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Special Thanks to Bridge Art Fair and the Orleans Street Gallery for facilitating the opportunity and Meghan Borato & Irene P�rez for assistance and photographic documentati...
"Bridge Art Fair" Catalina Hotel, Miami Beach, FL, 12.06.08.
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 3:45 PM
Crazy Home Lab
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 7:09 PM
Actually I found this site quite long time ago, I'm amazed by the craziness of the owner's home lab. You've probably seen this site before, since this site is quite famous.This site is named Uber Geek, the owner of this site is Scott Morris. His resume alone is outstanding, he's a quadruple CCIE, meaning he owns all four of the CCIE tracks.And he also wins all other networking certifications that you can dream of.Once you see the lab he has, you'd understand what I'm saying:I can't say anything but this lab is just crazy, not only Cisco devices but also Juniper, Sun, Dell, etc.Some of the small ISPs in my country don't even have these kind of...
Configuring SSH for Cisco
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 7:47 AM
In the CCNA level, we only know how to connect to Cisco devices using console connection and telnet connection.We know that no one can tap on the console connection since it's directly connected to the Cisco device, but different story for the telnet connection.Anyone can tap messages from the telnet session.All messages send in clear text, so it's dangerous to leave default communication with Cisco devices just using telnet.We can use SSH for secure connection to the Cisco devices. The SSH will encrypt all messages going from your computer to the Cisco devices.First you're going to need Cisco IOS image that support SSH or IPSec, DES, or 3DES....
3 Books to Definitely Help You Pass CCNA Exam
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 7:11 PM
You might be struggling to save money for joining the Cisco Networking Academy or other courses just to pass CCNA exam.The Cisco Networking Academy is great, yet the other courses, well in my experience, I joined a CCNA course - not the Cisco academy - but to be honest the result was not as I expected.I don't know if this happens in other countries or not, the instructors were not as qualified as they said, sure they passed the CCNA exam also but their experiences in handling Cisco devices were just poor.So, not satisfied with the result, I browsed the internet and found these three books are valuable to help me passed the CCNA exam.CCNA: Cisco...
Handy Commands for Cisco Initial Configuration
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 6:33 PM
I found the following handy Cisco commands are very useful for initial configuration of Cisco devices.I always use these commands to configure Cisco devices from fresh configuration.router> enablerouter> configure terminalrouter (config)# no ip domain-lookupThe no ip domain-lookup is very useful, what this command does is tell the Cisco device not to do a domain lookup when you mistype something in the CLI. For example if you do this without the no ip domain-lookup:router# pignTranslating "pign"... domain server (255.255.255.255)%unknown command or computer name, or unable to find computer addressThe Cisco device will try to find the computer name of pign, it doesn't know that you mistyped ping. This process could take a very long time.If you apply the no ip domain-lookup, the Cisco...
Handy Cisco Command - Interface Range
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 6:35 PM
There are many handy Cisco commands that you can use to help you in configuring Cisco devices, these commands well not exactly secret commands but you might not get it from the CCNA curriculum.One of these handy commands I already posted it at my previous post. But I want to cover it again in case you missed the post.This one is the interface range command. What this command does is to select a range of interfaces and apply the same commands to them.This is very handy especially in a Cisco switch environment where you might want to set some ports to be access ports or apply the same security to those ports instead of doing it one by one for each...
Do I Need Lightning and Surge Protection?
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 4:14 AM
That was what I concerned when first building my Cisco home lab. I never concerned about this before since I only had my laptop, couple of PCs and the good old Linksys networking devices.No matter what devices I have, I should have installed some lightning and surge protection for any electronic devices I have.Lightning, power surges and spikes are the main enemy of electronic devices. Lightning can cause a major power surge and spike, meaning when a lightning strikes it causes a brief huge power spike which can reach a spike of 50 million volts, it's brief but deadly.And not only surges from lightning, if you live in some old neighborhood, sometimes...
Building HotSpot
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 7:24 PM
Ever wonder how to build your very own wifi hotspot? If you followed my previous posts, I hope you manage to build your own home network and that is suffice for the first step in building wifi hotspot.Next things to consider are how to manage your network, you certainly don't want anyone just joining your wireless network right? that is if you don't want to build free for all hotspot.You also don't want people eating all your bandwidth, somehow you need to limit the hotspot users, and limit their access so they won't be able to join your internal LAN.If you want these features in your hotspot, you probably going to need something that is called...
Configuring WPA and WPA2 on Cisco Aironet
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 7:10 AM
The last post I talked about configuring WEP authentication on Cisco Aironet wireless access point.Now I want to configure WPA and WPA2 to give more strength in the wireless security.Just for a note I put an image of padlock on the last post and now I give a picture of a vault to give the image of stronger security.You know what I mean, padlock versus vault, oh just forget it.Back to the topic, when first posting about WEP I said that WEP encryption is weak, you better use encryption like WPA and WPA2.WPA gives better key management and stronger cipher encryption. For those who don't know about cipher, it's kinda algorithm for encryption and...
Configuring WEP Authentication on Cisco Aironet
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 5:31 PM
The wireless network you installed for your LAN can mean that you are directly exposing your network to the public.Anyone can use a wireless sniffer and view all the traffics going between the wireless access point and the clients. That's why you need to add security in your wireless LAN.This post will talk about WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy, the name states that your wireless network will be as safe as your wired network but not in reality.There are many WEP decryption tools available out there. Just capture some packets using wireless sniffer and use the the decryption tool to find out the WEP key.So we know the WEP is not secure, nevertheless...
"Graduate Open House" Columbia College, Chicago, IL, 11.08.08.
