Nov 11 2009 6:31PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
tutorial,
IT education,
technology education,
information technology reference,
information technology tutorial,
certification,
programming,
sql,
Database,
Microsoft education,
Microsoft,
Macromedia,
Adobe,
Networking,
network technology education,
MAC OS,
Linux,
XML
I recently came across an excellent IT education resource that is free. It is the eTutorials.org website. According to the website it is a source of thousands online tutorials, useful tips, articles, and researched recommendations.
Some of the content on eTutorials includes topics like:
Adobe:
- Adobe Illustrator CS
- Adobe Photoshop 7. How to
- Adobe Premiere 6.5. Teach yourself in 24 hours
- Adobe Indesign CS2. Professional Typography
Networking:
- Lan switching fundamentals
- Router firewall security
- Wireless lan security
- Integrated cisco and unix network architectures
- Lan switching first-step
- Mpls VPN security
- Beginner’s guide to wi-fi wireless networking
- 802.11 security. wi-fi protected access and 802.11i
- Wimax Technology for broadband wireless access
- Wireless community networks
- Network security assessment
- Network security hacks
- Network Management
- Wireless networks first-step
- LAN switching first-step
Certification:
- A programmer’s guide to java certification
- CCNP BSCI Official Exam Certification Guide
- Sun certified solaris 9.0 system and network administrator all-in-one exam guide
- Advanced DBA Certification Guide and Reference
Other technology sections include:
- Macromedia
- Programming
- SQL
- Server Administration
- Microsoft Products
- Mac OS
- Linux systems
- Mobile devices
- XML
- Misc
An example of the table of contents in the CCNP BSCI Official Exam Certification Guide tutorial includes the following sections:
CCNP BSCI Official Exam Certification Guide, Fourth Edition - Graphically Rich Book
Each chapter includes:
“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz
Foundation Topics
Foundation Summary
Q&A
Introduction
Part I: Introduction to Scalable Networks
Chapter 1. Network Design
Chapter 2. IP Address Planning and Summarization
Part II: EIGRP
Chapter 3. EIGRP Principles
Chapter 4. Scalable EIGRP
Part III: OSPF
Chapter 5. Understanding Simple Single-Area OSPF
Chapter 6. OSPF Network Topologies
Chapter 7. Using OSPF Across Multiple Areas
Chapter 8. OSPF Advanced Topics
Part IV: IS-IS
Chapter 9. Fundamentals of the Integrated IS-IS Protocol
Chapter 10. Configuring Integrated IS-IS
Part V: Cisco IOS Routing Features
Chapter 11. Implementing Redistribution and Controlling Routing Updates
Chapter 12. Controlling Redistribution with Route Maps
Chapter 13. Dynamic Host Control Protocol
Part VI: BGP
Chapter 14. BGP Concepts
Chapter 15. BGP Neighbors
Chapter 16. Controlling BGP Route Selection
Part VII: Multicasting
Chapter 17. What Is Multicasting?
Chapter 18. IGMP
Chapter 19. Configuring Multicast
Part VIII: IPv6
Chapter 20. Introduction to IPv6 and IPv6 Addressing
Chapter 21. IPv6 Routing Protocols, Configuration, and Transitioning from IPv4
Appendix A. Answers to Chapter “Do I Know This Already?” Quizzes and Q&A Sections
There is a LOT of tutorial content on this website! I would highly recommend using this resource for reference materials and increasing your knowledge in the technology topics offered.
Thanks for reading and please share with other IT Trenches readers what online tutorial resources you use for reference or education.
