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Hub & Spoke: an example of VRF-Lite

Fabio Semperboni — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:00:13 +0000

VRF is an extension of IP routing that provides multiple routing instances. It provides a separate IP routing and forwarding table to each VPN and is used in concert with MP-iBGP (Multi-Protocol internal BGP) between provider equipment (PE) routers to provide Layer 3 MPLS-VPN. However, ML-Series VRF implementation is without MP-iBGP. With VRF Lite, the ML Series is considered a PE-extension or a customer equipment (CE)-extension. VRF Lite is considered a PE-extension since its has VRF (but without MP-iBGP), and it is considered a CE-extension since this CE can have multiple VRFs and serves many customer with one CE box.

VRF Lite means VRF without the need to run MPLS in the network. VRF Lite allows the network administrator to create multiple routing instances on the same routing device within the enterprise (for instance, it is possible assign the 10.0.0.1/30 IP address on two different interfaces). VRF Lite can be useful when you need to isolate traffic between two networks sharing the same routing platform or if you have multiple networks with overlapping addresses sharing the same physical network. Multiple instances of routing protocols can be used for different VRFs on the same device to exchange routes dynamically with a direct connected device.(...)
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Rhinnovation: the winner of I-Prize contest

Fabio Semperboni — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:08:02 +0000

Do you remember the Cisco I-Prize contest, an open, global innovation contest developed to encourage collaboration among entrepreneurs and help identify new potential billion-dollar business ideas for Cisco?

On June 29 2010, Cisco announced the winner of its second I-Prize competition. A team of five university students from Mexico submitted the winning idea of a ‘Life Account‘ that gathers information about users through connected devices in the physical world and online data available in the virtual world. The winners receive a cash prize of $250,000.(...)
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Cisco New Zealand $100,000 Communications Makeover

Fabio Semperboni — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:26:11 +0000

Cisco New Zealand is again offering small to medium sized businesses the chance to win a total Communications Makeover and this year the prize package is doubled, offering $100,000 of Cisco solutions and deployment.

The Cisco Communications Makeover is a chance for businesses to transform the way they operate and help them stay ahead of the competition.

“New Zealand is a country of small-to-medium businesses,” says Geoff Lawrie, managing director, Cisco New Zealand. “Many of those businesses already punch well above their weight with the commercial success they achieve from the size and resourcing of their business, but their growth can be hampered by inefficient, out-dated or overloaded communications infrastructure.”(...)
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Cisco I-Prize: join and win $250,000

Fabio Semperboni — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 19:19:51 +0000

Cisco announces its second Cisco I-Prize contest. In this open, global competition entrepreneurs submit proposals and collaborate to create the seed idea for Cisco’s next billion-dollar business.
Idea submissions should fall in one of four categories:

The Future of Work: New solutions that accelerate and change the way we do business
The Connected Life: Technological inspirations that dramatically improve living conditions and disseminate culture
New Ways to Learn: Next-generation solutions that transform when, where, and how people learn.
The Future of Entertainment: New solutions that change how people play together

(...)
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Smartports Macros: a useful command

Fabio Semperboni — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:50:03 +0000

Working in a datacenter, it is often required to apply the same intereface configuration on many ports; Cisco has an embedded useful command to do it: the smartports macros.

Smartports macros provide a convenient way to save and share common configurations. You can use Smartports macros to enable features and settings based on the location of a switch in the network and for mass configuration deployments across the network.

Each Smartports macro is a set of CLI commands that you define. Smartports macros do not contain new CLI commands; they are simply a group of existing CLI commands.

When you apply a Smartports macro on an interface, the CLI commands within the macro are configured on the interface. When the macro is applied to an interface, the existing interface configurations are not lost. The new commands are added to the interface and are saved in the running configuration file.(...)
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© Fabio Semperboni for CiscoZine, 2010. | Permalink | One comment
Post tags: Advanced configuration, Smartports Macros, Video

Cisco Developer Contest: the winner is…

Fabio Semperboni — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:34:59 +0000

On October 8, 2009 Cisco announced the winners of its “Think Inside the Box” Developer Contest. Launched on Dicember 2008, the competition challenged application developers around the world to develop applications that run on the Cisco® Application Extension Platform (AXP), which resides on the popular Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR).

