Eric Stewart: Running Off At The Mouth

So we’ve had some computers die and were in need of something for a specific purpose: something to sync and backup our iOS devices with. Seeing as how we were originally using Windows for that, you’d think we’d have just gotten a cheap Dell or something. But, no. After some discussion, we got a refurbished iMac from Apple. Given that we were used to how Windows worked, this may have not been the best idea … even for someone who otherwise likes Macs, like me.

In which I regale you with the story of a wholesale warehouse company’s crappy timing; me attempting to purchase, at most, three phones; ending up with orders for five; get passed around (and tell the same story) to around four people over the phone with Verizon and then again to two or three people at a Verizon store; and also receive a phone call from a disgruntled former provider.

So, it took me a while to get around to ordering one and it took even longer for the phone to actually make it to me … but that’s a story for another post. For this post, I’m going to avoid anything too specific to my (new) cell provider, and try to focus strictly on the phone.

We ran into a little issue that, while others might think it simple, we had never seen before. A client requests a reserve lease; once the lease is provided, their PC wasn’t getting a gateway address. Here’s why (as far as I know at this time).

It is possible on the Nexus 7700 line, with certain optics, to break out 40Gb (and eventually 100Gb) to 4x10Gb interfaces (no one knows for sure what 100Gb will do – it will either be 8x10Gb or 10x10Gb). In this post I go over how $JOB is doing it (at least with the 40Gb) and what you need to be aware of. I do touch a little bit on the 100Gb breakout future and explain why we were looking to do it.

We racked our Nexus 7710 recently. Here’s some of the things you might need to know regarding getting this monster of a chassis into a rack.

I figured I should get this written while I can, and before it all fades away from my brain … here’s my thoughts on Cisco Live and some advice for future first-time attendees.

So we powered on our first to arrive Nexus 7706s (two of them). Here’s some notes so far.

As is not unusual, I run into an edge case that might be specific to us. While attempting to monitor IPv6 reachability of an NTP server I had just upgraded, I ran into an interesting case where NTP was responding via IPv4, but not IPv6, and they appeared to be identically configured.

Quick post about how to get your way through airline security without wasting everyone else’s time.