Networking

The last post I talked about configuring WEP authentication on Cisco Aironet wireless access point. Now I want to configure WPA and WPA2 to give more strength in the wireless security. Just for a note I put an image of padlock on the last post and now I give a picture of a vault to give the image of stronger security. You know what I mean, padlock versus vault, oh just forget it. Back to the topic, when first posting about WEP I said that WEP encryption is weak, you better use encryption like WPA and WPA2. WPA gives better key management and stronger cipher encryption. For those who don't know about cipher, it's kinda algorithm for encryption and decryption, we'll be configuring the cipher when dealing with WPA and WPA2. WPA uses what is called TKIP or Temporal Key Integrity Protocol for the cipher encryption. WPA2 is even better than WPA, it uses a stronger encryption called AES or Advanced Encryption Standard , it creates fresh sessions key so every packet

There are many handy Cisco commands that you can use to help you in configuring Cisco devices , these commands well not exactly secret commands but you might not get it from the CCNA curriculum. One of these handy commands I already posted it at my previous post . But I want to cover it again in case you missed the post. This one is the interface range command. What this command does is to select a range of interfaces and apply the same commands to them. This is very handy especially in a Cisco switch environment where you might want to set some ports to be access ports or apply the same security to those ports instead of doing it one by one for each interface. For example, I want to select the interfaces fastethernet 0/2 to 0/8, with the interface range command I'd just do it like this: 2950> enable 2950# configure terminal 2950 (config)# interface range fa0/2 - 8 2950 (config-if-range)# There, you notice that instead of displaying 2950 (config-if)# where you c

You might be struggling to save money for joining the Cisco Networking Academy or other courses just to pass CCNA exam . The Cisco Networking Academy is great, yet the other courses, well in my experience, I joined a CCNA course - not the Cisco academy - but to be honest the result was not as I expected. I don't know if this happens in other countries or not, the instructors were not as qualified as they said, sure they passed the CCNA exam also but their experiences in handling Cisco devices were just poor. So, not satisfied with the result, I browsed the internet and found these three books are valuable to help me passed the CCNA exam . CCNA: Cisco Certified Network Associate Study Guide: Exam 640-802 The first book is CCNA study guide from Todd Lammle. If you search for CCNA guide from google then you'd find the name of Todd Lammle popping up everywhere. Todd Lammle successfully authored books that can easily understand even by newbies, you can find all topics co

In the CCNA level, we only know how to connect to Cisco devices using console connection and telnet connection . We know that no one can tap on the console connection since it's directly connected to the Cisco device , but different story for the telnet connection . Anyone can tap messages from the telnet session. All messages send in clear text, so it's dangerous to leave default communication with Cisco devices just using telnet . We can use SSH for secure connection to the Cisco devices. The SSH will encrypt all messages going from your computer to the Cisco devices. First you're going to need Cisco IOS image that support SSH or IPSec , DES , or 3DES . How would you know that. Well you can just issue the following command: router> ena router# show ip ssh % Invalid input detected at '^' marker. If it's showing % Invalid input detected at '^' marker. , then the IOS does not support SSH. Now start with the configuration , you h

Back in the old days of networking newbie , I didn't even care about networking . What's so interesting about it. Just a bunch of cables connected from the computers to switches or routers/modems voila you get internet. Few years later, come to my notice that networking is far far more interesting than I had imagined. By the way this story is going somewhere if you wonder. Networking (in physical) is more than I said before, there are lots of in between the things I mentioned. Switches and routers should be enough for home or SOHO usage, but when it comes to enterprise, lots of new networking "creatures" would pop-out. All these creatures combined and managed well can be called structured cabling System (SCS). What SCS basically means is the systematic ways or you can say standards for network cabling and telecommunication rooms. These standards issued by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA), and o

Okay, now you got your ready, you also know the tools you need to run the cables inside your walls , then all that you need to have for your home networking tools is cable tie . What?!? why would I need cable ties . Yes you don't actually need cable ties to do home networking, but you do need them to make your cabling neat. Making your cables neat If you're running a whole lot of bundles of cables in your home, cable ties definitely things of your choice to neat your cabling work. What people usually use are these following types of cable ties : The one on the left is the velcro cable type, and the next one made of plastic or something (well, kinda plastic-like material) You can use any one of those two, the difference I may say is the velcro is definitely more expensive than the plastic cable ties . And also, the velcro cable ties are usually preferred for managing sensitive cables such as fiber optics cables. It's because the velcro type ties are not giving too muc