ROUTING & SWITCHING

IS-IS is a Link State IGP that’s fairly similar to OSPF in terms of operations. In fact, they were created around the same time ! IS-IS stands for Intermediate System to Intermediate System. In essence, an “Intermediate Systems” simply means a “Router”. So, “Router to Router” is a fair analogy when describing the protocol. Typically IS-IS is [ Read More ]

Have you heard of something called “The Internet” ? Well, BGP is actually the routing protocol that makes it all happen ! I would like to start off by saying BGP is by far my FAVORITE routing protocol ! By Far !!! Did I say by far ?! Not even close to the other ones [ Read More ]

OSPF is a routing protocol providing dynamic adjacency capabilities. It is a Link State protocol and is mostly used as IGP in large entreprise networks. Another Link State protocol is IS-IS which is still used in certain circumstances such as on the MPLS core of a Service Provider network… Also, the underline protocol running “TRILL” [ Read More ]

RIP is a distance vector routing protocol that uses hop counts as its metric to undergo a best path selection process. It can be considered somewhat effective for small networks but problematic for larger network as it transmits its entire routing table to its peers every 30sec. We will leverage the following topology to demonstrate how [ Read More ]

EIGRP named mode has been around for years. It is a bit different from the classic EIGRP that most Engineers are used to but it gives you more control and an edge in terms of troubleshooting as all the configuration are centric basically. At this point, if you are unfamiliar with EIGRP, I would suggest [ Read More ]

EIGRP stands for Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol which is just like the name implies, an enhanced version of the legacy IGRP. It is considered as an “Advanced Distance Vector Protocol” which uses 5 different type of packets to exchange information: -Hello: Hello packets are used to discover EIGRP neighbors. -Update: Updates are mainly used for [ Read More ]

Etherchannel which is also known as Link Aggregation and it is a protocol that allows grouping or bundling of multiple physical Ethernet links into a single logical one. Its main purpose is to provide fault-tolerant high-speed links between network devices and also servers. In today’s network, bottlenecks are fairly common and sometimes you may be [ Read More ]

VTP stands for “VLAN Trunking Protocol”. It is a Cisco-proprietary protocol designed to reduce administrative overhead in a switched network. Basically, when a new vlan is configured on the VTP server, it is then propagated throughout the switches. This behavior eradicates the need to configure the same vlan on each switch. You can imagine how [ Read More ]

In this post, we will talk about Trunk Links and the purpose to implement them in your environment. We will be using the following topology…   First, let’s talk about the meaning Trunk Link and its purpose. In layman’s terms, a trunk link is nothing but a regular link with the ability to pass and [ Read More ]

STP (Spanning-Tree Protocol) is one of those protocol that’ll run in the background with minimal management overhead providing there are no topology changes. STP functions is to primarily prevent bridge loops in a single broadcast domain. Given its capabilities, it is also used in network design in terms of redundant links as it provides dynamic backup [ Read More ]