Geek Speak Blog

Dude, cut the cord already - Part Two

2010-03-18T22:10:00Z

As you may have seen, a couple of weeks ago my friend and fellow blogger Michael Morisy over at Tech Target wrote a great blog post on his views of why today's network technology doesn't support the all wireless office environment. You can go read what Michael had to say about it here . I happen to be of the opposite opinion - i.e. I do believe that in many cases organizations could save a lot of time, money, and even improve the customer experience by going all wireless. You can read more...(read more)

Evolution, Justice, and the Art of Being a Geek

2010-03-12T03:14:00Z

I've mentioned it before, but The Big Bang Theory is one of my absolute favorite TV shows and if you're a geek like me you really ought to check it out sometime. Spoiler alert - if you watch the show I'm just about to discuss this week's episode... This week they did a bit where the guys had been following Adam West around Pasadena (hey, if you saw Adam West driving around town wouldn't you follow him?) and stumbled into a garage sale where they bought a box of miscelaneous items...(read more)

It's time dude, cut the cord already...

2010-03-04T20:11:00Z

Some things really are a matter of opinion. My buddy Greg Newman prefers spinnerbaits while I prefer to fish with plastic worms. My brother Zach prefers to shoot a pump gun while I shoot an over/under. And apparently my friend and fellow-blogger Michael Morisy over at Tech Target prefers to waste his money on less secure,old school wired networks than to step into the 21st century and join the wireless fan club... You can read all about his take on this subject here . Don't get me wrong - there...(read more)

Understanding When to Deploy a Distributed Network Management Architecture

2010-02-25T21:49:00Z

Here at SolarWinds we offer a product called EOC - or Enterprise Operations Console. EOC is used when you want to deploy Orion in a distributed management architecture. Today I received a question about when you should think about deploying such an architecture so I thought I'd take a few minutes to write on the subject. Before we go into the reasons to deploy such an architecture we should agree on what exactly a distributed network manaement architecture is. For the purposes of this conversation...(read more)

Understanding the difference between NetFlow and IP SLA

2010-02-22T19:38:00Z

One of the most common things I'm asked to explain is the difference between Cisco IP SLA and NetFlow. At a glance, they have a lot in common: They're both supported on many Cisco devices (routers, swithes, firewalls, etc) They both can help you understand network performance, especially on the WAN Network management applications like Orion and the SolarWinds free tools support both All that said, the similarities mostly end there... NetFlow Let's for a moment group all flow technologies...(read more)

Analyzing Web Traffic

2010-02-11T21:21:00Z

One of the most difficult aspects of analyzing network traffic is that so much of today's network traffic is web traffic riding on either port 80 (HTTP) or port 443 (HTTPS). When you analyze network traffic using a technology like NetFlow, sFlow, JFlow, or IPFix, the protocol tells you (among other things) the source and destination addresses, the protocol (TCP, UDP, etc), and the source and destination port numbers - but not the application. There are a few ways of getting around this. The latest...(read more)

Understanding how the Weather affects your Network

2010-02-09T04:06:00Z

Not too many years ago I ran a large network for the United States Air Force. For the first several years I was there we had an old copper-wire backbone and it was amazing to see the havoc that weather could wreak upon that network. Sometimes you practically needed scuba gear to go into those manholes and troubleshoot wiring issues. You could practically track where the storm was moving based upon the color changes on my maps within my NMS. Even today, with best in class technologies, weather can...(read more)

SolarWinds Makes the Move to Storage

2010-01-28T00:59:00Z

Well, the news is out. The geeks from Tek-Tools have joined the team here at SolarWinds and as usual, I'm pretty freakin' excited. If you want the details you can go here , but in a nutshell - you asked and we're delivering. The need for comprehensive management of networks, systems, applications, storage, and virtualization has never been higher and with the addition of the Tek-Tools stuff we're stepping up to the plate to deliver. Just imagine us standing at the plate and pointing...(read more)

New SolarWinds Free Tool - Network Config Generator

2010-01-27T01:18:00Z

Sometimes doing things the hard way can get a bit tiresome. Don't get me wrong, I love the CLI. I love the God-like power that I feel when I'm sitting in front of a router and the entire team is standing behind me watching while I bring forth the magic. I love the fact that I've memorized all kinds of IOS syntax that that my skills when invoking this knowledge can bring young network padawans to their knees, bowing in homage to the network jedi that I have become... Of course, not everyone...(read more)

Come see us at Cisco Live in Barcelona Next Week!!!

2010-01-20T16:47:00Z

Well, it's that time of year again. It's starting to feel like spring here in Austin Texas, the Super Bowl is only weeks away, the World Cup is only about 141 days, 5 hours, and 9 minutes away , and I'm packing for Barcelona for Networkers at Cisco Live . This year not only will SolarWinds be hosting the coolest booth at the show and giving out tons of free swag but I'll also be presenting within the Cisco Theatre. So, if you're going to be in Spain stop by and see us. And if...(read more)

How to find your firehose...

2010-01-15T16:48:00Z

I'm sure you've heard the term " drinking from the firehose " used to describe being fed information at an insane, maybe even overwhelming rate. For most people this is probably a bad thing, but for geeks like us sometimes it's just what the doctor orderred. I'm sure you've been there. It's the night before an important meeting and you're going to be expected to be an expert on some cool new area of technology. Problem is, you've never worked with it before...(read more)

A New Home for the Head Geek at SolarWinds - /geek

2010-01-10T22:04:00Z

In case you've been locked in a cave somewhere for the last couple of years and haven't noticed, here at SolarWinds we've been creating some great, free learning material for network engineers, network administrators, system administrators, and IT managers of all types. We've hosted and recorded dozens of webcasts, a myriad of videos, and several cool whitepapers among other things such as our Geek's Guides. To be honest, we've produced so much learning content that sometimes...(read more)

Head Geek's Top 5 Things to Focus on While Working thru the Holidays

2009-12-18T21:00:00Z

Here it is, December once again and we find ourselves in the office working as usual. Not an uncommon occurrence if you're a network administrator, network engineer, system administrator, consultant, DBA, Storage Administrator, VMWare Administrator, Web Developer, Systems Engineer, Applications Developer - well, basically anyone in any area of IT with the words "Manager, Administrator, Engineer, or Developer" in your title. But hey, it could be worse. After all, we sort of hold the...(read more)

Estimating your number of IP SLA Devices

2009-12-04T19:45:00Z

A few months ago here at SolarWinds we released a new add-on module to Orion called the Orion IP SLA Manager . The IP SLA manager leverages Cisco IP SLA and other protocols to measure and report on network performance from different perspectives across the network and to provide VoIP device and quality of service management. This new module has a very flexible licensing structure and is not tied to the version of Orion NPM (SLX, SL2000, SL500, SL250, SL100) that you own but instead is based on the...(read more)

Thoughts on the HP and 3Com Merger

2009-11-25T16:28:00Z

As many of you are probably aware, on November 11th HP announced plans to acquire 3Com for about $2.7 billion. I've received several e-mails asking for my opinion on this subject so I thought I'd take a few minutes here to share my thoughts as a network engineer who has been in the industry for a long time and has the opportunity to think strategically about technology. Before I get started I should come right out and say that I think that this is really good news. Of course, if you know...(read more)