So my blog posts have been a bit scarce lately, but that will be changing soon. Part of the reason is I've been spending an enormous amount of time researching the latest and greatest computer parts for a new build I'm working on. The good news is that I'm finally finishing up the top-end computer build (it'll be able to handle loads of GNS3/Dynamips processing). Build details:
- Intel Core i7 930 - 2.8Ghz -- I plan on over-clocking it to ~3.8Ghz (air cooled)
- Crucial C300 SSD (boot drive) 256GB, SATA 3.0 -- Currently the fastest SSD drive on the market
- 2x Hitachi 2TB hard drives in RAID 1 configuration -- Data mirroring for long-term storage
- G.Skill Ripjaw 12GB DDR3 memory - Reliable memory, also good for over-clocking
- Asus P6X58D motherboard - First mobo with USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0; also has dual NICs
- Antec TP-750 750watt PSU
- Pioneer 12x BluRay burner
- Sapphire ATI 5850 video card - Good for the occasional gaming
- Silverstone FT-01 case - This case is amazing, highly recommend it for many reasons
- Windows 7 Ultimate - Will be doing some VMWare virtualization for my *NIX needs
Still awaiting delivery:
- Dell U2711 monitor - 27" LCD, 2560x1440 resolution (!); brand new hot item causing delivery times to 2-3 weeks out. Will be worth the wait though (same LG panel is used here that's in the iMac 27")
Besides spending much of my spare time on that project, I'm still studying for the Cisco QoS exam (going for the CCIP now), albeit slowly. My current employer recently sent me off to some Global Knowledge courses, QoS and MPLS to be exact. Both classes were pretty good, although I was expecting more in-depth detail. Supposedly the exams are based off of this 'official' class material, we shall see though.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
Time Management - The Rich and the Poor
I just came across this amazing blog post from Scott Berkun (www.scottberkun.com) titled "The Cult of Busy" (http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2010/the-cult-of-busy/).
It's the perfect description of some of my own thoughts about how people manage their time; who's good at it and who isn't; and why the 'busy' people aren't necessarily who you want/should associate with.
It's unfortunate that most businesses, managers, and co-workers just don't get the meat of Scott's blog post, or what I like to call "working smart".
It's the perfect description of some of my own thoughts about how people manage their time; who's good at it and who isn't; and why the 'busy' people aren't necessarily who you want/should associate with.
It's unfortunate that most businesses, managers, and co-workers just don't get the meat of Scott's blog post, or what I like to call "working smart".
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Ciscos Big Announcement and VRRPv3
Just a couple quick news updates... Cisco's 'big announcement' yesterday was about the CRS-3 (3x the speed as the CRS-1): http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/prod_030910.html.
A lot of people were surprised and let down by the news of this, as it doesn't apply to anyone except for the large IXCs. Considering that the carriers who could afford this beast already knew about it months ago (and AT&T is even trialing it currently), it seems pretty strange that Cisco would go to the lengths they did to hype it up. When you really get down to the gist of their marketing strategy though, it comes down to using their power/visibility to advertise to the masses 'use more bandwidth'.
In the RFC world, the VRRP version 3 RFC was just released today. I haven't read it in detail, but out of a quick skimming I saw it was officially supporting IPv4 and IPv6 addresses; sub-second operation was also one of the features that is of interest to some people.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5798
A lot of people were surprised and let down by the news of this, as it doesn't apply to anyone except for the large IXCs. Considering that the carriers who could afford this beast already knew about it months ago (and AT&T is even trialing it currently), it seems pretty strange that Cisco would go to the lengths they did to hype it up. When you really get down to the gist of their marketing strategy though, it comes down to using their power/visibility to advertise to the masses 'use more bandwidth'.
