Posted by: Carole Warner Reece
on Mar 11, 2010
Tagged in:
test ,
snmp ,
network monitoring ,
network management ,
network health ,
network discovery ,
network analysis ,
NetMRI trial ,
NetMRI ,
diagnostic tools ,
device groups ,
device discovery ,
device configuration ,
configuration management
Because NetCraftsmen is now offering a free 30 dial trial of Netcordia's NetMRI software (at Netcordia NetMRI 4 Trial Download), we have had some recent discussions on the best way to run a trial.
Posted by: Carole Warner Reece
on Feb 10, 2010
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.)
Posted by: Carole Warner Reece
on Dec 10, 2009
I just finished reading a brief interview that Terry Slattery did with Train Signal Training on Cisco Certifications, Careers, Training and More (link to the interview).
As usual, I find Terry's comments and advice are worth reviewing. He discusses the value of certifications as well as changes in the certification process in the networking industry. He touches on various types of training and training resources, and talks a bit more about CCIE, CCDE, and the new CCA options from Cisco.
Posted by: Carole Warner Reece
on Oct 21, 2009
Tagged in:
VRF-Lite ,
VRF ,
virtualization ,
static routes ,
shared services ,
redistribution ,
Multi-VRF ,
fusion router ,
EIGRP ,
design ,
data center
Part 2 of my experiments with VRF-Lite, which provides more thoughts on whether the customer edge (CE) device should run one or more VRFs. (Part 1 is available here CE Design Options When Using VRF-Lite End-to-End, and discusses using the CE as a "fusion" router to support dynamic routing the customer routing process(es) with the shared service VRFs by using multiple EIGRP processes on the CE without any VRFs.)
Posted by: Carole Warner Reece
on Oct 18, 2009
Tagged in:
VRF-Lite ,
VRF ,
virtualization ,
static routes ,
shared services ,
redistribution ,
Multi-VRF ,
fusion router ,
fusion ,
EIGRP ,
design ,
data center
I've been testing some end-to-end VRF-Lite configurations, and I've been thinking about whether the customer edge (CE) device should run one or more VRFs. Like many design choices in networking, the decision to run VRFs on your CE devices depends on your application and your network.
Posted by: Carole Warner Reece
on Oct 5, 2009
I've been reviewing the VMware vSphere 4.0 architecture, and in the process put together the following introduction glossary.
Note: This includes just the terms I found useful this morning...
Posted by: Carole Warner Reece
on Sep 28, 2009
I've recently been looking at BGP designs using route reflectors (RR). As a best practice for RR designs, the logical iBGP sessions should follow the physical topology. But what could happen if you don't follow this practice?
Posted by: Carole Warner Reece
on Sep 21, 2009
You probably know a couple of ways to use BGP in an enterprise environment. Most commonly, BGP has been used in the enterprise to provide connectivity to the Internet, supporting multihoming solutions, traffic policies, and summarization. BGP has also been used in the core of large enterprise environments as a tool to enhance network scalability and support separate administrative control domains. However, another way to use BGP in the enterprise is on a single router supporting networking virtualization with VRF-Lite. (VRF-Lite is also known as Multi-VRF).
Posted by: Carole Warner Reece
on Sep 14, 2009
I've been testing some VRF-Lite (also known as Multi VRF) configurations, and I thought I would briefly illustrate redistribution of static routes into EIGRP.
Posted by: Carole Warner Reece
on Sep 7, 2009

A couple of folks have asked me questions about adding an RSS feed to their email, so I wrote up some simple instructions for two email clients, Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Firefox. (Adding this RSS feed will send an message to you when a new article or page is posted.) In addition to the article, I have a video screen capture of the Firefox process at the bottom of the article...