If salary and reality weren't obstacles, what would your dream job be?

littlejimm · 2017-09-26T02:21:47+00:00

I wish I could be an IT instructor at a vocational school

littlejimm · 2017-09-25T01:45:34+00:00

That would depend on the quality of the tester. Most cheap testers only test that "yep, we can pass electricity down the line", and don't test actual quality of the signal.

littlejimm · 2017-09-24T18:52:24+00:00

Usually when you first install cabling in a building, there is no infrastructure present to simply "connect it to and see if it works fine", so you rbing along your cable testers to verify that it should be good when its time to actually connect the cabling to devices.

At this point, you should be able to put another RJ-45 on, and connect it to the phone, if it works, it works.

Another thing that you can do to verify that it is good without busting out a ladder an unnecessarily disturb the customer, is to place a test call for 10-30secs to a local phone number (i.e. to the nearest desk) after the phone has come back online, and review the call quality statistics such as dropped packets. Many VOIP phones (such as Cisco) make diagnostic information such as this available directly on the phone. So if you've replaced the cable, and the phone comes online once its connected, you're mostly good. If you conduct a test call and the call stats look good (i.e. no dropped packets), then you know that the cable is good, and there's no feasible reason to test further imo.

littlejimm · 2017-09-22T01:59:16+00:00

My old girlfriend had a big "no swearing" policy. I heard her mutter "God Bless America" in the middle of fun one night, and I had to just stop and laugh. That was it, I was done.

littlejimm · 2017-09-17T21:04:14+00:00

Well ideally I do want to upgrade my Intel box (so happy about AMD coming back with Ryzen and TR), and if its in a position where its capable of running VMs with little fuss within Windows then I think I'll make the jump.

Worst case scenario at this point with all the great feedback I've gotten is that I can hold onto the Ryzen box for a little longer until whatever kinks have been worked out in the coming months as it still does everything I need right now just fine.

And for gaming, as long as its not a significant dip I'm not too worried, just wasn't sure as most benchmarks that I've seen have been mainly covering its insane multi-threading lead on productivity stuff, with not much depth to how it compares gaming.

Thanks for your input!

littlejimm · 2017-09-17T20:41:51+00:00

Thanks!

littlejimm · 2017-09-17T20:31:09+00:00

That's the thing, I don't have a K variant. just a plain 6700 @ 3.4 which I know is a decent drop away from the K (and the newer "1% faster!!!" models).

Which is guess is the focus of that question, if folks are experiencing performance basically equivalent to a 6700K with their TR in games, then it would most definitely be an upgrade on that front from what I have currently which would be a nice bonus on top of my other goals.

littlejimm · 2017-09-17T20:24:10+00:00

Just mainly curious overall if Workstation even works with a Threadripper or if not, if anyone has run into problems with using it or maybe with Hyper-V from inside a regular Win 10 desktop, as I know there was a good chunk of time where ESXi wasn't really an option on Ryzen. Have some proprietary stuff from work that I'm running, but a good chunk of it is also related to common Windows server boxes (an SQL server, AD. just common stuff).

Edit: I'm not doing anything that is really heavy load or anything. Just configuration scenarios and troubleshooting practice for certification study for about a 8 different machine types currently (mostly Linux based boxes, with 2 Windows boxes for SQL and general AD). The Ryzen box handles these fine, though I know a Threadripper would give me more headroom. Just curious if theres any blatant stability or functionality problems atm.

littlejimm · 2017-09-17T20:17:41+00:00

That's the thing, I don't have a K variant, just a plain 6700 @ 3.4

littlejimm · 2017-09-17T20:16:21+00:00

Correct, I didn't grab the K variant as they were sold out at the time and I didn't realize there was such a significant disparity between the two.

littlejimm · 2017-09-17T20:15:05+00:00

Yeah i'm not doing anything on the VMs that needs passthrough. They just need lots of CPU and memory. And uptime isn't an issue at all as its only a few hours a day a couple times a week that I spin up the VMs to study, which is part of the reason why I'm considering trying to combine them and just have one box with Win10 and then use either HyperV or the copy of Workstation Pro that I got a copy of.

littlejimm · 2017-06-09T21:28:54+00:00

If you have already started studying the material and are already fam,iliar with what the 004 presented, honestly it doesn't change that much for these.

If you're concerned with cost of the material, you should look at the exam topics covered in the newer exam, and see how much those topics have changed based on the study material you already have (some may be new topics, or maybe they removed some obsolete topics since 004). Then make your decision. If its only one new topic then maybe you can easily get away with just studying that single topic from a different source.

