A World Without Multicast
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Caffeine sequence initiated...We have lift off!
I rolled my fat butt out of a warm bed on a cold Wisconsin morning to conduct a WebEx Workshop on "Designing Your Network For The NEW Video" to a group of engineers in India today. I think they were surprised when I told them that this is NOT a Multicasting workshop.
So was I... Read more
Me Versus QoS...Round 1...
Last week we were shooting a TechWiseTV episode on Telepresence. I refused to do this at first since there is a ton a crap out there on how cool it looks. If we do this show we have to go behind the scenes and not even show a Telepresence system until the end of the show. We did that and it turned out to easily be one of our best shows hands down. It airs in Feb if you want to check it out. Read more
Firewall Features that don't SUCK: Zone Based Firewall Policies
I was at the gym the other day, now before you jump to conclusions; I was just waiting on my son to finish his fencing class. He was learning how to sell stolen merchandise in Milwaukee... I was just sitting there minding my own business, eating a Snickers, jumbo box of Cracker Jacks, Twix (in case I needed to pause) and washing it down with a half gallon of DIET Sundrop when I heard some annoying type "a" jag off meat head yell; "You’re in the ZONE!" to another meat head. Read more
iACLs; A Service Providers Best Practice on your LAN
When I first started working on Cisco gear back in the early 18th century, ACLs were one the the biggest deployment problems I ran into on a day to day basis. On my first day of being introduced to ACL's was also my first day of introducing our user base to self inflicted Goober Admin Denial of Service attacks (GADOS).... Oh sure they made sense on the various certification exams and talking about them with other geeks over a Bawls Cola at Star Trek conventions. Hey it's just basic boolean logic right? Read more
An Early Gift for MySQL servers
Trying to keep up with all of the possible attack vectors and decreasing your attack surface is like trying to eat Minute Rice with chop sticks. It's a full time job! I used to blame a lot of attacks on PHP because it deserves it. I think PHP sucks at recursion and I just do not believe the threads are safe at all.
But truth be told... Read more
How NIKTO saved my tail on a cold Wisconsin morning
Talking crap and pissin' folks off. These are a few of my favorite things - in a good way, of course! Not a type "A" win-at-all-cost jag-off like the folks you want to punch right square in the face at a sporting event. For me it's to bring out the competitive spirit and comradeship between friends. This is most likely why I am drawn to fishing so much. Challenging each other, to see who gets to take the walk of glory vs. the walk of shame back to the truck, is always a good time. Read more
Geek Salute to Veterans
TWTV2811>en Read more
TWTV2811#conf t
TWTV2811(conf)#banner exec #
MIB Walking 101
Network management is sometimes as difficult as trying to eat undercooked beef in front of guest. The more you chew the bigger and worse it gets. Of course that's when folks want to ask me a thousand questions... Like anything, lets take it small first and then work our way up to the bigger stuff.
First off, forget all of the GUI stuff, trend markers and way cool pie charts. Understanding the underlying design of all network management tools will take you from basic to alpha geek status in minutes. It's kinda like David Lee Roth walking into a Van Halen themed nightclub, always cool. Read more
Cool IOS Feature: Random NetFlow
Does anyone out there remember the show, "The Fall Guy" with Lee Majors and one of my big time young punk kid crushes, Heather Thomas. The theme song was as popular as the actual show (especially the later seasons which sucked worse then a "Think Outside the Box" workshop). Looking at Cisco Cat switches and routers, to me the true "unknown stuntman" of networking is Netflow. Read more
Overlooked VOIP Security Features
I am wanker when it comes to VOIP. I am not a huge VOIP fan. Nope. Not much at all. When I was growing up, phracking never really appealed to me. I remember tripping my first 5ESS and not thinking "that’s cool" but "so what". Kinda weird because VOIP possesses all the elements I like in engineering design. It has many parts, separate protocols, programming elements, high end user satisfaction, massive extensibility and lots and lots of tweakable elements. All a plus in the Jimmy Ray book of fun stuff to do on a weekend. Read more
Manly Man IOS Features
If I was to write a movie script, on a Manly Man Sys Admin who would I use a base to draw from. It’s certainly not some of the total knobs that have been pushed on us by Hollywood casting agencies. Look how they had portrayed us with folks like Matthew Brodrick, Keanu Reeves, Johnny Lee Miller, Pierce Bronsan, etc... OK, Kevin Smith I understand but the others, Come on man!! Nope if I was to write a script about a Manly Man Sys Admin it would be based on one Dude. A Dude that broke the friggen mold on Manliness. Read more
Port Scan Attack Detector PSAD
The fish just haven't been biting here in the Land of Cheese this year. So that has gave me tons more time in my lab geekin' and phrackin'. I was playing around in my lab the other day trying to build out a low to no cost SMB security design and hide out from my in laws. Of course many vendors already offer good solutions to this problem. But as a victim of the IBM, Unisys days of "My way or the highway" I never ever like to turn over control of my network to a vendor. Plus it really helps me to see the value add of what a vendor is really providing. Read more
Best. Training. Ever.
