Cisco’s Facebook App and Game – EdgeQuest 2 – Big Prizes!

by ADMIN on FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Cisco is offering a new Facebook application called Edge Quest 2 and it contains a shockwave game of the same name.

The game will also be involved in a tournament with the opportunity for your users to win prizes based on how they do. The Edge Quest 2 tournament starts on Monday, February 23, 2009 and ends on Friday, March 6, 2009. You can play as many times as you want to master the game – your top score may qualify you to win!

Your members can practice their skills within Facebook using the Cisco Facebook EdgQuest 2 App. When time for the actual tournament, they will play the game at the Cisco EdgeQuest website.

Potential prizes include:

• Grand prize: US$500 gift card and a Cisco Wireless Home Audio Solution
• First prize: US$300 gift card
• Second prize: US$100 gift card

Prizes will be awarded to each week’s top eligible scorers.

I hope you win some big prizes!

Frame Relay

What is Frame-Relay?

Frame Relay is a Layer 2 protocol and commonly known as a service from carriers. For example, people will say “I ordered a frame-relay circuit”. Frame relay creates a private network through a carrier’s network. This is done with permanent virtual circuits (PVC). A PVC is a connection from one site, to another site, through the carrier’s network. This is really just a configuration entry that a carrier makes on their frame relay switches.

Obtaining a frame-relay circuit is done by ordering a T1 or fractional T1 from the carrier. On top of that, you order a frame-relay port, matching the size of the circuit you ordered. Finally, you order a PVC that connects your frame relay port to another of your ports inside the network.

The benefits to frame-relay are:

• Ability to have a single circuit that connects to the “frame relay cloud” and gain access to all other sites (as long as you have PVCs). As the number of locations grow, you would save more and more money because you don’t need as many circuits as you would if you were trying to fully-mesh your network with point to point leased lines.
• Improved disaster recovery because all you have to do is to order a single circuit to the cloud and PVC’s to gain access to all remote sites.
• By using the PVCs, you can design your WAN however you want. Meaning, you define what sites have direct connections to other sites and you only pay the small monthly PVC fee for each connection.

Some other terms you should know, concerning frame relay are:

• LMI = local management interface. LMI is the management protocol of frame relay. LMI is sent between the frame relay switches and routers to communicate what DLCI’s are available and if there is congestion in the network.
• DLCI = data link connection identifier. This is a number used to identify each PVC in the frame relay network.
• CIR = committed information rate. This is the amount bandwidth you pay to guarantee you will receive, on each PVC. Generally you have much less CIR than you have port speed. You can, of course, burst above your CIR to your port speed but that traffic is marked DE.
• DE = discard eligible. Traffic marked DE (that was above your CIR) CAN be discarded by the frame-relay network if there is congestion.
• FECN & BECN = forward explicit congestion notification & backward explicit congestion notification. These are bits set inside LMI packets to alert the frame-relay devices that there is congestion in the network.

OSPF

The OSPF dynamic routing protocol is probably the most popular LAN routing protocol today. OSPF can scale to the largest LANs but can also start out small. While OSPF can be complex to configure, its basic configuration isn't difficult

What do you need to know about OSPF?

Before you configure OSPF, there are three things you should know about it first. Here they are:

1. OSPF stands for open shortest path first. It also uses the SPF (shortest path first) algorithm to determine the best route to its neighbors.
2. OSPF is a standard routing protocol, as defined by RFC2328 and RFC1247. This means that OSPF can run on just about any company's' routers and OSPF routes from a non-Cisco router can be exchanged with Cisco routers.
3. The administrative distance for OSPF is 110.
4. The entire network that OSPF routes for is called an "Autonomous System", or "AS".
5. All OSPF routing updates must traverse area 0. Because of this, you should carefully design your network before you begin deploying OSPF.

With OSPF, every router has its own unique "picture" (topology map) of the network. Routers use "HELLO" packets to periodically check with routers to ensure they are still there. Every router in OSPF is identified with a "router ID". The router ID can be manually entered or OSPF will automatically choose the IP address with the highest number.

What features does OSPF offer?

