I’m going to do a splattering of topics on this entry. Okay, if you get where the above quote is from, then you can skip the first bit.
If you haven’t seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, stop reading this right now, and go watch it. I’m serious. Go. Now. I’ll still be here. Honestly, this is one of the best put together and funniest mini-series I’ve seen. It’s by Joss Whedon (Buffy, Firefly, etc.) and stars Nathan Fillion (Mal Reynolds) among others. Oh my is it funny. I don’t buy DRM’d stuff, but I bought all the videos on iTunes, as well as the soundtrack (which has no DRM!). If you like satirical and/or slapstick humor, you will like this.
On the work front, I’ve taken on a couple new projects, including building out a new test lab. We had one, but since our last round of upgrade work, it needs to be put back together from scratch. We have example equipment of stuff from all over our network, and I get to play around with it and get it back up and running. It’ll help all of us when working on certs and stuff to be able to test out things with a set up that we can break, rebuild, and then break again.
I’m also starting on some Juniper certifications. I’m working on JNCIA-EX right now as I have a free voucher. Should be a good place to start. JUNOS (the Juniper routing OS — their version of IOS under Cisco) is actually very versatile, and more logically configured than a lot of things in IOS. I’m really hyped and interested in this stuff, so it’s good.
And lastly, I’m going to Australia. I know, holy crap. Tickets booked, visa is had, all those kind of good things. I’m taking 20 days off of work, and flying from Vancouver to Melbourne. So excited. It’s gonna be my first overseas trip, and I’ve got a large chunk of time to explore. I’m just going to backpack it and stay with friends while down there. Solo geek taking on Aus. I can’t wait! I leave mid-November, and am back first week of December. This all from a guy who has taken like.. 4-5 days off total in the last 3 years.
Lots of busy and exciting things happening!
Well, I’ve earned another piece of paper to hang on the wall. I’m officially a Cisco Certified Network Associate. I’m quite thrilled about this one, as it’s the first one specific to the networking field (and inherently, my current job!). I’m now all smart and stuff. Finally, someone other than me is recognizing it. 
My next project is going to be finishing off my MCSE. I’m not really using this knowledge (especially considering I haven’t used Windows in over 6 months), but I’m only 2 exams (in a 7 exam series) away from getting it, so I might as well finish it off. It’s still a really beneficial piece of paper to have, and a safety net is always good.
I recently wrote an article for ypigsfly, one of our partners who is developing a state of the art DDoS shield product. It’s designed to protect your web site and severs from being taken offline by an attacker. My article centers around the fact that your site doesn’t even have to be the intended target to feel the affects of a DDoS attack.
You can take a look at the article, here.
Yes, I know I’ve been a slacker with regards to posting. However, I’ll bring to your attention that I am ServerBeach’s Geek of the Week for the week of June 16, 2008. You can check me out, here.
PEER1 runs a redundant network utilizing 4 Tier 1 upstream providers. One of these providers, Savvis, had a major network fault last night. I started getting reports from customers that they are either unable to access their server, or their server was unable to access the internet outside the PEER1 network. After a bunch of diagnosis, I was able to trace the issue to our Savvis transit upstreams in the east coast.
I then checked a very handy service called Internet Pulse, and discovered that Savvis was having network issues pretty much all over North America.
Fantastic. However, with the help of the Engineering department, we were quickly able to react, and redirect traffic out the other upstreams, avoiding Savvis where possible. Most providers, no matter how big or small, will have network issues, faults, and generally not nice stuff happen to them.. However what makes the difference between the decent networks, and the great networks (like PEER1) is the ability to react quickly to changes in the structure of the network and minimize latency, packet loss, and downtime.