Apple Software Issues

Well, it turns out the Apple's iDVD software will only support native Apple superdrive units. It seems to be a very short sighted limitation of the software that I really don't understand. What is worse is that figuring that out takes forever. Apple may make it easy if you get all Apple components but for those adding any third party hardware or software things get just as tough as the Microsoft world - I don't care what anyone says.
- Ed

Apple Hardware Issues

I am still frustrated by the limited support that Apple gets from hardware manufactures but also the limited support Apple has in their OS for existing and well known hardware. I consider Memorex a pretty well known brand so asking for their DVD DL burner to be picked up shouldn't be to much to ask for, but apparently it is. Ugh, now I am going to have to pick up a unit that cost $100 more and does the same functions in the same form factor. Does that make any sense? Yeah, I didn't think so either. Such is life I suppose.
- Ed

Hamachi : Stay Connected

Hamachi is a VERY interesting piece of software. It is a mediated (it has some public relay servers for getting initial sessions established) peer to peer VPN software client. It allows you to dynamically build out VPN sessions behind almost all NAT devices to other machines as if they are on the local lan with ZERO configuration on your part. As long as you know the name of the network you want to join and the password - like magic - you are connected. It is using UDP and works on Windows 2000/XP and Linux with an OS/X version coming soon.
I have to admit that I am impressed with this project. Easy to use VPN for peer to peer projects. Very cool.
- Ed

kuro5hin.org || technology and culture, from the trenches - fun time waster

kuro5hin.org || technology and culture, from the trenches is a great time waster site. There are a few others out there like it but this site is by tech folks for the most part so they get it from the tech side of things and add in all the interesting other stuff that tech folks do. Check it out when you have some reading time.
- Ed

Just returned from Pittsburgh, PA

I have some items to add to the page this week since I missed out on updating due to travel and odd work hours. Pittsburgh was cold and started snowing the last two days I was there. More to follow.
- Ed

Introduction to IPv6 in Windows Vista

Well, I finally have my slide deck far enough along to post so here it is. If you have any feedback please send me a note at the e-mail in the slide deck and I will see if I can incorporate the feedback into the next version. I am working on the next presentation which should be more technical and I am also working on a lab configuration to do testing with IPv6. My apologies to the West Michigan NT Users Group for not getting this out a little sooner.
- Ed

SANS Top 20 Vulnerabilities - Version 6

SANS Top 20 Vulnerabilities is out again. I think the most amusing part of SANS putting this out every year is the fact that it really hasn't changed that much. There are examples of vulnerabilities that stand out for some years but the reality is they pretty much stay the same. This seems to indicate that either we are not addressing the core issues or the vulnerabilites are being identified to generally to allow any significant movement within the lists.
- Ed

Hurricane Electric IPv6 Tunnel Broker

Hurricane Electric IPv6 Tunnel Broker is one of the few that I am aware of that is free and is offering IPv6 /64 prefixes with it. I hope to be setting this up shortly for some labs I am putting together. Hurricane also has some of the more impressive native IPv6 peering out there, especially considering how limited native IPv6 is to obtain. You can check out their IPv6 site to get more info.
- Ed

SBC is now AT&T - its official

SBC has officially finished the acquisition of AT&T and are keeping the AT&T brand name. There is an article over at CNET News about it also. The market is really consolidating in the telecommunications space in terms of providers. It is going to be very interesting seeing how this effects pricing for the end consumer.
Close on the heels of this deal is the Verizon purchase of MCI which will make another huge telecom provider.
Keep an eye on your phone bills!
- Ed

Cisco Security Advisory: Multiple Vulnerabilities Found by PROTOS IPSec Test Suite

Cisco Security Advisory: Multiple Vulnerabilities Found by PROTOS IPSec Test Suite means that you need to patch your IOS, VPN Concentrator, PIX or MDS sometime soon. I am sure an exploit is going to come out soon. The other work around is to put access control lists all over the place until you can patch.
Either way, this is no fun for those of us running larger Cisco networks. Ugh.
- Ed

Juniper Networks to Acquire Funk Software

Juniper Networks to Acquire Funk Software is an interesting move. Funk Software makes one of the best third party 802.1x supplicants on the market so this move effects Cisco more then folks might think. Also, Steel Belted Radius is a great product that is used by a ton of service providers and I know several SE's who recommend it to service provider clients. I imagine that will change now.
All Juniper needs to do is buy Foundry, a storage switch vendor (Sanrad?) and a good wireless company and they could be playing in a lot more Enterprise space. It is going to get very interesting in the next few years in the network vendor space. I guess you could argue that if Juniper picked up a VoIP offering for the edge, not just session border controllers but handsets also, it would look a lot like Cisco.
- Ed

Experts at odds over relevance of IPv6

Slashdot pointed over to an interesting article on IPv6. It is here at Computerworld and basically is a classic old world arguement about IPv4 vs IPv6.
I differ from the comments made by one of the article's experts, Geoff Huston, who claims that the driving force for IPv6 has to come from the service providers. I actually think that IPv6 as a rollout will happen at the edge and that the majority of the core of the Internet will stay on IPv4. This pretty much eliminates the arguements he has for why IPv6 won't come into the market.
With every major OS now supporting IPv6 and will all the transition technologies relatively baked now I think folks who want to take advantage of what IPv6 can do now have the tools and means to do it. This is a huge win for application developers (though I don't think they know it yet!) and an interesting issue for IT Professional who have to manage these new networks.
I think the only thing really holding back deployment at this point is the lack of knowledge for IT Professionals in how IPv6 works, when to implement it and how to roll it out.
But that is just my 2 cents.
- Ed

Lack of Teredo Relay Servers on the Internet

I have been able to get Teredo working with some well known Teredo servers but I have not been able to test any Teredo relay servers at all because I can't find any! I am thinking that I need to get one set up so I can do testing and lab configurations. Anyone know of some good Teredo resources?
- Ed

IPv6 - IT Professionals need to keep any eye out

I have been doing more reading and research on IPv6 and I must admit there are going to be some major barriers for IT Professionals to get over before they are going to feel comfortable running it on their networks. My biggest concern is the fact that many people will have next to no lab or practice time using it before they will be asked to deploy it! And with Windows Vista having IPv6 on by default and Longhorn Server also doing the same the Enterprise landscape is going to change very rapidly as server teams start turning up these new OS's. I would not be surprised to see a backlash from the networking teams in regards to having IPv6 running over their IPv4 network infrastructure. I don't know of a lot of shops that are running any sort of native IPv6 networks or test labs currently.
The next question is how fast service providers are going to offer native IPv6 offerings or transition services.
- Ed

