Microsoft Windows

Epic Technology Day a great success!

Hi folks, so as you know I work for the largest locally owned IT consulting company in Manitoba. Twice a year we hold one of the largest HP partner events in North America called Epic Technology Day. This year I did a presentation on VoIP and Wireless and I was very happy with the turnout and buzz generated by the presentation.

Well after all was said and done we broke yet another record and had our largest registration numbers yet. I just wanted to thank all of you that came out for the event and I hope to see you again in April for our next Technology Day.

If there any particular presentations you want to see at the next event, please don’t hesitate to let us know so we can help tailor the event to the needs of our customers. I hope to be presenting again at the next Tech Day and look forward to seeing you all again soon!

-RP

Using Firefox when it’s being blocked

Hi folks, as you know I’ve been recently testing out the new version of Firefox and it’s been great! But what do you do when people decided to block which version of a browser you are using in an environment and force you to use Internet Explorer?

You look for a Firefox plugin of course! There is a plugin from Firefox called the User Agent Switcher. This plugin allows you to make Firefox impersonate a different web browser such as IE 6, 7 or 8. Some of the other things you can do is impersonate search robots which is great for search engine optimization.

I have to say Firefox has been a heck of a lot more stable than it ever has been for me. It is now my default browser of choice and with all these extra add-ons it is making my browsing life extremely easy!

-RP

My first CCNP exam is coming up soon - BSCI 642-901

Hi folks, so my first exam is coming up soon, exam # 642-901 otherwise known as BSCI - Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks. Rumour has it that this exam is at least 10 times harder than the other 3 exams in the CCNP series so it’s going to be interesting.

Some of the things I’ve been really focusing on in the exam are BGP, IPV6 and multicast as those are my weak points. The exam guide on the Cisco web site states that they can quiz you on anything from EIGRP and OSPF, to IS-IS. I feel fairly comfortable with EIGRP, OSPF and IS-IS which is why i’m focusing on BGP, multicast and IPV6. Those are 3 areas I haven’t had as much experience in as the other stuff.

I built a lab at home out of some of my equipment to help me test stuff out. I also rented rack time through the Bryant Advantage. The question is will this be enough for me to pass? I sure hope so! We’ll see if my focus yields the results I want. Stay tuned!

-RP

Aggregating links on Cisco switches

Hello again folks! So you’ve just recently got your purchase approved for a brand new set of switches and you want to find a way to increase your throughput. What do you do? You aggregate links of course!

Aggregating links is a common thing done on high end switches such as Cisco or HP switches to name a few. The idea behind it is to take two or more ports and bind them together to create a single virtual port that connects to another switch. Then you can take your traffic and shuttle it over this link.

In Cisco land this is called Etherchannel. When you create an Etherchannel, it is treated like an interface. People will commonly create Etherchannels and then trunk their vlans across this link. This allows for quite a bit of bandwidth, especially on gigabit switches. This doesn’t double your bandwidth but it does increase it by a fair bit.

You can read more about etherchannel here.

-RP

The Bryant Advantage

So now that I’ve been at the bootcamp and it’s time to buckle down and get ready for the exams, I was looking for some extra training material. I wanted to find some good study guides and labs that would help me prepare. I was also looking for some rack time (renting Cisco hardware and logging on to it remotely to do labs on) since I don’t own enough equipment myself.

Well I was doing some digging and I came across this thing called The Bryant Advantage. Chris Bryant is a certified CCIE and he created his own study material which is 100% legit and is great for studying for the exam. He also provides rack time if you need it.

So I figured I’d take the plunge and I bought the Bryant Advantage materials with the rack time. I have to say the material is just great! I’ve been reading his ebook and he really does a great job of explaining everything. Also Chris is extremely helpful for any questions you might have. I can highly recommend buying his material to prepare for the CCNP.

-RP

IPV6 and what it means to you

So after all this training at Boson for the CCNP, I have come out of there with a lot of Cisco knowledge bouncing around in my head. Over the next little while you will see me blogging about a lot of things Cisco related as that is what I’m currently working with a lot and also preparing for exam-wise.

One of the things that is prominent in my CCNP training is IPV6. As most of you know the problem witih IPV4 is that we are quickly running out of IPV4 addresses. We will probably run out of addresses between the years 2011 to 2012. That is not that far away. Companies need to seriously start thinking about how to address these issues now.

