Slashdot Mirror

Cisco has not only drivers for linux but also their config tools: cisco Aironet 350 linux drivers

Cisco Aironet 5 GHz 54 Mbps Wireless LAN Client Adapter 802.11a cards don't mention linux drivers on the data sheet, but hopefully they will soon.

If you're interested in linux and 802.11 stuff check out linux wlan project and wlan resources for linux

Cisco has not only drivers for linux but also their config tools: cisco Aironet 350 linux drivers

Cisco Aironet 5 GHz 54 Mbps Wireless LAN Client Adapter 802.11a cards don't mention linux drivers on the data sheet, but hopefully they will soon.

If you're interested in linux and 802.11 stuff check out linux wlan project and wlan resources for linux

-Pat

Like most Cisco engineers that use their SoftPhone or attached USB phone, you can always VPN back into your office and then attach to your CallManager.

As a matter of fact, the new version of Cisco VPN Client 4.0 has on-demand VPN so you could fire up your SoftPhone and it would automatically VPN in over your wireless connection and let you make and take calls.

If you haven't seen IPblue's skinny CallManager softphones, check them out! They have an iPaq wireless softphone as well, and their PC version supports USB handsets instead of cheesy headsets.

Cheers.

-Pat

Your Starbucks hotspot will be no good unless they decide to hook it to a CallManager, because the call has to be processed somewhere.

However, I don't think very much high-end telco/ISP equipment was really designed to duplicate packets to someone other than the intended recipient

I'm not much of a network guy, but in cisco lingo it is called "port span" which will echo the packet set to or from a port TO ANOTHER PORT. Just hook up a sniffer to the "spanned" port and you can listen to all the packets.

ISPs do this for their _secret_ monitoring / gov't-email-spying stuff. ISPs do it to find why they are having a network problem by monitoring the packets on a switched network without putting a hub in the middle.

If you do the span thing on a switch port that has a router on the other end you can see all packets leaving/entering the router.

Granted this captures a LOT of traffic, but if the monitoring box just drops stuff it doesnt want, the load is lighter (filters).

Here is a cisco doc on the topic:

Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) feature

I actually signed up for Vonage earlier today. The neighbourhood where I live (Avery Ranch) has fiber to all the homes. A provider called ClearWorks gave us Digital TV (which sucks more or less), as well as internet access (say 300K downstream, 100-200K upstream), and phone service. Apparently Clearworks is having some financial difficulties, and looks like they are dropping the phone service. We got a letter the other day saying we had to find a new provider, so I decided to investigate Vonage.

I actually already have a Cisco IP phone Cisco IP phone at home that I used for work (telecommuter), so I know that VoIP works great. My Cisco ATA box hasn't arrived yet ( this is the box you plug your standard POTS line into, and plug that into your home network), but even still we're using our new Vonage server right now by forwarding our (new) home number to the long distance number (in Canada) we want to call. I just hung up a few minutes ago and found the service to be pretty good, although I could notice a slight echo, which could be related to the phone that I was calling from. Basically $40/month for unlimited local AND long distance in US/Canada, as well as a ton of other cool features, like accessing your voice mail over the web, email notifications w/caller id on new messages, etc. We should save about $100/month in phone bills, so if I have to, I'll put up with a little echo :-) Hopefully my ATA box will arrive in the next couple of days, and hopefully my network connection will survive 2 VoIP phones online at the same time :-)

If only more technically trained people were put in a tight-loop with markteting and advertising...
You mean like Cisco does? They require the Sales experts to be certified as well, with some requirements: Networking 101, minimum pass score: 80%

The fact that cisco has a
webpage dedicated to their aquisitions really demonstrates their corporate mentality, for better or worse. It's a slippery slope for me. On the one hand, I am a huge fan of the products that Cisco has aquired and (in my opinion) improved on... take the VPN 3000 Series Concentrator line, or the AP 1200 series wireless access point. Both technologies built from aquired technology, and both have been improved in ways that only Cisco could improve them (using both corporate clout and Cisco owned technologies). I find it really comforting to know that when I have a new project at work, I only have to call my Cisco VAR and she and my regional Cisco rep show up with great ideas and help. But I find it unsettling somehow. I'm torn between wanting them to innovate, but at the same time, who really competes with Cisco. Juniper? Foundary? Certanly not 3Com anymore... The only way you can get your foot in the door against Cisco is to "pull a Juniper" and get your routers used instead of theirs on research networks like I2. Oh! The moral dilema...