IPv6 in the US Government - first deadline is approaching

This Memorandum for the Chief Information Officers from the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget is about the Transition Planning for Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). The first action date of November 15, 2005 is under two weeks away. It will be interesting to see how many agencies are able to comply by this date! Any IT Professional who thought they wouldn't have to deal with IPv6 are in for a surprise.
My colleagues Doug Spindler, Mike Pennacchi, Joseph Davies and I are coming up with practical IPv6 labs for folks to start using to learn all the different senerios you can do to transition to IPv6. Hope to get the stuff out there shortly.
- Ed

Cisco's Website seems to be having issues - updated

Looks like Cisco is having issues with their website or their peering today as the site is not coming up right now.
Odd that they would be having those sort of issues considering the HA solutions they sell. I wonder what is going on?
- Ed

Well, from what I have heard there was a power outage in Santa Clara that effected Cisco's BGP peering. Well, for a short while folks couldn't get to www.cisco.com from several different service providers. Everything looks to be up and working now though.
- Ed

Windows Live

Windows Live was announced yesterday. It is in Beta and seems to be and interesting concept for Microsoft. Windows Live is supposed to be e-mail, IM and other services (basically stuff Yahoo! has had working for ages) all via a web interface. Most folks are saying this is in response to Google.
Microsoft also announced Microsoft Office Live which is supposed to launch in early 2006. Basically it is an online business tool set. I don't know how successful it will be but it is an interesting idea.
- Ed

Level 3 and Cogent have terms on peering

Level 3 and Cogent have hammered out a peering agreement. The Nov 9th date for Level3 to cut off the peering was getting really close, I am glad they got this resolved. I think there is going to be more of this type of activity now that there are more mergers in the works. AT&T and SBC will change the landscape a little plus with Verizon picking up MCI that will have a major impact on how the top tiers play out. I think they will need to change the definition of a tier 1 provider given these changes. The definitions are so old that they really don't fit how the service provider landscape looks today or even how it has looked for the past 5 years.
- Ed

Skype Update - Security Issue for client software older then 1.4.0.84

Skype for Windows Change Log shows that you should be running version 1.4.0.84 due to some security issues with the client. The upgrade is super easy so I recommend to everyone who has Skype to do the upgrade ASAP.
- Ed

VMware releases free VMware Player

VMware Player is available for download. It basically allows you to run VM's that are built in Workstation, GSX or ESX on a machine without having to install a licensed copy of those products.
This is huge for training, labs, or vendors who want to distribute a copy of their product without having to have folks install a base OS to test something out.
I hope this pushes Microsoft to do something similar with their product line also. Even though both Virtual PC and VMWare workstation are relatively cheap products they still are not as widely available as one would like to see.
- Ed

New Cisco NAC available

Cisco has released the next version of NAC (Network Admission Control) that is now fully supported in the Catalyst switches and the Aironet wireless gear. NAC is part of Cisco Clean Access product line and they seem to be making good progress.
In the other camp, Microsoft is promoting their product, Network Access Protection or NAP. Microsoft is not pitching this as a security solution as much as a management solution. They are doing some really exciting things that will allow a Windows Vista client to use machine credentials, health credentials (from NAP) and Kerberos credentials from user login to build out an IPSec session to the Domain Controller. Very interesting stuff.
I was also told to expect a join announcement from both Microsoft and Cisco about how their platforms will work together some time soon. It will be interesting seeing how they are going to get the platforms working together.
- Ed

Some thoughts post Level3 Internet fallout

One of j2's BGP peers is Level3 so I know first hand some of the issues that went along with their serious outage issues on late Thursday early Friday morning of this last week. We also peer with InterNAP (excellent service and very knowledgeable BGP engineers) and I must say we have been very happy with InterNAP. My biggest concern with the Level3 outage was how slow Level3's network was at withdrawing routes. If you read the NANOG mailing lists you will see countless tales of folks taking down their BGP sessions with Level3 only to find that their network was so messed up that they couldn't get the routes to stop advertising through Level3. That's a huge problem and something that should be addressed. For those of us that are multihomed and diverse there should be high expectations that we can minimize that impact of such a large problem. I also wonder if IPv6 would have done any better in this situation. Honestly, I don't know.
- Ed

Got Windows Vista running in Virtual PC

I managed to get the time to load up Windows Vista Beta 5231 inside Virtual PC. Very cool stuff. I am gonna start working on some hands on labs with Vista and IPv6, ISATAP, 6to4, and Teredo. I need to get a few Vista installs done on some laptops to get a full lab environment built out but that should happen shortly.
For those who have not seen the new OS, you are missing out! There are some very cool features in Vista. I really want to get a nice workstation to see the new graphics load up also, sweet!
If anyone else wants to help build out a test IPv6 network and you have the time and machines to do so please tell me. Might be fun to test to see if ISATAP works across the public Internet! ;-)
- Ed

Virtual PC and VMWare presentation at TVNUG went well last night

Last night was the monthly meeting for TVNUG and we did a walk through of both Virtual PC and VMWare Workstation 5. Jose showed off his kung fu and had Apple's OSX x86 operating system running in a VMWare virtual machine! Way cool dude.
I also gave a test trial of my IPv6 presentation. I got some good feedback about it and made a bunch of changes to the slide deck on the flight down this morning before presenting to the West Michigan NT User's Group. I hope the IPv6 and Vista story is interesting and compelling for IT Professionals. I really think that more people need to start paying attention to IPv6 given what Microsoft is doing with it in Vista.
- Ed

Gave an IPv6 presentation today to the WMNTUG - West Michigan NT User's Group

WMNTUG - West Michigan NT User's Group was kind enough to invite me to do a presentation on IPv6 in Windows Vista (Thanks Liam!). I was using Skype to do the voice part and I was using GoToMeeting for the presentation of the slide deck. GoToMeeting is a Citrix product and very cool, Mike Pennacchi turned me on to it, so far I am sold. I also managed to have a colleague (Hey Mark!) who wanted to sit in join the Skype call and join the GoToMeeting session and was able to see everything that the Michigan User's Group got to see. This is some very cool stuff and I can see how doing remote labs, trainings and demos would be just awesome.
- Ed

