Tag: Networking

Cisco Console Server

May 24th, 2009 · The Fraser · Network Administration No comments - Tags: , , ,

In an effort to provide a more secure way to access our network equipment in the event of an outage we setup a console server. We didnt purchase anything from a vendor but built a Cisco Console server. There is little documentation for creating this online so I am going to go through the steps of creating one.

Equipment used: below is the list of equipment needed to get started with the project

  1. Cisco 2621xm router
  2. NM-32a Async network module
  3. cab-octal-sync Async octal set of cables (68pin connector terminated with 8 RJ45 async console ports)
  4. cat5 cables of appropriate length and color (In my environment, color signifies function. This may not apply in your setup)

Connectivity Setup:

To start we are going to setup the devices, power it and assume the switches have been setup appropriately.

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Network changes at home

December 15th, 2008 · The Fraser · Network Administration No comments - Tags: , , ,

Not sure how to say this but… Apple sucks sometimes!

I, being the dutiful Applite that i am, purchased the Airport Extreme for my home. I bought it so that I get the most out of my 802.11 N experience. Being this is acting as my home router i have found some weird anomalies with its routing table. Sometimes it will “forget” the routing table. At these times, I am able to communicate to the internet via the default gateway, but am unable to communicate to other systems on my network. This greatly disturbs me as there is much that I am running on my home network.

In my glee brought upon by the hope of a brighter future without my Airport serving as the router, I purchased a Cisco 2611 with a few ADSL & T1 WICs. This handy device will give me the ability to vlan, single point of NATing (Double Natting errors suck…). Presently i am programming it to authenticate my DSL account then I can setup my network. Properly.

Another interesting thing I found. When running the Airport extreme with a Mixed environment (my wife’s laptop and my iphone are not N-capable), network efficiency is greatly reduced. My task after moving everything over to the Cisco is to configure two wifi networks one for N, other for G.