Cisco usually incorporates stuff they buy into their existing portofolio. That usually means the product will end up running Cisco IOS. You can now buy Aironet access-points running IOS, but other Aironet products are still running their "old" OS. Same with Cistco Catalyst switches. They are only recently beginning to have the same features running IOS as they have running CatOS.

Cisco usually incorporates stuff they buy into their existing portofolio. That usually means the product will end up running Cisco IOS. You can now buy Aironet access-points running IOS, but other Aironet products are still running their "old" OS. Same with Cistco Catalyst switches. They are only recently beginning to have the same features running IOS as they have running CatOS.

Wouldn't surprise me. They recently bought Psionic as well and, as far as I can tell, handy tools like PortSentry and Logcheck are nowhere to be found anymore. Instead, PortSentry at least has been assimilated into overpriced Cisco products.

At least I still have the copies that I downloaded several months ago...

Your lawn dart delivery system reminds me of a similar system that *has* seen a decent amount of use -- the "wrap document around brick and hurl through plate glass window" delivery method...

Anyway, he didn't really build this thing because it's the best way to deliver a document... haven't you ever built anything just for fun, because you could?

I wrote a little text-to-speech converter once entirely in HTML and JavaScript, using the word pronunciations at Merriam-Webster Online. Naturally it was horrible, but very funny to listen to.

When we first got Cisco IP phones at my previous office I wrote a program that used the call manager web interface to initiate an outgoing call from any phone in the building to an external number of your choice (you'd just type in the target extension, destination number, and hit "make the call!").

You make rules -- like "work on this is only allowed between 12 and 1pm" -- because of course there's no real point. Maybe just "because it was there". And possibly to proudly show your little mutant creation to your friends and laugh about how interesting but useless an achievement it is.

>Having your MCSE and Cisco certs doesn't mean anything other than you can study for a test where you know the questions going into the test.

unfamiliar with the CCIE i assume?

This was actually done over Bell Canada's public IP Infrastructure using MPLS VPN technology, not over a "private" IP Network...

Get all the details from the Cisco press release:

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/prod_030403.html

• CIDR provides a further saving grace ...

• CIDR provides a further saving grace ...

If the use of BGP is out of the question, there seems to be only one alternative. However, this solution still leaves the ISP as a single point of failure.

The option is Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP). A brief description of VRRP, including a diagram, can be found here. Keep in mind that there are numerous other manufacturers that support the VRRP standard, you don't *have* to go with Cisco. Also, remember that with VRRP there is still a single point of failure, the ISP. This means that your ISP had better be a good one.

They have linux , windows, and mac clients, and our implementation uses SecurID for authentication, so at least it seems secure. (not being a security expert I have no idea if it actually is.)

The announcement was made on January 23, and it's nice to see things moving along. Cisco's announcement has a lot more details than the article reported today.

Like other ISPs using Cisco gear at the core, I definitely can't roll out IPv6 support until this matures, which will take a few years on Cisco's release schedule. I'd expect to see much more IPv6 availability then.

This article makes no sense from a proper real world routing perspective.

Any provider who is doing anything slightly serious will be using BGP4 routing for their EGP. It does NOT send out magic packets to find best paths. It learns routes from it's peers and will choose the best route based on a defined set of decisions. Routers do not keep a list of "neglected routes." If one route goes away, the router will simply pick the next best path.

Read more about BGP4 from Cisco's website. You will find little in common with this article and the one linked in the story.

Good routing relies on good admins with a well defined routing policy. There is no such thing as a "selfish" router.

Tim

Here are some answers/clarifycations on some stuff I've already seen in the coments here:

iSCSI is a SAN (Storage Area Network) replacement. It is not a file shareing system like Samba or NFS. The primary advantage of iSCSI over something like Fiber Channel is cost. You can build an iSCSI system with regular Ethernet switches where as Fiber Channel requires "special" switches and cableing. I would think that two systems could use the same iSCSI target, but only where it would make sense and where the file system could handle such access.

Yes, there are already are adapters. (Not quite sure how they are out ahead of the spec, but why would you let a little thing like that slow you down). They connect to the Ethernet switch (usually a gigabit switch) and therefor could boot off a volume via iSCSI.

Cisco also makes a device that can bridge lagacy SAN networks to iSCSI

We're talking about a software code upgrade on existing routers...

ISPs are utilizing either Cisco or Juniper in their cores (If they're using something else *chuckle*, it's time to change ISPs).

You can get IPv6 support from each company.

• Cisco
• Juniper

Why do people assume that this is going to require a capital investment?

It's no wonder you didn't sign your post.

I'm seeing a lot of knee-jerk reactions about Rendezvous and security. People are assuming that because the protocol is about making certain types of network configuration dynamic and simple, it is necessarily insecure. Well, I've got news for you: any type of connection from one computer to another is creating security issues. I mean...duh. Now, clearly using something like the zeroconf protocol is going to require stuff like...passwords and encryption and all the usual nonsense we need to make things secure. Oh, and a competent sysadmin administrating the system. So can we cool it with the frothing?

Now, if someone had some good comments on the security issues involved with the zeroconf protocol itself, I'd like to read about it.

The big players in VOIP, mainly Avaya, Nortell, Alcatel, Cisco, to name a few all started out with H.323 phones. Avaya (formerly the huge division of AT&T that did PBXs) is moving towards SIP. Though others are already there. It's probably not too important yet as most installations are still traditional analog and digital phones. That fact makes the small pure SIP players, like Pingtel have a huge disadvantage in market share/mind share. The next generation of Microsoft's RTC servers will be a SIP solution (this comes in addition to version 5.0 of Messenger). And hey, if you just want a SIP soft client on your desktop, why don't you surf over and grab linephone.

you mean this?

Cisco ATA 186

Quote from product literature:

"The Cisco ATA 186 Analog Telephone Adaptor brings traditional telephones to the networked world. It is a handset-to-Ethernet adaptor that interfaces regular analog telephones with IP-based telephony networks. The Cisco ATA 186 is installed at the subscriber's premises and supports two voice ports, each with its own independent telephone number."

people willing to sell you one

One thing I don't like about Vonage is that you have to use their Cisco ATA-186(the "POTS-to-Ethernet gizmo" you mentioned). Of course, they password protect it and provision it themselves, so it can only be used with their service. This means you don't get to play with this nifty device, 'cause they've locked you out. Goes against the hacker spirit, seems more like the Microsoft "we've set this up for you for your own protection" thing. I even emailed them to ask if I could use my own ATA, here is their response:

"We do not currently offer service on devices that we do not provide. We do include the Cisco ATA 186 free of charge. We do appreciate your interest in our service. Please do let us know if we may be of further assistance."

Why would you want to configure the Cisco ATA yourself? Well, you might want to try Free World Dialup, or you might want to play with VOCAL from vovida.org. Or whatever.

What I did was to buy a Cisco ATA-186 myself from YesMicro for about $170 with shipping. Then, I got an account at iconnecthere.com and set up my ATA using their setup instructions (it's a Word file, oh well...). I pick up the phone, and it works. When I make a call, they just charge me by the minute (2.9 cents to the U.S.). They have other plans that are cheaper, if you make a lot of calls. If you want to send and receive calls, you can do that for $8.95/month, or $10.95/month for a toll-free number (first hour is included, extra minutes at $0.10/minute). I don't, however, need my own phone number. So, here was my decision-making process, in a nutshell:

With Vonage, if I don't need my own phone number, too bad, no discount; I get a phone number anyway. I still can't tinker with the Cisco ATA, and I still need to give it back (it's not like I could do anything with it anyway, since it's locked down). $39.95 for unlimited calls to the U.S.

With iconnecthere, if I don't need my own phone number, then I don't pay the extra $8.95/month. However, I need to buy the Cisco ATA. Assuming a cost of $170, it would cost me $14.16/month to pay for it. Taking the cost of the Cisco into account, $39.95 buys me 1404 minutes/month, or about 47 minutes/day. Without the cost of the Cisco, it's 1767 minutes/month, or almost an hour/day.

However, I don't make a lot of calls every day. So, with iconnecthere, I can just pay by the minute. Assuming I make about 15 minutes of calls/day, that's $24.16/month including the cost of the Cisco as above, or $10/month not including the cost of the Cisco (with their 1000 minutes for $10 plan). Plus, I have the fun of being able to hack around on the Cisco ATA, and it's mine to keep.

So, in conclusion, if you don't want to hack around on your Cisco ATA, you don't mind giving it back, and you make over an hour's worth of calls every single day, go with Vonage. If you want to hack your Cisco ATA, own it, and make less than an hour's worth of calls a day, iconnecthere seems to be a better option.

A friend of mine recently became Cisco certified. He had to configure a hardware router (among other things) for one of the exams. This could be the sort of thing you're after. Check it out.

Sorry. Missed my link. Type too fast:

You can check out the various power limitations for 802.11b across the world at this site:

Maximum Power Levels and Antenna Gains

A country to regulation listing is here

Sorry. Missed my link. Type too fast:

You can check out the various power limitations for 802.11b across the world at this site:

Maximum Power Levels and Antenna Gains

A country to regulation listing is here

Linksys outputs 50mw. If you were to go to the FCC regulation maximum of 100mw (1 watt), you would do better.

If you use Cisco's Wireless Calculator Excel spreadsheet, you will see that a 21 dbi parabolic dish (as seen here could grant you 76.1 kilometers.

Now you have problems with this distance. Line of sight, for one.

The common calculation calls for a cone shaped space from each antenna meeting at the middle. This is called the Fresnel Zone The calculator says that this zone, for 76km is 28.2 meters (92 feet). So, you have to have 92 feet of clearance. No trees. No buildings. Nothing.

At this distance (44.5 miles) The earth curvature is 90 feet, somehow your signal must peak over that!

So, you are going to need antenna heights of over 150 meters to set up a 802.11b wireless like of this long.

Most engineers say this is simply not feasable. Other issues, such as antenna alighment, water (nasty multipath bounce), WiFi hotspot interferance, and the actual time it takes for a signal to travel that far are issues as well.

So just remember line of sight. If you have clean line of sight to the other endpoint, and clarity through the Fresenel Zone, you might just have a chance for point-point 802.11b wireless.

Cheers!

Linksys outputs 50mw. If you were to go to the FCC regulation maximum of 100mw (1 watt), you would do better.

If you use Cisco's Wireless Calculator Excel spreadsheet, you will see that a 21 dbi parabolic dish (as seen here could grant you 76.1 kilometers.

Now you have problems with this distance. Line of sight, for one.

The common calculation calls for a cone shaped space from each antenna meeting at the middle. This is called the Fresnel Zone The calculator says that this zone, for 76km is 28.2 meters (92 feet). So, you have to have 92 feet of clearance. No trees. No buildings. Nothing.

At this distance (44.5 miles) The earth curvature is 90 feet, somehow your signal must peak over that!

So, you are going to need antenna heights of over 150 meters to set up a 802.11b wireless like of this long.

Most engineers say this is simply not feasable. Other issues, such as antenna alighment, water (nasty multipath bounce), WiFi hotspot interferance, and the actual time it takes for a signal to travel that far are issues as well.

So just remember line of sight. If you have clean line of sight to the other endpoint, and clarity through the Fresenel Zone, you might just have a chance for point-point 802.11b wireless.

Cheers!

Could you detail a real-world attack that would break the security of the network I described above?

