Layer 2 to Layer 3 Metro-E Link Migration

Posted on December 26, 2012 by

Metro Ethernet has made connecting different sites extremely easy for just about any level of admin. The problem is, however, it has also made for some very sloppy setups. It is nearly always a recommended best practice to route WAN links. This is particularly true when the WAN is a bottle neck in terms of throughput. If a LAN is built on Gigabit Ethernet and a Metro-E link between sites is only 40Mbps there is a bottleneck. Often LANs in small to medium sized organizations are way underutilized and this can be gotten away with. Typically the Layer 2 connection would span the 40Mbps link with little trouble. However, as traffic increases, a redundant link is added between sites, or requirements change you can find this design corners you with a need for a better way of controlling traffic flow. Continue reading →

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Study the CCNA for Free

Posted on December 23, 2012 by

If you are just getting started in networking many people will recommend knocking out the CCNA certification.  I would probably agree with that.  Personally, when I got the CCNA I had a networking / systems admin job before hand and did just fine without the cert.  The CCNA study, however, gave me the opportunity to focus on the material and to expand a bit outside of what I worked with daily.  The CCNA is a prerequisite of a lot of other training courses offered on other Cisco technologies as well. The CCNA, or any certification for that matter, can be … Continue reading →

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802.1Q Tunneling AKA QinQ

Posted on December 17, 2012 by

You are probably familiar with VLAN tagging on switch trunks and how it can be used to separate physical infrastructures into multiple logical networks. With the explosive growth of Metro Ethernet connections the ability of site to site layer two connections has now become common. It’s easy for organizations to implement as network admins are already familiar with Ethernet as a LAN protocol. The setup is simple for the customer but a bit more configuration is needed on the service provider’s side if the customer desires VLAN tagged traffic to flow over the site to site link. Lets take a look! Continue reading →

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Native Grep and Cat Alternatives in Windows (sort of…)

Posted on December 5, 2012 by

If you use a Linux operating system for much you are probably familiar with the “grep” and “cat” commands and their usage.   Grep is probably one of the most powerful utilities in Linux because it allows for text and regular expression searching a number of different ways.  Grep is so popular that it has even been ported to Windows by many.  So how do you get grep functionality in Windows?  Well, you can download many of the installable versions out there and you’re set.  Unfortunately, in a pristine server environment with change control or limited privileges this is not an … Continue reading →

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