Oct 23 2009 6:40PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
net neutrality,
blacklist,
privacy,
wiretapping,
eavesdropping,
lawsuit,
Cisco,
Microsoft,
Comcast,
TRUSTe
A web based tool I frequently use is called Network-Tools.com. I frequently use the site to lookup names associated with IP addresses and whois information and ping to the addresses. A recent notice on the page raised my concern. The notice says:
Network-Tools owner sues Microsoft, Cisco, Comcast and TRUSTe over IP Address Blacklisting
Suit alleges eavdropping, privacy policy fraud, breach of contract and defamation
Interesting stuff, huh? So why would this suit be raised? According to the page tracking the lawsuit:
The lawsuit claims that Comcast, Microsoft, and Cisco collected information about Smith’s IP addresses and either put them on a “blacklist” or gave them a poor “Reputation Score.” Comcast even blocked his communication link with a mail server he operates outside the Comcast network. The suit claims that in order to collect this information in the first place Comcast, Cisco and Microsoft violated eavesdropping laws. The suit goes on to claim that Comcast, Microsoft, and Cisco failed to adhere to their privacy policies. Continued »
Oct 15 2009 6:44PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
network analysis,
protocol analysis,
packet analysis,
packet capture,
training,
education,
wireshark,
ethereal,
tcp/ip,
trace files,
Networking,
tools,
Monitoring,
reporting,
IT education,
performance monitoring,
troubleshooting,
howto,
Metrics,
analysis,
Laura Chappell
Laura Chappel, the BitGirl, is at it again with another in her series of Wireshark Jumpstart webinars. The next one is called Wireshark Jumpstart 201: Filtering on the Good, the Bad, the Ugly. It will be held on October 27 - 10:00am-11:00am PDT (GMT-7). If you manage networks or want to manage a network, a good understanding of protocol and packet analysis will help you immensely with your career.
Some things you will learn in this webinar:
- Using the Default Capture and Display Filters
- Creating a Few Hot Capture Filters
- Filtering Tips and Tricks for Troubleshooting
- Filtering Tips and Tricks for Security
Even if you are very familiar with Wireshark or other packet capture and protocol decode tools, Laura’s seminars are well worth attending. You might even find out a little tidbit here or there because Repetition is one of the keys of learning. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend this webinar since I will be on a golf vacation in North Carolina. So, if you attend this event, please come back and share with me and other IT Trenches readers what you learned and how valuable the webinar was for you.
Thanks for reading and let’s continue to be good network citizens!
Oct 7 2009 6:38PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
IT,
information technology,
professional,
career,
network analysis,
service level,
support,
information security,
infosec,
trojan,
bot,
botnet,
Security
In America, October is the time when haunting, evil spirits and curses come to mind. Earlier today I posted a blog entry titled Can IT education bring an end to the recession? I used a quote that is attributed to a series of Chinese curses that go in ascending order of severity. After I used it, I pondered on the other two curses and their applicability to IT services.
According to Wikipedia, the three curses are:
- May you live in interesting times.
- May you come to the attention of those in authority (sometimes rendered May the government be aware of you)
- May you find what you are looking for
Continued »
Sep 30 2009 1:36PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
case study,
WAN,
frame relay,
mpls,
vpn,
network management,
industry award,
ipsec,
SSL,
ssl vpn,
information security,
remote access,
Security,
security management
Have you ever wondered if vendor case studies are actually solutions to real life issues or if they are stories about compensated organizations using a particular vendor solution? Well, I am here to tell you that I know of at least one case study that is about an organization addressing real-life issues that was featured in an award winning vendor case study. The organization is the company I work for and the case study is about the challenges we faced with replacing an under-performing legacy Frame Relay network with a more efficient and flexible global solution that delivers high availability, remote access, and integrated security. For the record, no compensation was given for being the subject of this vendor case study.
The case study won the 2009 Best Deployment Scenario - VPN/IPSec/SSL and was featured in the Info Security Products Guide. The winning case study and announcement can be found at Manufacturing Company Achieves Security and Performance Goals with Virtela’s Remote Access Services from the Cloud.
See all 2009 Best Deployment Scenarios and Case Studies. This would be a good time to look at these and see if any of the solutions may meet some of the information security needs of your organization. Consider putting the solutions in your 2010 budgets.
Feel free to leave comments here or contact me through ITKE if you would like more information. Thanks for reading & let’s continue to be good network citizens.
Sep 30 2009 1:06PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
tcp,
udp,
network management,
network performance,
network monitoring,
application performance,
network analysis,
performance analysis,
protocol analysis,
packet capture
I recently came across an excellent article on the topic of TCP resets. TCP is a connection-oriented protocol as opposed to the connectionless nature of UDP. So, if there are TCP resets on your network, this is not a bad thing and is just inherent in the protocol. Without TCP resets, a host could have a lot of partial connections established which are in the wait state awaiting further transmissions. This can exhaust the number of available sockets and cause the host to become unresponsive. This is what happened several years back with the TCP SYN flood and LAND denial of service attacks. Another reset type includes the ACK/RST. This is where a client attempts to connect to a service that is not available on that destination host.