Slashdot | The exhaustion of IPv4 address space

Slashdot has a fun article going on now titled: Slashdot | The exhaustion of IPv4 address space. It relates to IPv6 and what is going on in the market currently. Sort of funny that yet again the major topic is the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses instead of any of the cool new features that IPv6 is really all about.
Anyway, I will be giving my first 101 presentation on IPv6 in Windows Vista to a user group this Weds - we'll see how it goes!
Hope to get my IPv6 articles finished of here shortly. I might even post so short sections here.
- Ed

Bird Flu - looks to be an issue

This is a little off topic but the Bird Flu that is spreading from Asia into Europe is really alarming. Not only is the financial impact scary but the chance it could become a much more serious virus that is spread to humans is a huge concern. Let us all hope this doesn't turn into this century's "black plague" conterpart.
- Ed

Google.org - the philanthropic arm of Google - the 1% joke

Google.org just came out, a bunch of sites have covered this. I find it interesting given the insane amount of wealth Google has managed to generate that so little has gone into philanthropy. To date they clain $33M has been donated but Google is only putting in 1% of the equity from last year's IPO and 1% of it annual profits. 1% ?!?! Are you kidding me.
Now granted the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been around for a few more years but they have given out in excess of $8B (yeah, that's a B) to date and this is the personal foundation of a Microsoft founder, not the company. Microsoft through their Microsoft Community Affairs has donated $47M in cash and $363M in software to nonprofits organizations around the world just last year.
I don't expect Google to start donating at the rate of a big established firm like Microsoft but honestly most corporations donate more then 1% to deserving causes. Now if only I could get my company to believe in some of that!
- Ed

Linksys releases a new wireless Skype enabled handset - CIT200

Linksys of all the SOHO hardware vendors gets it. They just released the CIT200 and this seems to be what a lot of Skype users have wanted. An easy way to step away from their computers but continue to use their Skype services. Brilliant. Hopefully the initial price point will come down a bit (starting at $130 or so) so that us average folks will seriously consider it. I wonder what hacks are going to come out for this! Cisco has done a pretty good job allowing Linksys to innovate separately and at the cutting edge, kudos to Cisco for that.
- Ed

If you do any Cisco design and reselling you have to check these guys out - Netformx

I attended the EBCUG meeting last night and Netformx gave an overview and presentation on their product. Soooooo cool if you are a Cisco VAR. If you have sales engineers spec'ing out product and building bill of materials this product will save you a TON of time and cut down on errors. I was very impressed with what it does. It can even audit what a customer already has and build out network diagrams from that. If only they had something similar for all those hardware/software VAR folks!
- Ed

iSCSI Storage is really starting to catch on

SANRAD came and presented at this months SFNTUG meeting on their IP-SAN switch products. The solutions coming out for iSCSI are pretty compelling now. Virtualizing storage and having a simple management interface to do the work is very appealing and a lot of folks at the meeting were talking about plans to evaluate their storage now. I think there will be some consolidation in the market but there really are some neat solutions out there, just a matter of finding the solution that fits your needs.
- Ed

Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager

While I was up at the MVP Summit there was more then a side mention of Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager which is available for a trial download. Microsoft seems to be doing a push into the storage area. Data Protection Manager (DPM) is a server software application that optimizes disk-based backup and recovery and does it centrally. Vertias BackupExec, Windows Backup and Yosemite Backup are all on board to work with it. Looks to be an interesting solution in the CDP (Continuous Data Protection) market.
- Ed

Cogent/Level 3 depeering

For those that don't follow service provider peering issues this might be an interesting look into what happens when provider depeer. Earlier today Cogent and Level 3 depeered which has caused all sorts of issues, primarily for folks who are peered with only one provider and they happen to be Level3 or Cogent. They have a bit about it over at CNET News also which is a good read. As a side note, CNET News also has a new look and feel - apparently so they can fit more advertising on the right hand side.
We haven't had much issues with the Level3 and Cogent depeering since we (j2) peer with both Level3 and Internap.
- Ed

A new Cisco Catalyst Switch - Express 500 Series Switches and other Cisco news

Cisco released a new layer 2 switch designed for the SMB market not long ago. Same form factor as the 3750's but they are calling them the Cisco Catalyst Express 500 Series Switches. If you just need a fast layer 2 rack mount switch this might be the way to go. They support 802.3af (Power over Ethernet) so they would be good for Wireless AP requirements and perhaps some other POE devices.

Does anyone else wonder why Cisco changes the form factor for the switches and routers so often? It sort of drives me nuts. The 2950, 3560/3550, 3750 models are all different in appearance but you can get each one in a 24 port or 48 port configuration. Now the new 2960's look like the 3560's and the new Express 500's look like the 3750's. Ugh! Is it to much to ask to get a consistant look and feel and could they please put the full model number on the front plate of the fixed-configuration gear?

On a side note - did folks see that Cisco sold its 6 millionth IP phone? Can you believe that? Wow.
- Ed

Interz0ne West Security Conference this weekend.

Interz0ne West is a new security conference being put on in Walnut Creek, CA - hey, it happens to be where I live! Anyway, they have some excellent speakers lined up and look to be a good event for a first time security conference.
On Saturday at 11:00-11:50 will be a presentation titled "Microsoft - What's new in TCP/IP in Windows Vista" which will be given by Network Architect Abolade Gbadegesin. I meet Abolade up at Microsoft during the MVP Summit and let me tell you, he really knows his stuff and is a very nice person to boot. If you have any questions about what is going on with Microsoft's new TCP/IP stack you can first check out some Cable Guy articles. He has one specifically on Next Generation TCP/IP Stack in Windows Vista and Windows Server "Longhorn" which is worth the read. It will also allow you to ask some questions with a good frame of reference. I think the most exciting stuff coming out are:
IPv6 (yeah you can turn it on in XP SP2 if you know what you are doing but it is on by default in Vista)
Auto tuning
QoS

The new Network Access Protection (NAP) will have some news coming out soon also. Word on the street is a joint announcement with Cisco will finally come out explaining how Network Admission Control (NAC) from Cisco will work with NAP from Microsoft. This is good news since the last news announcement about Cisco and Microsoft on this topic came out in October of last year, yeah that is right a YEAR ago! I guess the lawyers have been making sure they are demonstrating their "worth" in this case - geez.
- Ed

