Routing/Switching

What is NSF?

Cisco Nonstop Forwarding (NSF) is a high availability initiative that enables routers to continuously forward IP packets following a route processor takeover or switchover to another route processor. NSF maintains and updates Layer 3 routing and forwarding information in the backup route processor. This ensures that the forwarding of IP packets and routing protocol information [...]

30Jun2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

2800 Series ISR Fan Noise

If you are familiar with Cisco’s 2600/2600XM Series routers and have recently purchased an ISR 2801 or 2811 you may at first be a little shocked to find that those routers fan’s run significantly louder than those of the 2600’s. In fact the dissipation level of the 2801/2811 is twice that of the older routers [...]

25Jun2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

Cisco IOS Auto-Upgrade Manager

Upgrading images within IOS has long been a confusion point for many people, especially around the time that high-profile security vulnerabilities are announced. The complexities in upgrading IOS images include choosing the correct image, understanding the correct procedure to download the image onto the device, and understanding the recovery scenario if an upgrade fails. The [...]

13Jun2008 | Joe Harris | 5 comments | Continued

ASR First Look - Part 2

Now that we have looked at some of the basics regarding the ASR platform, lets looks at how we can manage the file system of the router. The ASR introduces a new file structure that many users that have not been exposed to modular IOS will find a little different at first know as sub-packages. [...]

5Jun2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

ASR Performance Report

I have received a number of emails asking about my performance setup and tests that I am running on the ASR this week in the lab but needless to say I’m not quite finished with those tests and as you can imagine I get pulled into conference calls and the like which slows my testing [...]

4Jun2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

16-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet module for the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series

Cisco announces order ability for the new 16-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet module for the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series. The 16-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet module doubles the 10 Gigabit Ethernet density on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series, providing up to 130 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet in a single Cisco Catalyst 6500 chassis. It is ideal for [...]

12Mar2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

3750G Field Notice

“Barrel Cracking” in the via holes of the Printed Circuit Assembly (PCA) of WS-C3750G-48TS-E and WS-C3750G-48TS-S could potentially threaten the reliability, or shorten the life of the affected switches. A via hole is a plated hole on the PCA that is not used to attach components, but serves as inter-layer connections. “Barrel cracking” describes the situation [...]

12Mar2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

The BGP Bomb

A friend of mine Bruce Fischer (CCIE# 6210) sent me a link to an interesting read; if you have not heard about this you should check out the article. In short Pakistan basically told the rest of the Internet that YouTube’s public IP addresses could be reached by routing their traffic to Pakistan which would effectively [...]

5Mar2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

Introducing Cisco IOS Service Diagnostics

Cisco IOS Service Diagnostics is an embedded feature that enables customers, partners and Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) engineers to diagnose software and network neighborhood issues on Cisco platforms, and minimizes troubleshooting time. It provides infrastructure to facilitate the deployment of customized diagnostics functionality and a set of scripts addressing specific diagnostics scenarios. It automates some [...]

28Feb2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

Cisco TAC Newsletter

Cisco has published the Technical Services Newsletter for the month of February. The Technical Services Newsletter is available online at the following link:
February Technical Services Newsletter
If you have never read through the newsletter, you are missing out on some very great technical information. The newsletter provides indepth technical documents for products covering all areas [...]

22Feb2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

Routing Protocols over VPLS

So a customer of mine was reading an interesting article posted @ NetworkWorld that focuses on VPLS and running a Layer-3 routing protocol over this new WAN access technology. If you are not familiar with VPLS or how it functions, for the sake of this discussion let’s just say that it provides Layer-2 peering connectivity to a WAN whereby those sites can [...]

16Feb2008 | Joe Harris | 1 comment | Continued

BGP New-Style Configuration

Want a way to convert your BGP configuration to the “new style” BGP configuration command structure without a major overhaul of the config? Most of the time the “new-style” configuration is associated with configurations related to MPLS VPN’s and usually that is correct…but what if you’re an SP that is migrating to an MPLS service [...]

11Feb2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

no service password-recovery

So I was reading Ivan’s blog yesterday morning and came across a post he had in regards to recovering from disabling the ability to perform password recovery and the moral that particular post was to test the feature prior to just implementing it because as was his case, he was running into issues…So that got me [...]

1Feb2008 | Joe Harris | 1 comment | Continued

ISR has extra hole on it…

Ok so I’m in the lab today and noticed that a great many of the 2811’s I have in front of me have a small hole located just under the CF LED however a great many of other 2811’s do not have the same hole located on them…So I couldn’t figure out what the little [...]

31Jan2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

Cisco Catalyst 6500 VSS Smashes Throughput Records

I have configured it and seen it with my own eyes….Exclusive NetworkWorld tests show new Catalyst 6500 VSS sets records for recovery times and throughput…Take a read of the articule here:
Cisco’s virtual switch smashes throughput records
Quotes from the Article:
“The results were impressive: VSS not only delivers a 20 fold improvement in failover times but also [...]

9Jan2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

Teach an old dog new tricks - QPPB

Well it’s been said many times that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks…I seem to disagree with this statement (especially if you’re in the field of technology) and over the course of last night and today I now know that statement is completely false. Over the course of this period I have been [...]

4Jan2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

Using a Customized HTTP Interface for Router Management

Many or most of you know that you can enable a Cisco router to function as an HTTP server using the ‘ip http server’ command. Once you do this you can open your web browser and browse to an ip address of the router and it will present you with a somewhat bland webpage for [...]

3Jan2008 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

Smart Call Home Sample Config

Call Home Configuration
Connect to the console of or telnet to the Catalyst 6500 switch and login. During this demonstration, the default Call-Home profile (called CiscoTAC-1) or a defined user profile will be used. A user profile may be created by copying the CiscoTAC-1 default profile. If a new profile is created disable any profile or [...]

16Dec2007 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

Cisco Smart Call Home

Do you have a Catalyst 6500 or MDS 9000 in your network? If so have you heard of the Cisco Smart Call Home feature yet? Call Home devices continuously monitor network device health using Generic Online Diagnostics (GOLD) technology and automatically notify the customer of potential issues using secure transmissions. If a serious problem arises, [...]

15Dec2007 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued

Performance Routing Question

Joe,
It is my understanding that Performance Routing (PFR) and Optimized Edge Routing (OER) are the same thing; Cisco just basically renamed OER. Can you briefly explain the benefits / differences of Performance Routing vs. Optimized Edge Routing?
Sure let’s start from the Data Sheet;
“Cisco Performance Routing takes advantage of the vast intelligence imbedded in Cisco IOS [...]

14Dec2007 | Joe Harris | 0 comments | Continued