A handful of ports descriptions labeled "port failed?".
Observing coworkers throw out "Must be a bad cable" before checking ip settings.
Not once have I ever needed to replace a factory terminated cable.
Not once have I found a "bad port" on a switch. Not sure what the failure mode of a bad port would be, but unless the contacts were corroded or dusty, I can't imagine a single port would fail.
I can however imagine, not knowing which drop corresponds to which patch port, which is a separate issue...

Am I a jerk for doubting my coworkers, or am I right that these failures are very rare?

Hello all,

I have this case where I need to set up a redundant path to our partner.

Our DCs: DC in LA and in NY. We have this subnet in LA: 10.160.10.0/24 and an another subnet in NY 10.180.10.0/24 that needs to reach 10.10.10.0/24 (our partner).

Setup: https://imgur.com/zkOiApf

Between our core switches in LA and NY, we run MPLS L3 VPN.

In LA, we have an internal FW (internal_FW_LA) and core switch (Core-sw_LA) that just run static routes between each other. There will be a direct fiber connection to the partner (Parrtner_A_LA router) from Core-sw_LA. I was thinking that I will run L3 (static) between internal_FW_LA and Partner router Partner_A_LA. This will be the primary link to the partner.

In NY, we have a internal FW (internal_FW_NY) core switch (Core_sw_NY), and VPN HUB (VPN_hub_NY). We run static routes as well between these three. From the VPN hub, I will run an IPsec tunnel to the Partner_A_NY Fortigate.

Now the idea is that we will only use one link to the partner at a time and in this case, it would be the primary link which is in LA. The 10.180.10.0/24 (in NY) needs to be routed through the MPLS and then from there through the primary link (via internal_FW_LA) to the partner router Partner_A_LA. 10.160.10.0/24 will of course take the same path.

In case the primary link goes down, then traffic from LA will need to be routed through the MPLS to NY and from there over the IPsec tunnel (so both 10.160.10.0/24 & 10.180.10.0/24) will be routed over the IPsec tunnel.

Now, I was thinking that I would need to use some kind of dynamic routing and in this case BGP on the internal firewalls but the ssue is that these internal firewalls are not allowed to use BGP (due to some policy). Running BGP on the core switches may make sense but that will break standardizing our way of designing things.

I am stuck and cannot figure out how to proceed here.

Any input?

I've got a situation where we have a cradlepoint L950 at a location that has good reception and its connected to a fibre media converter to single mode fibre that's ran through a factory. On the other side, we have a Fortigate firewall that is connected to a media converter RJ45 that gets connection from the single mode fibre.

The site is remote.

When doing a ping test from our loopback IP that we setup with our tunneling, I'm getting packet drops every 30 seconds and it coming back online after 10 seconds. The fibre cable was installed in the last month and the Cradlepoint reception is good. Previously when we were remotely connecting to the firewall, we had the firewall connected to the Cradlepoint directly (through PoE Inj on Port 2 of cradlepoint for IPPT) and experienced no issues at the same location the Cradlepoint is now. We've replaced wires and such and still having issues. We're getting our cable guy to check the fibre line again but anyone have any insight as to what is happening or the resolution to this?

Hi everyone,

I’m implementing 802.1X using Forescout, and I need some advice. Please help me understand if my plan is correct.

The Operations team hasn’t added the CCTV subnet to Forescout, and the cameras don’t support 802.1X.

My plan is to add the cameras to Forescout, register their MAC addresses in MAR, and then apply 802.1X to the switch ports.

Is this the correct approach, and what steps should I follow to avoid disconnecting them?

I also have IP phones sharing the same switch port with PCs, using separate Voice and Data VLANs.

I believe the phones don’t support 802.1X either.

Should I add their MAC addresses to MAR and use MAB for the phones while keeping 802.1X for the PCs?

