How to

If you are a SecureCRT user, here's a feature that might save you some time. Let's say you have a list of information in your terminal window that you'd like to copy - perhaps the output of "show ip interface brief." However, instead of the whole output, you only want the list of interfaces, not the rest of it. Normally, you would just highly the whole output of information and then either paste it as is or paste it in a notepad window and delete all the stuff you don't want. 

This gives you the following output:

R2#show ip int bri
Interface                  IP-Address      OK? Method Status                Protocol
Serial0/0                  unassigned      YES unset  up                    up      
Serial0/1                  unassigned      YES manual up                    down    
Serial0/2                  unassigned      YES unset  up                    down    
Serial0/3                  unassigned      YES unset  administratively down down    
FastEthernet1/0            10.1.1.2        YES manual up                    up      
FastEthernet2/0            192.168.100.2   YES manual up                    up      
Multilink1                 223.254.254.198 YES manual up                    up     

Well, there is another way. A much cleaner way...

If you bought a Macbook Pro in the last couple years, like me, you may be pushing the limits of the factory installed 250Gb hard drive. So far, the factory installed Toshiba hard drive has been rock solid, no complaints. I just need more space than 250Gb.

As of right now, the current Macbook Pros come with 500Gb or 750Gb hard drives (with an option to upgrade to 1Tb).  Back when I bought, they had 250Gb and 500Gb options. If you want more storage in your Macbook Pro, read on!

Select a Hard Drive

The first decision you have to make when buying a hard drive is how much space do you want?

I figure storage is relatively cheap, so why not go as big as possible? After a bit of research, the disk I chose to go with is the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1 TB Hard Drive. The decision was mainly based on the size of the disk, but several reviews I read all stated the disk is quiet and reasonably fast for it's size. The price is right as well (right around $100US).

Have you ever wanted to merge a bunch of text files together into one large one? For example, if you use a tool to go grab a bunch of show command results and output it to a text file per device, it's handy if you can have the operating system merge all that together for you. Many of you have likely done this at one point or another, but I figured it was worth capturing here to share the syntax.

So, if you are in a Windows command prompt, you can use the type command to output the contents of a file.

C:\>type text1.txt
This is a test. 

Then you can use the type command plus the double arrows to merge a bunch of files:

C:\>type *.txt >> merge.txt

text1.txt

text2.txt

text3.txt

text4.txt

This leaves you with all the original files plus a new one called merge.txt. Piece of cake.

A question was asked in the Tekcert forums regarding DHCP snooping configuration. After thinking about writing an in depth response, I decided to just write a full blown blog post.

Everything in this post has been tested in a lab environment with a Cisco 3550, Infoblox DHCP servers, a Netgear router as a "rogue" dhcp server, and a MacBook Pro as a client. The 3550 is configured with ip routing and a layer 3 interface on the subnet where the DHCP servers are located (10.0.10.0/24). VLAN 20 has been created on the 3550 with an interface ip address of 10.0.20.254/24. All the DHCP server configuration and helper addresses were tested and working prior to implementing DHCP snooping to eliminate any doubt as to whether the DHCP snooping configuration is working or not. So, let's get started.

Mozilla is at it again with their rapid fire release of Firefox 7. If you have automatic updates enabled, it most likely restarted your browser and installed version 7 without you even really noticing. This release likely has some whizzbang feature they believe justifies a major revision, however I doubt most people would agree it's major revision worthy.

The topic of today's post is regarding one of the lesser advertised features slipped into this version which lends to the "stupidization" of web surfers. The protocol handle is now gone at the leading edge of the URL. So, previously you would see "http://tekcer.com", it now reads "tekcert.com". Probably not a show stopper for your average sheepish websurfer, but if you are security-minded and want to know whether you're accessing something via http or https, it's handy to see it listed.

Thankfully, there is a work around. Whoever thought this was a great idea at least recognized that some people wouldn't think it was great, so they added a configuration setting to undo the damage. Here's how to get it fixed:

Over the past few weeks, I noticed my computer's time was drifting several minutes behind. This actually caused me to be late to a couple different meetings because I kept working on my computer instead of leaving the house. Well, since it's a Saturday and I had some time to fix the problem once and for all, I wanted to share what I've learned since it took longer than I expected to configure NTP on a Windows Server.

It all began several months back when I setup a Windows 2008 R2 Server and thought "wouldn't it be cool if I set my desktop's clock to update from the server instead of a reliable external source?" So, I unwittingly redirected my desktop from its reliable 0.us.pool.ntp.org to my server's ip address with the assumption the server was already getting it's time from a default external source. Hence the source of my lateness months later.

Fast forward to today. I figured it would be a quick 5 minute fix to remote into the server, find some sort of ntp settings tab in a properties window, then add my multiple servers. I should have known better than to assume Microsoft would have added such a logical GUI feature. 

After searching the Internet, reading through several Microsoft technet articles, and testing multiple configurations, here's what I've got...

If you are studying for the TSHOOT exam, it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with the topology. I've been working on creating a lab that mocks the TSHOOT topology, and it has forced me to recall how to setup a Cisco router to act like a Frame Relay switch. 

Here is the topology that I've built. As you can see, it closely resembles the topology that Cisco has provided on their site. Since their doc doesn't provide specific DLCIs, I've used the most logical numbers I could think of.

The first step in configuring a Cisco router to act like a frame relay switch is to enable frame relay switching: