Today we’re going to take a look at a very specific aspect the network project delivery workflow; seeking a quote from a value added reseller or VAR. A VAR re-sells equipment and services on behalf of network equipment vendors. In this post we’ll look at what a VAR is and how to reduce the time lost on equipment ordering. Like RMAs, RFQs are not sexy, but mishandled RFQs can burn a lot of time that you could otherwise spend…
I’ve have been invited to a join an event called “Networking Field Day 4” in San Jose from the 10th through 12th of October. During the Network Field Day, network equipment vendors get to come and present their newest and most awesome products to the delegates. We get to question, discuss and debate with the vendors and then blog about our take on the solutions, positive or negative. You can learn more about the event by following this link: http://techfieldday.com/event/nfd4/
Rapid growth I read an article by Greg Ferro about twenty-percent-growth recently. Greg makes the point that most network growth forecasts are grossly overoptimistic. However, my experience in the service provider world is that ‘the business’ underestimates growth in most cases. Network engineers have a fiscal responsibility not to gold-plate their network designs; network gear is just too damn expensive. But you can over-optimise for cost. It is incredibly frustrating to overhaul and scale-up a network within a year of the initial…
LSInfinity has two different values I have mentioned ‘LSInfinity’ in the max-metric post and in an earlier post on withdrawing OSPF routes. However if you look closely at each post you’ll see that LSinfinity had a different value in each of those posts . What gives? It turns out that the term LSinfinity has been overloaded somewhat in the RFCs and has different values and meanings for different LSAs.
When you configure an OSPF interface with a cost, you can do it directly using ip ospf cost or have the cost calculated for you using auto-cost reference bandwidth. Whichever method you choose, the OSPF RFC 2328 calls it “the cost of sending a packet out this interface”. The Router LSA, or type-1 LSA, has a 16-bit field (65535 in decimal) to represent the “interface output cost”. An interface cost of 65535 is also known as “LSInfinity”.