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Output 101 : BGP AFI/SAFI

November 26, 2009

When BGP peers set up their session between them, they send an OPEN message containing optional parameters.

One optional parameter is capabilities. Possible capabilities are Multiprotocol extensions, route refresh, outbound route filtering (ORF), and so on. When the BGP peers exchange the Multiprotocol extension capability, they exchange AFI and SAFI numbers and thus identify what the other BGP speaker is capable of.

IPv6 in BGP is implementated via Multi-Protocol BGP (MPBGP) (RFC 2283), as is MPLS and VPN’s through two new attributes: MP_UNREACH_NLRI and MP_REACH_NLRI. The first two values in these two attributes contain the Address Family Identifier (AFI) and the Subsequent Address Family Identifier (SAFI).

AFI Meaning
1 IPv4
2 IPv6 
.
SAFI Meaning
1 Unicast
2 Multicast
3 Unicast and multicast
4 MPLS Label
128 MPLS-labeled VPN

Read the rest of this entry »

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CCIE Flyer

November 19, 2009

I really enjoy meeting and discovering the people who helped build, engineer and nurture the industry I love so much. Also, those key individuals that have seen and helped the networking industry to grow to the colossal size it is today. I admire these individuals as they give me perspective on my achievements and more importantly, motivate me to follow in their steps. This is why the CCIE was my first stop.

Emmanuel Conde (aka Eman) from CCIE Flyer, has been involved in IT since before networking and the CCIE program came about. Eman is very well-known by those people who matter in the Networking Realm.

During his travels he has met some of the most influential individuals, who I would like to meet one day. From Scott Morris to Terry Slatery to Darby Weaver, they all know Eman and talk highly of him. He is also the only CCIE recruiter promoted by Cisco Systems. But what is so incredible about Eman, is that he tirelessly devotes most of his time to developing Cisco talent, and placing CCIE  candidates from all over the world in their deserving jobs. His believe and support in the networking industry is truly inspiring.

So what? Why the fuss? Well Eman, is the man who knows the trades and trends, I think better than most.  Eman has a publication that reaches thousands of people every month, called the CCIE Flyer. It contains the latest news and happenings regarding CISCO, the CCIE Program and other general Networking stuff. I read through most of the content, which is really appetising.

Feel free to visit Eman’s site and subscribe to it:)

Posted in Non Tech stuff, Resources | Leave a Comment »

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Huge Congrats to James Yeo – 11676

November 11, 2009

A good friend of mine has just passed his 3rd CCIE, and to my knowledge, this makes him the ONLY tripple CCIE in South-Africa.

He was one of the first security CCIE in Africa in 2003, and now James has earned himself the elite position of being 1 of 390 people in the world… holding 3 CCIE’s.

jamesHuge congratulations and well done!!!

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HexBinDec Conversion

November 10, 2009

I often see guys still using windows calculator to do Hex 2 Binary 2 Decimal conversions for Port numbers, Protocol numbers, DSCP values etc…

I have been using a small utility for years and have not yet come across a better one.
It was written by Live Bat Programming Group,  I can’t find an official website only an email address : dagus2@geocities.com (not sure if it is still valid).

It is called HEXBINDEC (descriptive I know):

hexbindec Read the rest of this entry »

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Searching for something?

November 9, 2009

Everybody knows how to use the include|begin|exclude search operators (I hope so at least), but you can also search through config with the “/” operator. You can use this with almost any SHOW command that is more than one page long. Although similar to linux and useful it is only half  as good.

I use this mostly when I want to see the configuration following a specific search string bound to show up multiple times from the SHOW command.

Example:  Show the running-config, and one the first page break, hit the forward slash “/”. Now enter the string you looking for:
Read the rest of this entry »

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CPU and Memory Thresholding

November 2, 2009

It is never nice when devices on a network go belly-up, but to know why or what happened right before they went belly-up, is crucial.

By enabling CPU and Memory thresholding, you can be sure to get those vital notifications when it happen allowing you to respond a lot quicker.

When a router is overloaded by processes, the amount of available memory might fall to levels insufficient for it to issue critical notifications, so the first step is to reserve some memory:
memory reserve critical {kilobytes}

Read the rest of this entry »

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Wendell Odom on R&S v4 Troubleshooting

October 30, 2009

Ah, as time passes all questions start getting answered. Many have feared the dreaded troubleshooting addition to the CCIE R&S v4 Lab. But as I expected, for the average hands-on individuals, it should be a breeze.

Wendell did a great write-up on the troubleshooting section, sharing his experience when he did the V4 Beta lab @ NetworkWorld.

In short the T/S  section is Virtual, no real kit and the topology consists of 30-40 routers. Now dont get alarmed by the numbers. As per Cisco you can expect 10-12 questions and you have 2 hours to complete them. The questions are short and clear. Ie R1 cant ping P2, etc.

The good news ? Wendell, who I believe, is not as hands-on as many candidates, (he is still a legend) said the time was not an issue, and neither was the difficulty of the questions. He believes the questions to be reasonable.

Head over to his blog article to see his T/S section strategy.

