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!
Jul 20 2009 6:36PM 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
There are more upcoming sessions in the Laura Chappell seminar series called Wireshark 101Jumpstart tutorials. Check out the schedule at Chappell University website. Some of the things you will learn include:
- Wireshark elements and capabilities
- Tapping into the wired or wireless network
- Capturing and filtering basics
- Graphing basics
If you cannot attend the seminar, you can still register and download the seminar notes and gain access to the trace files used in the session. If you manage a network, you should learn this stuff! Be sure to register and attend early. The sessions are limited to 1000 viewers and these fill up FAST!
See my entry
for a how attending one of these seminars helped address an issue I was having with using Wireshark.
Thanks for reading and lets continue to be good network citizens!
May 26 2009 8:41PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
Microsoft,
SharePoint,
website,
design,
website administration,
website admin,
tools
SharePoint Designer 2007 is Now Free – Office SharePoint Designer 2007 provides the powerful tools you need to deliver compelling and attractive SharePoint sites and quickly build workflow-enabled applications and reporting tools on the SharePoint platform, all in an IT-managed environment. You can use SharePoint Designer 2007 to create and deploy interactive solutions on the SharePoint platform, without having to write code. It also provides the professional-quality design tools you need to create great-looking SharePoint pages that are compatible with a wide range of browsers. Additionally, site administrators and IT managers can control exactly how SharePoint Designer 2007 is used to help ensure information workers have a managed and controlled experience.
If you are interested in learning more about SharePoint Designer 2007, please be sure to check out:
· Microsoft Office Sharepoint Designer 2007 Product Overview
· SharePoint Designer demos
· SharePoint Designer webcasts
· Help for SharePoint Designer 2007
· Future direction of Sharepoint Designer 2007: video
May 26 2009 7:34PM 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
I recently posted an update about Laura Chappell’s Chappell University Online seminars. I attended one of these seminars today. What a great experience! I always try to attend Laura’s events and always pickup a tidbit that makes my life as a network manager easier. She gives you information about tools you can use to fight the battle of “the network is down”. Most of the time the network is behaving as designed. It’s poorly written applications or too high user expectations that create issues. So, if you want be the expert on fighting the network is “bad” syndrome - check out Laura’s presentations - I did and I learned something new… Continued »
May 21 2009 12:57PM 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
I’m a huge fan of Laura Chappell. She has a great sense of humor and is a great educator about all things packet oriented. Previous posts about Laura have included:
Is protocol analysis or network management your thing?
ARP as a network auditing tool
Did you see this? - Latest Laura Chappell Newsletter
Did you see this? - the viral bitgirl
She has now started a new online seminar series. Some of the presentation are free and others are accessible for a fee of $99. If you cannot get away for education, then this is an excellent alternative and you can gain a great amount of knowledge from this packet analysis expert. I recommend that you visit Chappell Online University and sign up for the free Wireshark Jumpstart: Master Key Tasks for Network Troubleshooting seminar to get a feel for the seminars.
Thanks for reading and let’s continue to be good network citizens!
Apr 29 2009 12:25PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
tools,
toolkit,
wi-fi tools,
network analysis,
performance analysis,
performance monitoring,
wlan,
802.11,
free,
throughput,
network throughput,
throughput testing
Xirrus is a WLAN equipment manufacturer. They have some very cool products and if you have not checked them out and are looking for installing, adding or replacing any WLAN network gear, then I suggest you take a look at their offerings before making a decision.
Xirrus has a page on their website where they offer some cool free tools for planning, deploying and managing wireless networks. The tools will work on any 802.11 wireless network as well as on wired networks. Some of the tools available include:
Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector
The Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector is a powerful tool for managing and troubleshooting the Wi-Fi on a Windows XP or Vista laptop. Built in tests enable you to characterize the integrity and performance of your Wi-Fi connection.
Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor Gadgets/Widgets
The Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor allows you to monitor your Wi-Fi environment and connection in real time from your desktop in an easy-to-use mini-application. Nine different color skins allow you customize the Wi-Fi Monitor to your desktop
Iperf
Iperf is an easy to use and very popular tool that every IT professional should have that measures maximum throughput. Iperf provides you the data to tune TCP and UDP characteristics. Iperf reports throughput, delay jitter, and datagram loss in easy to understand tables and graphs. You can run Iperf from and command line or a GUI interface.
Qcheck
Qcheck is a must have and handy tool for any IT professional. It does much more than the traditional “ping” command
Other tools are available on this excellent website. I recommend that you take a few minutes, review the offerings and add to your toolbox those tools of value to you.
