I’ve been spending a lot of time with our Cisco switches, ASA firewalls, and PIX firewalls. It seems I learn something new every day.
Problem: Each data closet has to give the clients connected to it an IP address via DHCP from a specific scope.
Solution: “ip helper-address”
I’ll be setting up a number of DHCP scopes for the organization’s different data closets, wireless networks, and 3rd party connections. Good stuff. Fun stuff! I still find myself smiling throughout the day for no reason other than the fact that I simply LOVE my job!
Again. I gotta give probs to my networking guru friend. He knows who he is. 
Rather than spending HOURS searching the Internet using random keywords and sifting through the multitude of results, (I did spend a good half hour though) I was able to fire off an Instant message to him to explain the situtation and with two responses he was able to tell me what my problem was: VLAN interfaces on client switches can have their own IP addresses specified for them. Routing fixed. UDP broadcasts excepted. DHCP flows.
IM in the workplace isn’t the sin that many would consider it. Bucking your pride to ask a fellow IT’er a quick question is a excellent way to maximize your time… rather than researching “the wheel” for hours. Granted. I only have two “buddies” in my IM list. 
I only hope that some day I’ll get more IM requests than I send.
Griminal Grim's Ramblings
I just have to give a shout out to my man Tychl. Thanks for all the advice, help, and BSin’ that gave me a few ideas. I wouldn’t have a nice high speed link if it wasn’t for him…
After my tests yesterday, I’m going ahead with the 2.4Ghz rollout. I just purchased a 15dbi omni directional antenna along with a 2.4dbi directional grid. I also went to Menard’s today just to see what they may have for PVC outdoor enclosures. Behold the Kraloy 8 x 8 x 4 enclosure!
Kraloy 8 x 8 x 4 PVC Enclosure
It’s like this box was made just for WRT54G routers. I’ll take some of my own pics when I start mounting equipment and cables. At $18.00 for each box, I consider that a steal.
Griminal Grim's Ramblings
As I stated in a previous post, a friend of mine allowed me to borrow a 24 dbi grid antenna. I got it mounted and hooked up to the WRT54G router mounted on the tower earlier this week. I assumed that I’d need an amp and another high gain antenna at the donor’s house. I was mistaken….
Today, I took my laptop over to the donor’s house running Netstumbler. (Kismet kept locking up my laptop for some reason… it’s never done this before.) To my surprise, I had 70% signal strength with just my laptop!!! Mind you, I’m 1.8 miles away from my house with no line of sight and downloading from my router computer’s samba share at 3.5Mbs! Holy shit! I decided to go and get the other WRT54G I have set up for bridging and take it over to the DSL end. Bam! It bridged, my laptop got an IP from my router at home, and I downloaded files at 5.5Mbs, the max speed of 802.11B. Woohoo!!
I need to get a bit of equipment… outdoor enclosure and stuff for a POE setup on their end. I’ll probably buy an outdoor omni of some type to mount on my end and use a 24 dbi on their old TV tower. I should play with a WRT54G WDS (Wireless Distribution System) a bit and see if that works too. Damn! If I knew 802.11 gear would work with just a high gain antenna, I would have done this a long time ago.
I decided to play around a bit. I figured if I had that good of signal strength over there with just a laptop, I wonder if the WRT54G on the tower would see the ad-hoc wireless network I have setup at their house running off an old P166 with a Cisco Aironet 350 card. I logged into the radio and did a ‘wireless site survey’. Look at this shit!
It’s weak as hell. It comes and goes when I click the refresh button, but damn!
Griminal Grim's Ramblings
A friend of mine from the Buchanan, MI who was using a WISP told me that ACD.net has basically turned off their wireless service in certain areas. It’s a real pity. Their service had declined exponentially since Beanstalk sold off to Quantum Connections. There is an alternative though. Hi-Tech SMR Communications serves the area as well. I remember these folks were willing to come out right away when ACD.net had issues with their service. Switching to SMR should have happened. Looks like “old reliable” went straight down the tubes. This is what happens when you don’t keep up on infastructure and just let what is getting you by continue to be the norm. I see my old employer FINALLY got a T1 of some sort through Bandwidth.com/Qwest… at least that’s what the whois is tellin’ me. I think we’d been suggesting that move for the last 4 years, right? Anyways….
We’re looking at buying some new servers at work. We’re going to be implementing a SANs as the primary storage for two beafy machines that will run VMware Infrastructure. These machine will be redundant W2K3 AD controllers plus run a bunch of other neato stuff. I think the SANs alone is gunna cost in the mid 30’s. I’ll keep all my faithful readers up on the upgrade.
The last day or two I’ve spent my time configuring a lot of Cisco Aironet 1200 APs. Got ‘em running the latest firmware… and authenticating to a RADIUS server using WPA. I hope to get WPA2 implemented soon. That was a hoot. Learnin’ a lot about Cisco’s IOS too.
Griminal Grim's Ramblings
Grim’s Place = New Look!
There are tons of Wordpress themes out there. You’d think it would be possible for me to find just one that I’d like. Nope. I ended up redoing the style sheet on this one to get get rid of some colors.
Blue is better!
Griminal Grim's Ramblings
