June 2011

Came across a nifty video featuring Jimmy Ray Purser demonstrating the Cisco 4500 Sup 7E and the new single line In Service Software Upgrade (ISSU) feature. 

If you are unfamiliar with ISSU, it basically lets you upgrade a router or switch to new code without taking a significant outage to reboot.  In the 4500 Sup 7E, Jimmy mentions a 10 millisecond outage during the upgrade - much better than several minutes. 

The video is embedded below. If you don't have flash, the link to it on YouTube is also below.

If you have been thinking about going for the CCNP certification or are already working toward that goal, you have undoubtedly wondered what the TSHOOT exam has in store for you. Jeremy posted his thoughts on it after taking the exam last year. The official Cisco TSHOOT page also has specific information about the exam. However, sometimes it helps when the information is spoon fed to you in a video format. 

I stumbled on the following video and figured it was worth sharing. Not only was it informative, it reminded me of the pre-flight "fasten seatbelt" routine flight attendants go through when you travel. 

Here are some subnetting questions to get the synapses firing on a Friday:

1. What range of addresses are encompassed by the summary address 10.45.128.0/18?

A) 10.45.128.0-10.45.128.255

B) 10.45.128.0-10.45.128.128

C) 10.45.128.0-10.45.191.255

D) 10.45.128.0-10.45.129.255

2. You need to configure a new branch office LAN with at least 812 usable IP addresses. The site desktop manager wants a single range of addresses to make it easier to configure the gateway and subnet mask on the computers and printers being deployed. Your company uses the 10.0.0.0/8 address space for internal networks and the subnet 10.128.0.0/16 has been reserved for new branch office LANs (WAN links are in a different subnet). Starting with the first available network in the reserved range, what is the most efficient subnet and CIDR mask for this new branch office?

A) 10.128.0.0/16

B) 10.128.0.0/23

C) 10.128.0.0/21

D) 10.128.0.0/22

3. The following access list is filtering traffic:

access-list 1 deny 192.168.64.0 0.0.31.255

access-list 1 permit any

Which of the following addresses will not be dropped? (select all that apply)

A) 192.168.64.1

B) 192.168.92.1

C) 192.168.96.1

D) 192.168.127.1

Answers after the break:

If you use Microsoft Power Point on a regular basis, you may have already figured out that unlike the other Office products, Power Point is lacking a useful feature. Text doesn't automatically wrap around a picture when you drop it in the middle of a block of text!

I have used the Office suite for over a decade (and have even taught people how to use it), but I don't recall ever trying to drop a picture into a block of text and have it wrap around in Power Point. It works in Word, but not here. When I first had this happen, I figured there must be some obscure check box buried deep within the options and preferences that would enable text wrapping. After a bit of searching, no such check box was found. 

Well, after some research, I discovered somewhat of a public service announcement on Microsoft's site explaining how to do this manually since the feature was left out of Power Point 2010. At least they remembered to write a how to... 

Feels like it was just a few months ago we were installing the brand new Firefox 4 and now it is obsolete! That's right, Mozilla is laughing at Murphy's Law and coming out with a major rev of their software every 3 months instead of their previous schedule that was much more sane.

According to mozilla.com, "Mozilla Firefox is moving to a rapid release development cycle to
deliver new features, performance enhancements, security updates and
stability improvements to users faster."

So, if we're understanding this correctly, they want to deliver updates to their users like they always have, but they want to throw the whole concept of subversions out the window and stick with major releases. As a regular end user, I guess I can roll with that.

After months in the works, the Tekcert Forums are officially open to the public! 

For the next month or so, the forums will be in "beta" - this is to ensure things are running smoothly enough to let the forums continue to run. During this period, I will be making modifications and improvements to the forums. Also, I hope that you, the readers, will step up to the plate and become contributors as well. Create an account, login, and post to the forums.  Let me know if you run into any problems or tell me if you have a suggestion to improve the forums. To send me feedback, use the Contact form located here.

I hope this becomes a useful source of information for everyone. I've tried to create more certification focused forums, but if you want some new forum categories let me know and it might get added. 

Thanks and Happy Posting!