OSPF offers the following features, that are found in a number of routing protocols:

• A standards-based routing protocol that works is very interoperable between different vendors routers and firewalls
• Supports variable length subnet masks (VLSM), making it a classless routing protocols
• Authentication of routing updates are supported
• Route redistribution is supported between different routing protocols
• OSPF works well in point to point and point to multipoint, broadcast or non-broadcast configurations
• OSPF also offers a number of OSPF-specific features such as stub areas, virtual links, and OSPF on demand circuits.

How do you configure OSPF in the Cisco IOS?

To configure OSPF in the Cisco IOS, just follow these steps:

Set the bandwidth on your interfaces using the bandwidth command Router (config-if)#bandwidth XX (where XX signifies the bandwidth of the WAN connection)

Start the OSPF routing process and specify your process number. The process number is an arbitrary number. It is recommended that the number match on all routers but it is not required. The process ID number does not have to be the AS number, although many people confuse that it is.

Router (config)# router ospf {process-ID#}

Next, instruct the router to advertise the networks that are directly linked to it by entering network statments with the area ID number for that network, like this:

Router (config-router)# network {X.X.X.X} {Y.Y.Y.Y} area {z}

In this example, the X.X.X.X is the network id of a network that is linked directly to the router. The Y.Y.Y.Y is the wildcard mask for that network. The wildcard mask is the inverse mask of the subnet mask. The "z" parameter is the area id number. For small networks, this can always be zero (0) but for larger networks, the area IDs need to be properly planned as all routing updates must traverse area 0.

You should enter a network statement for every network directly attached to the router.

Once OSPF is configured, you can check the status using the show ip route and show ip ospfcommands.

For more information on configuring OSPF, see the official Cisco OSPF documentation.

Configuration Examples

Here is an example of a router configured with the OSPF routing protocol:

Interface Gigabit Ethernet 0/0 ip address 10.1.1.1 255.255.255.0

Interface Serial 3/0 ip address 10.2.1.1 255.255.255.0

router(config)# router ospf 1 router(config-router)# network 10.1.1.1 0.0.0.255 area 0 router(config-router)# network 10.2.1.1 0.0.0.255 area 0

In Summary

OSPF is the most popular Interior Routing Protocol (IGP) in use today. For that reason alone, it is a dynamic routing protocol that you should be familiar with. I encourage you to spend some time configuring a basic OSPF network to get experience with OSPF.

EIGRP

What do you need to know about EIGRP?

Before you configure EIGRP, there are some things you should know about it first. Here they are:

• EIGRP is the Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol.
• EIGRP is a Cisco proprietary routing protocol based on their original Interior Gateway Routing Protocol. EIGRP can only be used on networks where all routers are Cisco routers.
• The administrative distance for EIGRP is 90 and 170 for internal and external EIGRP, respectively.

What features does EIGRP offer?

• Automatic redistribution of routes between IGRP and EIGRP.
• Ability to turn off and on EIGRP and IGRP on individual interfaces of the router.
• Fast network convergence thanks to EIGRP's DUAL algorithm (convergence is when all routers know about all the networks that every other router is offering).
• Incremental Updates that save network bandwidth and speed convergence.
• Reduced router CPU load, as compared to IGRP.
• EIGRP uses neighbor discovery to find and keep track of neighboring routers. Neighbor discovery uses multicast IP and is not tied to whether or not the the IP network is properly configured.
• EIGRP prevents routing loops on the network
• Supports variable length subnet masks (VLSM)
• Automatic Route Summarization

How do you configure EIGRP in the Cisco IOS?

To configure EIGRP in the Cisco IOS, just follow these steps:

1. Set the bandwidth on your interfaces using the bandwidth command
Router (config-if)# bandwidth XX
(where XX signify the bandwidth of the WAN connection)
2. Start the EIGRP routing process and specify your AS number
Router (config)# router eigrp AS
Where the "AS" in the above-mentioned command stands for Autonomous System number. This number should be the same on all routers.
3. Once you are through this stage, next step is to instruct the router in order to advertise the networks that are directly linked to it. You can do it with the help of command
Router (config-router)# network X.X.X.X

Where X.X.X.X is the network id of a network that is linked directly to the router. You should enter this command for each network directly attached to the router. However, you can, in a single statement, enter the supernet of a group of subnets. When you do that, the router will automatically identify the subnets.