As far as the SSID is concerned: "Some access-point vendors, including Cisco, offer the option to disable SSID broadcasts in the beacon messages. The SSID can still be determined by sniffing the probe response frames from an access point".

For a description of a real-world attack on WEP, I would recommend "Using the Fluhrer, Mantin, and Shamir Attack to Break WEP" by Stubblefield, Ioannidis, and Rubin. They showed it was possible to recover a 104-bit key in a few hours...

Could you detail a real-world attack that would break the security of the network I described above?

As far as the SSID is concerned: "Some access-point vendors, including Cisco, offer the option to disable SSID broadcasts in the beacon messages. The SSID can still be determined by sniffing the probe response frames from an access point".

For a description of a real-world attack on WEP, I would recommend "Using the Fluhrer, Mantin, and Shamir Attack to Break WEP" by Stubblefield, Ioannidis, and Rubin. They showed it was possible to recover a 104-bit key in a few hours...

"HD is a retail shop, not a technology shop. ...As far as the head retailers were concerned, IT was nothing more than a 'cost center.'"

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Home Depot will never be as big as Wal-Mart. Home Depot thinks of IT as a hole that the company is constantly pouring money into; Wal-Mart relentlessly uses IT to further its goals of getting the lowest cost from suppliers. (The definitive article on Wal-Mart and technology.)

Home Depot will never be a leader in the industry if it continues to view IT as an expense rather than an investment. Your post was an excellent example of how retailers tend to forget that technology, when used properly, can not only form the core of the business, but strengthen existing product lines. Home Depot's executive staff most likely looks at Wal-Mart and ask "How do they do that?" The answer lies in Wal-Mart's aggressive stance on technology adoption.

In fact, Wal-Mart and Home Depot are even compared here, where Wal-Mart's CIO is asked whether or not it will make a difference if competitors use RFID tags. (RFID tags are Wal-Mart's next big frontier.) "The challenge is to keep innovating faster than the competition can copy us," he says.

If what you're saying really is true of Home Depot, expect Wal-Mart to keep swallowing Home Depot's business. Wal-Mart has never labeled itself as "just a retail shop," as you label Home Depot. Home Depot doesn't have the competitive advantage, nor does it sound like they know where to spend to get that advantage. I expect that Wal-mart will remain a leader for some time to come in the retail space. This quote sums up what you're seeing nicely:

"'I think Wal-Mart views technology in a different light than most retailers,' says Peter Abell, retail research director at AMR Research. 'It's not only an integral part of the company, but it's where the leaders of the company can come from.'"

This is the direction in which Home Depot must go in order to become truly successful at lowering costs and increasing productivity. Unfortunately for Home Depot, Wal-Mart is already there, and getting further and further ahead...

Sky's the Limit for Cisco Aironet Wireless LAN Technologies "Any traveler with a laptop computer or portable device equipped with a Wi-Fi compliant NIC card or enabled with Wi-Fi embedded inside will be able to log onto the wireless network. As part of the service, Lufthansa will also operate a 10 Mbps Ethernet wired network onboard for those passengers without wireless-capable computers. With 380 seats, a typical Lufthansa 747 has as many network connection sites as a mid-sized company. "

PIX is Cisco and there isn't a Linux company on the market that can beat their support. Match it MAYBE, but not beat it.

I don't think that will be a problem for really high end stuff when you are willing to pay whatever it takes. But for something like this, I think Linux would be competitive. I don't know what they charge for SMARTNET, but it must be in the thousands.

I'm sure that the parent post may look insightful, but the moderators have been led astray. The poster doesn't know what he's talking about, or is a troll. Probably both.
Thank you for your comments Anonymous Coward. I have had professors and mathematicians at the University of Chicago and Notre Dame look at my mathematics before, and although I cannot claim to be a mathematician, they have certainly agreed that I know something about which I talk about.

If the value is N^N, then each additional user multiplies the value by (N+1) * ((N+1)/N)^N, which is about (N+1)*e for large N. If adding the millionth user makes a network a few million times more valuable than it was before, then you have a poor definition of value.

