http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/feed.xml ITAA RSS feed en http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/how-get-one-printer-work-either-two-computers <p></p><p>Situation: one home computer and one printer in one room, connected by a cable thru a router. Another computer in another room, connected wirelessly through the same router. I want to be able to print from either computer. The computer/printer combo (in the same room) works. The computer in the other room won't print. I don't know the correct setup for the other computer. Recommendations, please.</p> http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/how-get-one-printer-work-either-two-computers#comments You say the hard wired computer is connected to the printer by a cable though the router so I am assuming this is a network printer. One way to print from the wireless computer is to share the printer from the computer that is hard wired so that the wireless computer can print to the printer by using the shared printer on the hard wired computer. To share the printer on a windows machine you highlight the printer in the printer list, right-click to bring up the menu, choose Properties, select the Sharing tab, and choose the "Share this Printer" option. After that you can connect from the wireless computer to the hard wired computer and select the shared printer and print a test page. After that you should be able to use the printer at will. Another way to print is directly to the network printer, but first you need to make sure that your router will pass wireless traffic on the port number used by the printer over to the printer and then you can set the wireless computer up the same way the hard wired computer is set up to print to the printer. If the printer has an IP address assigned you can use the ping command to verify that your wireless computer can connect to the printer. If you can not seem to make the connection to the printer you may need to review the instructions for your router and make some changes to the settings to enable network traffic to reach the printer from the wireless computer. Steve SMB Wireless / Mobile printers Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:25:03 -0500 36012 at http://www.networkworld.com/community http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/proxy-css1500-issue <p></p><p>I have an issue with load-balancing connections from a proxy server.</p> <p>The issue is some of the services I am running on the backend server farm require persistance. This is posing a problem as with source IP persistance - the connections will all always go to the same real server as the connection are all being sourced by the proxy server.</p> <p>I have thought about cookie persistance, but think the same issue will occur as the cookie will be placed on the proxy and not the real client intiating the request. <span class='read-more'><a href="http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/proxy-css1500-issue"><br /><br /><strong>Read more</strong></a></span></p> http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/proxy-css1500-issue#comments To see where changes need to be made, we need to look at each step in the communications process. Starting with the CS1500, I would make sure you are running the latest version of firmware available for the device. If this doesn't resolve the problem, try opening a case with Cisco TAC to see if there are any configuration changes that you can make that will help resolve the problem. I will assume that you are using a commercial proxy server for the rest of the options that I will discuss. While Cisco TAC may push back a bit because you are using a third-party proxy server, they should still be able to provide some troubleshooting steps to help you identify where the problem is and possibly how to resolve it. Try to white list the internal servers that you are having problems with. Whitelisting in the context I have used it will tell the proxy server not to do anything in terms of caching the server or anything else. If this appears to fix things, then you need to start digging deeper into the proxy server configuration to see how you can get things to work the way you need them to. As with the CSS1500, I would suggest that you installe the lastest firmware/software for the proxy server. This could either fix the problem or give you some additional tools to work with. The next troubleshooting step is to run a proctocol analyzer at three different points - between the CSS1500 and the external part of your network where the users are, between the proxy server and the CSS1500 and between the servers and the proxy server. Sniffing the traffic between each of these points should give you additional information as to where configuration changes to consider. It will also provide the vendor technical support folks you will be working with good information to help identify a fix. When looking for a fix for a problem when the traffic is flowing between a load balancer and a proxy server, document the steps you took to find the information about how the communications are flowing. I worked with one of my readers last year who was in a similar configuration and found that with one of the applications on their network that each time the application was upgraded that they had to make minor tweaks to the previous fix to get things to work again. Having the initial resolution documented helped to quickly identify what had to be changed to get things working again. Ron LANs / WANs Security cookies proxy servers Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:26:43 -0500 PLG 35812 at http://www.networkworld.com/community http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/telecom-software-certification <p></p><p>Hi,</p> <p>I am a software engineer in the telecom sector, working on VoIP on Session Initiation Protocol.