Ryan Is Rambling On Again

GOOD NEWS!  As long as we can properly simulate an MPLS network we don’t have to scrap our original plan.  That is such a relief.  Al and I will be spending the next 2-3 weeks focusing on learning the IOS commands for BGR and IS-IS protocols.

I have to figure out what happened with BIND today.  It was running perfectly and then I shut Server 2008 down and *poof* no more BIND.  Not only is it no longer the default DNS, I can’t even start the service anymore.  I think I’ll just start from scratch and completely reinstall BIND.

Al, Tom, Trisha and I stayed late at class last night and got 90% of our hardware and pricing figured out.  Say what you want to about Dell computers, but their website is freaking brilliant for our purposes.  Select your computers/servers, configure them with what you need and then click print!  It gives you a breakdown of what you selected and a price.  Simple!  There will be a few additional items that we will need to add as we progress with our design, but for now that is under control.

I’ll make my plea once more.  If you read this and know of any sources/blogs/websites with good tutorials on how to set up an MPLS network, please share them with me in the comments.

That’s it for now.

Our project just got flushed today!  We’ve been planning, with the encouragement of our instructor I might add, to build our Capstone project around an MPLS network.  However, the routers available to us at ITT-Tech are older than the MPLS technology so we can’t configure them for our needs.  I also learned that Packet Tracer 5.2 STILL doesn’t support MPLS so we can’t even build the MPLS network in a virtual environment.  What this all boils down to is WE CAN’T SHOW A DEMONSTRATION OF A MODERN NETWORK ARCHITECTURE AT A NATIONALLY ACCREDITED TECHNICAL SCHOOL WITH A COMPUTER NETWORKING DEGREE PROGRAM.  HOW PATHETIC!!!

Now, 4 weeks into this project, we have to start over with our network design.  It seems that the best we can do is demonstrate a VPN as long as we bring in our own computers.  Yes folks, the wonderful “suits” at ITT-Tech don’t see the need to give us a few computers in each lab that are configured with 2 NIC CARDS.  AND, they don’t allow us to open the existing computers up and install a second NIC card because we will VOID THE WARRANTY!!!  So, for the privilege of paying them $40k+ I get to work on outdated equipment, demonstrate decade old technology,  and I am still forced to bring my own personal equipment from home in order to properly demonstrate this decade old “secure” network technology.  Oh, yeah, and the computers in the labs the CNS students use are only 32 bit.

I know next to nothing about setting up a VPN so I’m seriously stressing out.  We have to research the technology and implementation of a VPN, come up with an IP scheme, and figure out what equipment and pricing will be for this.  My group now has to scramble to get anything put together in time.

Wish me luck…lots and lots of it.

It’s official…Microsoft Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 sp1 DO NOT play well together.  After almost 2 hours of trying to install Exchange 2007, I finally gave up.  I downloaded Exchange Server 2010 and PRESTO…no problems!  It installed with no errors on the first try!  As you can imagine I was thrilled and disgusted all at the same time.  So, we will be using Exchange 2010 for certain.

BIND DNS may be the most widely used DNS server on the planet, but like all things open source it has NO GUI, numerous little “quirks”, and no decent documentation.  I installed BIND, configured it, started it and was able to verify it was working.  Then I shut down VMWare and my computer and went to bed.  When I came back this afternoon to work on it some more, BIND was not working.  I tried to start it manually…no luck.  I tried to reload it…no joy.  AAAARRRGGGH!  Time to fire up the primary resource for the open source community, Google, and figure out what is going wrong.  I found numerous blogs about this problem, but none of the solutions seem to work.  I think that when I shut down the server last night it installed an update.  According to a few of the posts I’ve read, those automatic updates from Microsoft have a habit of blowing out BIND DNS and reloading Microsoft’s DNS (shocking that Microsoft would do something like that *said dripping with sarcasm*).  But, after shutting down Microsoft’s DNS, rebooting and shutting down Microsoft’s DNS again, and finally shouting and swearing at my monitor I still can’t start BIND.  If you heard a hollow thudding sound earlier today it was just the sound of my head repeatedly banging against my desk.  I’m thinking that I’m just going to reinstall BIND from scratch RIGHT AFTER I DISABLE THE AUTOMATIC UPDATES FROM MICRO$OFT!!