Returned from the Microsoft MVP Summit

Well, I have meet a lot of great folks up at Microsoft that develop the networking stuff. Wireless, TCP/IP stack, IPSec, IPv6, QoS, http.sys, you name it, if it involved networking I heard about it. I have to say that Joseph Davies better known as "The Cable Guy" was great fun to chat with and I was very excited about the new IPv6 changes Microsoft is doing. I don't think folks realize how big a deal this is going to be when it comes out. I am in the middle of writing an article about it and hope to put up some more details here shortly about some of the changes that will impact folks deploying and using Windows Vista and Windows Longhorn Server.
Many thanks to the Microsofties Susan Moran, Eddy Malik, and Joseph Davis for the warm welcome. It was also very nice catching up and meeting Laura Hunter, Mike Giorgio, Ed Roberts, Susan Bradley, Oliver Nguyen, Denis Jedig, Deji Akomolafe, Les Pinter and countless others who are MVP's and made the event memorable for me.
- Ed

First day of Microsoft MVP Summit

Well, I managed to fly into Seattle, drop by bags off at my hotel and make it over to the Microsoft Campus. The buses were horribly disorganized. Meet tons of folks and the regional dinner was fun once we finally made it over there. Got to meet Suzanna Moran finally and to chat with Susan Bradley face to face. Looking forward to catching up with some other folks and perhaps getting to know a few more MVP's.
- Ed

Heading up to Microsoft for the MVP Summit

I will be on a flight tomorrow to Seattle. Looking forward to the visit to the Microsoft campus (it will be my first) and to meeting some other MVP's also. I'll try and post while I am up there for the week but it might be a little tough given the schedule they have handed out so far.
- Ed

Cisco releases new products for protection against network threats

Cisco announced two new products today. They fall under the suite of the Cisco Self-Defending Network. They are the Cisco Incident Control System (ICS) and the Distributed Threat Mitigation for Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS). Seems like Cisco really likes the folks over at Trend Micro who Cisco uses for their Network Admission Control (NAC) product line. It is going to be very interesting to see how Microsoft reacts since they have their Network Access Protection (NAP) initative as well. Cisco seems to be cranking out the product lines in this area. It doesn't appear that Microsoft is moving as fast on this front and I am not really sure why. They certainly have the ability to own a good portion of this market if they so desired, especially in the corporate enterprise market.
- Ed

Feds to enforce FCC VoIP 911 regulation

CNET News.com is running an interesting article about the FCC's current plan to enforce VoIP providers compliance with their 911 services requirement. I actually don't have a huge issue with the FCC doing this. There are some serious hurtles to overcome for universal VoIP and 911 emergency services is one of them.
- Ed

Microsoft's Netsh overview

It seems that most Microsoft networking reference material I see out there still has folks using basics older tools for working on networking related issues for the newer Microsoft OS's. One that folks are going to have to start adding to their toolkit is Netsh which is VERY robust and very well supported for scripting. Given that fact that this is basically the only way you are going to be able to set IPv6 configuration information I think it is important for folks to start taking a look at it earlier rather then later.
- Ed

John Dvorak's Second Opinion: Microsoft shakeup prelude to breakup?

John Dvorak is at it again. I don't know if I agree with John's opinion on this one. If Microsoft were really thinking about splitting into three companies why did it not happen 5 years ago when the US Justice Office was REALLY hounding them. Right now they are in relatively cool water regarding anti-trust action and there is no external pressure to break the company appart. Shareholders aren't asking for it, to the best of my knowledge senior management isn't talking about it and I don't think it would change any of the moral issues going on within the company.
In addition to all that, it would be a huge change for all the reseller and support models that Microsoft has spend years investing in. I really don't know if they are willing to rock the boat with that channel of sales.
- Ed

Microsoft Realigns

"Microsoft Realigns for Next Wave of Innovation and Growth: CEO Ballmer appoints presidents of three core divisions; Allchin announces retirement plan" is the press release from Microsoft's site. I've been mulling this one over since the announcement. I honestly don't see an issue with Microsoft doing this and I don't think Google is the only reason for the motivation to do this either.
I have never understood why Microsoft had 7 divisions to begin with and the new organization will certainly make giving feedback to Microsoft easier and potentially more valuable since it has the potential to touch a lot more folks downstream.
In case you don't remember what the original 7 were, here you go:
Windows Client
Server & Tools
Information Worker
Microsoft Business Solutions
MSN
Mobile & Embedded Devices
Home Entertainment

The new three are:
Microsoft Platform Products & Services Division (Windows Client, Server & Tools, and MSN)
Microsoft Business Division (Information Worker and Microsoft Business Solutions)
Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division (Home Entertainment and Mobile & Embedded Devices)

What I am excited about is the potential to get the Groove product integrated in the majority of the product suites. I think that one product could completely change the way people use and extend their work environments. The fact that Ray Ozzie is expanding his roll as CTO and primarily helping to push the software based service across all three divisions will make for some interesting changes ahead.
- Ed

Thawte Personal E-mail Certificates

For those who are looking for a free personal x509 cert for their e-mail look no further then Thawte which has a Personal E-mail Certificates program and in addition has a very cool program for validating who you are so your name can appear in your cert. That program is call the Web of Trust or WOT. I happen to be a Notary for the WOT so if you are interested and in the Bay Area please feel free to hit me up. You just need to have an existing Thawte personal cert before I can help you.
- Ed

Qwest and Microsoft to offer Net phone service

Qwest and Microsoft to offer Net phone service has been announced. Well eBay, that Skype purchase doesn't look as attractive right now. I would not be surprised to see Microsoft start to leverage the huge base they have for offering SIP gateway services by partnering with the likes of Qwest and other providers. The VoIP market is going to start changing.
- Ed

Flying Spaghetti Monster

Bobby Henderson has written an Open Letter to the Kansas School Board and it is one of the more amusing things I have read in awhile. I might just have to add an FSM logo to my blog site for kicks!
- Ed

Slashdot story on Microsoft Employees Critical Of Their Employer

Slashdot is running an interesting article on some of the internal issues Microsoft is facing. I don't think this is anything new for Microsoft, I just think there are a lot more forums for folks to talk about it. I know Microsoft in the past has done some big changes to recruit and keep the talent they have, I would be surprised if they don't do the same again.
Well, I might get a chance to ask a few folks about it when I am up there at the end of the month for the MVP Summit. Then again, if I bring that up I might get the boot - haha.
- Ed

My links have moved!