In the RFC world, the VRRP version 3 RFC was just released today. I haven't read it in detail, but out of a quick skimming I saw it was officially supporting IPv4 and IPv6 addresses; sub-second operation was also one of the features that is of interest to some people.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5798
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Internet Draft: Multicast in MPLS/BGP IP VPNs
Another very interesting Internet Draft was posted today:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-l3vpn-2547bis-mcast-10
In todays MPLS VPN networks, multicast isn't natively supported, but there are some duct-tape workarounds to get it to work (MDT with GRE). Finally a more permanent solution is coming, albeit at the cost of some pretty complex functionality (luckily only in the SP network).
A bit of a long read, but there is some interesting info contained within if you can keep up with the theory.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-l3vpn-2547bis-mcast-10
In todays MPLS VPN networks, multicast isn't natively supported, but there are some duct-tape workarounds to get it to work (MDT with GRE). Finally a more permanent solution is coming, albeit at the cost of some pretty complex functionality (luckily only in the SP network).
A bit of a long read, but there is some interesting info contained within if you can keep up with the theory.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Another Nice Looking Internet Draft (Hopefully this makes it through fast!)
Extending ICMP for Interface and Next-hop Identification
This is quite the interesting draft that was just posted. Starting out my career from an Operations standpoint, I can definitely tell the authors of this draft are also quite familiar with the struggles of Operations.
Seems as though there are so many folks in the IT/Networking field that just don't understand the hurdles there in Operations, and often makes me cringe at the (terrible) ideas they come up with. Sorry for the rant :)
The key (exciting) point from the abstract:
"The ICMP extension defined herein can be used to identify any combination of the following: the IP interface upon which a datagram arrived, the sub-IP component of an IP interface upon which a datagram arrived, the IP interface through which the datagram would have been forwarded had it been forwardable, the IP next hop to which the datagram would have been forwarded.
Devices can use this ICMP extension to identify interfaces and their components by any combination of the following: ifIndex, IPv4 address, IPv6 address, name and MTU. ICMP-aware devices can use these extensions to identify both numbered and unnumbered interfaces."
This is quite the interesting draft that was just posted. Starting out my career from an Operations standpoint, I can definitely tell the authors of this draft are also quite familiar with the struggles of Operations.
Seems as though there are so many folks in the IT/Networking field that just don't understand the hurdles there in Operations, and often makes me cringe at the (terrible) ideas they come up with. Sorry for the rant :)
The key (exciting) point from the abstract:
"The ICMP extension defined herein can be used to identify any combination of the following: the IP interface upon which a datagram arrived, the sub-IP component of an IP interface upon which a datagram arrived, the IP interface through which the datagram would have been forwarded had it been forwardable, the IP next hop to which the datagram would have been forwarded.
Devices can use this ICMP extension to identify interfaces and their components by any combination of the following: ifIndex, IPv4 address, IPv6 address, name and MTU. ICMP-aware devices can use these extensions to identify both numbered and unnumbered interfaces."
Monday, December 28, 2009
Future Internet Routing Architectures
A few days ago there was a IETF draft posted about the future of Internet routing architectures, and their recommendation (still in draft, so there is no written recommendation yet). It's a pretty good read, and very interesting to see what ideas are out there for a more secure, reliable, and scalable Internet routing architecture. The link to the draft is below:
Recommendation for a Routing Architecture
If you're interested in how I found out about this IETF draft, I subscribe to their RFC and Draft RSS feeds located here:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/
Recommendation for a Routing Architecture
If you're interested in how I found out about this IETF draft, I subscribe to their RFC and Draft RSS feeds located here:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/
Friday, December 11, 2009
News in the World of Wireless
There have been a couple pretty big announcements in the past few days about new wireless standards currently in the works, and are steadily on track *fingers crossed*.
