Archive

Archive for July, 2009

Cisco Catalyst 2960 – Powered by PoE!

July 30th, 2009 No comments

Take a look at this video, which features the Catalyst 2960 products range. Notice the 2960PD-8TT-L, which is a little gem; I can imagine many circumstances when this could be used. The switch receives it’s power via PoE.

Q. What is the Cisco Catalyst 2960PD-8TT-L compact switch?

A. The Cisco® Catalyst® 2960PD-8TT-L switch has eight 10/100 Mbps ports and receives power over the Gig uplink port from an upstream power over Ethernet (PoE) switch.

The Cisco Catalyst 2960 powered device (PD) switch is ideal for deployments outside the wiring closet such as conference rooms and classrooms with spacing and wiring constraints.

Here is some more information and a 2960 product video: Read more…

Categories: CISCO Tags:

Cisco Unified Expert Advisor

July 30th, 2009 No comments

Cisco Unified Expert Advisor is a very good alternative to traditional call-handling and would be especially good for call centres, avoiding the frustration of CTI (press 1 for this, 2 for that, etc.) and also having to take pot-luck, hoping that you’ll eventually speak to somebody who has relevant expertise. Read more…

Categories: CISCO Tags:

Configuring 802.1x on Cisco CatOS

July 25th, 2009 No comments

Here is an example of how to configure 802.1x on a Cisco 6500-series running CatOS:  (if you wish to configure dot1x on IOS, read this post)

Read more…

Categories: CISCO, Security Tags:

Nagios Distributed Monitoring – Diagram

July 24th, 2009 No comments

Here is another aide-memoir.  It is a diagram of Nagios in a distributed monitoring configuration (click to view full-screen) Read more…

Categories: Nagios Tags:

Understanding SNMP MIBs and OIDs

July 22nd, 2009 No comments

MIB stands for Management Information Base and is a collection of information organised into a hierarchy. These are accessed using a protocol such as SNMP. There are two types of MIBs: scalar and tabular. Scalar objects define a single object instance whereas tabular objects define multiple related object instances grouped in MIB tables. Read more…

Categories: Network Management Tags:

Calculating Network Availability

July 22nd, 2009 No comments

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)

MTBF is a basic measure of reliability for components that are able to be repaired. It is the number of hours that pass before a component or system fails. It is a commonly-used variable in network availability analyses and reports. Read more…

Categories: Network Management Tags:

Network Diagram – Typical Medium Enterprise

July 21st, 2009 No comments

Shows examples of router redundancy / failover capabilitiesat Layer 3 and also Layer 2 spanning-tree root bridge configuration to enable pseudo-load balancing by using PVST.

(click to load image):

Network-Diagram-Draft

Categories: CISCO Tags:

Which Linux Distribution is right for you?

July 19th, 2009 No comments

The quiz asks questions such as whether participants plan to use wireless devices, how they rate their technical skills and whether they are installing the operating system on a desktop or portable computer.

Once the quiz is complete, the applications recommends one particular Linux distribution and lists a number of alternative distributions, along with the criteria they failed on.

Linux Distribution Chooser [zegenie Studios]

Categories: linux Tags:

Hacking Cisco NAC (BlackHat Video)

July 19th, 2009 No comments

Cisco NAC (Network Admission Control) enable security policy enforcement on end-devices attaching to the network.  This video produced by net-security.org reveals a critical vulnerability:

Read more…

Categories: CISCO, Security Tags:

Monitoring a UPS with Nagios

July 12th, 2009 No comments

The check_ups plugin was created to facilitate monitoring of a number of UPS vendor products.  To use the plugin you will need to install UPSD daemon distributed with Russel Kroll’s Smart UPS Tools on the remote host.  (See the REQUIREMENTS at the end of this post).

I do however believe that this plugin works with the old NUT API, which has been deprecated when switching from 1.4 to 2.0 version of NUT.

Read more…

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