me downs from the central LAN.
Looking back at the branch office/replicated sites I have rolled out in the past, I have noticed five things in common across the board that seem to contribute to a successful roll out for the IT staff, Management and Bean Counters.
Tip 00x01 Build a template. I am the first to scream against using a cookie cutter approach in building out networks. In the branch office, I think it is critical. Have a simple IBM style flow chart that looks at; cable plant, seats supports, number of closets, voip, service level agreement, etc. Then build out your set up scripts add the new branch to the NOC support plan and start deployin' Not only is this easier on you by far, but now bean counters can see the IT cost associated with a roll out and management can do people planning better.../insert joke here
Tip 00x02 Accelerate the WAN. I am a big fan of WAN accelerators. I have tested and installed most of the popular one on the market today. Personally, I like the Cisco WAAS module best of all. Now I know y'all are thinkin' "whatta a knob! of course he likes WAAS he works for Cisco doesn't he read Gartner?" True I work for Cisco and no I do not read any analyst that has never been in the field and built street cred yo. They write about that in the networking geek handbook; Something about talkin' the talk... I have really beat that product up in testing big time. I love the conf options, performance, management and modular design of WAAS. Either way, WAN acceleration is a great way to optimize bandwidth for a low cost and certain a MUST in branch deployment. Read more
Jimmy Ray Purser is the technical co-host for Cisco's TechWise and BizWise TV. Jimmy Ray also conducts advanced training for engineers across North America and Europe and regularly speaks at industry conferences such as VON, CeBIT, N+I, and Networkers. As a field engineer, Jimmy Ray experiences networking first hand behind the console or in the rack. He is an active member in the IEEE and the Ethernet Alliance and has designed, installed and tested numerous networks for Fortune 500 companies, the United States military and other institutions worldwide. He holds 3 U.S. patents for Ethernet security algorithms with two others pending and one defensive publication, as well as numerous other vendor certifications in networking and security.
Purser holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Southern Illinois University is currently pursuing a master of science degree in electrical engineering and is a licensed professional engineer in Wisconsin.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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