First off the new 802.11 standard 802.11ac is the next-gen WLAN standard that is working to achieve speeds of 1+ Gigabit/s. It's still fairly early in the standardization process, but it will be using the 5ghz spectrum (the 2.4ghz range is overly crowded now). To achieve the throughput, there are talks of using wider bands of 80Mhz (possibly 160Mhz), more modern modulation techniques, and MU-MIMO (multiple user - multiple input multiple output). The proposed date for this standard to be ratified is Dec 2012, but I wouldn't hold your breath on that (the 802.11n ridiculousness). Here's a great article on Ars Technica covering this in more detail:
The future of WiFi: gigabit speeds and beyond
The other wireless standard that is just around the bend is the WiGig standard that completed it's specification on Dec 10th. It provides 7 Gigabit/s (!) of speed using the 60Ghz spectrum, but obviously using that range the distance limitation is significant (i.e. not really to be used for WLANs). The specification says that it's good for 10 meters, but also has "support for beamforming, enabling robust communication at distances beyond 10 meters". This standard will be mainly used in the communication of video and audio between multimedia devices which require that kind of bandwidth (HD video and audio streams).
Some of the newest high-end HDTVs already have wireless communications from the main panel to a separate 'receiver' that houses all the inputs and outputs for the TV, and use the 60Ghz range used by this specification. I'm uncertain if they were early adopters of the specification, but could easily be assumed so since they are a part of the Wireless Gigabit Alliance.
Some key points listed on their website:
The WiGig version 1.0 specification includes the following key elements:
* Supports data transmission rates up to 7 Gbps – more than ten times faster than the highest 802.11n rate
* Supplements and extends the 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) layer and is backward compatible with the IEEE 802.11 standard
* Physical layer enables both the low power and the high performance WiGig devices, guaranteeing interoperability and communication at gigabit rates
* Protocol adaptation layers are being developed to support specific system interfaces including data buses for PC peripherals and display interfaces for HDTVs, monitors and projectors
* Support for beamforming, enabling robust communication at distances beyond 10 meters
* Widely used advanced security and power management for WiGig devices
More info at:
http://wirelessgigabitalliance.org/
First off the new 802.11 standard 802.11ac is the next-gen WLAN standard that is working to achieve speeds of 1+ Gigabit/s. It's still fairly early in the standardization process, but it will be using the 5ghz spectrum (the 2.4ghz range is overly crowded now). To achieve the throughput, there are talks of using wider bands of 80Mhz (possibly 160Mhz), more modern modulation techniques, and MU-MIMO (multiple user - multiple input multiple output). The proposed date for this standard to be ratified is Dec 2012, but I wouldn't hold your breath on that (the 802.11n ridiculousness). Here's a great article on Ars Technica covering this in more detail:
The future of WiFi: gigabit speeds and beyond
The other wireless standard that is just around the bend is the WiGig standard that completed it's specification on Dec 10th. It provides 7 Gigabit/s (!) of speed using the 60Ghz spectrum, but obviously using that range the distance limitation is significant (i.e. not really to be used for WLANs). The specification says that it's good for 10 meters, but also has "support for beamforming, enabling robust communication at distances beyond 10 meters". This standard will be mainly used in the communication of video and audio between multimedia devices which require that kind of bandwidth (HD video and audio streams).
Some of the newest high-end HDTVs already have wireless communications from the main panel to a separate 'receiver' that houses all the inputs and outputs for the TV, and use the 60Ghz range used by this specification. I'm uncertain if they were early adopters of the specification, but could easily be assumed so since they are a part of the Wireless Gigabit Alliance.
Some key points listed on their website:
The WiGig version 1.0 specification includes the following key elements:
* Supports data transmission rates up to 7 Gbps – more than ten times faster than the highest 802.11n rate
* Supplements and extends the 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) layer and is backward compatible with the IEEE 802.11 standard
* Physical layer enables both the low power and the high performance WiGig devices, guaranteeing interoperability and communication at gigabit rates
* Protocol adaptation layers are being developed to support specific system interfaces including data buses for PC peripherals and display interfaces for HDTVs, monitors and projectors
* Support for beamforming, enabling robust communication at distances beyond 10 meters
* Widely used advanced security and power management for WiGig devices
More info at:
http://wirelessgigabitalliance.org/
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