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 9:06 PM
Configuring Cisco Aironet in Home Lab - Part 2
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 5:50 PM
Now it's time to configure Cisco Aironet Wireless Access Point for Cisco home lab.What I'm going to do first is to configure the connectivity between the Cisco Aironet 1240AG wireless access point to the Cisco 2950 switch.Here's the closer look of the network diagram of the wireless access point and the switch:The network will be using VLAN 5 (192.168.5.0 network) as the native VLAN and the rest of the VLANs will be used for the SSIDs.There's an interface called BVI or Bridge-group Virtual Interface, what this interface does is bridge all of the interfaces in the access point - the wired and wireless interfaces - so you can use the interface...
Configuring Cisco Aironet in Home Lab - Part 1
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 6:35 PM
I've configured my Cisco home lab with a router that connects to cable internet and a switch with VLANs.Now it's time to add a new device to the Cisco home lab, a Cisco Aironet 1240AG wireless access point for wireless connection.And by the way, the image on the left is not an official logo from Cisco or anything, I just made that up.I won't configure anything fancy this time, only give basic administration configuration and set up an open SSIDs also associate the SSIDs to VLANs.Since I want to configure two SSIDs - one is free for all SSID with no authentication and the other one with authentication - for the wireless network, I need to configure...
Building on Diversity
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 5:08 AM
Congratulations Mr. Community Organizer! You beat them with the strategy they mocked.Recently, I read an excellent book about Abe Lincoln -- Team of Rivals. In order to deal with a divided nation, Lincoln chose his cabinet from the best minds available. He ended up with a cabinet composed of mostly his rivals to the presidency. He chose these men for their abilities and experience. Lincoln knew the problems he faced were too much for one person. He knew he needed a team of experts -- all more capable than him in their specialities.Lincoln was a master weaver in not only creating his team, but also managing them. A diverse team is difficult...
Wireless Home Network
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 1:59 AM
At the last post I talked briefly about the wireless site survey in networking projects.Now I want to share my view in things that I personally consider in building wireless home network.The following points are just my considerations, most home or SOHO users just plug their wireless access points, configure them and they just work fine.Which Standard to UseCurrently there are four common standards for wireless networking, the 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and the latest one is 802.11n. These standards use unlicensed frequencies meaning they're all free for all to use.You can use the frequencies for your wireless networks and you can't complain...
Planning for Wireless Network
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 5:34 PM
If you're planning to deploy wireless access points in a networking project then I congrats you, you still have lots of works to be done before you get to configuring the access points .There are lots of things to consider if you're in a networking project, the location of the access points, channels to use, are there radio interferences in the locations, etc.You need to do wireless site survey in a network project, see they even created their own science for this work.To talk about wireless site survey could take its own blogs, books, tools and even specialized certification if you want to do it properly and professionally.The tools software...
Get to Know Cisco Aironet Wireless Access Point
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 3:31 AM
Ah, I just love these things the Cisco Aironet Wireless Access Points, on the left one you can see the Cisco Aironet 1240AG Access Point, one among every other Cisco Aironet series.This is the very first Cisco device that I got, I thought that at least I can integrate it with my existing non-Cisco home network.1240AG is not the prettiest access point that you can get, but I like the shape anyway. It reminds me of liquor bottles that I used to see in the movies.Now why would you want to buy Cisco Aironet, it costs about ten times or more than the average home usage access points like Linksys or D-Link.These Aironet things are great, for the 1240AG,...
The Danger of Broadcast Storm and the Solution
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 5:41 AM
If you've taken the Cisco Academy program or been in the network world for a while, you must have heard about broadcast storm.Broadcast storm is a state in a network where a frame broadcast in a switch environment is continually being flooded through the network.This is mostly happen in a switch environment where you have redundant connection between switches, remember that routers segment or isolate broadcast between networks.Redundant connections are important if you want to create a backup path between switches. If one path fails the other will take over.This won't work out with switches that don't have any loop avoidance mechanism.This is...
Adding Switch to Cisco Home Lab - Part 5
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 9:36 AM
Configure Router as DHCP Server for VLANsNow this part of configuration is the most fun part of all. I just love the way that one router accepts requests from clients on different VLANs (with different subnets), and the router gives away the addresses based on what VLAN a client resides.That's just cool, your average home usage routers can't do this kind of stuff, most of the average home usage routers can do is just give away IP addresses for one network.At the previous post, I posted about how to make a router to be DHCP server. Now this post is similar but I'm going to make the router to give away IP addresses for clients on different networks.The configuration is also the same, but now I'm going to make several IP DHCP pool. The amazing thing is that the router can differentiate each client...
Adding Switch to Cisco Home Lab - Part 4
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 5:49 PM
Configure Router for InterVLAN routingIf you only configure VLAN on the 2950 or other layer 2 switches, the clients can only communicate with other clients within the same VLAN.If you want them to be able to communicate with other clients on different VLANs, then you need to configure a router for interVLAN routing.Configuration of router for interVLAN routing often called router on a stick. The reason is the clients that want to communicate with other clients on different VLANs need to go through the router first and the router will route the packets to the appropriate VLANs back through the same line.The disadvantage of this is that single...
Adding Switch to Cisco Home Lab - Part 3
Posted by Internet at Every Where on 9:24 PM
Assigning Switch Ports to VLANsAfter configuring VLANs on Cisco switch, now we need to assign the switch ports to VLANs.We need to assign which ports should be in which VLAN, remember VLAN = broadcast domain = subnet.So before making your own VLANs, consider the IP addressing scheme and which computer should be in which broadcast domain or network.Next step is to configure the trunk port to connect to the router and access port to connect the switch ports to our clients' PCs or other network devices.The trunk port is needed to carry all VLANs or selected VLANs (you can decide which VLANs are allowed to cross the trunk link) in one port and the native VLAN is assigned to "tag" untagged frames with the ID of the native VLAN.You should also configure trunk if you want to connect a switch to another...
