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Configuration Lock

February 5, 2010


Ever busy with a scheduled change, and the configuration all of a sudden differs from what you configured five minutes ago?

Normal IOS (not XR) behaviour allows multiple users to make instant changes to the running configuration. Occasionally two users make changes to the same config portion at the same time. One overwriting the others. ONLY the last commands entered will take effect.

The Configuration Lock  feature allows a one to have exclusive change access to the Cisco IOS running configuration, preventing multiple users from making concurrent configuration changes.

There are two modes:

  • Auto
  • Manual

Read the rest of this entry »

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CCIE Short-Notes v4.1 is now available

February 1, 2010


Thanks to my iPhone, publishing this was made easy.

Feel free to download 3 of the 15 chapters here.

Then if you are interested in obtaining a full copy of Short-Notes V4.1 just click on the BUY link on the right-hand side under pages.

Ping me if any questions.

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What is Short-Notes all about?

January 31, 2010


Short-Notes is the result of an unplanned book I wrote during my studies for the CCIE Routing & Switching lab.

It is a good source for theory. It is a great reference guide for the practical commands.  It also presents complete configuration examples, in a completely new way, to easily see how the technologies are implemented. Most topics include the DOC-CD locations, so more info is at hand if needed. Ultimately this is the only CCIE study guide, (I have found) which can be used to review all the work start to finish the day before the lab.

A deeper look at the origins…

Read the rest of this entry »

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Getting your router to Tweet

January 20, 2010


Ok, so an earlier post sharing a really neat geek trick is awesome, but how the hell does one go about configuring a router to tweet something? (if you not a programmer)

To do it, you would need the following:

  • IOS image that supports EEM.
  • A twitter account.
  • A base64 encoded representation of you twitter account’s
  • Bruno’s twitter script. Download tweet-policy.tcl here.
  • The IP address of your nearest twitter server. (nslookup or dig will help you there)

The IOS obviously must support EEM.

Then once you have your twitter account, you need to encode your twitter account’s username:password to a base64 encoded representation.  Could be done using this website. Example:

twitter-username:tweet-password
        gives you
dHdpdHRlci11c2VybmFtZTp0d2VldC1wYXNzd29yZA==

Read the rest of this entry »

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Updated Study Guide Chapters

January 19, 2010


I have updated the free Switching and OSPF study guides.

Feel free to download them at these posts:

01- Switching

07- OSPF

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PfR Process flow

January 19, 2010


I came across a really good Performance Routing document, that I thought should assist R&S v4 candidates. It has really great examples of the different scenarios along with implementations.

Here is a depiction of the PfR process flow for OER configuration:

Source: Cisco Design Land

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Using TCL/EEM to tweet SYSLOG events

January 17, 2010


Staying in the focus of the previous article, this is one of those really cool features, but possible something that you won’t easily use in production. Or maybe you would!

How about taking your routers syslog events and sending them to a twitter account. That way you can easily keep on heights when something in your network goes really wonky.Why would you want to do this?  To have a publicly accessable syslog replacement, or just because you can!

Bruno Klauser from Cisco wrote a TCL script using EEM to tweet routers syslog messages to a twitter account.  Here is an example of one tweeting router:  EASyDMI.

If you want to use this or give it a try, download the script at Cisco Land, and see my post on how to configure this.

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Tweeting Bits

January 14, 2010

Routing-Bits is now Tweeting-Bits too.

Yes I know I should have done this ages ago :(

But better late than never.

Feel free to visit twitter.com/routingbits

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Route Selection with equal AD’s

January 7, 2010


I had a interesting question from a friend today.

Assume the following scenario:

Im going to exclude any MPLS connectivity, as it is not relevant.
The PE (Router1) connects the CE (Router3) with two links, one serial and one wireless.
This particular ISP runs mostly static routes to client sites (within the VRF’s) or alternatively eBGP.

On a wireless link it is always good practise to run BGP to detect when connectivity with the remote end is lost in the underlying Layer2 network. (Preventing a blackhole)
Regarding routing on the Serial Link, there as a default route out from Router 3 and a static route to 10.33.33.0/24 on Router1 pointing to Router3.

The client wants to load-balance traffic across both links. And the Admin Distance of the static route was set to 20 to match eBGP. (this is the scenario)

So the question : Why does Router1 not install both routes (the eBGP route and the Static), both with an prefix-length of /24,  a Admin Distance of 20, and metric of 0 into the RIB??

Read the rest of this entry »

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RIB Route-Selection

January 7, 2010


Inspired by the  flow chart that Mr Richard Bannister did for the BGP route path selection, I did one for conventional route-selection in the RIB.