Thanks for reading and let’s continue to be good network citizens.
Apr 29 2009 12:11PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
packet analysis,
packet capture,
protocol analysis,
tools,
analysis,
analysis tools,
Microsoft,
network analysis,
network,
tcp,
udp,
network monitor
If you do packet capture or analysis in a Microsoft environment, then you are probably already familiar with Microsoft Network Monitor. If not, please read my real-world use of it for PROTOCOL analysis vs protocol analysis (with a small p). Microsoft has updated Network Monitor to v3.3. The announcement of its release can be found on the Technet blog. Some of the new features listed are:
· Ability to capture WWAN (mobile broadband) and Tunnel traffic on Windows 7.
· Full Hyper-V support on Windows Server 2008
· Right-click-add-to-alias: Right-click a frame in the Frame Summary window with an IPv4, IPv6 or MAC address to add that address as a new alias. This is one of those little things that simplifies your work-flow.
· Right-click-go-to-definition: Have you ever wondered where and how the protocols fields you see in the Frame Details are defined in our in-built parsers? Wonder no more. Introducing right-click-go-to-definition: right-click a field in the Frame Details window and select Go To Data Field Definition or Go To Data Type Definition to see where the field is defined in the NPL parsers.
· Autoscroll: Another one of those little, but priceless things … auto-scroll. See the most recent traffic as it comes in. In a live capture, click the AutoScroll button on the main toolbar to have the Frame Summary window automatically scroll down to display the most recent frames as they come in. Click Autoscroll again to freeze the view in its present location.
Several other new features are described in the Technet blog. If you capture packets on a Microsoft network, then you should get this upgraded version to add to your toolbox.
Thanks for reading and let’s continue to be good network citizens.
Apr 27 2009 1:29PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
snmp,
mib,
Monitoring,
performance monitoring,
trend analysis,
tools,
netadmin,
sysadmin,
protocol,
rfc
SNMP - Simple Network Management Protocol has been around since the late 1980’s (RFC 1065, 1066, 1067). It has moved from SNMPv1 to the current SNMPv3 (RFC 3411 - 3418). Older versions are considered obsolete or historical.
SNMP is available on almost every network device such as switches, routers, servers, desktops and laptops. It is a feature provided by the operating system on these devices. Since it is so prevalent and across so many platforms, it is a significant risk to an environment if the SNMP configuration is enabled and the defaults are not changed, a malicious hacker could gain a lot of information and possibly control an organization’s infrastructure with little or no notice by the affected organization.
It is critical that each sysadmin and netadmin understand this service/protocol. It is not something to be taken lightly. Device configurations can be changed using SNMP. Data can be sniffed, redirected and decoded using SNMP. The upside of SNMP is it can be used effectively as a warning system of system/network issues. Thresholds can be monitored and notifications sent before the users detect any issues. Trend analysis can be performed based on historical data.
Here’s a sampling of some SNMP resources to help you gain a better understanding of this protocol/service that is likely already running on your network but not being monitored.
SNMP Link Org - a portal to all things SNMP; has news, software, appliance information and other SNMP related resources.
SNMP Wikipedia article - a great page with links to many SNMP resources
GetIF - a nice free SNMP tool that I use occasionally to quickly watch some SNMP MIBs on devices
What SNMP tools do you like that are easy to use and available for other administrators to use?
Thanks for reading & let’s continue to be good network citizens.
Mar 23 2009 3:57PM GMT
Posted by: Troy Tate
Security,
protocol analysis,
contest,
xbox,
social engineering,
social networking,
network throughput,
network capacity,
analysis tools,
tools,
Cisco
Looking for some help on some troublesome IT isssues? Post your question on IT Knowledge Exchange. Maybe take some time to read through some of the questions on ITKE. Provide an answer or even improve answers already given or give some discussion feedback. By doing these things with other IT peers, you could just win one of three XBox 360’s to be given away in April.
While you are her on ITKE, why not take some time, read through a few of my blog postings, maybe there is something there that would be of value to you or someone else you know. Send your fellow IT peers to ITKE. Make this the best free online support community and a one-stop shop for getting the support you need for those IT issues we each face every day.
Some of my blogs that will hopefully be of interest to you include:
What did I just do with my contacts list? - Social Engineering/Networking & contact list scraping
Network speed & capacity are NOT the same
Financial crisis due to poor risk understanding & management - IT security next?
Nifty tools for tracking down that “interesting” network traffic
PROTOCOL analysis vs protocol analysis (with a small p)
Good luck with the contest! Stay tuned for more and thanks for reading. Let’s continue to be good network citizens together.