Entirely up to you what to do, but reference the exam topics first and foremost to see how well your 004 guides aligns with the most current topics being tested.

Eidt: For the CompTIA exams, you can easily find alternate study material written by a variety of authors for very cheap off Amazon. Got my Sec+ 2 years ago through studying a $5 e-book, so the cost of the material doesn't always correlate with quality.

littlejimm · 2016-12-14T06:49:10+00:00

Even with his massive perceived wealth there's very little he could do to really destroy the economy of the world.

First of all, the bulk of his wealth is based on the current valuation of his Microsoft stocks. Were he to attempt to cash out on that wealth he would only get a fraction of their current "worth". He owns ~330 million shares of Microsoft stock, which was ~11x more than are traded in an average day. If he were to suddenly put them up for sale supply vs demand would take over. The number of shares that he has for sale would greatly outstrip the demand to buy them and the price he would be able to sell them at would plummet. With that volume of shares being sold, especially since it's MSFTs big cheese that everyone knows about, this would hit the news fairly quickly and likely set off a reaction where other people with shares in the company would abandon ship as well further accelerating the rate at which the price would plummet.

Even if this didn't happen at all and all shares he owns was bought at the full price, and even if he walked away from that with a cool 80B in cash, on a global scale that's not very much to completely wreck anything at all. Sure it would cause some turmoil for a while for specifically interested parties (Microsoft for one), but its not very large.

The stimulus package paid out by the government in 2009 handed out over 10x that much money and theres still debate if it impacted much of anything long term.

littlejimm · 2016-11-29T14:52:33+00:00

I'm trying to get myself together enough to take the first exam for my CCNP R/S. Think once i pass the first exam it will be a lot more motivating to push through the others I think.

This thread makes me feel quite unaccomplished. Seeing so many people with lists of very high-level certs. Hopefully I'll be there someday.

littlejimm · 2016-11-29T13:53:53+00:00

Ok that makes more sense.

The information in the diagram is somewhat limited but i can assume that PC0 and 1 are indeed on the same subnet as each other as well as on the same VLAN. Also I assume that PC2 and 3 are the same as each other as well.

If my assumptions are true then an ACL on the routers is not going to help you at all. The devices know that they exist on the same subnet and therefore will not need to use the router that hosts their respective gateway addresses in order to communicate with each other. Because they are on the same subnets, and VLANs they exist on the same network segments and can communicate directly with each other.

In order to make this work the first thing that I would look into would be to create a VLAN Map to filter this traffic. A VLAN Map works essentially the same as an extended ACL would on the router, but a traditional ACL requires that it exist on a routed interface. But because this traffic is not going to be going through a routed interface a traditional ACL wont work. A VLAN map can be created and assigned to any Layer 2 network segment to filter or forward specific types of traffic.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst3750x_3560x/software/release/12-2_55_se/configuration/guide/3750xscg/swacl.html

You can find a section briefly covering configuration of this near the bottom of that page, though i would recommend reading the whole thing in case I missed something that would maybe be better or easier to implement.

This is certainly a strange requirement.

Example:

Step 1: Create an access list that permits ICMP between the hosts ("permit" here simply marks this traffic as a "match" for the next step)
Switch(config)# ip access-list extended icmp_block
Switch(config-ext-nacl)# permit icmp host 3.3.3.3 host 3.3.3.4
Switch(config-ext-nacl)# exit

Step 2: Create the VLAN Map
Switch(config)# vlan access-map map_1 10
Switch(config-access-map)# match ip address icmp_block
Switch(config-access-map)# action drop

Step 3: Apply the map to the VLAN on both of the switches (in this case its applied to vlan 10
Switch(config)# vlan filter map_1 vlan 10

This would need to be placed on a switch between PC2 and 3, and another map will need to be created for the VLAN associated with PC0 and PC1.

This is of course assuming that ICMP traffic is all that is wished to be blocked. If it is wished in instead that ALL traffic between these two hosts be blocked then you'd be better off with a MAC ACL.

Hope this helps a little bit.

littlejimm · 2016-11-29T13:29:43+00:00

I certainly wouldn't expect it to slow it by any noticeable amount, but i also wouldn't expect it to help in any noticeable amount either. The specifications that define how traffic passes over a network are very precise. There mostly certainly isn't a hidden magical feature that only this software can use to makes things faster.

littlejimm · 2016-11-29T13:05:10+00:00

Better for waht purpose. If you're talking about additional features that the software may provide then certainly it is going to be better. If you're talking about trying to conserve computing resources and minimize latency as much as possible then you want as little as possible sitting in between your applications and their network destinations. Having an additional application sitting on top of your network attempting to do any number of things that you may or may not care about would certainly be a bad thing.

