Ivan’s post this week was a good reminder that other parts of IT aren’t perfect either. It’s not all roses on the other side of the fence. Networking has done...
This article is Part 11 in a 12-Part Series. Part 1 - War Stories: Loops that Permanently Broke the Network Part 2 - War Stories: Switches Lying about Duplex Mismatches...
I’ve been wondering about how we’re approaching networking change. We know we need to make things better. Are we changing the ‘right’ things? I’ve got a feeling that we’re not,...
Brocade VDX switches have REST and NETCONF interfaces. The REST API uses the built-in HTTP server. By default, this uses plain-text HTTP. As of NOS 6.0, you can (and should!)...
A reader asked “What can I do if my boss won’t let me automate my tasks?” Sadly some people still have a fear of automating even common, well-understood tasks. They’re worried about...
One of the things I struggled with when starting at a vendor was dealing with project codenames. There is no secret decoder ring - you have to learn the names the...
Recently I wanted to look at the structure of sFlow packets. Of course I can read the specs, but it’s often easier to look at some real packets. So I set...
A year ago I published a table of New Zealand ISP IPv6 support. At the time support was fairly poor. I’m pleased to report that things have gotten better over the...
Brocade tightened up some SNMP settings with NOS 6.0.x. This improves security, but it also means that you will need to modify your configuration if you upgrade. If you don’t,...
I loathe MRTG graphs. They were cool in 2000, but now they’re showing their age. We have much better visualisation tools available, and we don’t need to be so aggressive...
I work from home these days. Therefore it’s important that I have a decent desk setup. My previous setup was pretty crappy, but I only worked from home part-time. I’ve...
Brocade Network Advisor (BNA) has a REST API for accessing Fibre Channel-related data. The documentation includes a sample Python script showing how to connect to the API to retrieve Fabric info....