OK, I finally had enough links on the sidebar that is was getting hard to find stuff. So I have built a seperate page to hold them all. I will most likely spend a little time getting them more organized and adding a few more catagories and such. If you have any recommendations send them on over! The new links are here.
- Ed

NANOG and ARIN joint meeting in Los Angeles, CA - Oct 23-28

NANOG! and ARIN will be hosting their fourth joint meeting in Los Angeles, Ca. The NANOG meeting will be from Sun-Tues and ARIN from Wed-Fri. There is going to be a special hands-on tutorial on IPv6 that looks to be worth the time on Sunday. Its only $350 for both.
- Ed

North American IPv6 Technology Conference

The first annual North American IPv6 Technology Conference will be held at San Jose State University next week (Sept 19-22). If anyone is interested in finding out what is going on with IPv6 this is the place to be to hear from all the folks that are actively involved in trying to get IPv6 rolled out and put to use in commercial industry.
- Ed

eBay to Acquire Skype

eBay to Acquire Skype?!? What the heck was eBay thinking? Nothing like straying from your core competence a little bit. Considering how quickly other folks are going to be building out similar VoIP services (think Microsoft for starters) this is sort of nuts. I don't know how they are going to translate any of the Skype user base over to eBay and the reverse even less so. Well, they say Skype has 54 million members (I would read that as a free member basis number) I think the pricing they paid was a little out of line. Get ready for ugly eBay ads in your Skype client!
- Ed

RFC-Ignorant info

For those not initiated into the world of RFC's here is a great place to start, its called RFC-Ignorant.org and it is an interesting resource to find out about all the things you've been doing wrong for all those years (like not accepting abuse@ on your mail server)! If you need a tool to help you debug what you need to do to be RFC compliant both the RFC-Ignorant site and DNS Stuff are the places to go. In fact, almost every day I make use of DNS Stuff, I think it is one of the most useful sites for network administrators on the Internet.
- Ed

Public Traceroute, Looking Glasses and Route-Servers

OK, occassionally I need to perform traceroutes from locations other then our core BGP routers. Mainly for Europe, Latin America and Asia. There are a great listing of available servers at traceroute.org.

Also, if you are looking for the route-server listings then hit BGP4.NET Wiki - Tools:IPv4 Route-Servers for some route-servers you can use to check BGP routes. A short list of ones I have used:

route-server.as5388.net
route-server.cerf.net (this one gets a ton of traffic so it can be tough to get in)
route-server.exodus.net or route-server.savvis.net (goes to the same route-server)
route-server.gblx.net
route-server.ip.att.net (this one gets a ton of traffic so it can be tough to get in)
route-server.he.net

They are mainly for North America so if you need something in Europe or Asia hit the list above and you should be able to find something you can use.

As for looking glasses you can get a listing at BGP4.NET Wiki - Tools:IPv4 Looking Glasses which should give you a good enough start.
- Ed

Bogon IPs

For those not familiar with the term Bogon IPs they are basically IP address blocks that haven't been allocated or have been reserved by IANA. In a nutshell they are not to be used by anyone on the public Internet. They could be reserved due to RFC requirements, special use designations and a host of other reasons but basically you should never see them on the Internet.
What is tough about them is that they do change! So if you plan to use ACL's to protect your routers make sure you check back with the Bogon IPs site to make sure you aren't blocking legit traffic.
They provide some really great templates on the site to allow you to build ACL's very quickly and you can pick and choose how much you want from their list depending on your requirements. In addition, they have a very neat idea which is blocking bogons using DNS lists (like a realtime blackhole list) and you can even do BGP peering with them where they basically blackhole all the BOGON IPs on the net for you. There are some limitations and holes in that method but overall its a pretty cool solution, especially if you are running BGP as an end user (non transit).
- Ed

Back from work travel!

I spend a week in Hollywood working out of the office for j2. Always nice to see my fellow co-workers but I rarely have time to post when I am down. I have a few interesting items to put up over the next week.
- Ed

The Return of TimeShift

TimeShift is the San Francisco startup I joined way back in 1997. It was started by two wonderful gentlemen, Phil Alfaro and Leo D'Angelo. After securing VC funding and then having the VC decide to sell off the company was a weird process to go through but it did land me at my current gig with j2 Global (at the time the company was named jFax.com) as a network engineer. I've been with j2 now for over 5 years (a lifetime in a dotcom) not including my time at TimeShift. Its exciting to see the old name in use again.
- Ed

Check out Susan's Blog on SBS

Susan Bradley is a Microsoft MVP in SBS also and has some great resources up on her blog which is called: E-Bitz - SBS MVP the Official Blog of the SBS "Diva". She's got attitude and is entertaining to boot.
- Ed

SMB Nation Annual Conference Sept 9th - 11th

For those that are consulting to companies and deploying Microsoft's Small Business Server I recommend you attend the SMB Nation Annual Conference up in Redmond, WA Sept 9th to the 11th. Its put together by Harry Brelsford who is a Microsoft MVP in SBS.
-Ed

Blogging from Iraq - Michael Yon

Michael Yon is over in Iraq reporting. My colleague Robert Yee turned me on to this blog and it is remarkable. It hits home given that fact that my cousin is serving in Iraq right now - Steve Nakamoto, come home safe.

We all get so busy in day to day life sometimes it is good and important to reflect on what is happening to our troops over in Iraq today. I hope we are able to bring the conflict to an end and bring all our families home where they belong.
-Ed

Google Talk

Well, Google finally released yet another IM client, this one has voice capabilities and from all accounts is using jabber and sip. I am already using every major IM service to keep in touch with my co-workers and friends through Trillian Pro and also with the Skype client. At least I can add the Google IM chat to Trillian Pro but honestly, do we need another IM client in the mix? Gah! Well, given the amount of money Google has managed to war chest a buy out of Skype is all the rumor mill right now. I think Google's got to much engineering pride to go buy Skype but you never know.
- Ed

The Cable Guy Articles

The Cable Guy is a great resources for those interested in learning more about networking topics from a Microsoft perspective. I've been helping to review and edit some of the content that Joseph Davies puts together for these articles and others. There is some really good stuff available that folks should read over to learn more about networking.
- Ed

Back from Vacation!

Sorry there haven't been any postings. Took the family to San Diego for a week. Had a blast visiting Frank (my roomate from college) and Julie. Anyway, back to the grind of work and user groups! As soon as I catch up from the mountain of e-mail I will start posting some interesting stuff.
- Ed

eBig

The nice folks over at eBig (Hi Kristen!) are doing a membership drive. If you are interested at all please Join eBig as they are a wonderful organization that is doing good work out in the East Bay. They work with TVNUG to help us get the word out about our meetings. TVNUG is the Network Technology SIG for eBig and they just recently added the East Bay Cisco Users Group to the SIG list under the Telecom listing. At a minimum it is worth signing up to their many lists to get information about cool user group meetings going on in the East Bay.
- Ed

MSN Virtual Earth, Google Maps and Google Moon - All very cool mapping stuff

MSN Virtual Earth just turned up and while not as smooth as Google Maps it has better detail in the Aerial photos that is uses. As a fun time waster you can also check out Google Moon which has all the locations of the Apollo landings. It is actually very cool.
- Ed

Groove Virtual Office - Virtual office software for sharing files, projects and data.

