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January 2008

Help! Remote Switch IP Changes...

I feel so shamed. I have completely neglected the CiscoBlog since the holidays and my first post of the new year is a plea for help. How pathetic! Forgive me. I plan on putting plenty of time into the blog, answering many of the questions that have come in over the last few weeks, and getting that forum running (I'm really close!). The check's in the mail
So here's what I need help with. This weekend, I'm doing a massive network migration for a government agency. They have about 60 switches that I will be moving over to a new IP addressing scheme (creating a separate management VLAN). So here's, in effect, what I'll be doing:
interface vlan 1
no ip address
interface vlan 200
ip address 10.20.x.x 255.255.0.0 (each switch gets its own IP address)
no shutdown
Seems simple, right? Well, these switches are spread over 15 buildings miles apart using fiber cabling.

Recovering Type 7 Passwords Without Web-Tools

I'm stealing this guy from a reader tip on the January edition of the Cisco Tech Newsletter. Apparently, the "keychain" configuration of a Cisco router supports a decrypt command that allows you to recover (break) the Type 7 encrypted passwords:
Router (config) #key chain LIGHT
Router (config-keychain) #key 718
Router (config-keychain-key) #key-string 7 11192616193C233850012E3D2B2725711D
Router (config-keychain-key) #do show key chain LIGHT Key-chain decrypt:
key 1 -- text "decrypted_password"
accept lifetime (always valid) - (always valid) [valid now]
send lifetime (always valid) - (always valid) [valid now]
It probably takes more time to do something like this than just paste the encrypted password into this Java applet...but you'd feel much cooler doing it this way :).

Cisco Announces CCDE Certification

Well, it's now out there: The Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE) - the next "expert" level certificaiton equivalent to the CCIE. I've been reviewing many of the resources on this one...all I can say is has got to be intense! I'm really curious about the how the practical exam will be administered...are you interviewed? Drawing network diagrams?
Anyhow, here's all the information - let me know if you find any interesting facts about this:
Cisco CCDE Certification Page:
http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/ccde/index.html
CCDE Written Exam Info:
http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/ccde/ccde_exam_information.html
CCDE Book List: (Check this thing out!!!



Dr. Radut