</p> <p>I like to know which are the certification courses that can be benificial in my career growth as per learning and as per growth prospectives.</p> <p>Whether CCNA will help me regarding my career growth.</p> <p>Regards,<br /> KD</p> http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/telecom-software-certification#comments KD: Having your CCNA certainly wouldn't hurt: It'll help give you a good grounding in the OSI model, the math you will need to be comfortable with in handling a network of any size, the basics of routing, etc. There are several areas that you can look at moving onto from there. Which ones will depend on your focus in VoIP and the the hardware that you will be running it on. Cisco has several options worth considering. A newly announced certification, CCNA Voice, might be the next step - you'll need to have your CCNA for this. CCNA Wireless starts to move you into VoIP specific parts of Cisco Unified Messaging. Depending on how far you want to take it, at least on the Cisco side of things, you can then look at CCVP, which is a series of 4 exams taking you deeper into the VoIP world. There are a host of other VOIP related certifications that you can pursue from companies such as CompTIA, Lucent and Alcatel. What you should consider pursuing will depend in part as to what hardware platforms you plan on being involved with or would like exposure to. Ron VoIP / Convergence certification telecom Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:35:15 -0500 35731 at http://www.networkworld.com/community http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/connect-2-lan-cards-single-system <p></p><p>I have XP operated and win98 SE operating system. I am using VSNL Broadband connection in XP I had two lan cards located in XP one is on board (Realtek) and another is D-Link. I am connecting to internet using<strong> Realtek</strong> which have <strong>ip#192.1681.1</strong> and <strong>defa gateway#192.168.1.254</strong> and dns which are provided by ISP.<br /> Now I want to connect both systems in P2P using other lancard I had installed drivers but In system tray its showing as lancard unplugged (whcih I want to used for P2P). <span class='read-more'><a href="http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/connect-2-lan-cards-single-system"><br /><br /><strong>Read more</strong></a></span></p> http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/connect-2-lan-cards-single-system#comments If you are connecting the XP and Win98 computers with a cable going directly from one computer's ethernet port to the other you will need to use a "null-modem ethernet cable" rather than a standard ethernet cable. If you are going through a hub or router then you would use regular ethernet cable. If you are using the proper cabling then after double checking that your physical connections are securely in place open up the control panel on the XP system and dig down into the System/Hardware/Device Manager applet and expand the Network adapters section of the tree and verify that both cards are listed there. If they are not both listed in the Network adapters list you may need to find the missing adapter under the big yellow question mark section and delete the device from the list, reboot, and re-install the driver software. If they are both in the Network adapters list check the properties of each to ensure that there are no conflicts listed in the Resources panel of the Properties dialog. If there are conflicts identified you may need to change settings on one or the other network adapter to eliminate the conflicts. Another possibility is to use a hub and the single working network adapter in the XP box along with Internet Connection Sharing to connect the Win98 machine to the Internet by setting up Internet Connection Sharing on the XP system, connecting both machines to the hub, the hub to the internet, and aiming the Win98 system's gateway address at the XP machine. Steve LANs / WANs Network Management Cisco Local Networking Academy Ethernet internet sharing lan cards lan setup lan sharing Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:51:47 -0500 35695 at http://www.networkworld.com/community http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/problem-connecting-wireless-home <p></p><p>I used to be able to connect to my home wireless with no problems. I recently reformatted my laptop and of course I had to download drivers and such. However, now I'm having problems getting a connection wirelessly. I am connected with excellent signal strength but the status says "limited or no connectivity". I don't think anything is wrong with the modem because I am able to establish a wired connection. Thanks for any attempts to help.</p> http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/problem-connecting-wireless-home#comments There are several things to look at. The first is to get a copy of inSSIDer from the folks at <a href="http://www.MetaGeek.net">MetaGeek.net</a>. I used to suggest Netstumbler but it doesn't have support for WPA. If you can see your access point (AP) with inSSIDer, that would indicate that the AP is OK and the area you need to concentrate is your laptop. You don't mention the version of Windows that you are running on. If it is XP, you really want to install XP SP 3, because it fixes several wireless-related problems. If you are on Vista, make sure you have the latest patches installed. Make sure that you have the latest firmware installed on your AP. You may need to taking things down a step or two on your AP depending on how hard you have it locked down. If you have broadcasting turned off for your SSID, try enabling it just to make it easier for the laptop to find the AP. If inSSIDer shows the SSID for your AP, try using the wireless survey functionality that is included with most to see if it also sees the AP as well. I like using different apps that do the same test just to make sure you get the same results. If you have encryption turned