I did a Packet Pushers Podcast recently with Greg Ferro and Josh O'Brien , talking about the common network problems that we see in operational networks. The list of topics comes from a poster, The Top 25 Network Problems and Their Business Impact that I developed while at Netcordia (now Infoblox...

I was at VoiceCon two weeks ago, participating in a panel where I talked about network resiliency and presented my VoIP Troubleshooting and Monitoring tutorial. Both presentations included examples of how you should be prepared for network failures. I'm a proponent of understanding the causes of...

After my posting about the dangers of spanning Layer 2 between data centers in my blog titled Spanning Tree Protocol and Failure Domains , Shivlu Jain ( www.mplsvpn.info ) asked about handling requests to span Layer 2 between data centers. One of his concerns was how to handle HA (High Availability)...

While doing some other research recently, I ran across the Bridge Assurance feature in Cisco gear, which was new to me. Cisco has been working on ways to avoid STP melt-down and Bridge Assurance is another tool to help network administrators keep networks running. STP problems occur when forwarding loops...

Co-worker Pete Welcher recently helped a customer whose network experienced a spanning tree loop (i.e. a melt-down). Several things can be learned from thinking about the experience and how to avoid it. Lesson #1: Adequately plan the task. Rush jobs carry a higher risk of problems than well-planned tasks...