Optionally, you can configure the amount of WAN link bandwidth that an EIGRP router will use with this command:

Router(config-if)# ip bandwidth-percent eigrp XX

Once EIGRP is configured, you can check the status using the show ip route and show ip eigrp commands. Here are some examples:

Router# show ip route

207.71.26.0/28 is subnetted, 1 subnets D 207.71.26.128 [90/8199936] via 10.6.199.1, 1w1d, Serial0/0 10.0.0.0/8 is variably subnetted, 217 subnets, 4 masks D 10.110.100.0/30 [90/6535936] via 10.6.199.1, 5w1d, Serial0/0

Notice the "D" on the left side of the output. All "D" routes are EIGRP routes.

There are a number of show ip eigrp xxxx commands. Here is an example of the "neighbors" version:

Router# show ip eigrp neighbors IP-EIGRP neighbors for process 100 H Address Interface Hold Uptime SRTT RTO Q Seq Type (sec) (ms) Cnt Num 0 10.6.199.1 Se0/0 11 5w1d 20 282 0 887645 Router#

In Summary

While some of you might say that EIGRP is past its prime or has been replaced by OSPF, I ask that you take a second look at EIGRP. It is an excellent routing protocol and is used in so many large networks today. EIGRP is not too difficult to configure and it can handle even the largest networks. 

Passwords to secure your Cisco Router.

Types of Cisco Router Passwords

When it comes to basic password security, there are three basic types:

• Line Passwords
• Privileged mode Passwords (enable mode)
• Username Passwords (optional)

Let’s explore these.

Line Passwords

Line passwords are configured on router lines. Examples of lines are:

• Console Line - The console is the main serial administrative port on a router. This is where you configure the router when it is new and has no network configuration.

• Aux Line – The aux line is an auxiliary port. Like the console, it is a physical port on every router. You can think of it as a backup console port. Besides being a backup console port, the aux port is periodically used for administrative console dial up access to the router.
• VTY Lines – Vty lines are “virtual tty” lines and are used when you connect to the router via telnet or ssh. These are not physical lines on the router but virtual “inbound network lines”.
• Async Lines – Async lines are asynchronous serial lines and are optional. These async lines are created when you insert an async serial card in a router. You can use the async serial lines to connect dumb-terminals (text-based terminals), serial printers, or modems.
  
  
  
  
  All of these different lines need a password configured on them. Let’s find out how to configure Cisco router line passwords.

  Configuring Cisco Router Line Passwords

  There are two commands used to configure line passwords, no matter what kind of line you are using. The commands are password and login. The password command is used to set your line password. The login command, when entered by itself, is used to tell the router to use the password that is configured on the line. Here is an example of how this is configured on the console port:
  
  
  Router#conf t
  Router(config)#line con 0
  Router(config-line)#password cisco
  Router(config-line)#login
  Router(config-line)#exit
  
  
  We repeat this on AUX port as well
  
  
  Router#conf t
  Router(config)#line aux 0
  Router(config-line)#password cisco
  Router(config-line)#login
  Router(config-line)#exit
  
  
  Finally, we configure the same commands on the VTY lines. The catch to doing this is that there is more than one VTY. Because you don’t want to have to configure them one at a time, you use a VTY range when performing the configuration. Using a VTY range works by specifying your router’s starting and ending VTY number. Inside the configuration mode for this range of VTYs is where you are configuring the password and login commands. In the past, router only had 0-4, or 5, VTY lines. Today, most routers have 0-15, or 16, VTY lines. Make sure that you know how many VTY’s your router has so that there aren’t some lines that are left without a password. Here is what you do to tell how many lines your router has:
  
  
  Router#conf t
  Router(config)#line vty 0 ?
   <1-15>   Last Line Number
  
  
  
  
  The last Number for example 15 lets you know how many VTY lines are on the router...in this case it is 16....
  
  
  for configuration of VTY passwords on the router
  
  
  Router#conf t
  Router(config)#line vty 0 15
  Router(config-line)#password cisco
  Router(config-line)#login
  Router(config-line)#exit