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 [...]

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.

Cisco IOS permits to define multiple privilege levels for different accounts. This could be useful when many people work on the same router / switch, but with different roles (operator, tecnhician, network manager) and there is no time to implement an authentication server. There are 16 different privilege levels that can be used. Level 0 is user mode. Level 15 is the privileged mode. Level 1 through 14 are available for customization and use.

Cisco announced the launch of its Global Talent Acceleration Program in Bangalore, India. GTAP is a long-term Cisco initiative aimed at creating Cisco’s next-generation local engineering and sales talent in India and other emerging countries. Through the GTAP in India, Cisco plans to train Indian engineering students at the CCIE level, the highest stage professional certification offered by Cisco. Cisco Learning Solutions Partners, Datacraft, Fast Lane Global Knowledge, and NIIT will act as Cisco’s initial primary partner delivery organizations in India.

This visualization represents macroscopic snapshots of the IPv4 and IPv6Internet topologies observed during the first week of January 2008.It simultaneously illustrates the peering richness of each topology and the worldwide distribution of nodes in each routing system.

The new competition of the NetSpace Skills Pursuit is designed to recognize the top student and alumni players in the world and reward them with real prizes. Will you be one of the top players in your category (PC Technician, Network Technician, Network Associate, or Network Professional) and win a prize package? Starting 23 October 2008 at 12:01 a.m. Central time (GMT-5hrs) students and alumni are encouraged to apply their networking skills to real world problems in a new online NetSpace Skills Pursuit competition. Join in the fun and explore how networking can be used to solve a multitude of [...]

A vulnerability exists in Cisco Unity that could allow an unauthenticated user to view or modify some of the configuration parameters of the Cisco Unity server. Cisco has released free software updates that address this vulnerability. A workaround that mitigates this vulnerability is available. Vulnerable Products All Cisco Unity versions, 4.x, 5.x and 7.x, may be affected by this vulnerability.

There are some “standards” steps used for basic configuration on your Cisco router/switch: Define the hostname Assign the privileged level Secure console port Secure VTY lines Encrypt the passwords