Ryan Is Rambling On Again

In my last post I was pretty discouraged and I believe I described our project as “hosed”. I may have been a little premature with that assessment.

Al, who was just as discouraged as I was, had a brainstorm and started searching for simulators that can handle MPLS. He came across one called GNS3. It’s an open source simulator that allows you to load an IOS .bin file to the router in the simulator. This allows you to give the router a modern enough OS to be able to configue it for MPLS. It comes in both Linux and Windows flavors and not knowing which would work better we decided to try to load both. I fired up VMware on my laptop and loaded my Fedora 11 machine and he grabbed his laptop with 64 bit Windows Vista on it. We both went to SourceForge and downloaded the program and set out to get it working. After a brief 3.5 hours of extreme frustration I decided to shut down my Fedora virtual machine and try to install it on my laptop’s 64 bit Windows 7 OS. A brief hour and a half later I finally had success!  The simulator FINALLY worked!  Al had one little box checked that was preventing him from getting it to work on his computer (isn’t that always the way). So we both loaded up a .bin file of IOS version 12 or newer and tried to configure a router. IT WORKED! I think that Al and I may have burned out a few of Google’s servers figuring that out tonight. Now we just need to figure out how to configure an MPLS network. Hahahahaha (imagine the Joker laughing here).

I’m happy that we should now be able to stick with our original plan. I’m also a little intimidated by the prospect of having to learn all of the new command line stuff in the next few weeks. But I’m no longer discouraged about this project.

To infinity and beyond…

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.

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!