Category: Routers

NAAATTT!!!!

 

Ok I know this will pull a significant amount of hate from all of the NAT haters.  99.9% of the time I would agree.  However our business is unique.  That is the first thing I am going to layout for sake of the discussion that will happen.

What we do:  We do real time video communication.

Who we do it for:  Medical Institutions.

How we deliver it:  Via Private MPLS from the client site to our call centers.  At the client side we ride their infrastructure.

Hopefully the issue becomes immediately clear.  If it does not let me help out.  I own my network and the MPLS links and CPE router.  I do not own, control, influence or have any visibility into the client infrastructure.  In most cases the answer would be who cares push it to the gateway NAT it and be done with it.  However real time communications using SIP first don’t natively like NAT (but I have that issue fixed…..I think.)  and these systems are not simple point to point communications.  Instead they are CientX to server, server to ClientY, ClientY to ClientX communications.  The solutions should be pretty obvious; Read more

Where the Heck are My TenGigabit Interfaces?

Well the picture to the right shows exactly where they are.  In the past we have dealt with 1Gbps interfaces on supervisors that had both RJ-45 and SFP slots and it was an either/or decision if you wanted to use them.  In those cases you had a config entry that required you to state SFP or RJ-45 in the interface configuration.  No matter what you chose it was always shown Interface GigabitEthernet Mod#/Port#.  So when I dove  into the Sup720 I was configuring I decided it was supposed to be the same way because why would Cisco ever let me use all the ports on the front of my hardware?  Being the all knowing geek that I am I also ignored the config file that I have seen at least 30 times in the last hour and I just started typing Interface TenGigabitEthernet 5/1, and I kept getting this; Read more

Upon us all a little rain must fall.

Led Zeppelin said it best I guess.  This past week Ohio along with lots of other states got hit with the remains of hurricane Dean.  So far it has been the most damaging storm for my clients in my short consulting career.  The first call came on Tuesday morning August 21st.  That call was from one of our account managers who indicated a client had sustained catastrophic damage to their 6509 when water rushed into their core network closet.  My first two thoughts were how quickly can we get replacement hardware and how long should it take for me to get them back up and going? Read more