I’ve found my self a Juniper SSG 20 which is not that expensive ( comparing to other Juniper stuff , especially brand new ) for training.

One thing which I’ve noticed strait away was the registration process. I simply couldn’t find any link on www.juniper.net which would let me create an account. I had to mistype the user and password and then system suggested to create one!! What on earth?!

Also access to ScreenOS technical documentation, I really had to dig around to find that gem. But nothing really substitutes a good book.

I’ve opted for :

• ScreenOS Cookbook
• Configuring Juniper Networks NetScreen & SSG Firewalls

Hope they will give me nice reference point for my trip into the strange world of NOT CISCO Network System

Finally, after around 4 years of having the AA Account ( AAA I’ve finished Special Forces training! This gave me access to some neat weaponry in the game. Also unlocked SF exclusive deployments. Most of the time i was playing SF Hospital, but now SF Snakeplains is my favourite. The only training which I didn’t finish is for becoming a Medic.

I have also lost about 1.5 days over the weekend replacing old Monowall FIrewall with a state of art CIsco ASA 5510 Security Plus. I have some suspicion that current SysOp has a bug in regard to Port Speed. When, you boot the box, ports, which are connected to gigabit start, to glow orange, as they should to indicate 1Gbps connection, but after the system has finished booting, they are back to green, telling me that they are 100Mbps. After disconnecting and connecting back the cables, they are back to orange .. 1Gbps.

Oh, also replacing the firewall and extended period of time of dis-connectivity caused Windows 2003 DNS server on AD controller to crash in a way that it wasn’t serving any queries any more… that is MS for you.

Due to server hardware refresh coming at work, I am investigating routes which we can take, one of the new ones is going virtual. It has couple of advantages like High Availability, and Fail Over which are very important these days ( users complain if their services are not available 100% )

So far I have covered VMWare Server and Infrastructure products. Where I like features of Infrastructure and price and ease of use of Server.

Now it’s time for XEN. From the beginning it looks very bare. Not like entirely integrated VMWare software, XEN is just the basic core and you need tools to use it and these come in plenty. Now I am playing with what came shipped with OpenSuSe. But just now I’ve briefly read on ganeti and I am impressed.

Linux KVM, hmm, I don’t have much to say for it. From what I’ve seen it’s not good for hosting MS Windows guest systems.

SAN

This is kinda strange, I know what are they, how they work, even used it in some testing. But I never had opportunity to work with a real, expensive solution. So far, Compellent is looking like the sort of things which I might consider installing. The only thing which worries me is license cost as well as resilience of a controller. If I have half a dozen servers connected to that bastard, they all die with it.

Routing

I am also in the router/firewall upgrade bucket. Choice is hard here, part of me wants a Cisco and the other one wants something cheaper but as good as Cisco. No part of me wants a Juniper, they are cheaper but from what I have seen they are awkward to work with. I’ve came across Vyatta, looks solid and as I am testing it, I can not find any limitations which would cross it out. But I don’t like it’s name, it does not flow on the keyboard right ( definitely not as well as my yllq )

Later I have installed Asterisk server for my self to play with … and this is where the real love for VoIP started.

At the moment I have local numbers in 3 countries if my family wishes to call me from their regular phones  a few phones around my flat, phones in my parents place, as well as my cell phone can SIP in

Now I am working on commercial solutions with Asterisk at the center and Grandstream, Sipura/Linksys and Cisco clients. Asterisk is brilliant and strait forward… worse with the clients, Grandstream phones are OK to provision while their gateway is just full of confusions and you do need to know a lot about the environment which it will work in – without documentation, unable to configure. Sipura/Linksys phones have a strait forward documentation for provisioning … but it does not work … use VoIP Info website. Cisco Phones … you do need to dig out some documentation and IRV codes to make them go …

Why I am writing that ?

Here is a features table which I found there :

I have bought one unit and when trying to configure ipv6 …. it is missing. I say OK, maybe on this IOS image.

Going back to Cisco website, using Software Advisor I can not find any IOS for 850 series which contains IPv6.

So, I have opened an issue with TAC. And guy says something “yeah, 850s don’t have IPv6″.

CISCO give me my IPv6 on router which I bought!!!!!! Or give me a new one which does it!

Cisco liars !!!

I am fishing on Ebay for any IPv6 capable router, my bad, I know only about Cisco 8[3,5,7]1 routers which are also in price range acceptable for me. Maybe you know about any other ? does not have to be Cisco ( however I prefer ) and does not have to be new.

But … if I wish to make it something permanently fitted in to my network, I will need to redesign it, and replace at least one router with something what supports IPv6 and no doubt it will be Cisco … unless you know other Big Brand, cheap router.

When I am doing nslookup on external server which returns one of my static external IPs , my router is spoofing it and sends me my internal IP instead of external. Sometimes useful, sometimes not.

Freaking surprise !

I ended up installing new OS on my Nokia 770 , the 2006 edition. I have not used it for a while and I have not looked in to software repositories for it, for very very long time.

As many portals cover what it comes with ( the new 2006 edition ) they tend to say a lot about Gtalk client … But my most beloved new functionality is Application Installer.

App Installer is just a frontend to regular software management system called APT, and it is originating from Debian… not my favorite SMS but still it does the job. Users of real operating systems like Linux, *BSD are spoiled by management systems. If you do not know what is this and how it works, you have probably lived in a cave with Windows.

Just added most of the repos from Maemo Wiki and now hassle I am able to install most of the available software , with a touch of a button. No looking for applications websites, no looking for dependencies ( 2005 was lacking that part ), just one place to find them all. Love That!

As I have mentioned, I have not checked what software was created for N770, for long time. Today I have discovered missing App. Glurp, the MPD client , which works! If you are some music addict, like me, and you have MPD running on some computer for 24/7 … this app is a real gem. It turns your N770 in to really expensive remote control with all the features of “big computers” clients.

So my favorite apps for N770 are :

• Fbreader
• Glurp
• Password Safe

All other are just useful from time to time… and Application Installer in its new incarnation will be very useful from time to time.

QoS, Nat were nowhere on my CNA, same goes for ATM/ADSL. Actually this router made me review my knowledge and catch up on IOS.

Oh the router is used in my new flat for internet access as previous one D-Link something 604 something did not remember my magic after reset, and was hanging too often.