I learned a lot of good stuff about an MPLS network over the weekend.  Now I’m not sure that we can do it at the school.  It seems that we don’t have routers at the school that can be configured for MPLS.  They want a live demo, not a simulated one, but when the equipment is older than the current technology out there (ex., not a single 64 bit PC in the building except the student’s laptops), they may need to loosen up the rules just a touch.  When I see my instructor this week I’m going to ask if we can do our demo through Packet Tracer.  Does anyone know if MPLS can be configured in Packet Tracer?  If the answer is yes, does anyone know how?

My next task is to turn Fedora 11 into our web server and integrate it into our network.  I feel many hours spent with SAMBA, SWAT and/or Webmin coming on.

Other than all of the problems caused by Microsoft’s brilliant (again, *sarcasm*) software, I’m feeling good about the progress we are making.  Al was here today working on the IP address scheme and finishing up the documentation that needs to be turned in.  Tomorrow Al, Trish and I will be meeting up at the school for a few hours to finish up the stuff that’s due later this week.  Also, we will be getting Tom back now that his medical woes seem to be coming to an end.  That will be fantastic!  Things are moving along.

More to come…

I am entering into my final quarter of the Associates Degree program at ITT-Tech.  In the final quarter all students take a class called Capstone.  This class is a 12 week long project that forces you to use all of the knowledge and skills you have learned during your time at the school.  Since I’m a Computer Networking Systems student my project is all about building a big, nasty network.

We were handed a 35 page document that is actually a mock-RFP.  It details the requirements of a fictitious company’s new network needs and includes building layouts and existing hardware.  We are supposed to use this information to create a network solution that meets their needs and present it to the clients (in this case the clients are the school’s instructors and any other students who want to come).  In this particular project we are responding to a request from 5 doctors that have formed a new partnership and are trying to update their own internal LANs and also link all 5 locations in to a single WAN.  Seems easy, right?  NOT EVEN KINDA in reality!

My group decided to go with an MPLS design for connecting the 5 locations. This seems to be the most secure and robust way of handling their data sharing needs while maintaining HIPAA compliance.  This type of network is something that was mentioned to us but never really taught.  So, we are trying to learn how to build and deploy an MPLS network from scratch in the next few weeks.  We realize that the ISP typically configures this type of network for the client, but we still have to know how it works, give IP/subnet schemes for it and demo it in our presentation.  We have racks of Cisco routers and switches at the school to configure this on, but we have no idea what the IOS commands are to configure this type of network.  So, I’m grabbing my laptop this weekend, heading to Barnes & Noble to look for books on the topic, and then sitting in their cafe (I’m a poor student that can’t afford to buy these books).  I’ll fire up Packet Tracer to see if I can stumble my way through it on the simulator before spending hours in the school’s labs in a tangle of ethernet and rollover cables trying to figure it out on the live routers.  We also have to configure all of the Servers, MS Exchange, DNS, etc., and produce a working demo of what their network will look/behave like.  Twelve weeks seemed like a lot of time but in reality it’s not nearly enough.

I have a fantastic group for this project.  Al, Tom and Trisha are probably the the most dedicated and capable students in my graduating class (besides myself, of course).  I have no doubt that we will put together a solid solution and a strong presentation.  I just hope we don’t have to drop the MPLS idea.

I’m putting out a call for help from all of you wonderful people in internet land.  If you have any knowledge or resources that you can share or point me to about configuring this type of network, please post in the comments.  Any help will be greatly appreciated!  I’ll post updates as I stumble through this project

Wish me luck!