Studies in Data Center Networking, Virtualization, Computing
Jul 04 2008
I passed the 350-001 Routing & Switching Exam to re-certify my CCIE status. This was the new 3.1 version of the test with 105 questions. I can tell you that this test is no walk in the park, they have definitely cranked up the difficulty here. Word of advice: Know your OSPF cold!
Jan 06 2008
Well, it’s that time again. Time to re-certify my CCIE R&S certification by passing the written test. To prepare for the re-certification test I am reading from the book CCIE Routing and Switching Exam Guide Volume 3 (a very good book!).
The bottom line is this: The CCIE Routing and Switching written exam [...]
Nov 27 2007
It always helps me to think of the English translation when trying to memorize and understand some the Cisco IOS settings I think are important.
Here are some Cisco IOS switchport configurations translated into English:
‘switchport mode trunk‘ says: “Always trunk on this end, and I will send DTP to attempt to negotiate a trunk on the [...]
Nov 27 2007
IEEE 802.1Q (sometimes referred to as 1Q or DOT1Q) is a industry standards based implementation of carring traffic for multiple VLANs on a single trunking interface between two Ethernet switches. 802.1Q is for Ethernet networks only.
Unlike ISL , 802.1Q does not encapsulate the original Ethernet frame.
For Ethernet V2 frames, 802.1Q inserts a new 4-byte [...]
Nov 26 2007
Inter-Switch Link (ISL) is a Cisco specific implementation of trunking multiple VLANs between two Cisco switches where a single interface will carry traffic for more than one VLAN. ISL was designed to work with Ethernet, FDDI, Token Ring, and ATM.
ISL completely encapsulates the original Ethernet frame by adding a new 26 byte header and [...]
Nov 21 2007
Some notes about VTP (VLAN Trunking Protocol):
Cisco switches running Cisco IOS store VTP and VLAN information in a separate database stored in Flash, in file called vlan.dat.
Cisco switches running CatOS store VTP and VLAN information in the main switch configuration file, stored in NVRAM.
VTP information is only transmitted over trunk ports.
A VTP client does not [...]
Nov 21 2007
Just like there are 3 different Ethernet header types, there are also 3 different types of Ethernet addresses:
Unicast
Broadcast
Multicast
A unicast frame contains the unique MAC address of the destination receiver. A broadcast frame contains all binary 1’s as the destination address (FFFF.FFFF.FFFF). A multicast frame contains the unique multicast MAC address of an application, [...]
Nov 19 2007
There are 3 different Ethernet Header types defined by the IEEE and in use today. So, one question comes to mind: When a Ethernet receiver receives a frame, how does it know what kind of header it is? After all, if a receiver is unable to properly recognize the header type, it will [...]
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