The problem

I manage many networks and quite often I work at customer site.

For every site I need and IP address, gateway, Wi-Fi network, sometimes proxy, a printer and many other unique network settings.

Change IP address on Windows is a process that takes too much time and many clicks.

The automation

I used to use …

Quick tool: PingInfoView

PingInfoView is a small utility that allows you to easily ping multiple host names and IP addresses, and watch the result in one table. It automatically ping to all hosts every number of seconds that you specify, and displays the number of succeed and failed pings, as well as the average ping …

Just a quick post since I speak with many network engineers and I notice some confusion about this topic.

Are all 4 pairs of an Cat5e cable used?

The answer is.. it depends.

For gigabit speed 1000T all four pairs are used.

If 100TX speed is enough we can of course split the cable and double the connections without …

Log analysis is important to both troubleshoot and understand network devices behavior.

Tail/less/grep are great tools that can help to filter and search hundreds or thousands lines of  logs.

If you prefer a GUI there are a couple of alternatives that can fit well.

For windows users only Log Expert is a great choice …

A few days ago a customer called worried by the flow control counters increasing on his Cisco 4510 switch, he just sent me this asking for an explanation:

CORE_4510#show interfaces flowcontrol
Port       Send FlowControl  Receive FlowControl  RxPause TxPause
admin    oper     admin    oper
---------  -------- -------- …

Last week I passed PW0-105 exam and obtained the CWNA certification:

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Networking is awesome but some tasks may be quite boring and repetitive. For  new campus network installations a lot of time is used just to put a basic initial configuration template on switches.

Each vendor has its proprietary method to distribute configs automagically but sometimes the effort to setup the system is …

This means two things:

• I'm CCIE for over one year now
• I need to prepare again the written exam

The last day to test the v4 edition is June 3, 2014, I've passed that exam twice so I expect a little effort to pass it again.

Ten years ago I've passed my first Cisco exam: CCNA! What was supposed to be just a marginal skill for a junior systems engineer became both my job and my passion.

Ten years and 21 Cisco exams later (and a bunch of other vendors), with 2 labs in Brussels, 1 FAIL and 1 PASS, I'm still excited about networking and I hope …

IPv6 is the evolution that everybody know must be done one day but not today.

Unike the Millenniun Bug that had a clear deadline, IPv6 adoption is a topic that I often discuss with clients but nobody is really willing to do it, even in a test environment.

I studied IPv6 in many Cisco certifications but since they're …

Questo post e' dedicato ai networkers iscritti al CUG di AreaNetworking.it per condividere la mia esperienza del Cisco Live! 2013 a Londra.

Ho visto diversi messaggi in ML e dato che la risposta sarebbe un po' lunga e magari puo' interessare a piu' persone ho deciso di scrivere direttamente un post qui. Ho avuto il …

Huawei network devices are becoming more and more popular in European market lately. It all started with 3G adapters, then mobiles, and now I see routers and switches deployed in many locations.

For a project I'll deploy in the next few weeks I had the opportunity to attend an Huawei training.

Huawei provides a …

I noticed that not everybody knows how to download Cisco certs PDF files or order additional printed copies. Just open this link, login with your Cisco credentials and enter the menu "Certification Fulfillment".

An additional CCIE plaque costs 150USD, paper certs cost 15USD. …

NTP client / server with authentication

SERVER CONFIG

ntp authentication-key 1 md5 0802657D2A36 7
ntp master 5

CLIENT CONFIG

ntp authentication-key 1 md5 1531223F2705 7
ntp authenticate
ntp trusted-key 1
ntp server 10.0.12.1 key 1

Notes: the client authenticates the time source, server must have the key.