Chesapeake NetCraftsmen

Earlier this year I started my "Potentially Infinite Series" on What It's Like to be a NetCraftsmen.  As promised, this won't be a one and done top ten list.  A fair amount of time has passed since my original blog, so it is now time for Installment 2 (aka, Part Deux):

• We live in "virtual reality".  NetCraftsmen is unlike most companies you may have come across.  We are a "virtual" company in that we do not have an office or offices that we report to everyday.  Instead, we work from home when we can or, based on client preferences, at a client site.  Some folks have FTE positions so they see a client office on a regular basis.  Some of us (like the majority of the UC team) do project-based work so we see a mix of both.  Currently, I'd say Bill and I are enjoying a nice stretch of working from home as we are collaborating for a large client on the west coast (which requires that we work remotely unless an onsite visit is requested/arranged).  So that's the "virtual" part of our company.  The "reality" part is that NetCraftsmen is for real.  We've built a solid reputation with our partners and clients and we have real contracts, have solid financials, and (from my perspective) have more than weathered the "recession" many companies have been hurt by.  We're selective but we're seeking strong candidates with strong skills across several disciplines.

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I've been surprised recently by how many people have asked me about the WebEx Meeting Center for iPhone application.  It's not only clients inquiring but also just the "Average Joes" (neighbors, friends, etc).  A good example is that not too long ago, I was hanging out a neighbor's house toward the end the day on a Friday and I remembered I had to hop on a WebEx meeting and I did...via iPhone.  Long story short, this aroused a number of questions and just "cool factor" comments from the small crowd of non-technical bystanders.  This is when I realized that for every person I've assumed knows about this application already, there is at least one person that doesn't and should.

Some of the typical questions/comments I've received include:

"You use that app?  Is it any good?" - Yes, I use the app.  Yes, it's good.

"Was it worth the money?" - Yes, it's FREE.  As in, no cost, no obligations, purely FREE, FREE.

"I heard such and such about it so I didn't bother with it." - Varies depending on what was "heard"  but typically my answer is, "Actually you can do that" or "True, but you can still do this....".

"At my work, most people don't even know how to reserve a conference room and here you are talking and viewing the presentation on your phone from your recliner." - That's called, "work smarter, not harder".

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This article continues the discussion started in a prior blog titled Configuring the Customer Side of an MPLS VPN WAN, Part 1 (of course). It can be found at http://www.netcraftsmen.net/resources/blogs/configuring-the-customer-side-of-an-mpls-vpn-wan-part-1.html.

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I've recently been doing a lot of consulting work involving variations on a common theme. The general theme is how do I configure my routers to work with the MPLS VPN service I have bought or am about to buy from Provider X. If the service is to be your sole WAN connection, there's little problem or complexity. Do get the carrier to hand routes off to you in your IGP, unless you happen to want EBGP in your life. If you are going to have two WAN connections, well, things can get more interesting. Which is what this article is about. 

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I've been reading and re-reading various Cisco documents, looking for clarity about Non-Stop Forwarding / High Availability / Resiliency and how it interacts with Fast Re-Routing. To some extent, the more I read, the more puzzled I got. The explanations of each topic are pretty good. How they interact, good but apparently a little incomplete. 

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One of my friends asked me recently if he had too much redundancy. He was concerned about potential issues in having multiple equal cost paths from his Unified Communications Manager to his IP phones, and between IP phones in different locations. (In his case, he is running EIGRP and has up to 4 equal cost paths.)

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I think I have a love / hate relationship going with the Cisco 6500 Sup720-10G module ports. On the one hand, they're darn handy and cost-effective. On the other hand, they represent one more set of one-off gotchas that make the whole 6500 complex. I won't say unnecessarily complex, but definitely taxing to track the idiosynracies of, the capabilities and limitations of the various modules, etc. Bleeding edge technology (or what once was), cost effective, however it seems like it could all be a lot more user friendly. (Take QoS for example ... but that's another rant.)

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The Cisco AnyConnect VPN client is Cisco’s SSL VPN client offering.  Cisco currently supports this VPN client and the legacy IPSec VPN client, called the Cisco VPN Client.  The Cisco VPN client will be phased out over time.  This can be seen by the Cisco VPN Client FAQ explaining that 64 bit operating systems are not supported by the Cisco VPN client, but are supported by the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client. 

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For those of you that think professional hackers don't care about your small business, let me introduce you to Zeus, the number one threat of 2009.  According to SC Magazine:

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I am posting the PDF of a presentation I prepared for the Business IPv6 Exchange on Tuesday 1/26/2010. The contents represent my thoughts together with what I found after conducting light research ("Google") about the topic -- to see if anyone had anything to say on the subject that fell outside what I knew or considered relevant.

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