Currently viewing the category: "Network Tools"

CCIE home rack – Ubuntu persistent net rules

By On November 26, 2011 · Leave a Comment

In one of my last posts, I was writing about my CCIE home rack which has one server that runs Ubuntu + Ethernet Quad cards + Cisco switches. Before connecting the cables between server and Cisco switches, I had one problem that was driving me crazy.

I have three Ethernet Quad cards connected in 3 PCI slots in my server. The issue is that sometimes (quite often) the port numbers were changing during the reboot of my client. To [...]

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Draw network diagrams online (with Cisco stencils)

By On September 17, 2011 · 1 Comment

I’m a Mac and Linux user and if you are like me, then you have the same problems drawing network diagrams. Microsoft Visio does not have a version for this platforms. I’m not saying that there are no alternatives to Visio on Mac or Linux platform, but most of them are either limited in features, expensive or need some tricks to use it (as I described in one of my early post).

Finally I’ve found [...]

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Etherape – Real time network topology and traffic flow

By On December 15, 2010 · Leave a Comment

There are numerous reasons why you would want to watch your network topology or the flow of traffic on your network. Say you are experiencing a bandwidth bottleneck. What is causing that bottleneck? Is it a particular user? A machine gone awry? How do you find out what is happening without having to walk around to every single machine on your network? Easy. The Etherape network monitor gives you a real-time graphical display of your network and the flow of traffic. Using this [...]

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How to connect Vyatta to Cisco using VirtualBox and GNS3

By On August 17, 2010 · 5 Comments

“Vyatta is  a software-based, open-source, network operating system that is portable to standard x86 hardware as well as common virtualization and cloud computing platforms. By deploying Vyatta, users benefit from a flexible enterprise-class routing and security feature set capable of scaling from DSL to 20Gbps performance at a fraction of the cost of proprietary solutions.”

Shortly, you take this piece of software, install it on a x86 machine (any decent PC with quality network card will do) and have yourself a network [...]

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Free live webinars covering the new Wireshark certification

By On August 13, 2010 · 1 Comment

What should you study? How should you study? What are the hot areas on the Exam? What are the Exam question formats? What should you watch for? What if you need to reschedule the Exam? What can you bring with you?

This are the questions that Laura Chappell will try to answer in the 4 free live webinars hosted at Chappell Seminars on from 17th to 19th of August 2010. I you are curious who is Laura Chappell, you should know [...]

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How to emulate ASA in Ubuntu 9.10 and GNS3

By On April 28, 2010 · 2 Comments

Brainbump.net has an excellent and very complete how to emulate ASA using just the following components:

Ubuntu 9.10 – 32 bit Edition GNS3 v0.7 RC1 tgz Dynamips 0.2.8-RC2 binary for Linux x86 platforms Qemu-0.11.0 tar.gz Qemu-0.11.0 Patch ASA Binary Version 8.0(2) – (asa802-k8.bin)

How-to is divided in 3 video tutorial parts for easy understanding and start with the most basic installation on GNS3 under Ubuntu 9.10 and continue with the actually configuration on the emulation.
If you are interested in security or [...]

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Cisco Visual Network Index (VNI)

By On March 14, 2010 · 3 Comments

Cisco Visual Network Index (VNI) is an interactive tool that can help you to forecast and analyze the growth and use of IP networks worldwide. Cisco VNI intiative includes distinct elements to provide a comprehensive view of the changing IP network landscape:

Cisco VNI Forecast is a model for the estimation of future global IP traffic growth.

This can help you to estimate global IP traffic growth using data sources like Application Type, Country and Region, Segment or Network. You can access this VNI [...]

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How to integrate GNS3 with VirtualBox

By On February 9, 2010 · 9 Comments

The best method to test a solution that you want to implement is to real see how it’s performing with some real traffic. GNS3 or Dynamips are very good at emulating a network topology  but unfortunately they cannot assure you with the tools capable to test the environment you just create.

In one of my old posts I showed how to integrate Virtual PC with GNS3, but the problem is that with Virtual PC you can just [...]

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Great tool for testing QoS implementation

By On December 16, 2009 · 5 Comments

After my last post, some readers were asking what tool did I used for testing the QoS and how satisfied I’m with it.

The name of the tool is Packgen. According to its developer developers, “Packgen is a simple network packet generator handling diffserv markers, useful for testing network bandwidth and QoS.” It support features like:
– Network packet flows generation with given bandwidth (packets sent at each time interval depending on the bandwidth to produce and the [...]

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Draw network diagrams with Visio under Mac or Linux

By On November 12, 2009 · 7 Comments

Maybe one of the biggest loss of mine when I switched from PC to Mac, was the Microsoft Visio is not available for any other platform than Windows OS. Now, I’m not a big fan of Microsoft products, but I have to admit that they have some good products, and one of this is Visio. Like it or not, more than 75%  of the network diagrams that I get are in  VSD format, which we all know (or we should) is a [...]

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