I have been playing with Microsoft's new product from Groove Virtual Office that they acquired from their Groove Network's purchase. I have to admit it is a very cool idea. I hope to use it for work I do with SFNTUG and other user groups.
- Ed

DEF CON 13 is upon us

DEF CON 13 is July 29-31, 2005, Fri-Sun in Las Vegas at the Alexis Park Hotel. I know a few folks who are planning on attending this year. If you go, have fun, and don't turn your laptop on - haha.
- Ed

Cisco and Yahoo submit DomainKeys Identified Mail or DKIM to IETF

Well Cisco and Yahoo combined their message signing technologies into DomainKeys Identified Mail or DKIM. This is basically Cisco Identified Internet Mail and Yahoo DomainKeys getting submitted jointly to the IETF. It will most likely get experimental status like SenderID did.
My personal belief is that you are going to see SPF and DKIM become more widely deployed within the next year. Yahoo and Google both support DomainKeys and there are extensions to do DomainKeys and Identified Internet Mail available now.
Yet another Anti-Spam Solution (YAAS) to keep track of.
- Ed

Lasso Logic

Lasso Logic presented at the TVNUG meeting this evening. They have a very interesting appliance and service built around continuous data protection (CDP) and it is targeted at small and medium sized businesses. They seem to have addressed a lot of issues that small business owners have in trying to figure out how to backup and recover lost data. They store files on a local appliance for fast recovery but also push the data out to an online service (similar to all the "vault" services out there). That way, in case of total disaster you still have access to data stores. The product uses an agent to do continuous backups to the appliance so they encourage businesses to run the agent on all machines, not just servers.
For businesses that are to small to be able to afford VTL and SAN/NAS with snapshotting features this might be a serious consideration.
- Ed

Root Server Technical Operations Assn

If you are at all interested in DNS and how it is run on the Internet today there are a couple of cool sites you need to check out. Have you ever wondered who runs all the root level servers? Then visit the Root Server Technical Operations Assn website. There is also a great write up over at Internet Systems Consortium about their management of the F-Root. I highly recommend reading through the Hierarchical Anycast technique which is used for many of the root level servers. They even give you their peering information. Very cool.
- Ed

Antispam proposals advance in the IETF

Once again the battle between SPF and SenderID is working its way through the IETF. Nice overview article at News.com about it. I think SPF will get wide support given how easy it is to set up and run with little to no changes required to a network. SenderID will take a lot more work to get widespread adoption. It has another mark against it being sponsored by Microsoft (which is a shame in many ways) and by them having patent issues with the proposed standard.

I personally think the combination of SPF and DomainKeys will be what most folks go for. DomainKeys is clean, does not have any patent issues that I am aware of and is currently supported by Yahoo! and Google already in addition to making it through the first rounds of the IETF. Either way, I think every Service Provider in the world is going to do both of these for two reasons. First is to reduce the amount of UCE (SPAM) on their networks (cost savings) and second is because it is difficult to run and administer all these solutions as a SMB owner or even the small tech shops that support them. The Service Providers want it to be difficult to run MTA's and DNS on a network, that way you will pay the fees to use their solutions. A win-win as far as they are concerned. Oh, and they can really mess up your day if they refuse to do reverse DNS delegation with you and you are running an MTA. So much for the openness of the Internet!

Bigger enterprise groups will continue to run their own infrastructure since they will have the staff and expertise to support it. Something to think about.
- Ed

Cisco Networkers 2005

I got to attend three days of Cisco Networkers in Las Vegas. If you do any work with Cisco products and would like to find out what is really going on within Cisco this is the only place to be. Cisco always does a great job with facilities and the presentation sessions were excellent for the most part. It looks like it is going to be in Las Vegas again next year in June. Hope to see you there!
- Ed

NetApp buys Decru

I found this news interesting. The reason why is that Decru is only one of two crypto on the fly storage protection companies I know of, the other being NeoScale. I don't know if other vendors will still be recommending Decru given the situation but I would not be surprised to see a bidding war for NeoScale now from other storage vendors. Something to keep an eye on.
- Ed

Windows SharePoint

Kern Sutton gave a great overview of the Windows SharePoint product this evening at the SFNTUG meeting. If you want you can install WSS on your Windows 2003 Server and get it up and running very quickly. It is a free download and is available here. If you are looking to build a quick, functional intranet site this is definitely the quickest and cheapest method if you already have Windows 2003 Server or Windows Small Business Server. Overall, Microsoft seems to have a hidden gem in SharePoint that folks are finally catching onto.
- Ed

Apple switching to Intel? Why not AMD?

Well, Apple has moved to Intel's x86 platform. I personally don't get why they didn't jump on with AMD who already has a 64bit mobile processor. Slashdot has all the digs on it so head over there for the thread.
Now Apple is a true software company (technically they were a hardware company before due to all the custom hardware development). They get to go head to head with Microsoft and also now have to buy chips from Intel who sells to folks like Dell, HP, Toshiba, IBM, and others who buy more chips in a month then Apple all year. I don't know if this is brilliant or suicide. Good luck Apple, you have a rocking OS.
- Ed

Postmaster sites for MSN Hotmail and AOL

For those folks who have to try and get e-mail to work with some of the big boys out there I suggest folks take a look at some of the postmaster sites they maintain. Microsoft just released their site for MSN Hotmail and AOL has had theirs out for awhile. Yahoo does it slightly differently and they run an DomainKeys is a great read if you get a moment.
- Ed

Cool site for traceroute listings, looking glasses , bogons and route-servers

traceroute.org has a great link list of sites that run remote traceroute tools, looking glasses and route-servers. The route-servers are pretty useful since you can see if your BGP AS announcements look correct!

I also have used the NANOG site which has some great looking glass links and information.

For those looking for Bogon infomation check out Team Cymru which runs a cool project that allows you to do BGP peering to filter out the Bogon address listings. You can also just get the Bogon List from them to build your own ACL. This can be tough to maintain on your own since the list changes pretty regularly. You should check their site on a monthly basis to make sure you aren't mistakenly blocking a newly activated IP address block.

