It’s been a busy six weeks for me.  I got the crazy idea of putting together some short five to ten minute how-to ConfigBytes video casts,   I’m just polishing up the last frames of my video podcast debut.  I decided to create these from watching several others that ether fall short or are out dated.

There is nothing more frustrating than watching a configuration video that someone placed on YouTube with NO sound or at least a commentary of what they are doing.  What I found is that these are freaking hard to make, trying not to stutter and remember to look up at the camera ever now and then were the hard parts then threes video and sound editing along with fact checking (making sure that the config you type is correct)

I hope to have the first video in the can by the end of this month.  My  goal to create one a month based on the amount of feedback I get I can see me doing one a week.

Recently I experienced an issue with a customer that had their long distance carrier shut the service down .  The reason why was that they were showing an excessively large amount of long distance calls made to various African countries as well as Cuba.

The customer is using a Call Manager Business Edition which puts the Call Manger and Unity on the same 7800 server.

Click to open PDF

The way the problem was presented to us suggested that these calls may have been made internally (it’s my experience that someone on the cleaning crew could be making these calls) which can be easily and quickly identify, all we need to do is look for a pattern when the calls were made, time, day and extension.

Most the time internal fraud calls like theses are made from an open fax machine that has a headset attached to it.  Sometimes Fax lines may be configured to go straight to the gateway on an FXS port; relying on whatever the dial peer

dial-peers configured
dial-peer voice 11 pots
destination-pattern 9[2-9]……
port 0/2/0:23

forward-digits 7that port is configure to.   Of course this type of configuration bypasses the CM and its logging, dial restriction ability.    Other times the fax line can be set to go into the CM and required to follow what every the dial restrictions are set to.

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July 13 2010 marks the end of Microsoft’s extended support for Windows 2000

I’m sad to see it go, it’s my opinion that Windows 2000 was probably one of the most stable OS’s that Microsoft put out.  I rarely had any issues running it and I know that a lot of businesses were still using the OS, it does a great job of getting basic internet tasks done.

We seen several services packs released over years for Windows 2000, service pack 1 gave us IPV6 support which was easily enable with the net start tcpipv6 command.   Service pack 2 gave us DX 9c and 128-bit encryption, SP 3 gave more security updates and SP 4 allows users of an Win2k users who have not applied any packs to fully upgrade.

Granted is was not all was warm and fuzy in Win2k land, there were security issues in the beginning most notably was the leak memo by Marry Jo Foley who revealed that Win2K had over sixty thousand known defects .  Win2K also received its fair virus share of famous attacks such as Code Red and Nimda.

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I received a faulty ASA 5505 from a customer the other day.  Customer has already been shipped a replacement and now I asked what should I do with this one, sitting on my desk. The problem with this device is that the power plug had become loose, periodically causing the ASA to reload and causing havoc on the customer’s network. It clearly had to be replaced

Normally I would send a refurbished non smart net covered Cisco item out for repair, if the cost was justified. ASA 5505 can be purchased from Bay for around 375 bucks used and 600 new; cost to repair this plus shipping would have been close to $200.  In this case it was better to simply replace it.    I decided to crack this box open and take a peek inside. I feel comfortable doing this because my previous career was a en electronics bench tech.  Read more…

Earlier this week Sony announced that it will stop making the 3.5 inch floppy disk March 1 2011. The disk first appeared in 1982 with 264KB formatted.  When I bought the Amiga Computer in 1988  It sported a 720k 3.5 inch drive, later on I moved on to a 386 IBM compatible  with 1.44MB 3.5 inch drive allowing for the latest HD = High Density floppies..  Later years we saw the 3.5 inch grow to 2.8 MB (wish i rarely saw and truthfully don’t think they even took off) .

I moved on to the 120 MB zip disk, which i still have a few today.  It’s funny just last month I found a box of old floppy disks from the mid 90′s.  Going through the disks was traveling back in time, I found old word docs, Viso drawings and some digital pics that were save in 320x 240 resolution.

WOOT.    Most of the people I talked to about this thought that the production of floppy had already stopped years ago.  Desktops and Laptops have not included a floppy drive for sometime, but if you administer a server you are familiarized with the old “recovery disk” ; Linux and Microsoft servers both use them.

Flash drives are here to stay but I don’t think that I will be finding a flash drive still in good condition and able to retrieve files that is 15 years old.  I heard to many horror stories of flash drives failing after a few years, Perhaps has they mature in the future they will become more durable.

Yesterday I received my new CCNP books from Cisco Press.  Surprisingly the price was not that bad what I got.  All three courses, 642- 902, 813 and the 832.  I opt for Certs Kits for each as well.

The complete course was around $250 which includes the “Official Certification Guides” , Cert Kits and shipping.

The Cert Kits includes a Quick Reference booklets, flash cards (found online) and a DVD. Each DVD in the same familiar format as the the Video Mentor series is, each with an introduction and roughly 5 to 6 hours of video, each covering the the material talk about in the Certification Guides.

This is makes this series stand out is that the Cert Kits complement the Cert Guides.  I would recommend that you buy them both.  While scanning through the new material I notice that this time Cisco is really pushing hard on the routing and switching.  They have left a lot of the VOiP and security out, which was found in the ONT (642-845) and ISCW (642-825) tracks.

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Just received our first Juniper router, a J2300; this will be added to our lab along with the Extreme Summit and the rest of Cisco gear. At first glance the J2300 looks like any other device that will fit a 19in rack.  The first thing I had to do was pop the top off and see what made this tick. As you can see from the following picture there not a whole lot in here. The box appears rather empty, I did notice a beefy processor and a standard compact flash.

The power supply is 250watt, not much going on here, than again you really don’t much to drive this thing.

root@J2300> show version
Hostname: J2300
Model: j2300
JUNOS Software Release [7.1R1.3] (Export edition)

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