My Fan Club

As I've mentioned a few times in the past, I act as an admin for one of the largest, if not the largest, Facebook groups dedicated to CCNA study.  You can find that group right here, or through the Facebook button in the top right corner of any page on this blog.  The group has a few other admins spread out through the world (so that our eyes would be on the page at different times of the day, ideally) and we run the group in accordance to our own moral compass, which for the most part aligns pretty well amongst ourselves and past admins.

Of course, the rules that we've set for the group don't sit well with some people.  If you're into something that doesn't jive with the rules, just simply don't discuss it in the group.  It's pretty simple, right?  Well for some it isn't that easy.  And since I encourage feedback from the community of users, I get it.  Here I've collected a few of my favorites.  There have been others, but many of them blocked me not long after and Facebook knocked it off of my messages before I could get a screenshot.  Warning, the language in these screenshots is a bit graphic.

This first satisfied customer of our services was removed for discussing braindumps and gets right to the point.

User number two was removed for the same reason.  Apparently cheating on exams means obtaining knowledge, and I'm just jealous somehow.   Interesting take.

User number three is my personal favorite.  I think he's asking me to create a group full of porn, and then show it to him?  I didn't realize that porn was so difficult to find.  I know that Netflix is taking over as the king of Internet traffic, but recent numbers show porn is still well over 30% of all traffic.

User number four was apparently upset that the free service we're providing him didn't get him an answer quickly enough for his satisfaction.  So he asked a few more times.  I believe this is the fourth time he asked, a couple times as a top level post, and a couple other times attempting to thread-jack another discussion.  Anyway, I did answer one of his other posts but he chose to ignore that and post again.  Needless to say, he won't have to worry about us getting back to him too slowly anymore.

Finally, this last one didn't come from the CCNA group, it came as a private message to the Free CCNA Workbook Facebook page, which I am also an admin for.  No commentary necessary, I think it speaks for itself.  Apparently when I took the screenshot of this one, I was feeling generous and omitted the name of this class act.  I wonder what he would have thought if I tracked down his instructor and showed them this?

And this is far from all of the nonsense I've gotten over the years, it's just the ones that amused me to the point of taking a screenshot.  That is not to say that it's all negative feedback, but that's primarily the thanks you get for a well maintained group.  The group has no spam, no flame wars, nothing violating the rules except for the very brief time it takes an admin to see and kill the post.  That is, except in my private inbox.  That's full of it.

Registering ASP.NET for Office Web Apps Error

Here's a quick and dirty post for something that came up recently in the lab.  I was setting up an Office Web Apps server, and was getting the following error:

Can't create new Office Web Apps farm: The server must be joined to a domain.

Seeing this error message was a bit frustrating to say the least, because the server was indeed joined to a domain.  After a bunch of searching with Google, I finally came across the answer.  While setting up the server, I had installed IIS before .NET, so I needed to register ASP.NET.  The required bits in IIS were already installed, so it was just a matter of registration. This can be done with the following steps:

• Open an elevated command prompt or PowerShell console.
• execute the command start Microsoft.NET
• navigate to c:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727
• execute the command asp_regiis.exe /i 
• execute the command iisreset or restart the server

Other things to check for when getting this error are to ensure that your server really is connected to a domain (and that the server account in AD is not broken) and that you have the correct DNS Server specified in the network settings.

SENSS Passed

Just a short post for this week, as I've done recently.  This exam has completely consumed my time lately.  Because I had yesterday off, I scheduled my second attempt at the SENSS and nailed it this time with a score of 910.  Exams are a lot easier when you know what you need to know, aren't they?  This isn't a knock against Cisco's exam topics, I just didn't have a good idea of just how deep I needed to know certain things that didn't seem like they'd be covered as heavily which lead me to spend a lot of time on things that weren't really covered very much.  It was my first failed Cisco exam, and quite a humbling experience. Either way now I have a much better idea idea of what I need to do moving forward in the CCNP Security.

Next up, I don't know yet.  I plan to take a couple days to recover from that experience and give some thought to which exam I want to tackle next.  While the SIMOS looks like it'll be a lot more fun as it's very heavy in cryptography and VPNs, the SISAS may be more practical as ISE reared it's head multiple times already in the SENSS, and I doubt it won't be in the other exams as well. Besides that, the SISAS is the only exam with a certification guide, so getting to see a little bit of structure in exam preparation may be of use.

