Nanog 3

Yesterday was day 2 of NANOG57. Like the previous day, I had a blast.
I was pretty tired but took notes on some of the presentations I attended here.
This second day was a lot more social for me. I met individuals from companies all over the networking spectrum. Big shoutout to Joe from google, Jeremy from box.com, Charles from wins.net, David from Windstream, and Paul from Jive(Go Portland!). Which is somewhat ironic since while I think of Jive as being a Portland company, something like half of their workers(including Paul) don't work in Portland. These guys are all network admins for their companies/isps and I learned a lot from just talking to them.
I also want to make a big shoutout to Imtech, a UK company that sent Dave and another to NANOG. Dave and his friend are really cool people and welcomed me in right from the start.
I also want to thank the guys whose names I did not get from Comcast, Level 3, and Microsoft who welcomed me with open arms at the Beer 'n Gear. That was a lot of fun and I learned a lot.
Time for breakfast, will report in with more later.

Nanog 2

Wow! What a day. Day 1 of NANOG 57 was a rush and a blast. A brief summary before I collapse from exhaustion.
My brief and unedited notes are here. Another adventurous user has been keeping notes here. These notes only go slightly beyond what is presented in the abstracts for the presentations. A big shoutout and thank you to everyone who presented today. It was awesome.
I met a *ton* of cool people today. Among them were two network designers from the U.K., three professional network admins for three different internet exchanges in Germany(including DE-CIX, the largest IX in the world.) I met several engineers from other companies at the "Newcomers Lunch," and met several people from a major backbone provider after that.
I learned a lot and am looking forward to going back again tomorrow.

Nanog 0

Stardate: 90697.69
NANOG (North American Network Operators Group) is meeting in Orlando for NANOG 57. I am in Orlando and will attend.

You can see the agenda here. From the first day, I'm looking forward to the 'Newcomers Lunch,' BCOP(Best current operational practices), and the panel on the impacts of Super Storm Sandy.
I'm very excited about the wireless. From Nanog's page on the subject:

For the duration of the meeting conference, NANOG provides a dual-stack IPv4/v6 meeting network. IP address allocation is available by DHCP for IPv4 and neighbor discovery for IPv6. No NAT or translation protocols are utilized, in addition local NANOG DNS servers offer DNSSEC capability.

Woot!
I believe the following wpa_supplicant.conf configuration will work for me:

network={
        ssid="NANOG-a-secure"
        scan_ssid=1
        key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
        pairwise=CCMP TKIP
        group=CCMP TKIP
        eap=TLS
        identity="nanog"
        identity="nanog"
}

I will report on the wireless at NANOG tomorrow. I'll also see if I can find the certificate used by the access points.

Cisco diagnostics

Stardate: 90666.54 Cisco switches and routers (Catalyst 3750 series in this example) support some really cool diagnostics. These diagnostics come in handy when trying to determine if a Layer 1 fault may be involved and where it is. This technology, known as Time domain reflectometry, is available on all Cisco 3750 models including the new Catalyst 3750X.
An initial example: This shows normal use an a no-fault return.

fab20a#test cable-diagnostics tdr interface Gi1/0/25
TDR test started on interface Gi1/0/25
A TDR test can take a few seconds to run on an interface
Use 'show cable-diagnostics tdr' to read the TDR results.
fab20a#show cable-diagnostics tdr int Gi1/0/25
TDR test last run on: January 22 20:41:52

Interface Speed Local pair Pair length        Remote pair Pair status
--------- ----- ---------- ------------------ ----------- --------------------
Gi1/0/25  1000M Pair A     49   +/- 4  meters Pair A      Normal
                Pair B     45   +/- 4  meters Pair B      Normal
                Pair C     48   +/- 4  meters Pair C      Normal
                Pair D     45   +/- 4  meters Pair D      Normal

Another example: this shows normal use and an open circuit(most likely meaning no host is on the other side.

fab60a#test cable-diagnostics tdr interface GigabitEthernet 1/0/31
TDR test started on interface Gi1/0/31
A TDR test can take a few seconds to run on an interface
Use 'show cable-diagnostics tdr' to read the TDR results.

fab60a#show cable-diagnostics tdr int GigabitEthernet 1/0/31
TDR test last run on: January 08 14:45:40

Interface Speed Local pair Pair length        Remote pair Pair status
--------- ----- ---------- ------------------ ----------- --------------------
Gi1/0/31  auto  Pair A     3    +/- 4  meters N/A         Open
                Pair B     2    +/- 4  meters N/A         Open
                Pair C     0    +/- 4  meters N/A         Open
                Pair D     3    +/- 4  meters N/A         Open

Note that you must specify 'int' between tdr and the interface identifier. Presumably so you could shoot electrons at something that isn't an interface, like the door or something. An example of a broken pair:

fab20a#test cable-diagnostics tdr interface Gi1/0/25
TDR test started on interface Gi1/0/25
A TDR test can take a few seconds to run on an interface
Use 'show cable-diagnostics tdr' to read the TDR results.
fab20a#show cable-diagnostics tdr int Gi1/0/25
TDR test last run on: January 22 18:33:07

Interface Speed Local pair Pair length        Remote pair Pair status
--------- ----- ---------- ------------------ ----------- --------------------
Gi1/0/25   100M Pair A     49   +/- 4  meters Pair A      Normal
                Pair B     45   +/- 4  meters Pair B      Normal
                Pair C     48   +/- 4  meters Pair C      Normal
                Pair D     0    +/- 4  meters Pair D      Open

Here the "D" pair is broken. You can see from the 'pair length' column that it is broken at the beginning of the cable. This means we got lucky. We were able to replace the patch cable instead of having a contractor rewire the wire in the conduit. Notice that with only 3 pairs, the link is still up at 100Mbit.