Author Archives: Adam

Cisco Privilege Level Access with Radius and NPS Server

When administering Cisco network gear it’s always nice to be able to login with your typical admin credentials. You change one password and it changes over all systems. It’s not uncommon for organizations of many different sizes to use RADIUS backed up to Active Directory to achieve this.

The simplest setup is typically to allow network admins full access to the CLI and nothing for everyone else. Typically, that works well. I wanted the helpdesk guys to get some Cisco experience, however, while not having the ability to make a bunch of changes. Continue reading

Posted in Networking, Security | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Windows NPS Radius Authentication of Cisco Prime Infrastructure

As part of a recent network upgrade I was able to get Cisco Prime Infrastructure included in the moneys for the project. I love new systems to play with, of course, and immediately got to work checking out all the bells and whistles. Needless to say, it wasn’t long until I got tired of remembering the root credentials and began looking at RADIUS authentication for some help. Additionally, I’m kind of the security guy too and knew I was breaking my own rules by not having individual user logons in place. Continue reading

Posted in Security | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Cannot Connect to Brand New ASA

I recently experienced an issue making a connection to a brand new, factory default, just out of the box ASA firewall. “Connect using a browser and the URL https://192.168.1.1” did not work like the quick start guide suggested. The solution was simple but somewhat elusive if you don’t know where to look. Continue reading

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Power over Ethernet Issues

With the invention of Power over Ethernet (PoE) bringing up light devices such as VOIP phones and wireless access points has become very easy. Power and data flow over the same cable on various wire pairs. The simplicity is great but the electrical requirements are a bit more particular with PoE. With full Gigabit implementations all wire pairs are required for power and for data transmission. When one pair is not properly terminated strange things happen… Continue reading

Posted in Networking | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments