Home Lab – Page 2 – routingloop.net

IPv6 Next Hop

Over the last two weeks I’ve been focusing on strengthening my knowledge of IPv6 and it got me thinking about usage of link local addresses as the next hop for routing. It became apparent that this difference from IPv4 makes it possible to have equal cost next hops via the same output interface and for

IPv4 Fragmentation

2MarchStevenHome Lab, Routing

One of the attributes that helped IPv4 stand the test of time is the ability to slice and dice big datagrams into multiple smaller ones on the fly. This provides tremendous flexibility for different data links and their maximum packet size, reduced MTUs inside of tunnels, and the like. The process of chopping up IP

Joining MST and PVST Domains

16FebruaryStevenHome Lab, Switching

Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol (MST) allows network operators to map one or more VLANs to a Spanning Tree Protocol instance. For example, VLANs 1,2,3,4, and 5 can be mapped to STP instance 1 while VLANs 6,7,8,9 and 10 are mapped to STP instance 2. Consolidating multiple VLANs into a single STP instance requires less overhead

Spanning Tree BackboneFast

8FebruaryStevenHome Lab, Switching

To close out this 3-part series on Spanning Tree convergence optimizations we’ll be diving into Spanning Tree BackboneFast. This feature allows “classic” STP 802.1D bridges to converge faster when a remote bridge loses connectivity to the root bridge, i.e. this allows faster convergence to indirect link failure. Demo Network To demonstrate convergence with and without

Spaghetti

8FebruaryStevenHome Lab

PIM RP Redundancy that (kinda) Works

10JanuarySteven1 CommentHome Lab, Routing

I spent a few minutes thinking about anycast RP for PIM sparse-mode deployment and thought of a way to provide RP redundancy without auto-RP or BSR to dynamically learn RPs, and without using MSDP to synchronize active source information between anycast RPs. There is a major pitfall to this approach but it can work. Demo

STP Priority

31DecemberStevenHome Lab, Switching

When learning protocols, I like to build out a lab, take packet captures, debugs, and show commands and try to understand and justify the output. My most recent exercise is with PVST+. I built out the 6-switch topology below in CML. One of the first things I experimented with is bridge priority configuration. VLAN 10

AS Boundary Links in IGP?

14DecemberStevenENSLD, Home Lab, Routing

Lately I’ve been focusing on honing my BGP skills to prepare for the ENSLD exam. While this isn’t a configuration focused exam, I’ve been spending some lab time on it to reinforce design concepts. I built out a 29-node lab in Cisco modeling labs featuring eBGP, iBGP, route reflectors, BGP confederations, and eBGP third party

Information Hiding in Routing Systems

19NovemberStevenHome Lab, Routing

One of the most effective methods to build stable and scalable routing designs is to summarize topology and reachability information in routing protocols. Summarization can help networks converge faster and limit the number of routers that need to perform route calculations when an event such as a link flap occurs. However, there are tradeoffs to

Static Routes, Exit Interfaces, Ethernets

9SeptemberStevenHome Lab, Routing

Ethernet Ethernet allows multiple hosts to share the same network segment. There are only 3 ways to deliver a frame to another computer over ethernet. You can send a broadcast and interrupt every host on the segment, send a multicast and hope that the intended receiver is listening, or send a unicast by placing the

routingloop.net

A place for me to ramble about computer networking.

Category Archives: Home Lab