February 2012 - Test - lists.nanog.org

time sink 42
by Randy Bush 27 Apr '12

27 Apr '12

ok, this is horribly pragmatic, but it's real. yesterday i was in the westin playing rack and stack for five hours. an horrifyingly large amount of my time was spent trying to peel apart labels made on my portable brother label tape maker, yes peeling the backing from a little label so remote hands could easily confirm a server they were going to attack. is there a trick? is there a (not expensive) different labeling machine or technique i should use? randy

33 44

Most energy efficient (home) setup
by Jeroen van Aart 19 Apr '12

19 Apr '12

After reading a number of threads where people list their huge and wasteful, but undoubtedly fun (and sometimes necessary?), home setups complete with dedicated rooms and aircos I felt inclined to ask who has attempted to make a really energy efficient setup? This may be an interesting read, it uses a plugcomputer: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/11/diy_zero_energy_home_server/page2.h… Admittedly I don't have a need for a full blown home lab since I am not a network engineer, I'm more of a sysadmin/network admin/programmer kind of person... So I can make do with a somewhat minimal set up. But I *do* have tunneled IPv6 from home ;-) In my current apartment in addition to an el cheapo DSL modem that probably wastes about 10 watts and a "sometimes on" PC workstation I used to have an always on thinkpad (early 2000s model) as my main desktop system and an always on G4 system (pegasos2 in case you care) acting as a mail/web/ssh server. The thinkpad was a refurbished model and it was quite stable, up to 500 days of uptime during its last years. But the hardware slowly disintegrated and when the gfx card died I retired it. Right now my always on server is a VIA artigo 1100 pico-itx system (replacing the G4 system) and my "router/firewall/modem" is still the el cheapo DSL modem (which runs busybox by the way). I have an upgraded workstation that's "sometimes on", it has a mini itx form factor (AMD phenom2 CPU). I use debian on all systems. I haven't measured it but I think if the set up would use 30 watts continuously (only taking the always on systems into account) it'd be a lot. Of course it'll spike when I fire up the workstation. It's not extremely energy efficient but compared to some setups I read about it is. The next step would be to migrate to a plugcomputer or something similar (http://plugcomputer.org/) Any suggestions and ideas appreciated of course. :-) Thanks, Jeroen -- Earthquake Magnitude: 3.0 Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 13:57:33 UTC Location: Island of Hawaii, Hawaii Latitude: 19.4252; Longitude: -155.3207 Depth: 3.90 km

24 46

[NANOG-announce] NANOG 55 - Vancouver: Call For Presentations
by Dave Temkin 02 Apr '12

02 Apr '12

NANOG Community, After an awesome meeting in San Diego, we're already starting to get ready for NANOG 55 in Vancouver. If you have a topic you'd like to speak about, we'd love to consider it. Please watch http://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog55/callforpresentations.html for more information. Please keep these important dates in mind: Presentation Abstracts and Draft Slides Due: 02-Apr-2012 Final Slides Due: 09-Apr-2012 Draft Program Published: 27-Apr-2012 Final Agenda Published: 15-May-2012 Please submit your materials to http://pc.nanog.org Looking forward to seeing everyone in San Diego. -Dave Temkin (Chair, NANOG Program Committee) _______________________________________________ NANOG-announce mailing list NANOG-announce(a)nanog.org https://mailman.nanog.org/mailman/listinfo/nanog-announce

1 1

Programmers with network engineering skills
by A. Pishdadi 16 Mar '12

16 Mar '12

Hello All, i have been looking for quite some time now a descent coder (c,php) who has a descent amount of system admin / netadmin experience. Doesn't necessarily need to be an expert at network engineering but being acclimated in understanding the basic fundamentals of networking. Understanding basic routing concepts, how to diagnose using tcpdump / pcap, understanding subnetting and how bgp works (not necessarily setting up bgp). I've posted job listings on the likes of dice and monster and have not found any good canidates, most of them ASP / Java guys. If anyone can point me to a site they might recommend for job postings or know of any consulting firms that might provide these services that would be greatly appreciated.

