Skip to Content

January 2011

IPv6 in 2011?

Mon, 2011-01-03 07:31

There's an interesting little write-up over at the Internet Storm Center today entitled
What Will Matter in 2011. On their list, they have IPv6 slated to finally be force fed to us IPv4 users since the IPv4 space is almost depleted. There have been predictions for the past 10 years that the IPv4 space will run out, but somehow we always squeeze a little more of it out to push back the inevitable migration to IPv6. 

If you want to see where all of the address space is currently allocated, check out IANA's list. You'll find a majority of the addresses on that list are administerred by ARIN, who maintains a page on this issue here. 

CES 2011

Wed, 2011-01-05 07:27

The 2011 Consumer Electronic Show kicks off this week in Las Vegas, Nevada. Officially the event begins tomorrow and goes through the weekend, but the media and bloggers of the world have already started the frenzy of discussing new products and predicting what's to come. 

Expect a slew of new cell phones, laptops, netbooks, and tablets on the mobile front. There's an entire section of the show devoted to electronics in automobiles that includes car stereos, gps/nav, and anything else you can cram into a car. One year, Mercedes Benz setup a closed track in a parking lot and allowed convention-goers to test drive anyone of a handful of their latest and greatest (it was very fun). Cloud based applications and touch technology will likely be the big buzz words this year.

Cisco at CES

Fri, 2011-01-07 07:38

Cisco has made their presence known at CES this year with their hopes of a killer app for the network, Video. Their lineup includes the Flip camera, umi telepresence, and their goal of redefining television with Videoscape. 

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

CES 2011 Round Up

Mon, 2011-01-10 07:59

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show introduced a lot of cool and innovative products. After checking them all out, here’s my “worth taking a look at” list with four categories: Most Useful, Most Innovative, Goofiest Looking, and Best of Show.  Read on for the break down.

Intrusion Prevention System Stress Tests

Wed, 2011-01-12 00:09

NSS Labs tested 13 leading Intrusion Prevention Systems and have released the results. The tests included a total of 1179 exploits performed against each of the IPS devices in two stages, one with the default settings on the systems, and another with a vendor representative tuning the configuration. NSS Labs stresses that the tests were provided at no cost to the vendors and everything was unbiased. 

The results are definitely enlightening if you can get your hands on them; NSS Labs is asking a new low price of $1,800 per user to get the full report if you don't have a subscription to their service. If you do some poking around you can find some of the information on the specific vendor sites. If your company really needs the full report, NSS Labs deserves the price of admission for their hard work. None the less, I did some digging and have provided what I've found below. 

WebVPN / SSLVPN Sessions

Thu, 2011-01-13 08:59

Every Cisco ASA supports two SSLVPN sessions out of the box without additional licenses. This is great until you have a "hung session" that eats up a license and you can't clear it. These commands for interacting with the SSLVPN from the command line are extremely poorly documented (hard to find)...so I'm putting them here for good keeping:

Birthday Cake

Fri, 2011-01-14 07:37
Birthday Cake

Happy Birthday Tekcert!

Fri, 2011-01-14 07:38
Birthday Cake

Tekcert.com is now 1 Year old! About a year and a half ago I had the idea to create a blog, but it took a nudge from my brother to go for it. It didn't take long to get the basic site up and running, but a lot of hours have gone into making modifications and adding features.

After about 6 months of blogging solo, Jeremy and I had some Thai food and I told him about the site. Since he was at a crossroads with the domain name, I suggested the idea of a joint blog and he thought the idea was cool enough to give it a shot. After quite a bit of work, most of the data from ciscoblog was migrated (minus the spam comments) and the cut was made in September.

It has been a lot of fun (and a lot of work) making Tekcert what it has become. It's been a pleasure to be able to collaborate with Jeremy on this project. This year I hope to introduce some new features on the site. Perhaps a Tekcert forum if there is enough interest. I hope everyone who visits the site finds some useful information because in the end my goal is to help people become better at what they do, be it their job or taking certification exams.

Thanks everyone for making the first year of tekcert.com a great one!

-Adam

Cisco Flip

Fri, 2011-01-14 15:55

Over the past few years, Cisco has gradually been introducing products in the consumer space, either through acquisition of companies or innovation of new products. The Flip Camera is one of those Cisco products that was part of the package when they acquired Pure Digital in 2009. 

If you have never seen a flip, it's basically a cell phone sized HD video camera with built-in compact flash. It's built to be an easy, consumer grade point and shoot video camera. You pull it out of the box, charge it up (or put batteries in it if it's a cheaper model) and start recording video. 

IT Manager Salaries

Mon, 2011-01-17 21:10

Over the years, I've seen many people get promoted from entry level and mid-level technical positions to lead and managerial roles. Out of curiosity, I decided to look up what an average IT Manager makes. Here's what I found (at least for the US):

CCIE & CCNP Salaries

Wed, 2011-01-19 06:17
dollar.PNG

After the surprise wore off from seeing how low salaries for IT managers can go, I started to wonder how much of a bump in salary the average network engineer would get with achieving a CCIE. This is the only current survey I could find, I searched and found a bunch of data from 2008, 2004, and older. 

So, for supposedly recent CCIE data, here ya go...

Cisco Introduces Dual Band Wireless Home Router

Thu, 2011-01-20 21:57
Cisco has released their latest home router with built in dual band wifi, so you can run both G and N wireless at the same time, from one device. Pretty sweet! Also comes with 4 Gig-E interfaces, a USB port for attaching storage, and UPnP support for streaming music and videos!

CCIE Service Provider Beta Exam

Mon, 2011-01-24 00:26

The latest version of the CCIE Service Provider Written exam will be available in beta form from February 18 to March 18, 2011. The exam is offered at the standard discounted beta price of $50 USD and can be taken at your favorite authorized Pearson VUE testing center. More details can be found here. 

The exam objectives look pretty solid, they cover just about everything you would see in a service provider environment - DWDM, SONET, frame relay, 10gig core routing, multicast, & GRE. The full list of exam topics can be found here (CCO login required). 

NSS Labs IPS Winner

Wed, 2011-01-26 07:24

Two weeks ago I posted the results that I could find regarding the recent NSS Labs IPS Stress Test. As much as I searched at the time, I couldn't find the vendor in the first place spot, until this morning. Thanks to an anonymous source, we now know that Sourcefire took the best of show!

The official press release is here. If you would like to see the individual results for Sourcefire, you can get them via email by filling out the form here. 

Pop Quiz: EIGRP Metric Calculation

Fri, 2011-01-28 07:25

Here are a few questions to get the synapses firing on a Friday...

1) When calculating the composite metric, does EIGRP use the MTU?

2) Assuming default EIGRP behavior, what two vector metrics are used to calculate the composite route metric?

3) What are the default K values set to in EIGRP?
-Answers after the break-

Cheap GigabitEthernet

Mon, 2011-01-31 07:27

Looking for inexpensive connectivity for your house or small business network? I was too until this past weekend when I picked up one of these:

 

Pretty simple little switch, you just plug it in and there's no config. I just needed some Gig-E ports and didn't want to buy a D-link, it felt wrong for some reason.



Dr. Radut