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Useful Links
Free CCNA Practice Questions
Mar 16th
Steve over at Networking Forum came up with another great idea. He’s offering free CCNA practice questions. He’s asked the members to assist with providing the questions and answers. So far, there are about 30 questions posted, with more to come. They’re all multiple choice, but we’ve included some drag and drop type questions and some troubleshooting/simulation type questions as well (as much as we could while keeping them multiple choice). I’ll post a couple sample question below.
Fiber Woes
Sep 7th
I’m in the process of doing a very large hardware refresh for my company. We’re replacing 100+ old/EOL switches throughout the network/country. This shouldn’t be too big of a deal, but the latest generation of Cisco switches use SFPs. The older stuff is all GBIC. For most of our large sites, this isn’t major as we just run an ST to LC cable from the patch panel to the switch…
But of course, there are random sites without patch panels. The fiber runs directly from switch to switch. This presents a problem as we don’t have detailed information for most of our sites. So the options are re-terminating the ends of the fiber, buying a long enough patch cable (difficult to do) or having someone come out and pull new runs. That was until I came across these:
Tripp Lite N458-001-50 Duplex Multimode 50/125 Fiber Adapter, LC-M/SC-F – 1ft
Cisco Port to ASIC Mapping
May 31st
You know you’re a nerd or really bored when you get into conversations about the oversubscription of ports on each ASIC. 
So obviously I was having this conversation, lol. I’m pretty noobish when it comes to the mechanics of network gear. I know the configuration relatively well, but not enough about the internals. So I did some searching and came across this great page on James Ventre’s blog. Check it out if you’re curious about ASICs and how many ports each will support on various platforms. I found some other interesting reading on the site as well.
Here’s another helpful link describing the architecture of the 3750-Es. Page 53 goes into the ASICs specifically.
Catalyst 6500 Information
May 19th
Lately I’ve been feeling like my 6500 knowledge is severely lacking. I work with them everyday, but my knowledge of the underlying technology isn’t very deep. I know the basics like most people, which supervisors are better, a general idea of what they’re capable of, etc. But I’m not familiar with the nitty gritty on the sups and line cards. Naturally I decided to learn more. 
Here are some good links:
- Great overview from Etherealmind
- Detailed 6500 presentation from Cisco Networkers 2004
- 6500 Architecture Overview from Cisco.com
- Good information on the SFM from Cisco.com
- Good information on the Module Buffers and Queues from Cisco.com
- Good information on the Sup32 from Cisco.com
I’m posting this here so I never lose it, and hopefully it will help others. If you guys know of any other decent 6500 links, please post in the comments!
Practice Subnetting
Mar 26th
Steve at Networking-Forum has created a tool to practice subnetting. Here’s an example question:
It’s a very cool idea, IMO. Check it out!
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