on at the AP (and you should), temporarily turn off encryption to see if it is a setting problem between AP and your laptop. Depending on the type and level of encryption used, you might have a setting problem between the two devices that could explain the problem. For example WPA and WPA2 are similar encryption methods but you can't use WPA to talk to WPA2. Depending on who made the wireless card in your laptop (it is probably Intel), go directly to the wireless-car vendor's Web site and get the latest drivers (it's possible that the latest drivers are not on the laptop vendor's website). Look for things in the immediate area of your laptop and access point that may have changed. If you have a cordless phone, see if it is in the same frequency range as your AP. If the phone is labeled with something like 2.4 somewhere on the phone, try removing power from the phone and see if your wireless problem goes away. If that fixes it, you will need to change out your wireless phone to one that uses either 900-Mhz or the 5-Gigahertz range. Ron SMB Wireless / Mobile Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:30:43 -0500 lootninja 35632 at http://www.networkworld.com/community http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/netflow-cs-mars <p></p><p>Hi all,</p> <p>NetFlow is also involved in CS-MARS for anomaly detection. Can anyone tell me is there any any difference when NetFlow data used in NFC Engine/CS-MARS.Is there any performance issues result over the Netflow data used in NFC/CS-MARS.</p> <p>Regards,<br /> Srini</p> http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/netflow-cs-mars#comments This <a href="http://www.cisco.com/web/DK/assets/docs/security2006/Security2006_Eric_Lenten_2.pdf">Cisco security presentation</a> discusses using Netflow with CS-Mars and indicates that enabling Netflow 5 and exporting data can increase CPU load on the router between 15 and 20 percent and that Netflow traffic may represent between 1 and 1.5 percent of the network traffic being monitored. The <a href="http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/security_management/cs-mars/6.0/device/configuration/guide/chAsa8x.html">Device Configuration Guide for Cisco Security MARS, Release 6.x</a> says that NSEL, which is an adaptation of Netflow 9 can transmit much of the same information in a less CPU-intensive, more secure, and more bandwidth-efficient way. The performance difference between using CS-MARS or the Netflow Collector Engine is going to depend on the hardware and which version(s) of software you are running. Steve Security NetFlow Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:09:47 -0500 Srinivas 35532 at http://www.networkworld.com/community http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/making-jump-it-director <p></p><p>I have been in IT for almost 20 years now and have worked my way all the way up from the help desk to an IT Director in the Healthcare industry. </p> <p>I have been lucky enough to have hands on and management experience in cutting edge technology as well as experience in integrating IT services into acute/critical business processes with great success. I am very comfortable with the technology part as well as the managing of those departments and setting course for future direction. </p> <p>My question is; how would one make the jump from an IT Director to a more senior level position? <span class='read-more'><a href="http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/making-jump-it-director"><br /><br /><strong>Read more</strong></a></span></p> http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/making-jump-it-director#comments The easiest way to become a CEO is to start your own company. Rising from a director level position to a more senior management or CxO level position otherwise is not something I have a lot of experience with. The people around me in corporate settings who made that move to the next level successfully were invited upstairs so there may be some validity in your statement about who you know versus what you know. The key seemed to be ensuring that senior management knows you well enough to have good knowledge about what you could accomplish beyond meeting the expectations of the current position. I have also seen people move from Director level positions in large enterprises to CxO level positions in small or mid-market enterprises where the companies they moved to were comparable in size and complexity to the department or division they were in before. Perhaps there are readers with more experience than I who can share their wisdom on the subject. Steve Careers Data Center Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:32:40 -0500 35389 at http://www.networkworld.com/community http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/meaning-or-definations <p></p><p>When I enter <em>Show Process CPU</em> on a 6509 router, I am getting following results, in that i can see <strong>"Port manager per"</strong> process. I want to know the meaning of that particular process.</p> http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/meaning-or-definations#comments Referring to the <a href="http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/iosswrel/ps1828/products_tech_note09186a00800a65d0.shtml#showproccpu">Cisco docs</a>, we see <h2><a name="showproccpu">The show processes cpu Command</a></h2> <p>The <b>show processes cpu</b> command displays information about the active processes in the router and their corresponding CPU utilization statistics. <a href="/community/showprocess">Here</a> is a sample output of the <b>show processes cpu</b> command</p> <p>For more information, refer to <a href="http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/iosswrel/ps1828/products_tech_note09186a00800a65d0.shtml#processes">The Processes</a> section of the documentation. Following the link to the The Processes will take you to a description of the particular processes you see in the Show Processes CPU output.