QoS (Quality of Service) involves prioritization of network traffic. QoS is the idea that transmission rates, error rates, and other characteristics can be measured, improved, and, to some extent, guaranteed in advance. QoS can be targeted at a network interface, toward a given server or router’s performance, or in terms of specific applications. A network monitoring system must typically be deployed as part of QoS, to insure that networks are performing at the desired level.

QoS is especially important for the new generation of Internet applications such as VoIP, video-on-demand and other consumer services.

Introduced in the Cisco IOS Release 12.2(15), Gateway Load Balancing Protocol (GLBP) is supported by Cisco 1700, 2600, 3620, 3631, 3640, 3660, 3725, 3745, 7100, 7200, 7400, 7500 series. GLBP is a Cisco proprietary protocol that attempts to overcome the limitations of existing redundant router protocols (HSRP, VRRP, …) by adding basic load balancing functionality.

GLBP provides load balancing over multiple routers (gateways) using a single virtual IP address and multiple virtual MAC addresses. Each host is configured with the same virtual IP address, and all routers in the virtual router group participate in forwarding packets. GLBP members communicate between each other through hello messages sent every 3 seconds to the multicast address 224.0.0.102, User Datagram Protocol (UDP) port 3222 (source and destination).

John Chambers, Chairman and CEO, and Frank Calderoni, CFO, speak with CNBC and Bloomberg News about Cisco’s Q1 FY 09 financial results.

How would you characterize the strength of the quarter, and the strength of the company as a whole?
John Chambers says: “We exit the first quarter of fiscal year 2009 with an extremely strong position in the marketplace. We have approximately $27 billion in cash and investments. We also have solid balance from a product, geographic and customer segment perspective, which we consider perhaps one of the broadest balances across the IT industry. We have achieved continued success in being the number one or number two player in most of our 20+ targeted product areas.

On September 2008, Cisco has agreed to purchase open-source instant messaging firm Jabber (http://www.ciscozine.com/2008/09/20/cisco-to-acquire-jabber/).

Two days ago (November 3, 2008 ) Cisco announced that it has completed its purchase of Jabber Inc.

“The acquisition will enable Cisco to embed presence and messaging services “in the network” and provide rich aggregation capabilities to users through both on-premise and on-demand solutions, across multiple platforms including Cisco WebEx® Connect and Cisco® Unified Communications.

EtherChannel bundles individual Ethernet links into a single logical link that provides bandwidth up to 1600 Mbps (Fast EtherChannel, full duplex) or 16 Gbps (Gigabit EtherChannel) between two Cisco Catalyst switches. All interfaces in each EtherChannel must be the same speed and duplex, and both ends of the channel must be configured as either a Layer 2 or Layer 3 interface.

If a link within the EtherChannel bundle fails, traffic previously carried over the failed link is carried over the remaining links within the EtherChannel.

There are two protocols used for the link aggregation:

• Cisco’s proprietary Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP).
• IEEE standard Link Aggregation Protocol (LACP)

As you see in the article “Implementing High Availability with HSRP“, it is quite simple configure Hot Standby Router Protocol.
Some cases require a custom configuration, using priority, track, preempt etc…and these are:

• The standby preempt interface configuration command allows the router to become the active router when its priority is higher than all other HSRP-configured routers in this Hot Standby group. The configurations of both routers include this command so that each router can be the standby router for the other router. The 1 indicates that this command applies to Hot Standby group 1. If you do not use the standby preempt command in the configuration for a router, that router cannot become the active router.
• The standby priority interface configuration command sets the router’s HSRP priority to 110, which is higher than the default priority of 100. Only the configuration of Router A includes this command, which makes Router A the default active router. The 1 indicates that this command applies to Hot Standby group 1.
• The standby timers interface configuration command sets the interval in seconds between hello messages (called the hello time) to five seconds and sets the duration in seconds that a router waits before it declares the active router to be down (called the hold time) to eight seconds. (The defaults are three and 10 seconds, respectively.) If you decide to modify the default values, you must configure each router to use the same hello time and hold time. The “1″ indicates that this command applies to Hot Standby group 1.
• The standby track command allows you to specify another interface on the router for the HSRP process to monitor in order to alter the HSRP priority for a given group. If the line protocol of the specified interface goes down, the HSRP priority is reduced. This means that another HSRP router with higher priority can become the active router if that router has standby preempt enabled.
• The standby authentication interface configuration command establishes an authentication string whose value is an unencrypted eight-character string that is incorporated in each HSRP multicast message. This command is optional. If you choose to use it, each HSRP-configured router in the group should use the same string so that each router can authenticate the source of the HSRP messages that it receives. The “1″ indicates that this command applies to Hot Standby group 1.

In the era of electronic exchanges, tiny spikes and bottlenecks in network traffic can create delays which compromise the split-second accuracy needed for effective trading. Tracking down these problems has been beyond the reach of any technology-until now, thanks to Cisco Systems, Inc.

While traditional network monitoring systems can only analyze traffic behavior over a minimum of five minutes or so on average, the Cisco Bandwidth Quality Manager (BQM), part of the Cisco Network Application Performance Analysis (NAPA) Solution, can get down to millisecond level.

The Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) is a Cisco proprietary first-hop redundancy protocol (FHRP) designed to allow for transparent fail-over of the first-hop IP router, and has been described in detail in RFC 2281.

HSRP provides high network availability by providing first-hop routing redundancy for IP hosts on Ethernet, Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Bridge-Group Virtual Interface (BVI), LAN Emulation (LANE), or Token Ring networks configured with a default gateway IP address. HSRP is used in a group of routers for selecting an active router and a standby router. In a group of router interfaces, the active router is the router of choice for routing packets; the standby router is the router that takes over when the active router fails or when preset conditions are met. HSRP active and standby routers send hello messages to the multicast address 224.0.0.2 using UDP port 1985.

Multiple vulnerabilities exist in the Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances and Cisco PIX Security Appliances. This security advisory outlines details of these vulnerabilities:

• Windows NT Domain Authentication Bypass Vulnerability
• IPv6 Denial of Service Vulnerability
• Crypto Accelerator Memory Leak Vulnerability

Starting from last October 17, Linksys will now be called Cisco Consumer Business Group (CBG). CBG will become Cisco’s expertise center of consumer activity and go-to-market model and will be aimed towards the development of products and services for consumers and businesses in the SOHO-market.

For the next few months, the “Linksys by Cisco” will continue to identify consumer products Cisco and coexist with the Cisco brand, although further changes could be adopted in relation to specific market needs.