It’s not every day you see something that excites you to a point of ecstatic glee. This is a special day indeed, and it’s thanks to the minds at Forward Networks.
TL;DR, Forward Networks has introduced the first and only accurate software copy of your exact network. That’s right — a full-scale, veritable sandbox of your massive network, in a clean and powerful interface. No lie – it’s cool! (more…)
Ever hear of a company called Paessler AG? No? Neither have I. Ever hear of a product called PRTG? Of course?! Me too! Call me crazy, but I never knew this was the same company! Paessler AG presented for Tech Field Day at VMworld in Barcelona yesterday, demonstrating their product PRTG and making legitimate points in support of their competitive edge in the monitoring industry. In this blog I’ll be doing a personal Q&A about PRTG, running queries against the DB (Dave Brain), hoping it doesn’t fail on me. If it fails, I’m not too concerned, for I’ve installed the appropriate SNMP MIBs used to alert my right hand that coffee needs to be delivered to my mouth. PRTG, save me! (more…)
My life was a one-track record on repeat, tirelessly playing the same tune over and over. New nodes added to the network means new nodes to monitor. The manual, arduous tasks of clicking through monitoring tool menus, selecting appropriate polling agents, configuring appropriate properties, and validating node status can lead a man to madness. There must be a better way!
When I first heard that I could “easily” script and automate some tasks in SolarWinds, I stared askance, knowing good and well this wouldn’t be easy, if it worked at all. A couple of years later, and several hundred more managed nodes in the pocket, I figured it’s time to revisit this possibility. Although the SolarWinds Orion SDK has been around for a few years, documentation is limited and content is heavily reliant on the THWACK community. However, dig deep enough, and you’ll find a wealth of useful information! I learned that “easy” is relative, and given the number of examples SolarWinds provides in their SDK, it’s really not all that bad. (more…)
Those who have read my blog know that I am not a professional writer. I’m a novice at best, blissfully blurting mediocre sentence structure in cyber space. These words have never really been for anyone other than myself, so who cares if I’m overly generous with commas, or underwhelmingly inept with word diversity? I mean, no one will ever be as critical as I am to myself. This hasn’t stopped me. In fact, I continue to write despite barriers and walls, for this has opened my mind far beyond what I could have imagined. It’s all about the content. (more…)
Looking back at the evolution of the network in the past decade, we see a constant trend of devices migrating to Ethernet, resulting in a migration to IP. IP telephony took off in 2005 and is now the de facto standard for any phone system. Coax-connected cameras migrated to IP surveillance in the late 2000s. Legacy building management systems using BACnet started migrating to low-voltage PoE systems in the early 2010s. Within the past year, we’ve seen a new trend of high-voltage systems like lighting start migrating towards low-voltage PoE, dubbed “Smart Lighting”. This move towards digitization makes sense on all fronts. It’s cheaper, scalable, extensible, can easily be managed and monitored, and opens the door for new experiences with intelligent buildings. (more…)
I’m a first time traveler to another country. I’m aware of multiple languages, but I don’t know how to speak any other than English. It’s one of those things that I’ve always wanted to learn, but just never got around to. So, I’m aboard an aircraft to Germany, and the first conversation I had on the plane was with a flight attendant. It went a little something like this:
Her: Ist das Ihre rote Tasche dort?
Me: … <wishing I knew what she was saying>
Her: …
Me: English?
Her: Is that your red bag over there?
Me: Nein
It started out weak and embarrassing, I didn’t know what she was saying. There was a very brief moment, just a second or two, where my brain was attempting with futility to decipher the foreign tongue, returning a meandering blank stare, followed by the simple one-worded question: “English?”. The flight attendant immediately responded in my native language, and I clearly understood her. I responded confidently with a German “nein”. She smiled. (more…)
I’m a Network Engineer learning Python, and these are purely my notes. I’m not an expert by any means. Feel free to use any of these examples and improve upon them. Feel free to call me out where things can be done better.
I regularly need a simple yes/no function in Python when interacting with users. This function uses sets of data to represent “yes” and “no”. Sets are unordered collections of elements, and can be used similarly to lists (e.g. x in set). The function will take in an answer (yes/no). This will be converted to lowercase and then checked against each set. Result is returned. (more…)