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The quote has been made in the past “Whoever controls the skies controls the land.”* I think that an equivalent quote in today’s network environment is: Whoever controls the infrastructure [...]

Two prior blogs discussed OTV, Cisco Overlay Transport Virtualization. One of those blogs pointed out some concerns one might have about optimal routing, OTV optimal routing. (My virtual machine — [...]

A few weeks ago Dr. Welcher brought up some interesting points around QoS for Microsoft UC environments.  One of the topics discussed was the need to facilitate traffic classification at the access layer for applications requiring QoS running on PCs.  The problem being how to ensure that the right application…

In this CMUG session, I discussed “Data Center Virtualization” at the April C-MUG session. We looked at the many aspects of virtualization that are relevant to the data center, sharing [...]

Two things happened recently that reinforced my preference for network management appliances.  The first is database configuration and maintenance.  The second is system configuration for efficiency. I’m installing and configuring [...]

Carole Warner Reece and I had the pleasure last week of attending a combined Nexus 7000 and Nexus 5000 / Nexus 2000 course taught by FireFly in NJ. (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps9402/solution_overview_c22-516393_ps10110_Product_Solution_Overview.html Understanding [...]

This past week I had to update selected edge ports on a set of Cisco Catalyst 4507 and 4510 switches.  Two things forced me to take the time to use [...]

NetCraftsmen has been supporting several customers with designs and implementations of ‘Medical Grade Networks’. Steve Meyer and I thought we should discuss an example health care network design that uses [...]

Over the years, I’ve provided a number of customers with QoS configurations in support of IP Telephony (IPT) and IP VideoConferencing (IPVC), generally non-Cisco. I’ve been working recently with a couple [...]

Have you ever accidentally left debug enabled on a Cisco network device?  I have, many years ago.  I had been doing some troubleshooting and was interrupted by someone with a [...]

Remember the old management adage “You can only manage what you can measure”?  Well, there’s a corollary in Network Management, in which you can only manage devices that you know [...]

Ever since I started working with Cisco Call Manager (circa 1999 - yikes) I have always wanted a way to implement an Authentication/Authorization/Accounting model.  Now,  I finally got everything I wanted.   The Authentication/Authorization need was addressed somewhere around CM 3.1.4b with a web application add-on called Multi-Level Access (MLA).  Since…