I’d appreciate any advice on the correct approach.
Thanks

Ive been working with firewalls since 2009. I've worked with Cisco, Meraki, Fortinet, Palo Alto, Sonicwall, Sophos, pfSense, and a few others. My Cisco experience was the pix and then the asa's. I haven't really played with any of the firepower line. Cisco will always hold a special place, it's what I started with and it's the equipment I learned on. But then I found the FortiGate and liked it MUCH better. More intuitive, good price, modern gui but still powerful. The Fortigate has been my favorite over the years but as I bounced around different companies I got to touch a lot of different firewalls. Merakis just seem to work, modern gui but I feel like it lacks some advanced features/settings for the sake of being easy to setup. Palo Altos AppID I really liked and honestly, I think its app control is better than fortinets, but almost everything else felt convoluted and not as intuitive. Why must I go to 12 different spots to build a vpn tunnel?! The wait times for changes also drove me crazy. Plus those Palos are expensive. Both the Sophos and the Sonicwalls I was able to use but they felt like they were a step behind and not as polished. So now I ask you, what firewall have you liked over the years?

I’ve been working with FortiGate as my main edge firewall for a while, and I’ve always found its traffic visibility, bandwidth statistics, and QoS/traffic shaping pretty straightforward

Now that I’m working more with Palo Alto, I find these areas surprisingly WAY more complicated, especially understanding traffic statistics and configuring QoS.

Is this a normal learning curve when switching from Fortinet to Palo Alto, or am I missing something? 😅

Curious how common this actually is. Do you force everything through internal resolvers and block 53 out from endpoints, or is it more of a “we should” thing?

For those who did it, what broke? And do you block DoH too, or is that a lost cause?

My company is at the verge of turning up backbone links between our metros and we will run sr mpls. At a new site I had a chance to configure mpls so it's ready. All Nokia routers. IPv6 was a bit of an afterthought for me. We do have it on all interfaces, but nobody here wants to run Srv6. Would rather stay with the more mature mpls.

We could run dual stack ipv4 / ipv6, but im not sure if TE would be too difficult like that. We'll probably run rsvp for congestion control. I heard that it's better to run v6 over v4 mpls if you want this. And 6PE was an easy way to set that up. So I did that.

But...on these Nokias it was a bit of a headache to get working. I thought it was a simple as enabling label-unicast in the neighbor config. It's a bit more. Iad to adjust all the ibgp export policies for label-ipv6 also. Then, because SR holds separate RIB's for ipv6 and label-ipv6, I had to manually import routes between theories using import policies.

It works now but I found that after this import, only one best path is imported. We use multipath to load balance but that wont work for ipv6 routes now. You also have to do a special 'show route all' to see the imported best routes in the ipv6 RIB. They are hidden otherwise.

So I don't think it was a very good experience configuring this on the Nokias. I belive it's much easier on other platforms. But that could be another bring assumption. What do you guys think? Is 6PE needed for a reason beyond having a v6vfeee core? Is it actually really needed if you want TE? And is it less difficult to get working on most platforms?

Hi!

I'm trying to figure out how to cable some ciena waveserver AIs we have. First time doing this for me so i'm learning

We have two modules installed

• slot 1: CMD-10
• slot 2: MOTR-400-1-8
• On the MOTR we're using 2/3 and 2/7 as the 400G client side ports, so that part is easy.

This is my understanding of how the other ports should be connected:

• 1/13 is the Line port (the actual dark fiber going to the other site)
• 1/11 and 1/12 are connected to each other with a normal duplex fiber cable (OSC ports)
• Port 2/1 goes to 1/1 with a normal duplex fiber cable.

I think thats about it? Aside from the DCN and console which are easy.

I couldn't find any help on ciena.com for this which is why i'm asking here. Thanks!!

I have landed myself as the networking guy for an org with 10-15 admin sites and 120-130 residential sites.

Our currently topology has every location set up with 2 manual policy based IPSEC tunnels to our azure hosted virutal sonicwall and an onsite sonicwall at our main admin location.
However we are moving from having each site having tunnels to using SDWAN with unifi gateways and having all of the normal sites as spokes that talk to a set of devices acting as hubs that then pass the traffic to the azure sonicwall.
With having the multiple hubs, in order for that failover to work without the ipsec tunnels sending data into a black hole we're going to need dynamic routing.

Currently testing BGP with no experience, just starting with a UDM Pro as a test hub and have it talking to azure through a route based ipsec VTI. I got the AS on each end to talk to each other.
The test UDM's gateway can reach its BGP Neighbor and pass traffic, but it's unable to pass traffic to the 2 subnets it's advertising.
I'm more than happy to share my config for others to look at.