47 99

Re: [c-nsp] ASR opinions..
by Christopher J. Pilkington 08 Mar '12

08 Mar '12

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 5:56 AM, Mark Tinka <mtinka(a)globaltransit.net> wrote: > Like the ASR1002-F, the ASR1001 is based on an ESP5 > forwarding processor. That comes with 512,000 FIB entries > maximum. > > As a side note, unlike the ASR1002-F, the ASR1001 can be > upgraded (software license) form the default 2.5Gbps > forwarding performance to 5Gbps. > >> To >> my knowledge this is not true as the 1001 has the Intel >> RP1.5... > > We're talking about FIB slots (the ESP) and not RIB slots > (the RP). Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I'm also confused on this ASR1001 FIB question. The Cisco ASR 1000 ESP data sheet (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/routers/ps9343/data_sheet_c78-45…) lists the ASR1001 separately from the ASR1002-5G. It claims the ASR1001 does 1M IPv4 and 1M IPv6 routes. (Not to be confused with the numbers on the ASR 1000 RP data sheet, which say it can do up to 9M with 8GB RAM doing selective download.) Does anyone have a link to a definitive document clearly showing FIB numbers for the ASR1001? I've got an email into our Cisco SE, but I don't think they're motivated to sell us a lower-end box. :-) -cjp

5 8

FCoE/CNA Deployment w/ Nexus 5K, HP 580s, QLogic
by David Swafford 06 Mar '12

06 Mar '12

Hi Everyone! I had several requests for more feedback on our FCoE experience, based on my comments from a thread last week, so I'm writing here with a bit more background on our project in hopes that it saves some pain for others :-). I'm with a sizable health insurance provider in the mid-west, and we've typically focused on technology vs. headcount as an overal strategy. Based on that, we upgrade much more often than some of our peers in the industry because techology is still cheaper than long-term staffing costs. Last fall, we were faced with an issue of both power and rack capacity constraints in our primary datacenter, which is just three years old now. As various ideas were on the table, which included taking out a section of IT cubes to expand the DC, the most appealing idea was to consolidate our server and network infrastructure into what was coined our "High Density Row". We transitioned from Cat6500s as access to a Nexus 5K deployment, using 5Ks as both distribution and access for the new HD row. We didn't like how oversubscription is handled on 2K FEXs when it comes to 10G links, so for the situation here all 5Ks made the most sense. Our capacity needs couldn't justify 7Ks and while they would have been cool to have, we didn't want to blow money just because. Our SAN is an EMC Symmetrix with Cisco MDS switches in between it and the hosts (Fiber Channel). In the new row, we deployed all hosts with CNAs (converged net adapters), which combine both FCoE storage and network in a single 10Gb connection. Since FCoE was new to all of us, we use a phased approach that the Nexus offered where we brough straight fiber channel connections into our distibution layer 5Ks and used the Nexus' FCoE proxy functionality to convert between true FC to FCoE. >From the host perpsective, it was only aware of FCoE connectivity to the Nexus. VSANs had to be created on the Nexus to map back to the FC VSANs on the MDS side, Virtual Fiber Channel (VFC) interfaces were created on the Nexus side, and a few other settings had to be configured. Overall though, the config wasn't huge, but the biggest hurdle for was that as the network guys, we had to learn the storage side to be able to properly set this up. So new terms like WWN (world wide name), floggy database, VSAN (a VLAN for storage), etc. Also, on the Nexus side, you have to enable the feature of FCOE, as Nexus OS is very modulular and leaves most options disabled during the initial setup. The painful part, which is probably what might be of most interest here, is that we hit a very strange and catrastrophic issue specific to QLogic's 8242 Copper-based (twinax) CNA adapter. As part of the burn-in testing, we were working with our server team to simulate the loss of a link/card/switch (all hosts were dual-connected with dual-CNAs to separate 5Ks). We were using the Cisco branded twinax cabling and QLogic's 8242 card (brand new HP DL580s in this case, new card, new 5K, new cabling). When a single link was dropped/diconnected PHYSICALLY (a shut/no shut is not the same here), the host's throughput on BOTH storage and network went to crap. Our baseline was showing nearly 400MB/s on storage (raw disk IO) tests prior to a link drop and 1-8 MB/s after! This siutation would not recover until you fully rebooted/power cycled the server. We had the same results accross every HP DL 580 tested, which was 5-6 of them I belive. We replaced CNAs, cables, and even moved ports across 5Ks. It didn't matter which cable, 5K, port, of card we used, all reacted the same! The hosts were all Windows 2008 Datacenter, simliar hardware, Nexus 5K on current code, twinax cabling. This situation led to a sev 2 w/ Cisco, the equivalant w/ HP, EMC, and QLogic. We used both the straight QLogic 8242 and the HP OEM'd version and the results were identical. QLogic acknowledged the issue but could not resolve it due not being able to grab a hardware level trace of the connection (required some type of test equipment that they couldn't provide and we didn't have). As part of our trail/error testing, we had our re-seller ship us the fiber versions of the same QLogic cards, becuase we eventually got down to a gut instinct of this being a copper/electrical anomoly. That instict was dead-on. Switching to the fiber versions, with fiber SFPs on the 5K side resolved the situation entirely. We are now able to drop a link with NO noticable degradation, back and forth, and eveyrthing is consistent again. We originally went the twinax route because it was signifiantly cheaper than the fiber, but in retrospect, as a whole, the danger posed was not worth it. You might ask, well... why would you intentially drop the cable? Think about a situation of doing a code upgrade on the 5K, since it's not a dual-sup box, you physcailly go through a reboot to upgrade it. That reboot right htere would have hosed our entire environment (keep in mind, the HD row's intent was to replace a signifiant portion of our production environment). You could also have a HW failure on a 5K. It kind of defeats the point of all this redundancy if your throuhput goes to hell when loosing a single path. As our storage guys best put it "i'd rather loose a path than have bad performance through it....based on how things alert, I'd know right away if a path were down, but not if it were severaly degraded." Btw, we've been rock solid on the fiber-connected CNAs ever since. We're still using copper on our connections to HP blade chassis though, which go to FLEX Fabric cards, as we couldn't produce the problem on those. For those wondering, we did rebuild several of the DL580s from scratch (all of this was a new deployment, thankfully!), we also went through many iterations of driver updates/changes/etc. Lots of head-banging and teamwork eventually got us squared away! This situation is a good example of why network guys NEED to have a great relationship with both server and storage guys (we're all really close where I'm at). Had there been tension/etc between the teams, this would have been signifiantky harder to resolve. Hope this helps, sorry for the long winded email :-), but I think those interested will find it beneficial. David.