Luckily Cisco is one of the companies that has actually forseen this as an issue and has taken the pro-active step to include IPV6 training in their certifications. I commend them for that and realistically how could they not when their routers are largely responsible for running a good chunk of the Internet’s network.

Already desktop operating systems are giving you the ability to setup IPV6. I encourage you to setup some test labs and try it out. I find that a lot of people are afraid of it because they are not familiar with it. But if you take some time to sit down and learn it, it’s actually not that bad.

-RP

I’m back from the boot camp!

Hi folks, I’m back from the Boson CCNP Boot Camp! It was 2 weeks of very intense training and great Florida weather! It kinda sucks to be back in our crappy Winnipeg summer up here in Canada.

Anyways, the training was absolutely amazing. It was 2 weeks filled with very informative material regarding exam preparation, true learning, and real world situations. Bryan was very good and showing us All the Boson employees were great and made us Canadians feel very welcome down there.

We had a small class of just 5 people and each of us had our own racks of equipment to play with. The instructor created some awesome labs for us to go through which really reinforced our learning. Bryan was very good at answering all of our questions.

Now to start the long hard road of writing the exams. Wish me luck!

-RP

EDS face more pay cuts

So this just surfaced across the web in the news. It seems EDS employees are facing more pay cuts again. Seriously?

Last I checked, the government told us that Canada is out of a recession. It seems like the US part of HP is blindly sending down paycuts to their Canadian bretheren. You do realize that we are a different country and are actually not doing so bad in comparison? Maybe you want to look at the numbers before doing this sort of thing.

I seriously disagree with the amount of paycuts that have been hitting EDS, it’s not fair to the employees that have been working their butts off for the company and making them money all these years. There are lots of places where they could cut but just don’t want to so instead the little guy gets the shaft.

Read more about it here.

-RP

The importance of wireless site surveys

Hello again! Here’s some more information for you techs delving into the world of wireless. Wireless site surveys! One of the things I find often overlooked when implementing a wireless strategy, is the lack of one! Even when people listen to me about putting in the proper access points and controllers, sometimes they just don’t think about placement.

Now I don’t understand why on earth you wouldn’t do a wireless site survey. A proper survey can save you tons of headaches for your users and for yourself, as well as save you on countless hours of troubleshooting. Access points should not be installed into an organization with no regard to placement, that’s just a dumb idea. You’ll more than likely end up by way too many access points to deal with a given situation and end up wasting your money.

Instead, you should hire a wireless certified individual or company and have them come in and run a wireless site survey. They will come in and scan the surrounding area that you need to have wireless coverage in and they will present you with a nice report that shows you exactly how many access points you need, and where to place them for maximum coverage. Then from this report, you will have a good idea of which wireless controllers and access points you’ll need to buy.

Remember, don’t go into wireless blindly, take your time, do the proper legwork and install a solution that will make your users happy and make you look great!

-RP

Implementing wireless in your business

Hello again folks, once again I wanted to talk a little bit about wireless connectivity. More and more, people are finding that they are requiring wireless access in their organization. Unfortunately a good majority of them are going about it the wrong way.

What do I mean by this? Well let’s take a small business for example, one with just a few people and a very small sized office. If they need wireless access all they need to do is go to their nearest electronics retailer and buy a small Linksys or D-Link wireless router and hook it up and they’re good to go. Simple, effective,  cheap, not so bad at all.

But now take the slightly larger business, with many people and a larger office than a single wireless router or access point can serve. I’ve seen way too many people try and setup wireless by buying multiple home based wireless routers and spreading them across their premises with no rhyme or reason to try and get the best coverage. Also the larger the building(s), the more management the administrator ends up having by having to go and configure each access point individually.

Never fear, there is a better way. Our friends at Cisco and HP(technology recently acquired from Colubris) both have competing solutions that will serve your needs. The idea is to use a Wireless Controller device which you configure which then in turn controls your access points by use of LWAPP(Lightweight Access Point Protocol). LWAPP allows you to control and configure multiple access points from a centrally accessed wireless controller. The controller pushes out it’s configuration to all of these access points making administration quite easy.

-RP