RUN TCP/IP | Morgan Lucas is Tech Blogging

  Want to get started using network automation, but don't have a suitable home lab? Cisco, as always, has you covered. The sandbox has configurations with special programming languages (For lack of a more clarifying term) like Ansible, YAML, or JSON, and probably Python. It's reminiscent of Cisco Live's Capture the Flag games, which I've participated in before. The site within the sandbox does not have full connectivity; Is redundancy set up? Are two routers connected to each other and one not? There's more info if you scroll to the right - "Device groups", "up since", "connected vManage", which is an SD-WAN controller that ensures visibility and control from end-to-end.   You'll notice TCP Optimization isn't reachable. This chart is the activity over 24 hours. If I sort by a smaller amount of time - say 1 or 3 - there is no data to show. Here's a reachable device. and here are the active interfaces [vedge01...

Capture the Flag is a networking game that will allow you to gain hands-on experience with designing and operating cloud-based solutions with the Cisco Meraki platform. #CiscoCTF Find it HERE (Until July 17th 2020) - An Online treasure hunt! Where the treasure is "things to put onto your resume."

The new CCNA was released in mid Feb of 2020. With the advent of COVID, all of our active certs were pushed back 6 months. Mine won't expire until the end of next year, which is rapidly approaching. So why not go through the free course on Cisco NetAcad? It looks way different than the first course. The navigation on the left starts at... 10. It takes until 11.1.10 to get to a Packet Tracer about Port Security. It's an old one, I recognize it. There are no small activities scattered throughout the (much shorter) lessons. There used to be matching games. Short quizzes are at the end of each section. (Unrelated note: It also showed that the Rogue Laptop thwarted by port security and sticky MACs, while in the same subnet as the legitimate machines, couldn't ping. Because port security!) The Syntax Checker displays the appropriate instruction at the appropriate time. No more continuous scrolling back and forth (Unless you want to go upward and check on a command in the lesson) ...

Like many events, CiscoLive 2020 was pushed to an all digital format. What is everyone talking about? I'm at #CiscoLive with a crowd right now! 🎉 pic.twitter.com/djamyEymyG — Morgan Lucas @ Cisco Live! ※ o(￣▽￣)ｄ (@runtcpip) June 17, 2020 So, I have to repeat this again; Online events should have always been an option at this point . I understand the energy of real people. It's fun to talk to random, like minded people! However, these events take place in a world of growing inequality, especially in America, where people who want to learn, network , and improve, might not have the money for this.

Again; I've done this, but now there's so many new things, I'm doing it again. The truly new portions were...everything on the right side of this diagram; The cloud needed a coax connector and a copper Ethernet connector. It's all easy to install, turn off the cloud (Weird), install the modules. Getting the Cable section of Connections was an unusual struggle - The other drop down menu had nothing within. It required going into the Ethernet options and setting the Provider Network to 'cable', which is the next step AFTER the drop-downs. The rest was typical DHCP and DNS setups, mainly on the Cisco server down there. The post is rather short - How about adding a video to it? Find out what A Record means - This site says 'Maps a name to an IP address', which is DNS. So it's another name for DNS? You can change them (presumably in a local context) to associate an IP address to another name.

 If you're seeing this post, I'm helping you, and you probably have LI presence: React and share this post to help me in return.   In Packet Tracer, a demo software made by Cisco Systems. It certainly has changed a lot since 2016. It's almost an Olympic feat to even get started with it now, but it does look snazzy. This is for the new CCNA, that integrates, among other things, IoT and Automation, which I've worked on here before. Instructions here . I don't know if this is an aspect of "Let's make sure people are paying attention and not simply following blindly", or an oversight - The instructions indicate a Meraki Server, when a regular one is the working option here. I have to enable the IoT service on this server. Also, we assign the server an IPv4 address from a DHCP pool instead of giving it a static one. For something that handles our IoT business, perhaps that's safer; Getting a new IPv4 address every week or so is a minimal step against an...

* I am using an Ubuntu server, which means I could skip epel-release and simply install Ansible from these instructions. Opening the configuration file in vi (as su, or you won't be able to overwrite), I'm pleasantly surprised it didn't take me more than 3 minutes to find #host_key_checking = False . The # means 'this is a comment', so let's take that away so it can work with the demo. Let's configure; This is openly available information over here . Let's ping it; Yes, apparently my Ansible was using older Python for backwards compatibility. But we did successfully ping the router! First bit of automation = ✅ With a bit of manipulation, we can run some good old Cisco IOS commands like 'show ip int brief'; The command is sudo ansible router -m ios_command -a "commands='show ip int brief'" I revisited this the next day and added the second router; I got a really funky error pointing out a...

  Something I very recently learned is that routing protocols are learned on Control Planes. Also, welcome to possibly the last post of 2019. I need a break too!  There's plenty more coming in 2020. Meanwhile, visit and follow the new LinkedIn Company Page , if you please.

IGRP information is...scant. It's made by Cisco, and they have since moved on to EIGRP. EIGRP talks to its neighbors it knows via the neighbor table. Neighbors are directly connected. The topology table stores routes it learns from its directly connected neighbors  Hellos are sent every few seconds (Depending on Network capability) to make sure the neighbor is still there. A hold time is around 15 seconds. The router will drop the connection if the neighbor doesn't respond. Routers get updates via multicast address 224.0.0.10

Less 'introduction' and more "Well, I paid and studied to take the CCNA, so I'm going to put this information to use somehow." Also, apparently network administrators feel very strongly about their routing protocol of choice, and will fight people over it. Lol. Someone just created a new Twitter account to criticize my view on BGP. Classy! That’s a quick block. pic.twitter.com/WmoIbqunoI — Daniel Dib (@danieldibswe) November 18, 2019 To be clear, I'm 🤔 at the person who went through all that effort to make an account to do this. I have that kind of time as well, but I'm not doing that, I'm doing this. So, what is a Routing Protocol? Graphic Design in My Passion

If you haven't looked at Cisco DevNet, it's a really hoppin' resource for hands on work. (Who says 'hoppin' resource'?) I'm working from two articles to: Use Meraki Make a captive portal - That thing that says 'Adhere by our T&C' when you try to log in to use public Wi-Fi with your VPN (You are using a VPN, right?) Articles: 1 , 2 Copying from git in cmd worked well (Somehow, I couldn't do it in Git Bash) However;

I get this question a lot, from LinkedIn to even Instagram and Tumblr, and thought I'd give a list of resources I used to pass both tests on my first try. It looks like a mugshot but it's not.

Machine learning! Metadata! Phone calls!

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An effective Firewall stops threats, and should also give deep insights for better decisions with automation. Next gen Cisco FirePOWER can do this - So watch the webinar here .

So still on our APIC-EM with Python for Cisco roll, I made a GitHub ! And made a Get-Host-API program that I'm not 100% sure if said code is functional. But you can check it out and read the comments.

I came across a nifty site - Cisco DevNet , helping developers learn how to work with Software-Defined Networking, and I wanted to jump in feet first. Luckily, the idea is to program in Python.