Port on Aaron's Worthless Words

DHCP ACK Error on Avaya Phones

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

We’re an Avaya voice shop (for now if I have my way) and have Avaya systems of various sizes and shapes all around the Enterprise. I was at one of our remote locations a few weeks back and helped the guys there replace a non-PoE switch so they could get the old power injector panel out of their rack. When we moved stuff around, the phones didn’t come back and had the dreaded DHCP Ack Error.

IIUC Notes - Voice Ports and Dial Peers

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

More of my IIUC study notes. As always, feel free to correct. I really need to have a real post, don’t I?

show voice port summary

Shows the voice ports available for use

R1#show voice port summary
                                          IN       OUT
PORT           CH   SIG-TYPE   ADMIN OPER STATUS   STATUS   EC
============== == ============ ===== ==== ======== ======== ==
50/0/1         1      efxs     up    up   on-hook  idle     y
50/0/1         2      efxs     up    up   on-hook  idle     y
50/0/2         1      efxs     up    up   on-hook  idle     y
50/0/2         2      efxs     up    up   on-hook  idle     y
50/0/3         1      efxs     up    up   on-hook  idle     y
50/0/4         1      efxs     up    up   on-hook  idle     y
50/0/5         1      efxs     up    up   on-hook  idle     y

An ephone-dn shows up as efxs, so all these are ephone-dns.
Channels are numbered 0-23; timeslots are numbered 1-24

FXS Ports

SWITCH – STP Exercise #1 Solution

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Did you guys have any trouble with the solution to the STP exercise? Let’s work through it and see what happens. I got a few responses to the solution, and everyone seems to get the same answer, so I assume we’re all right.

Before we get started, I wanted to mention the tie breakers since there can be ties in STP. If there is a tie in any calculation, the same tie breakers are used, so I’ll list them here to use as we move through the calculations.

Ideas That Seems Good At the Time

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

When I started in IT, I tried to get my gear as standardized as possible to impress everyone. I worked at it and worked at it until I realized that there were a handful of things that sound good but just won’t work. If you’re just getting started in the field, you may not agree, but come back in 5 years and see how right I am. Heh.

Assigning switchports to VLANs in chunks just doesn’t work. This seems like a great idea. You can put client A on port 1 through 12 and client B on ports 13 through 24. Then client A winds up with 13 servers, and B only has 3, so your whole scheme is in pieces on the floor. It’s just easier to plug servers into the next available port and forget physically organizing the ports. The switches don’t care if the ports are in order by VLAN. Just keep it simple.
Color-coding cables only works for a while. Let’s cable web servers with green cables and application boxes with blue cables and the database servers with pink and the mail servers with aubergine. I promise you, though, that you will run out of cables of one color or another and wind up having a database server in green. Then you’ll have something else wrong. It won’t be long before the color standard only applies on paper.
Labeling switchports by name only works if you buy servers all the time. If you’re in an environment where servers change roles and names, I guarantee you that your ports are mislabeled. The only time that labeling really works is if you’re lucky enough to work for a company with enough money to buy new stuff for every project. I’ve actually resorted to labeling ports with serial numbers instead of names since those won’t change.
Complicated naming schemes don’t work. They may sound cool, but simpler names are almost always better. Name your router “r1” or something. Don’t try “rtr001prod1” or something as ludicrous. I once made up this awesome naming scheme, and it worked until the business took on other projects that didn’t fall into the standard, so I was screwed. Save yourself some problems and keep it simple.