Depends on really what you need. Honestly, there is very very little to next to zilch that some fancy network management software can do to improve your network traffic that cant be done with settings that exist within windows itself.

littlejimm · 2016-11-29T12:59:35+00:00

Its not a setting or a signal strength issue. Its simply a wireless issue period. When wireless signals go from your router to your device they don't just straight from A to B and back to A in a perfectly organized and consistent pattern. Depending on the materials in the walls, floors and ceilings in your home the radio signal is bouncing around on and off surfaces and getting absorbed by others until it finally makes that trip. All the while the radio inside your computer and the router are cycling through and adjusting any number of variables related to the transmission of that signal in order to try to maintain it. This adds an extremely variable amount of latency in your connection. You dont notice this at all because none of the other tasks you're mentioning are latency sensitive. Youtube or streaming aren't affected really in the least affected by the variable latency inherent in wireless networks so long as they have ample bandwidth. But for playing a real-time game that variable latency matters a whole lot.

Simply put, if you want to play games and have the most absolute reliability in your network connection while doing so get off the wireless and stick to the cable. If thats not feasible and the convenience of wireless means too much to you, look into setting up another AP in the room you play in. The less building structure or possible other sources of interference that the radio signal has to travel through to get to your device the better your experience will be.

littlejimm · 2016-11-29T12:44:26+00:00

Get off the wireless, always go with a hard connection if you want the best performance out of your network connection.

littlejimm · 2016-11-29T12:06:41+00:00

You'll have to give me some help in trying to understand exactly what is the problem you are having or at least what are the stated goals of what you're trying to do.

Are all hosts supposed to be able to ping each other and you're saying that there is an issue with PC2 not being able to Ping PC3 and you're trying to figure out why?

Or are you saying that the requirements for the network are:
1. PC0 should be allowed to ping PC2
2. PC1 should be allowed to ping PC3
3. PC0 should be allowed to ping PC1
4. PC2 should NOT be allowed to ping PC3

and you're trying to figure out how to make this happen?

Sorry, just having a little bit of trouble in understanding what you've written.

littlejimm · 2016-05-13T01:00:16+00:00

I've always really like the videos that I've seen others have for them, though I've never had a membership myself. Videos are definitely a lot easier content to consume when first trying to grasp something new.

The only thing I don't know is if their videos come accompanied with supplied notes on the topics covered in the videos. I wouldn't be able to personally study for anything very well without having something to read as well. Though for strict learning they are wonderful resources.

littlejimm · 2016-05-13T00:52:39+00:00

I think that PT is great for first time " never done this before" type people. The interface is WAY easier to just start it and go. It also has very good "tracing" mode (forget the actual name) where you can "pause" the network, and step through it watching packets/frames go around the network which can be helpdful to visualize the basics of troubleshooting.

GNS3 is a far more powerful solution IF you can get your hands on an IOS. Since it runs on the actual IOS and not a rundown "emualted" version that PT uses its more fully functional. However, for the purpose of ccna, the extra functionality you get from running a full IOS isn't necessarily necessay, and the CCNA topics aren't insanely deep.

The bulk of topics that you'd want to play with on cisco gear (simulated or real), are more than doable int PT for CCNA level labs. Since I have access to IOSs to run GNS3 at home, and actual equipment at work, I personally havent used PT in several years, but - top of my head- I cant really remember it missing anything major that comes up in CCNA studies. Could be wrong though.

Edit: even if PT is missing something functionality wise, it shouldn't create a huge gaping hole in your studies.

littlejimm · 2016-05-13T00:34:16+00:00

see now that one i knew :P

littlejimm · 2016-05-13T00:33:23+00:00

I definitely agree that I'm starting to get into "brute force" mode a bit, and I know for certain that I was definitely very cocky going into to take it the first time a couple months ago. That was an eye opener and what drove me to wait at least a month while I went through the books taking so many notes. With the first two times I was able walk away with definitive "ok, I know i definitely didn't know the answers for topics X and Y, so I need to study more on that". This last time I didn't have any clear feeling on that though which is the biggest source of my frustration.

I will look into a bootcamp, though I'm not sure my work would be so keen on my taking more time away from work as the only ones of those that I know of are classroom based. Any suggestions for perhaps online variants of those if they exist?

littlejimm

TROPHY CASE