If you manage a network and have taken packet captures to work on a problem and have seen RST packets or if you need to do this at some point in your career, you need to understand the purpose and source of the RST packets. Take a few minutes, read this excellent article that is the best explanation that I have seen on this topic. You will become better informed and better able to understand the nature of the network beast.
Thanks for reading and let’s continue to be good network citizens.
Sep 25 2009 3:15PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
ping,
url ping,
network performance,
application performance,
network management,
application management,
network design,
network diagnosis,
icmp,
web services,
webserver,
performance analysis
In part one of this series, I discussed ping and pathping. These tools are good for some interactive realtime testing. However, what do you do when you want to run these types of tools over an extended period and then do statistical analysis? In cases like this I use the fping tool. I recently completed an analysis task requiring comparison of network ping times against web server response times. The tool I used for measuring webserver response (time to first byte) is called URL ping. Users were reporting slow webserver (Sharepoint) performance. Everyone was saying it is a network issue. Since there are so many “moving” parts between the users and the webserver farm, I wanted to prove to them that the network was not the issue but that something inherent in the way the webserver responds to the requests is the real issue.
Continued »
Sep 14 2009 1:49PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
Microsoft,
information security,
vulnerability,
risk management,
patches,
tcp-ip,
tcp,
tcp/ip,
Windows,
windows 2000,
support,
Microsoft support,
threat,
risk
Last week was the September issue of Microsoft “patch Tuesday”. The September 2009 Microsoft Security Bulletin lists a number of vulnerabilities. Microsoft held the bulletin webcast on Wednesday, September 9, to discuss the vulnerabilities and customer concerns.
One particular bulletin is creating some concerns for Microsoft Windows 2000 users. MS09-048 is a bulletin for a vulnerability to the TCP/IP stack in all current supported versions of Windows. The bulletin describes the vulnerability:
Vulnerabilities in Windows TCP/IP Could Allow Remote Code Execution (967723)
This security update resolves several privately reported vulnerabilities in Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) processing. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if an attacker sent specially crafted TCP/IP packets over the network to a computer with a listening service. Firewall best practices and standard default firewall configurations can help protect networks from attacks that originate outside the enterprise perimeter. Best practices recommend that systems that are connected to the Internet have a minimal number of ports exposed.
Even though the bulletin here describes it as potential remote code execution, the webcast focused more on the denial of service threat due to this vulnerability. Unfortunately, Microsoft has chosen to not issue a patch for Windows 2000, even though Windows 2000 is a supported version of Windows with regards to patches and security fixes. ComputerWorld gives a good amount of detail in the article: Microsoft: Patching Windows 2000 ‘infeasible’ Dark Reading published Microsoft, Cisco Issue Defenses For TCP Denial-Of-Service Attack and The Register published Microsoft, Cisco issue patches for newfangled DoS exploit.
I know that there is a reasonable population of Windows 2000 machines in operation at my organization. So, this choice by Microsoft to not issue a patch for this vulnerability raises some concerns. Fortunately the vulnerable population is not publicly exposed and does not have mobile users. The layered defenses we have in place should help mitigate the risks to our environment. However, the risk is still there and the threat needs to be addressed. What other vulnerability will come out that Microsoft chooses not to address in a supported operating system? Are you facing the same situation in your environment? How large is the risk to your environment? What are you doing to address these threats? Why are you doing what you are doing? Share your thoughts with other ITKE readers.
Thanks for reading & let’s continue to be good network citizens.
Aug 28 2009 4:57PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
ping,
pathping,
network performance,
application performance,
network management,
application management,
network design,
network diagnosis
One of my biggest challenges as a network manager is when users cry “the network is slow”. Some of you may have tools available to you where you can instantly dig in and see what the user might be seeing. There are some vendors out there with application and network monitoring tools. Netscout is one that comes to mind. However, I don’t have tools like that available so I have to work through several layers of data collection methods and tools to get a picture of what might be happening. Maybe you are in the same boat. Getting an answer to “the network is slow” is not a simple or quick activity. How do you deal with this? Following are some ways that I use to try and address the situation.
Continued »