I'm not exactly sure when or where N^N was introducted to this line of discussion. I was refering to N! which, although related to N^{nth power}, actually increases faster than N^{nth). Perhaps I am wrong. The fact of the matter is that it increases quickly, and it accelerates as it increases.

Group theory and quantum theory are not relevant here. If the poster had enough of a mathematics background to understand either of those topics, though, then he would not have misunderstood N^N.

Well, Anonymous Coward, I would suggest reading some texts including Cisco's Internetworking Technologies Handbook and Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. While you are at it, you may want to check out some stuff on Quantum Graph Theory.

"Graph theory combinatorics" is not a term anyone working in graph theory or combinatorics would use, and if they did, they would not elevate this trivial problem by claiming that they are relevant anyway.

Except for the 56,000 people who are recorded by google as having used those three words together in a webpage. Oh, wait, here is a conference on it, and here is a plug-in for mathematica. Oh, wait, they teach classes and hold conferences and seminars on group theory and combinatorics. (Have you ever hear of adjectives?) And more over, these are the basic mathematics used to discuss world problems, such as poverty, hunger, disease, and war.

Linear dynamics is not relevant, and probably nobody thought it was.

Except for the person who said that the problem was exponential or logarithmic.

Eigenfunctions and eigenvalues are not relevant here.

It appears to me that you don't know how to use eigenfunctions and eigenvalues to calculate quantum graphs, or to solve real world problems in quantum computing, fiber optics, network routing, group addressing, domain name spacing, etc. etc. etc. I suppose that it never occured to you that quantum graph, or a network graph, such as is described by Reed's Law could be described by a matrix or an eigenvalue, did you?

Whatever you think "modular mathematics" is, it's not relevant either.

You know what. I'm just not going to be drawn into this argument.

Much of the rest of what the parent's poster said doesn't make any sense. I think it's clear that he's full of shit.

Excellent strategy! When confronted with something you don't understand, resort to the use of vulgarities! Full of shit I am! It's a biological phenomena which results from eating food. I'm also full of water, proteins, amino acids, calcium deposits, muscle masses, and nucleic acids. But I try to be polite, and I try not to curse.

Reed's law is indeed rubbish. Where would anyone get N^N anyway? Someone could be forgiven for thinking that every possible subset of users adds some minimum value to the network, and they'd get 2^N. That would be a dubious proposition of itself. But N^N is ridiculous

Agreed! N^N is rubbish! I don't know where you got that expression. If you observe my posting, nowhere did I use the expression 'N^N'. Perhaps you were attempting to raise 'N' by 'N+1' or something. I'm not sure. I was attempting to express a concept which is typically refered to with the notation 'N!' although in my haste, I did not compose that message with that particular expression. Anyhow, I agree that N^N is rediculous. Why did you bring it up?

The largest reason for dark fiber is the emergence of Dense Wave Division Multiplexing aka DWDM. In simple terms, it allows one fiber to carry many times the normal bandwidth by combining different wavelengths of light at the source and splitting them out at the destination.

This isn't that the bandwidth isn't necessary. It isn't corporate profiteering. Its simply VCs investing in infrastructure without realizing that technology advances would soon render it useless.

In essence, aggregate performance is the primary difference between Layer 3 switches and traditional routers.

The Cisco CCIE practical exam has changed from an older 2-day format to a new 1-day format. The old format used to include troubleshooting - the new format is mainly all the configuration of the previous two days and more crammed into a mere 8 hours.

There was a _lot_ of discussion about the removal of troubleshooting. Speaking out of personal experience (I've done them both), you can test the skills you need to be a good troubleshooter just as well with giving you a very well thought-through exam as with giving you a broken network to fix.

For those of you interested - please see the Cisco Blueprint for an idea of what you need to study for just the qualification portion of this exam.