</p> Steve Cisco LANs / WANs routers Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:48:17 -0500 35353 at http://www.networkworld.com/community http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/cymphonix-dc30x-has-problem-my-organization <p></p><p>When I connect a Cymphonix DC30X to my network, after 7 or 8 hours my network goes down and users cannot use the Internet, but when I disconnect it, everything is OK.</p> http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/cymphonix-dc30x-has-problem-my-organization#comments I have worked with appliances similar to this and learned a lesson early one - proceed carefully and slowly. I would suggest using <a href="http://www.wireshark.org/">Wireshark</a> or your network analyzer of choice and look at the ports where the traffic comes into the device from your Internet connection and where to enters your network. Do this on both ports when the device is first connected to the network and then again when your network seems to come to a half. The first "sniffing" of network traffic will give you a baseline of the way things are working and will help you when you can no longer get anything to work on the network after several hours have passed. You should be able to get some idea as to where the problem is by seeing the traffic that is or isnt passing through the unit when you begin to see the problem you mentioned. Review the documentation that shipped with the device to ensure that you have it connected to the right point in the network. I usually place devices like this just inside the firewall and the remainder of the network it is servicing. Look at the error logs in the unit to see if it gives you any indication of what is or isnt working when your network traffic goes awry. Make sure that you have the latest version of the firmware for the appliance installed. We have all run into our fair share of bugs when implementing either an appliance or other software service that might have been avoided if we had applied the latest firmware updates. One option, if nothing else works and assuming that you have your configuration documented, is to do a factory reset of the appliance and rebuild your configuration one step at a time. It is entirely possible that one or more of the configuration changes you made might either be fighting between themselves or be the cause of the problem. If you do have your changes documented, you might be able to resolve the problem you are running into by carefully backing out the changes in the reverse order they were made (i.e. the last one made is removed first, then the next previous change is removed, etc). If you still haven't been able to find the source of the problem, make use of the support contract that I hope you have. If you don't have one, see if you can purchase a one-time support call or you may need to consider biting the bullet and getting the contract. While support contracts can be pricey, like the Mastercard commercial, they can be priceless when you really need them and havent been able to resolve the problem through other means. In checking the specs of the unit you mentioned, it appears capable of handling 5,000 users. While you didnt mention the number of users on your network, I will assume that you aren't near this limit. Another item to check is the speed of the Internet connection that you are using. The specs indicate it supports a connection speed of up to 20 Megabytes. If you rspeed is close to this or you have some heavy users, or a combination of the two, it is possible that the device simply can't keep up with the combination. This is where talking to the technical support folks at Cymphonix might yield some configuration changes that could improve the situation or give you the news that an upgrade to the next higher model might be necessary. Ron Network Management Security bandwidth optimization content filtering Cymphonix Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:53:47 -0500 35220 at http://www.networkworld.com/community http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/whats-use-marker-interface <p></p><p>Marker interface doesn't contains any methods or method declarations. What's the use of implements these interface. What's logic behind importing these market interfaces like serializable, clonable.</p> http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/whats-use-marker-interface#comments Marker interfaces are used to 'mark' an implementing class as having the capability indicated by the Marker interface and even though the interface does not define any methods to be implemented by the class being marked, for example, as Serializable, the declaration is required to enable the capability. In the case of Seriablizable, you declare that your class implements Serializable and that indicates that the non-transient data members in the class can be written to an ObjectOutputStream. The ObjectOutputStream private method writeObject() contains a series of instanceof tests to determine writeability, one of which looks for the Serializable interface. So declaring that your class implements the Serializable interface means that the writeability test will pass and writeObject() will send the data to the ObjectOutputStream. Declaring that your class implements the marker interface is how you indicate that your software wants to make use of some built in functionality that is enabled simply by declaring that your class implements the interface, even though you don't have to write any code to implement any methods. In the most recent versions of the Java language it is recommended to use annotations rather than marker interfaces to indicate that classes have particular semantics like serializable and clonable. Steve Software application development Java Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:59:59 -0500 35142 at http://www.networkworld.com/community