I would love any advice or assistance

Hola en resumen que cuando pongo el qcow2 de fortigate (ya probe todas las versiones) enciende pero no muestra nada en consola, probe de todo, cambiandole el nombre al qcow2 que sea igual a la hora de poner la plantilla, probre poner el GNS3 con VMWARE y VIRTUALBOX, me da el mismo error en los dos, probe instalar versiones anteriores de GNS3 pero nada sigue igual.

MI VM de GNS3 tiene 8 cores y 20gb de RAM

Howdy!

Looking for some tips on staying sane during a 3 month project with early hours mixed with normal hours I’m about to start.

I am about to kick off a 3 month project where I will be replacing switches at all of our locations. Due to business requirements the maintenance windows will be starting around 3AM and will go till 6AM. This will be 2-3 days a week, sometimes 4 days a week, so I typically will be starting the week off with normal hours on Monday, and then come Tuesday/Wednesday I need to flip my schedule to accommodate the early start, and then go back to a “normal” schedule Thursday/Friday.

Is there really anything I can do to make this adjustment a little easier on my body/mental or do I just need to suck it up for the few months and then take time off at the end to recover lol? I’m already starting to absolutely dread this and it hasn’t even started yet. I’m no stranger to working weird hours but this is the first time where it will be going on weekly for around 3 months and I’m trying to mentally prepare for the fucked up sleep I’m about to endure.

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m reviewing a network diagram for a hotel infrastructure and I’m a bit confused about the role of the Collect Switch 1 & 2 (both Sw-24). My questions:

1. What is the exact role of the Collect Switches in this design?
2. Why do we need them? What benefits do they provide?
3. Why not connect the Router Load Balancing directly to Firewall #1 and #2? Would that break something (redundancy, scalability, security, management…)?

I’ve attached the diagram for reference.

Thanks in advance for any insights!

https://i.postimg.cc/QdLdpnyN/Topo-nw.jpg

After a switch firmware upgrade, users started having intermittent wireless connectivity issues, with brief disconnects and reconnects while connected to the corporate Wi-Fi network. Multiple access points are repeatedly losing and re-establishing their CAPWAP connection to the wireless controller. While the affected APs remain powered on and do not reboot, their CAPWAP association uptime continuously resets, causing APs to temporarily enter FlexConnect standalone mode before rejoining the controller. Controller logs show repeated DTLS tunnel disconnects, while AP logs indicate CAPWAP restarts due to missed data keepalives ("data keepalive not received").

I ruled out AP reboots, PoE issues, interface errors, STP. Physical switch ports are operating normally with no CRC, discards, or link errors. Opened Cisco TAC case but they're taking long so looking to the masses for help. I'm hoping someone experienced something similar that can throw in their two cents.

Anyone here doing Fortigate installations? I have been running into an oddity where if I have a location of lets say 10 switches that you would assume fits nicely in /28 pool, at around switch 8 or 9 once new switches go online previous switches start appearing as offline, and seemingly needing to be assigned a new IP from the pool.

Similiar issues happen when you do actually run out of IP addresses in the pool, which is why im thinking the issue is related to the IP pool. Anyone else noticed the same issue? (afaik it doesnt affect functionality since last migration I had the main switch appear as offline while all the switches connected to it remained online, and looking from CLI even the main one appeared online).

Olá colegas. Atualmente trabalho no NOC de um provedor local da minha região. Recentemente, me cadastrei em uma pós-graduação da instituição Hackone e me deparei com a disciplina de infraestrutura e arquitetura de redes e sobre o método PPDIOO da cisco. Eu sou muito problemático em não saber fazer as coisas da maneira correta então sempre pesquiso bit a bit de tudo, porém o PPDIOO não me parece ter muita documentação atual na internet e parece que ele está sendo descontinuado. Com isso, queria me certificar se alguém com experiÊncia no mercado em empresas de NOC ou de TI costuma usar essa metodologia para desenvolver infraestruturas de redes para atender demandas de empresas dos mais diversos tamanhos.