Is this flamebait or what? Maybe it's just an un-informed comment that got a high rank because it sounds informative. Here are a few useful details:

1) PVST can be turned off on Cisco gear so that you only have one spanning-tree for the whole network if that's what you want. However, you should consider that unless you have every VLAN on every switch, PVST actually saves your processor by creating smaller spanning-trees that reconverge independently. Without PVST, there's only one spanning-tree and it has to reconverge anytime there's trouble with any equipment on the layer-2 network.

2) I used to say the same thing about Cisco's line of L3 switches because they had nothing to compare with Foundry's gear. However, in the last year or two, they've introduced several new products, including the Catalyst 3550 which happens to be one of my favorites now. These new products compare very nicely with Foundry (and others) and if I'm already using Cisco for WAN connections, it's all the same to me to use Cisco for the LAN to be consistent.

interface FastEthernet0/1
port security action trap
port sec max-mac-count

Spanning-Tree Protocol is a link management protocol that provides path redundancy while preventing undesirable loops in the network. For an Ethernet network to function properly, only one active path can exist between two stations.

Multiple active paths between stations cause loops in the network. If a loop exists in the network topology, the potential exists for duplication of messages. When loops occur, some switches see stations appear on both sides of the switch. This condition confuses the forwarding algorithm and allows duplicate frames to be forwarded.

To provide path redundancy, Spanning-Tree Protocol defines a tree that spans all switches in an extended network. Spanning-Tree Protocol forces certain redundant data paths into a standby (blocked) state. If one network segment in the Spanning-Tree Protocol becomes unreachable, or if Spanning-Tree Protocol costs change, the spanning-tree algorithm reconfigures the spanning-tree topology and reestablishes the link by activating the standby path.

Spanning-Tree Protocol operation is transparent to end stations, which are unaware whether they are connected to a single LAN segment or a switched LAN of multiple segments.

see this page for mode info

I keep a bunch of "classic" bookmarks around. Some are undisputed gems, others are, well, to my taste. Bytes being cheap here's a batch.

• Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource
• AmbySoft Inc. White Papers: Scott Ambler's Online Writings
• windows.oreilly.com -- Deep Inside C#: An Interview with Microsoft Chief Architect Anders Hejlsberg
• TQ
• The Rise of ``Worse is Better''
  
• A Whirlwind Tutorial on Creating Really Teensy ELF Executables for Linux
  
• Theist Hall of Shame
• Internetworking Technology Overview
  
• Software Technology Review
  Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics
• P.S.: More Than Just Words
• Welcome to the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
• John McCarthy
  
• Slashdot | Net Translations of Dead-Tree IT Classics
  
• advICE
  
• 0xdeadbeef archives
  

I think that this does a real disservice to us all. The problem here is that as soon as ISPs capitulate to this one request they are therefore obligated to capitulate to all further requests.

Is it okay for the Chrurch of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ought to be able to ask for google.com to be removed?

According to all the positive feedback here, it is. So why the complaints when ISPs censor?

Check out Cisco IPJ's The Uncommon Carrier for some further reflections.

Take a look at the mounting brackets included with your kit, if any, along with the screwholes on the sides of the case. Sometimes, 1U-size devices are designed so that all you have to do is change where you place the brackets relative to the enclosure. E.g., Cisco 1U-size routers like the 2500 and 2600 series include mounting brackets that can also be used as wall-mounting straps, and is well documented in the installation manuals. Also, as noted above, you should note the ventilation characteristics of your hardware; if it has a fan, make sure that the exhaust points up (also noted in Cisco's documentation).

This might help.

good cisco paper that explains the whole MTU, MSS, fragmentation business (includes pretty pictures :)

Also explains how this relates to GRE & IPSec tunnels not working.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk648/tk369/techno logies_white_paper09186a00800d66f2.shtml

I think it's utopic to think one can fix so many's ISPs problems. It's like closing open relays, even with big real-time blocking lists, a lot still slip thru.
A good paper explaining MTU/MSS is on Cisco. If your ISP can't just 'adjust-mss' on his router, either he will fragment a lot and drop the DF (don't fragment) packets, or you will have to use Dr TCP to fix the MTU on your side.