• Japan Stopover

    On my way to Germany, I stayed five nights in Japan, doing a whirlwind tour of Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka. Apart from the blood, sweat (and almost tears) of lugging 27 kg of gear through Tokyo train stations, Japan was a really cool place. The people are amazingly friendly and generous, and the whole…

  • Upgrading IOS remotely

    I recently had to upgrade a bunch of Cisco routers to an up to date IOS. These routers were scattered up and down the country, and I don’t have much to do with the servers sitting behind them, so I needed to do a remote upgrade over the Internet. Now, TFTP is pretty hit and…

  • CCNA exam

    I renewed my CCNA certification today, which should now mean that my CCNP is complete. What a wonderful little racket Cisco runs with these exams. Funny how there are no official prerequisites whatsoever for CCIE. Maybe it’s time to take a look at some Juniper certifications…

  • CIT exam

    Second time around, passed with flying colours. It’s amazing the difference it makes when you have up to date study material. So that’s all four exams done, but it appears I might not yet be a CCNP. Since my CCNA expired a couple of years ago, I think I will have to re-sit the CCNA…

  • Cisco 857 router

    I’ve finally replaced my trusty old D-Link DSL500, which I’ve had for about four years, with a Cisco 857. What can I say about these routers… well… My 857 router arrived with SDM Express, but not SDM, installed on the flash drive. While SDM Express is an improvement over the old Cisco Router Web Setup…

  • BCRAN exam

    Another one bites the dust. BCRAN exam done and dusted. Once again, lots of US-centric technology that I’m unlikely to run into in NZ, or even Europe. And of course, they never test you on the topics that you spend the most time studying :\ Anyway… three down, one to go.

  • BSCI exam

    Well, after about a month of studying dynamic routing protocols, some of which I doubt I’ll ever use or come into contact with, I passed my Cisco BSCI exam. Two down, two to go.

  • Catalyst Express(?!) 500 switches

    On the weekend I helped a friend set up some Cisco kit involving Catalyst Express 500 switches, Aironet 1310 wireless bridges, and various Cisco IP phones. What should have been a relatively simple job ended up taking about 10 hours. My friend had already configured the 2800 series router, with Cisco Call Manager Express. Phones…

  • BCMSN exam

    I passed my Cisco BCMSN exam with flying colours, despite a really bad feeling I had about the exam before clicking the final “submit” button. Cisco have changed the format of the exam, and while it certainly looks more modern, I couldn’t really say whether it’s an improvement or not. I’ve decided to study for…