Either way, it's not going to be the SITCS this time.  There's no way I'll be able to knock out v1.0 before December 16, and I'd prefer to wait a little bit and let the community hash out exactly what v1.5 is before attempting it.  There was a lot of butt-hurt early on for all 4 of these exams from the early attempts and I'd hate to join the ranks.

Also in the near future will be the CISSP, which is the capstone of my Masters Degree, and the Upgrading Your Skills to MCSA Windows Server 2016 exam.  I haven't decided when I'll mix those two in yet either.  So for now I'll just be kicking the tires on Server 2016 and starting to tinker with ISE.  I've got a few SENSS related posts still in very rough form, so I'll probably get those presentable and post them here and there as well.

CCNA Question of the Week 4

This week, we had an open ended question that covers a lot of areas.  This is a take on a question that was asked during the phone screening for my first I.T. job.  As with all questions in this series, do not make assumptions, and do not answer a question that was not asked. Just answer the question as completely as your knowledge allows.

Your computer was just started and you just logged in and then loaded your favorite web browser.  No other actions have been taken on this computer and no other programs have been launched.  You type www.yahoo.com into the URL bar of the browser and press Enter.  Between now and when the page finishes loading, describe everything that happens in order for that page to load.

The Official CCNA Group Rules

Group Rules:
1.This is a network for the network associate. All legitimate things CCNA related, as well as most other I.T. topics may be discussed here.
2.Things that may not be discussed here include (but is not limited to): Brain-dumps, any other form of copyright infringement, any illegal activity, spam, politics, and personal attacks. It doesn’t matter if it’s legal where you live, Facebook is an American website. If you like a post, that is considered the same as if you posted it yourself.
3.If certguard.com says it’s a dump, then it’s a dump and this isn’t open to negotiation.
4.Do not post homework questions with the expectation that the answers will just be provided. We are willing to help if you don’t understand something, but this group isn’t here to just do it for you.
5.The admins, and only the admins, will decide and enforce the rules.
6.Not knowing is no excuse. You shouldn’t be posting anywhere on the Internet if you don’t know the rules. Violators of any rule are subject to immediate banning.
7. No new accounts. No offense to anyone, it's just that accounts newer than 30 days are where the majority of spam comes from. If you get turned away for this, feel free to try again later.
8. No one word answers. If you can't explain why the answer is d, then you don't need to be the 15th person saying d. Contribute something meaningful to the conversation.
9. Don't try to add people to the group. Nobody gets in without an admin's approval, and I do not approve anyone who did not join on their own.

Group FAQ:
http://www.firewallninja.info/2016/07/the-official-ccna-group-faq.html

CCNA Question of the Week 2

In the following image, you'll see a network topology.  In this topology, the routers are running the RIP routing protocol.  As is traditional with these questions, I'm going to strip out all the irrelevant information.  We're not going to see any router configuration, IP addressing, or anything else that would distract from the question at hand.  The key thing we're going to focus on here is that there are 20 routers.  First, we'll start with a couple assumptions:

• The RIP routing protocol is configured correctly on every router.  
• Nothing in the routers configurations differ except for IP addresses and networks in the routing protocol.
• The IP addressing scheme is correctly subnetted, and the routers are addressed correctly on every interface.

So this week's question is, can the RIP protocol function correctly in this topology?  And for a couple follow up questions:  Why or why not?  Does it make a difference if we're running RIPv1 or RIPv2?

The first thing that probably comes to mind is that the RIP protocol has a maximum hop count.  Most CCNA students go here first when something of this nature comes up.   Now let's consider the difference between hop count, and the number of routers in the topology.  The hop count refers to the number of hops between two routers.  It says nothing about the number of routers in the topology.  

So Let's look at the two routers that are furthest apart, R1 and R20.  In this particular topology, there is no path from R1 to R20 that is more than 7 hops.  And if there a path that exceeded the maximum hop count, it would be ignored by the routing protocol, not having any effect on a different route that didn't exceed 15 hops.  

So the answer to the question is yes, this is a valid RIP topology.  Now two routers exceed 15 hops apart, so there is no part of the topology that is unreachable by any other portion of the topology.  PC1 can reach PC2.

And for the final follow up question, it doesn't matter if we're running RIPv1 or RIPv2.  Neither version of RIP will balk at a hop count of 7.