The winning teams were determined by a panel of seven industry experts who selected the following applications as the most innovative, implementable and relevant to businesses. More than 100 qualified teams from 75 countries entered the competition. The finalists demonstrated the business relevance of the AXP in solving real-world problems, in areas of unified communications, security, advertising, cloud architectures and energy management.(...)
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How to use archive command to save configuration

Fabio Semperboni — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 07:20:45 +0000

In a large/critical network, it is fundamental backup the Cisco configuration for two reasons:

Rollback configuration
Restore configuration in case of a broken router

There are two ways to backup: manually (using write command each time that you would save running configuration) or automatically (using software like Ciscoworks, HP OpenView, … ).

In this tutorial, I would explain a different method to backup configuration: the archive command.

Introduced into Cisco IOS Release 12.3(4)T, the archive command permits to save a copy of the current running configuration to different path: ftp, http, https, rcp, scp, tftp servers. Moreover the archive command has other features, but in this article I would use only two of these:

time-period: it sets the time increment for automatically saving an archive file of the current running configuration in the Cisco IOS configuration archive.
write-memory: it enable automatic backup generation during write memory; for instance, when I use the ‘write’ command the archive command will be invoked automatically.

(...)
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Happy Birthday Cisco!

Fabio Semperboni — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:26:45 +0000

Yesterday, Cisco marks its 25th anniversary with a call to community service. Chairman and CEO John Chambers challenged every Cisco employee to volunteer four hours of service in his or her local community. The networking leader’s goal is an aggregate contribution of 200,000 employee volunteer hours, which equates to approximately 25 years worth of service to the global community.

Cisco was founded on December 10, 1984 by husband and wife Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, two former Stanford University computer scientists whose efforts to enable email between computers on different networks led to the invention of the first multiprotocol router. This seminal breakthrough played a major role in fueling the growth of the Internet.

Chambers says “In the coming quarter century, the role of the network will become even more important in driving growth, innovation, and productivity in industries such as healthcare, education and energy. Looking ahead, Cisco is positioned to lead the evolution of the network to enable a ‘connected future’ which is increasingly collaborative, video-driven, personalized, and mobile.”.(...)
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Cisco Christmas Connections Contest

Fabio Semperboni — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:42:49 +0000

Cisco invites people residing in Australia and New Zealand to submit entries to the Cisco “Christmas Connections” Contest for a chance to connect with family and friends from around the world this Christmas via Cisco TelePresenceTM.

Cisco will award two first-place prizes of Christmas dinners over TelePresence, 10 second-place prizes of a TelePresence meeting and 20 third-place prizes of Flip MinoTM cameras to the person with the entry that best illustrates the importance of connections with family and friends at Christmas.(...)
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Cisco SIO To Go, an iPhone application

Fabio Semperboni — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:38:54 +0000

Three days ago, Cisco announced the availability of Cisco SIO To Go, an Apple iPhone application that puts the power of the Cisco Security Intelligence Operations (SIO) in users’ hands, giving them real-time access to a wealth of actionable global security information no matter where they are. The Cisco SIO iPhone application enables users to personalize alerts to show only those security threats that could impact their network and provides added assurance that they are being protected by their Cisco security solution.

Marie Hattar, vice president, Network Systems Solutions Marketing, Cisco says: “enabling borderless networks is critical for today’s business success. A key component of enabling individuals to connect to their business networks from anywhere is working to ensure that the network is protected regardless of the device used. Our new Cisco SIO To Go iPhone application is another important step in making this vision a reality. It improves the means by which IT departments are alerted to threats, and it provides added confidence and device flexibility as Cisco customers are shielded from these breaches.”(...)
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