- Ed

Internet Safety for Children

NOBUG - Novell Oakland/Bay Area Users Group is hosting Laura Chappell this evening. Laura has been traveling around promoting a worthy cause. She will be presenting on "Internet Safety for Children" and I think it will be worth showing up for given some of the headlines recently.

Laura has her own company Protocol Analysis Institute and I recommend her as a speaker. She is very entertaining and engaging.

Doug Spindler also gave a presentation on this topic in Moraga, CA back on May 17th, 2005 you can check out that information here.

If you are at all interested in helping spread the word attend the meeting tonight and Laura can get you set up to present on the topic yourself to the local community.

- Ed

Stack3 presentation thoughts from the TVNUG meeting

We had an interesting presenter last evening at the Tri-Valley Network Users Group (www.tvnug.org) meeting. Paul from Stack3 gave a very interesting presentation on the products they are working on.
They basically have two appliances right now, one is an all in one security gateway and the other is a voip pbx that works tightly with the security appliance. They seem remarkable cost effective given everything the products do.
They are running open source software but on the NetBSD OS. They are using Polycom phones which are very affordable and they seems to be a great fit for the SMB market. From back of the envelope math they are significantly cheaper then a similar deployment of either Cisco, Avaya or Shoreline. It remains to be seen if their product is as robust as it needs to be to support telephony for business critical needs.
The security appliance has a SPI firewall, anti-virus, anti-spam, content control, proxy services, and several other interesting services all rolled into a single device. They claim to have tested IPSec compatibility with several of the major vendors so they seem to have a product folks could use right away without cleaning out the bank to get all the features you would want.
- Ed

Interesting projects Microsoft Research is doing

Leo Laporte did a very quick intro into a research project that Microsoft is doing called mywhallop.com. It is pretty interesting, you can read about it at the Microsoft Reseach Social Computing Group site. I use a product out now called MindManager that is pretty cool. There are other interesting solutions out there like TheBrain and interesting projects like James Burke's Knowledge Web. If you are using any similar products please tell me about them, fasinating stuff.
- Ed

Creative Commons License

I have been reading up about blogs, copyrights, and publishing on the web. It seems that the most practical license out there is the Creative Commons license for protecting your content. To me it seems the best balance of getting your information out there while preventing (if you want) commercial folks from taking your info and running off with it to make some money. There are several different license type to pick from and the stuff just seems to make sense. I recommend folks check them out, especially if you are generating content of any kind and making it available on the web in any format (blog, rss, podcast, etc.).
- Ed

EBCUG presentation was a fun time

Thanks to everyone who showed up to the EBCUG meeting, I am glad so many folks found the presentation useful. The slide deck is available for folks who are interested in reviewing the material. Feel free to add some feedback about the presentation onto my blog here if you want.

Oh, I attended the California IPv6 tech conference - there were more folks at the EBCUG meeting then the IPv6 forum! Needless to say, they don't seem to be getting much traction at all. I don't know if that is a function of the lack of interest in IPv6 or some other issues. Anyway, I think some common sense material about IPv6 might be in order. There seems to be no one who is doing a clear and compelling story around IPv6 without lossing folks in the techno-babble.
- Ed

California IPv6 Technology Conference - May 10th

I will be attending the California IPv6 Technology Conference up in Sacramento tomorrow, May 10th during the day then running to the East Bay Cisco User's Group meeting in San Ramon that evening to present on SPAM prevention using DNS. I imagine if I pick up anything cool on the IPv6 happenings I will share that at the meeting also!
This is the first time I will attend a California IPv6 Task Force event. Hope they have some interesting stuff going on.
- Ed

Microsoft MVP info

I have updated my profile information over at the Microsoft MVP site. Here is the most current info about my speaking engagements and other info that might be of interest.
- Ed

Leoville

Leoville is Leo Laporte's website and I recommend taking a look. Leo came and spoke at the San Francisco Network Technology User Group this last Tuesday and was very engaging. He covered some great general technology subjects and also showed off Apple's newest OS release, 10.4 (Tiger). The RSS screen saver alone was worth coming to the meeting to see!
- Ed

Presenting at the EBCUG on Tuesday May 10th

Doug Renner has asked me to present to the East Bay Cisco Users Group about SPAM prevention using DNS. I've updated my slide deck with new information on rDNS, SPF and the links you need to make it all happen. Hopefully folks will find it useful. I want to turn the slide deck into more of a short article for publication since there seems to be a shortage or good practical overview of the how and why of reverse DNS.
- Ed

Duplex is important to keep an eye on.

Mismatch duplex settings can cause all sorts of headaches. I just had to clean some up this morning between a router and a switch. Here is a cheat sheet on which settings work or not.

	Auto Detect	Half Duplex	Full Duplex
Auto Detect	OK	OK - not optimal	NO - see note
Half Duplex	OK - not optimal	OK	NO
Full Duplex	NO - see note	NO	OK

Note: A forced duplex setting such as half or full will stop the port from sending Fast Link Pulse (FLP) or the 802.3u auto-negotiation protocol. FLP notifies the other end the auto-negotiation options of the source sending the FLP. If a port is set to auto and it does not receive FLP, the default behavior is for it to assume the other end of the connection is set to half duplex (last priority or lowest common denominator). You can now see why full/auto won't work to well. Oh, and obviously if the speed of the interfaces don't match things aren't going to work to well either. Here is the table of priority order that 802.3u uses, in case you are interested.

Auto-negotiation Process:
Priority Physical-Layer
1 100BaseT2 full duplex
2 100BaseT2 half duplex
3 100BaseTX full duplex
4 100BaseT4 half duplex*
5 100BaseTX half duplex
6 10BaseT full duplex
7 10BaseT half duplex

Note: * 100BaseT4 supports only half duplex.

- Ed

User Groups

I have been looking for vendors to sponsor both the user groups that I help out. The San Francisco Network Technology Users Group and the Tri-Valley Network Users Group are both excellent user groups for those that are in the San Francisco Bay Area. They focus on Network and System Admins. If anyone is interested in sponsoring either group please send me a note via their respective websites. I would also plug the East Bay Cisco Users Group and the Southern California Cisco Users Group which are both excellent and have great folks running them.
- Ed

CCIE Study Book List

So far, here is what I have come up with that I think will be worthwhile.

