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Month: November 2012

Design – Pushing for true network requirements

Design – Pushing for true network requirements

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All too often we engineers end up blindly actioning tasks without questioning the true requirements driving the request.  Even if you are ‘efficient’ at deployment, doing the wrong task well is not ‘effectiveness’. Picture the scene when a project manager walks into your workspace.  “Hey junior-engineer-I’ve-never-seen-before, I need to you to install a 3750E-48TS in the Phoenix branch office. It’s a straighforward task, so I expect it complete by Friday.”

Video – Solving power connector confusion

Video – Solving power connector confusion

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Why talk about network power connectors? Here at Network Sherpa base camp, we’re all about removing confusion and saving time.   I’ve always had a bit of difficulty differentiating between the connector types,  PDU’s,  inlets outlets and country specific power cords. In this post I share my learnings. In the video below I focus on the commonly used low power IEC 320 series C13/14 connectors.  If you want further detail or more info about other connectors, then check out NetworkingNerds’s great…

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What is a physical layer switch?

What is a physical layer switch?

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I did a quick review of commercial lab management software recently when Spirent launched their Lab Optimizer software.  In the process I quickly glossed over physical layer (a.k.a. Layer-1) switches.  A physical layer switch is a powerful tool to have in a network lab or as a network tap, so let’s take a closer look at these devices.

Cut-through, corruption and CRC-stomping

Cut-through, corruption and CRC-stomping

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Corrupted frames are the devils spawn.  A few noisy links causing frame corruption can quickly degrade network performance, and troubleshooting them is getting harder.  These integrity errors generally occur when signal noise causes a binary ‘1’ to be mistaken for a binary ‘0’ or vice-versa.  This post takes a look at integrity errors and the impacts of corrupted frames in a cut-through switched network.  Throughout this post I’ll use the term ‘CRC errors’ term to refer to frame integrity errors which…

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Tester not included

Tester not included

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A few years ago, I had the chance to attend an IXIA training course in our Dublin office. I had seen the time-suck of network test gear before.  So I said,  “I’m not spending a week trying to learn a test-set.  It’ll be cool, but what’s the point. I won’t get the time to apply those skills, then I’ll forget, and it will be a wasted week.”  I declined the training.