Training. Deciding on a career in IT is also making a decision to be a career student. We can’t escape it; Moore’s Law also works in the training area as well. I have been to bootcamps, online training, classroom training, seminars, private training, mentored training, apprenticeships plus I read books like crazy on IT to keep my skills sharper then a SOG knife. Heck, when I interview for a job my first and deal killer question is; "What is your policy on training?" Read more
A New Twist on Kiosk Hacking
What does eating at Vegan restaurant and attending a four day conference in Waukegan on the external factors influencing paint drying times have in common? Let me be rude here and answer that question with another question; What is the difference between c:\windows, c:/windows/, file:/c:\windows\ and %WINDIR% if your answer is no difference in taste or suck factor then move to the highlighted square and continue your hack... Read more
Pissed Off About Poor Quality
I am pissed off. I am not sure what at so I thought I would start writing and see if I can figure it out. I know who I am pissed at and that is Hewlett Packard (HP). It's not a competitive thing either. I love the competition between anyone. Heck, that is what I miss the absolute most (still) about field sales. That two roosters in a hen house attitude slugging it out for every single dollar was the BEST. Oh man! I still get the chills thinking about it. Read more
Port 666
How many Star Trek classic fans are in the house? Man, I just love that show. I honestly believe that is was Star Trek that generated my interest in engineering and of course kept me from getting dates until college, but that's a story for my therapist. There is an episode called "The Corbomite Maneuver," where the intergalactic King of Cool Captain Kirk bluffs a goober alien into thinking he has a heavy duty bomb onboard and the alien backs off. Then he, Spock and Scotty drink a case of Newcastle and ash out a Cohiba. Read more
One Cool ISO: Fully Automated Nagios
TV Dinners. Not only is this an ultra cool song by ZZ Top but on the surface of the twenty year turkey in a thirty year old skin it should be a perfect meal for folks on the go. The majority of your food groups are all there, cooked at once on a throw away dish. Perfect right? Read more
Password Cracking with CUDA
There a few milestones in my life that I can look back on and know that I have turned a corner. For example; Read more
- When I could no longer recognize the names in the Police Blotter section of the paper; I knew I was older.
- When I could actually taste a difference between good beer and Pabst Blue Ribbon; I knew my pallet was getting better.
- When I heard of CUDA and immediately thought of Compute Unified Device Architecture instead of a bad to bone MOPAR with a Hemi; I knew I was a major league geek.
Delay Tolerant Networking
Having a network that tolerates delays is like wearing a leather jacket on a moped. In this phase of networking where email is too slow, video streaming is 28% on Internet traffic and Public Switched Telephone Networks are being bypassed with the use of SIP Trunking, delay of any type is the last thing I want on my network. Read more
Three Better Ways of Doing Networking That We Ain't Doin'
I really enjoy tweaking things to squeeze just a bit more power out of what I already have. If I am building a small-block Chevy engine, over-clocking a server, reprogramming a EEPROM or trimming out a fishing lure, I love pushing stuff to its absolute limits.
However, sometimes all the modding in the world just can not solve the core problem. Putting a .265 duration cam, rollers, headers and hi riser will improve the suck factor of 305 Chevy very little.
It's time to scrap the crap and move up to the next big thing. Read more
- About Networking Geek to Geek
Jimmy Ray Purser is the technical co-host for Cisco's TechWise and BizWise TV. Jimmy Ray also conducts advanced training for engineers across North America and Europe and regularly speaks at industry conferences such as VON, CeBIT, N+I, and Networkers. As a field engineer, Jimmy Ray experiences networking first hand behind the console or in the rack. He is an active member in the IEEE and the Ethernet Alliance and has designed, installed and tested numerous networks for Fortune 500 companies, the United States military and other institutions worldwide. He holds 3 U.S. patents for Ethernet security algorithms with two others pending and one defensive publication, as well as numerous other vendor certifications in networking and security.
Purser holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Southern Illinois University is currently pursuing a master of science degree in electrical engineering.
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