Routing TCP/IP, Volume I (CCIE Professional Development) (Doyle, ISBN# 1578700418)
Routing TCP/IP, Volume II (CCIE Professional Development) (Doyle, DeHaven, Carroll, ISBN# 1578700892)
Cisco LAN Switching (Clark, Hamilton, ISBN# 1578700949)
Internet Routing Architectures, 2nd edition (Sam Halabi, ISBN# 15787050862)
CCIE Practical Studies Volume I (Solie, ISBN# 1587200023)
CCIE Practical Studies Volume II (CCIE Self-Study) (Solie, Lynch, ISBN# 1587050722)
Cisco Certification: Bridges, Routers and Switches for CCIEs (2nd Edition) (Caslow, Pavlichenko, ISBN# 0130903892)
CCIE Routing and Switching Exam Certification Guide (Bruno, ISBN# 1587200538)
Cisco OSPF Command and Configuration Handbook (Parkhurst, ISBN# 1587050714)
Configuring IPv6 for Cisco IOS (Edgar Parenti, Jr., Eric Knnip, Brian Browne, Syngress, ISBN# 1928994849)
Cisco BGP-4 Command and Configuration Handbook (Parkhurst, ISBN# 158705017X)
802.11 Wireless LAN Fundamentals (Pejman Roshan, Jonathan Leary, ISBN# 1587050773)
Wi-Fi (802.11) Network Habdbook (Neil P. Reid, Ron Seide, McGraw Hill Osborne Media, ISBN# 0072226234)

I am considering the CCIE Pratice Labs book from Cisco Press but haven't decided on it yet. I think I am going to use Certification Zone's website subscription for practice exam and study materials. They have good sample content posted up and seem to have a good reputation out there.
- Ed

Added a lot more reference links

I have started organizing my links into catagories - mainly for my own use so I don't have to keep trying to find the same vendors and tools over and over again. Google still makes it easy to find them again but sometimes you forget vendor names - you only remember the catagory! I will try and ad to it every week.
- Ed

Visio site links for info and stencils

I needed to update my Visio stencils (yet again) for some current work I am doing. There are a couple of very useful sites out there to get links to manufacture's Visio stencils for their gear and also generic ones.

Visio Cafe - ultimate site for your stencil fix!
mvps.org - a great site on Visio info
Cisco's Stencil Library - this link requires that you have a CCO login account
Dell's Library - for a manufacture supplied stencil I think they are very poor in quality
Juniper's Library - includes the NetScreen product line along with the Juniper gear

HP's wonderfully stencils can be found at the Visio Cafe link.

- Ed

Some cool day to day software applications

I have a pretty cool list of tools for network and systems (which I may post soon) but what about all that great software that you use day to day but don't think about - which is sort of funny if you think about it. Anyway, after moving onto yet another company laptop I had to go through the list of applications I use day to day along with the list of cool utilities.
Here are some of the apps that I use almost daily.

Trillian Pro, MindManager X5 Pro, SecureCRT, Pumpkin, PGP, Spybot Search and Destroy, Firefox, Remote Desktop, Skype, MS Office, MS Visio, Real VNC, MS Beta AntiSpyware

I might think of one or two more while I am at it but wanted to get them down to remember - since I am sure I will have to move laptops yet again sometime soon!
- Ed

Cisco CCIE RS Written - Study References

I have been starting to put my study reference materials together for the CCIE RS Written Exam. Wanted to get some info posted up on some of the sites I am using (or thinking about using) to start preparing for the exam. I've always been a hands on and self study sort of person (lots of book reading) so I thought I would expand my study options a bit. As they say, practical hands on time with the subject is best. I guess that means I will be playing in j2 Global's QA Lab a little bit more. ;-)
GroupStudy.com

Certification Zone

CCPrep

Cisco's CCIE Site

If you have any recommendations please post them up in the comments.
- Ed

UOP Tigers

Well, UOP's men's basketball lost today against Washington 79 to 97. Congrats to the Tigers for making it into the second round in the NCAA Tournament. It is their second time appearing in the NCAA Tournament, lets hope the tradition continues. To make matters worse the San Jose Stealth lost a close match tonight against Calgary - ugh. Not a good day for my teams.
- Ed

DNS and IP Management Products

I have been discussing some of the Network DNS, DHCP and IP management products out there with some colleagues and thought I would list some of them out. This is sort of the short list that came up, there are a ton more products out there. When I get a moment I will expand the list some more.

IP DHCP and IP Address management software:
http://www.lucent.com/products/solution/0,,CTID+2020-STID+10439-SOID+1456-LOCL+1,00.html

http://www.solarwinds.net/Tools/Professional/Categories/IP_Address.htm

http://www.menandmice.com/2000/2300_enterprise.html

http://www.nortelnetworks.com/products/01/optivity/opt_netid/index.html

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/nemnsw/nerr/index.shtml

IP DHCP and DNS appliances:
http://bluecatnetworks.com/products/adonis/index.html

Open Source IP address management software:
http://iptrack.sourceforge.net/

Some cool Network Monitoring / Management software applications:
http://manageengine.adventnet.com/products/oputils/address-monitoring-tools.html

http://www.neon.com/LSwin.shtml

http://www.netscantools.com/nstpromain.html

http://www.ipswitch.com/Products/WhatsUp/professional/index.html

http://manageengine.adventnet.com/products/opmanager/

Here is a cool list from the Stanford Linear Accelerator that covers most everything!
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/nmtf/nmtf-tools.html

- Ed

First set of links for DNS issues

DNS Stuff is a great site for figuring out what is happening with DNS and rDNS issues. For those who are using SBC for dedicated Internet service it can be difficult to figure out who you are supposed to contact. Some links to make your life a little easier!
DNS and rDNS request pages:
http://dedicated.pacbell.net/custcare/dns_worksheet.html
http://dialup.pacbell.net/dn_worksheet.html

If you have SBC DSL and can no longer send SMTP traffic outbound except to SBC servers then you need to opt out of their SMTP blocking. Here is the link you need for that.
Opt out for port 25:
http://help.sbcglobal.net/servabuse.php

Now I have to go and update all my powerpoint slide links with this new info!
- Ed

Howfunky.com

It is finally time to start making some headway with the Howfunky.com site. I have decided that the site will have some serious technical reference content to make it worthwhile to folks. I am going to narrow down the subject matter (draft thought) to:
DNS and specifically Reverse DNS issues.
Cisco routing, switching and content delivery
Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
Microsoft Network Optimization

First order of business will be to get a lot of the links I have organized and posted. Would love to have additional links for content if they are related to the above topics.

Regards,
Ed