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Routing-Bits on iPhone

October 28, 2009

I have enabled a Mobile Theme for visits from iPhone Safari Browsers that makes browsing much easier, Maybe later a similar theme will be enabled for Win-Mo users.

iphone

Posted in Non Tech stuff | Leave a Comment »

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Cisco Autosecure

October 24, 2009

Cisco always attempts to make our lives easier, or at least sometimes.

When you setup your last CE router, did you make sure all the necessary security measure were setup? Is it protected against DOS attacks, stack or buffer overflows? Aare you logging the correct info in case someone tries to access your network?

Cisco, quite some time ago, wrote a macro command combining what they believe to be the necessary and recommended features that should be enabled on every CE router.

There are two main parts of this command:

  • Securing the Forwarding Plane
  • Securing the Management Plane

Just because this command could make your life easier, you should understand each action that is executed, or else you might disable or break a needed function.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Wendell Odom shares his peak at v4

October 23, 2009

CCIE R&S version 4 kicked off this week, and part of a BETA testing from Cisco, Maurilio Goritto asked a couple Cisco Press CCIE authors and other CCIE veterans to ‘retake’ the lab, and provide their input on the structure, layout, difficulty, time and overall fairness.

Wendell Odom, renowned Cisco Press author, shared his view of these topics at his Networkworld blog.

One big change regarding the actual lab day, (besides the net content/TS part), is no more printed lab exercise book, I personally won’t like that. According to Wendell there is a new GUI, in the format of indexed content, clickable diagrams and questions.

Read this article if you taking the new, now current version 4 of the CCIE R&S.

Posted in Non Tech stuff | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

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CCIE Study Wiki

October 22, 2009

I came across this site recently, and I must say the idea is great and the content are good..

cciestudywikilogo

There’s thousands of great CCIE articles out there just waiting to be found.

If there’s one thing the new CCIE Study Wiki does well, it’s how it serves as a central point for collecting and sorting information from all corners of the web. Right now there are over 3000 quality links, and it’s growing everyday.

Great going Jason :)

Posted in Resources | 2 Comments »

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Cisco IOS v15.0

October 21, 2009

Cisco finally took the long awaited leap, and released a new Major Release. The latest Cisco IOS version was 12.4 until  Cisco released IOS version 15.0.

Version 15.0? Surely that is a typo a mistake?

iosv15

According to a forum or two, rumors is that Cisco avoided using 13 and 14 because 13 is considered unlucky in the Western Culture and 14 is also considered unlucky in the Asian culture !!

And I thought believing in superstition was bad luck! LOL

Release Notes are here.
New Features are here.

Posted in General info, Humour | Leave a Comment »

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BFD – Bidirectional Forwarding Detection

October 20, 2009

What is one pain-in-the-butt thing with wireless links connected to a Ethernet port on a Cisco router?
You don’t know when the wireless link goes down?

Since Ethernet technology does not provide for end-to-end connectivity checks, like ATM OAM F5, Frame-Relay EEK, or PPP LCP Keepalive, you need a similar method to know when the wireless link or the remote site is unreachable.

There are varies workarounds, eg using IP SLA monitor, or using BGP with reduced timers. A better solution is to use Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD), to quickly identify the failing wireless VLANs and route your retraffic quickly and efficiently.

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Renaming Class-maps and Policy-maps

October 19, 2009

I saw someone removing a Policy-Map and the associated Class-Maps, just to rename the class-maps to the correct naming standard. And although the intention was great conforming to network standards, there is an easier way.

Within the class-map and the Policy-Map there is a rename option. What is really cool, Mr IOS will update the mappings that are in use or referenced by that name auto-magically.

Class-Maps

Take the following Class-Map and Policy-Map I ‘errornously’ created:

cmpm-1 Read the rest of this entry »

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FWSM IOS upgrade

October 18, 2009

If you need to upgrade the IOS on a FWSM (Firewall Switch Module), you will soon find out, that the upgrade works slightly differently to routers. You don’t have the option of using multiple ‘boot system’ commands, nor can you copy more than one IOS image to the FWSM flash. If that is the case, what about failback, if you don’t have the old/current IOS version? (and no you can’t just tftp/ftp the current image from a FWSM when in-use). So now what?

A really neat yet fairly undocumented feature is how the FWSM  addresses the space allocation of the Flash memory. Refer to the Application partitions (cf:4 and cf:5), see a previous post that listed the partition break down.

Application Partition cf:4 is used by default,  but cf:5 not.  Because cf:5 provides a secondary partition to boot from,  it allows you to test config on a new IOS version. If you boot of cf:5 appose to cf:4, you have a clean and fresh ‘dir flash:‘ to load a new IOS image on, while leaving the working ‘dir flash:‘ intact . ,

Just change the default boot partition to cf:5 from the switch, with
boot device module {MOD-NUMBER} cf:5

Then reload the module, and load the ‘test’ IOS image to flash (now cf:5) and do any tests necessary. Once happy remove the above command and upgrade to the new IOS on the default partition cf:4.

Posted in My Journal | Leave a Comment »

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