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OUTPUT-101 : Frame-Relay Traffic Shaping

December 24, 2009


Often knowing the necessary show commands is not enough, you need to understand the output.
Here is a good example and breakdown of each of the fields with the command:

show traffic-shape

 VC                      = 'DLCI's'
 Access List             = 'Used to shape traffic of common type for separation'
 Target Rate             = 'CIR in bits'
 Byte-Limit              = 'Bc+Be ie the size the token bucket, express in BYTES'
 Sustain bits/int        = 'Bc value per Tc, (int is short for interval or Tc)'
 Excess bits/int         = 'Be value'
 Interval (ms)           = 'Tc value'
 Increment (bytes)       = 'How many bytes of token replenished each Tc, ie Bc value in bytes'
 Adapt Active            = 'Shows Adaptive shaping has been enabled. If a BECN is received, the flow is throttled back'

What else can be set about the configuration here?
The interface have 3 DLCI’s defined.
DLCI’s 413 and 405 have a CIR of 56k. This was not configured. This is default behaviour. When ‘frame-relay traffic-shaping’ is enabled each DLCI on that interface will be allocated a 56k CIR unless changed. Here it is clear that DLCI 403 has a map-class policy applied.

Oh and Merry Christmas guys :D

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Scott Morris

December 21, 2009


While searching for CCIE jokes, I found an old forum thread at Cisco Learning network containing jokes about the man, the legend, the hex-translator, the missing E-bit(evil) : Scott Morris.

Here are some of the jokes I think is pretty funny:

  • Scott Morris once planned a cross-country trip using a Route Map!
  • Scott Morris plays a rather unique instrument called the ISAKMP!
  • Every VPN is an EasyVPN for Scott Morris!
  • When Scott Morris was four years old he was putting together OSI models!
  • Scott Morris’ home wireless network runs on brain waves!
  • Scott Morris slayed the Kerberos daemon.
  • Scott Morris’s driver’s license is a PDF!
  • If you doubt Scott Morris just sh Scott | s certification
  • There are no hidden IOS commands. Only those Scott Morris chooses not to look at!
  • Scott Morris has counted to pi.. twice!
  • Normal people teach their dogs to fetch. Scott Morris taught his dog to route.
  • Morpheus was searching for Scott Morris!
  • Scott Morris doesn’t have a steering wheel in his car. He has a CLI!
  • Scott Morris found Waldo in an extended access control list!
  • Scott Morris is actually an undercover SNMP Agent!

My favourite three are :

  • Scott Morris ran track in high school and always won the 100 meter frame relay!
  • He taught his dog to ARP!    arp, arp, arp, arp.
  • MD5 : Morris Digests 5 CCIE’s for breakfast!
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CCIE OSPF Study Guide

December 17, 2009


This chapter provides perfect insight about the concise content of each technology section covered in Short-Notes V4.

Short-Notes is the definitive CCIE R&S Study guide.

Feel free to download, but please let me know you views and comments : blog@ru.co.za .  Alternative please rate this post (click on title, then rate below). :)

OSPF Short-Notes

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Serialization Delay?

December 15, 2009


Serialization/Access-Rate is the physical clocking speed of the interface (ie 64-kbps/128-kbps etc), which determines the amount of data that can be encapsulated on to the wire.

Serialization Delay or Serialization Rate is a constant based on the access rate of the interface. It is the time needed to place data on the physical wire.

These values are set in hardware and cannot be changed.

A data frame can be sent onto the physical wire ONLY at the serialization rate of the interface. Thus serialization delay is the size of the frame in bits divided by the clocking speed of the interface.

Serialization Delay = Frame Size/Link Speed

For example, a 1500-byte frame (12000-bites/64000-bites) will take 187.5ms to serialize (put on the wire) on a 64-kbps circuit.

Link- Frame Size (Bytes)
Speed 64 128 256 512 1024 1500
64 kbps 8 ms 16 ms 32 ms 64 ms 128 ms 187 ms
128 kbps 4 ms 8 ms 16 ms 32 ms 64 ms 93 ms
256 kbps 2 ms 4 ms 8 ms 16 ms 32 ms 46 ms
512 kbps 1 ms 2 ms 4 ms 8 ms 16 ms 23 ms
768 kbps 0.640 ms 1.28 ms 2.56 ms 5.12 ms 10.4 ms 15 ms

For low-speed WAN connections (those with a clocking speed of 768kbps or below), it might be necessary to provide a mechanism for Link Fragmentation and Interleaving (LFI) when running delay sensitive application like voice.

Read the rest of this entry »

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CCIE Switching Study Guide

December 10, 2009


This chapter provides perfect insight about the concise content of each technology section covered in Short-Notes V4.

Short-Notes is the definitive CCIE R&S Study guide.

Feel free to download, but please let me know you views and comments : blog@ru.co.za .  Alternative please rate this post (click on title, then rate below). :)

Switching Short-Notes