5 6

WW: Colo Vending Machine
by Jay Ashworth 06 Mar '12

06 Mar '12

Please post your top 3 favorite components/parts you'd like to see in a vending machine at your colo; please be as specific as possible; don't let vendor specificity scare you off. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra(a)baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274

74 145

BBC reports Kenya fiber break
by Marshall Eubanks 05 Mar '12

05 Mar '12

Is anyone seeing this ? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17179544 "East Africa's high-speed internet access has been severely disrupted after a ship dropped its anchor onto fibre-optic cables off Kenya's coast." Regards Marshall

23 26

Common operational misconceptions
by John Kristoff 03 Mar '12

03 Mar '12

Hi friends, As some of you may know, I occasionally teach networking to college students and I frequently encounter misconceptions about some aspect of networking that can take a fair amount of effort to correct. For instance, a topic that has come up on this list before is how the inappropriate use of classful terminology is rampant among students, books and often other teachers. Furthermore, the terminology isn't even always used correctly in the original context of classful addressing. I have a handful of common misconceptions that I'd put on a top 10 list, but I'd like to solicit from this community what it considers to be the most annoying and common operational misconceptions future operators often come at you with. I'd prefer replies off-list and can summarize back to the list if there is interest. John

89 211

Small ISP Need to Know
by not common 03 Mar '12

03 Mar '12

Hello, I work for an ISP (35K customers) and do System Admin work for operations and development (DNS, Radius and such). I want learn more on our IP side (Routing, BGP, MPLS, Core Network). I am trying to learn the Net Ops world piece by piece, and this is where I ask: Where is a good place (or places) to start learning ISP operations "Need To Know"? Thanks for your time

4 3