Articles in the Networking category

Using Cisco NBAR to Monitor Traffic Protocols on Your Network

Posted on May 12, 2007 in Networking

Many network administrators already know how to use tools like Cacti or MRTG to monitor the usage on their network links. (If you don't, let me know and I'll show you how.) Unfortunately, those tools only reveal part of the story. They show you how much traffic is traversing a …
What is NetBIOS?

Posted on May 09, 2007 in Networking
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<acronym title="Transmission Control Protocol">TCP</acronym>, <acronym title="User Datagram Protocol">UDP</acronym>
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Choosing Between RADIUS And TACACS+

Posted on April 24, 2007 in Networking

Deciding whether to use <acronym title="Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service">RADIUS</acronym> or <acronym title="Terminal Access Controller Access Control System Plus">TACACS+</acronym> for <acronym title="Authentication, Authorization, Accounting">AAA</acronym> functionality on a Cisco-based network seems straight-forward. After all, if the network uses Cisco, shouldn't the AAA …
UDLD In Radio-Based Metro Ethernet Rings

Posted on April 17, 2007 in Networking

<acronym title="UniDirectional Link Detection">UDLD</acronym> is a Cisco protocol designed to detect and disable unidirectional links in Ethernet (fiber or twisted-pair). In the case of a radio-based Metro Ethernet ring, UDLD goes the extra mile in preventing Spanning-Tree loops and user service interruption.

In this simple network of …
Implement a Sensible Naming Policy in Cisco IOS

Posted on April 10, 2007 in Networking

Network configuration names are not decoration. They are operational metadata. When something is broken at 2:00 a.m., the difference between ACL-EDGE-IN and access-list is not aesthetic. It is the difference between narrowing the blast radius quickly and spelunking through hundreds or thousands of lines of Cisco IOS configuration …

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