Entre outras dúvidas:

Além do PPDIOO há outro framework para desenvolver redes?
Quais as metodologias são empregadas em cada etapa? (sendo o PPDIOO ou não)
Como posso chegar o mais perto possível de entender como se defini os requisitos de um negócio e transormá-los em redes?

Além de ser problemático com o "bit a bit" também sou problemático com a prática, mesmo se eu souber exatamente toda a teoria e não ter a prática eu não considero que sei fazer "aquilo". Como posso obter prática em desenvolver arquiteturas de redes e implementá-las? Mas antes de tudo desenvolver uma arquitetura do zero de maneira racional e sistemática é o meu foco.

The issue I am running into is that the full configuration is not being saved once the pull is complete. I have checked the most recent pull and it is grabbing the whole config, but when I open the config in the webUI I am only getting about 80 - 90 lines in the file. I'm currently trying to backup configs for Extreme 4850GTS switches (formerly Avaya). Using model Boss. Wondering if anyone has encountered this issue with the same switches are other models? If so, were you able to find a resolution?

Thank you.

I came across an interesting discussion on LowEndTalk about pricing differences on the IPXO marketplace.

Someone managing IPv4 space for multiple owners compared prices for the same subnets across different accounts and noticed some unexpected differences.

Here's what was reported:

• A /24 subnet listed by its owner at $60/month normally appeared at $69/month to buyers, including a $9 platform fee.
• The same subnet reportedly showed $87/month when viewed from an account that had previously rented IPs through IPXO.
• The difference matches the formula: $60 × 1.30 + $9 = $87.
• Another /24 was listed at $59/month for some accounts and $74/month for others, showing a similar pattern.

According to the original report, accounts with previous rental activity appeared to see higher prices than accounts without rental history.

The report also raises questions about whether address owners are aware of these pricing differences and how any additional charges are handled.

Original discussion with screenshots:

https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/222031/ipxo-loyalty-program-rent-once-see-a-30-markup-even-on-your-own-subnet

I'm curious whether anyone else has observed similar pricing differences on IPXO.

Could this be related to a specific pricing policy, account settings, or something else?

Would be interested in hearing from other users or IPXO representatives who can clarify how this works.

Currently my company uses solarwinds for monitoring firewall and switches. I am using snmp traps for alerting and I have netflow setup. I am not thrilled with solarwinds since the traps are tied to a node so its harder to reset the snmp traps as well as well as their support is extremely hit or miss. I also do not like the fact that NCM does not do API for individual firewalls and switches unless I have an orchestrator or something cloud based like meraki. Who do you guys use for network monitoring?

If you were designing a service provider network and had to use segment routing, what data plane would you use and why? (SR-MPLS or SRv6)

Just trying to understand how this makes sense. We have a defective fan on a Aruba 7240 Controller. As part of the RMA, we received a brand new controller, instead of just the replacement fan. We are supposed to return the defective fan with the brand new controller. Why wouldn't they just send the replacement fan? Just doesn't make sense to me.

I’m senior level with advanced certs and 15 yeo. I’m looking at AI capability exploding and just an overall simplification of networking in general via abstraction e.g SDWan, ACI etc.

Yes, orgs will always need someone who knows what’s going on under the hood but they aren’t going to need dozens of people. And yes someone will need to be physically present but why pay someone 100k for that?

I realize this isn’t just a networking issue but a societal order issue as this same thing will happen to all other fields but at end of day nobody is coming to save us.

I’ve got 20+ years left in the game so I ask you what is our strategy to continue to earn income for next two decades? Should we just accept reality and pivot into AI now and forget networking? Worth pursuing MS in AI or perhaps some relevant certs?

Edit: Yall 50+ graybeards are lucky bastards to be able to peace out right at this shit takes over and after a historic market run. I’m jealous.

What Product are most people using, the company I work for uses Palo Alto’s Ion product and it has been nothing short of trash, from bugs, to the sase connection being more sketchy than dollar store pills. It seems like the product is simply not mature, is that the norm or did we just get sold an awful product? We did a POC with other products (Fortinet & Cisco) and the decision was made to go with Ion. What’s the consensus on SD-WAN?