Routerz...

a couple 1841's trickled in.

Cleaning physically and logically.

Router#copy flash:c1841-adventerprisek9-mz.124-24.T1.bin tftp
Address or name of remote host []? 192.168.1.99
Destination filename [c1841-adventerprisek9-mz.124-24.T1.bin]?
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
40494348 bytes copied in 156.916 secs (258064 bytes/sec)

Ohh, if I could spare the $$$

Microsoft Touch Table top computer on Ebay

and... we are mobile.

finished up the rolling portion of one rack. About $50 in materials, and a wider stance.

With the Ebay sales, and recycling, I'm still $15.00 ahead on the racks. ;-)

stuff coming in, slowly...

The 1841's are apparently going to take twice as long as 3560's and 3550's to ship apparently ?


The rack mounts for the Silverstone ATX case came in. Silverstone really makes nice products. I've always liked their Home Theater PC cases.

DB-60 cables arrived finally from Hong Kong. Paid too much for them for how long they took to get here.

And I spent a little bit to get one of the racks up off the ground and mobile.

Mounting them on 24" 2x4's to lengthen the stance of the rack some. Should work.

Getting creative with password recovery/ROMMON

The 1811 I picked up off of Ebay arrived and was locked down pretty hard. I wasn't even able to break to ROMMON.

Not having worked with one of these flashed based ISR's before, I wasn't sure what to do. I was going to see about booting from a USB stick, but thought I'd try one thing first. I powered it down, pulled the flash, powered it back up, and obviously, it went to ROMMON. I'm sure voiding the imaginary warranty that the new to me 1811, didn't have, I shoved the Flash back into the router and dir flash: and it was able to see it.

Changed confreg to 2142, and reloaded. It booted past the lockdown, and I was able to clear the startup config.

Works for me.

Now to figure out how to set it up as a home router.

Routers bought

So, I did end up picking up three 1841's. I think they all have VPN modules in them and appear have to 256/64, and are running top shelf IOS.

I also picked up an 1811w, which will become the remote, remote access gateway for the network and the house. The DD-WRT from Buffalo networks has not be too reliable on the wireless end lately.

I'm having an issue with remote access to CLI, on the remote reboot power switches. I can access the CLI locally, but not remotely outside the house. I can reach the web interface, but not the CLI. I reach our house router through a powerline network extender from Western Digital, which works really well, but I'm wondering if it's blocking remote access somehow.

***EDIT***

Never mind, the factory reset on the Buffalo must have worked, or the power cycle I did on the synaccess, who knows. I'm in it now, lol.

finding that I am only having issues with local echo with the synaccess box's with Putty. With hyperterm, or whatever is bundled with windows these days, I have no issues, nor do I with SecureCRT. Trying to figure out what setting is causing this in Putty. Command complete by tab is also not working in putty.

Just waiting for routers to show up now, and working on switch studying.

tying up loose ends, waiting on routers.

Upgraded the rest of the 3550's, picked up more rack bolts, and started mounting into the TSHOOT/CCNA rack.

Shopping for Routers to fill out my topologies now. 2811's, 1841's, 2621xm's. We'll see what it ends up as.

Made an offer on 5 1841's that was less than half the $1100 they were looking for, and they came down to $1095, snarky, but I guess they'll learn their lesson that they are looking for $200/rtr for a model that's selling for less than $100 at the mem config they have. It would have been $500 that they didn't have before, but maybe they are new at this.

Ebay is funny sometimes.

the Command center: where the magic happens... more like the scratching of head...

Switch lab up and running, missing a 3560 though

Building the Synaccess cables was  a PITA. I've literally built thousands of custom cables(my project on the Dell Lebanon, Tennessee site was the burn-in racks, 1500 RJ45's termed and tested) , and it was still a pain. The RS232 requires one conductor to be skipped on each end, which if you have ever terminated an RJ45, sliding 7 conductors into a jack meant for 8 is literally a hit-or-miss proposition.

Still need hosts, the missing 3560, and a backbone router.

webcam is also up, embedding is going to be a problem from what I see on the camera makers forums

Home Lab work continues, cable making, integrating system into the network... testing, and a big Whew...

Well, I was up late last night and pretty dejected.

It was looking like the Synaccess remote power switches were going to be fine for remote power access, but the pass through for console ports that would save me the price of a couple 2509/2511's was iffy at best.

At first, it was looking like they were not going to work at all because they want the terminal emulator to be Local Echo Off, which means I could send commands through the access switch, but wouldn't be able to see what I was typing. That doesn't appear to fully be the case. I changed it to local echo on, and it still works, but with some caveats.

1. I was getting double entry's on the return from the device, which is fine, as long as it was only sending one command.

2. Scrolling a long window, such as show run would stop at the first screen. I've never had to change console setup, so I thought that might be a deal killer, but found that I can set console to length 0 which runs the whole command, then you just have to scroll back to see what you want, perfectly fine by me. Big relief.

And a geek like me can't help but giggle a bit when I can shut the power off to my rack from my phone...

So now, I'm making more cables, as the Synaccess has to have an RS232 to Cisco pin-out. It's probably the same pin-out as on the 2509/2511rj's, but I'm not sure. 

Brings back memories, as inside plant commercial cabling is what got me on the track to where I am now. If there is anything I know, it's cabling. Luckily I still have all the tools.

Need more rack bolts !!!
(and yes this will have an IP camera pointed at the racks, also because I'm a geek.)

Speaking of racks. The 200+, 14ft, and 25ft, CAT-3 jumpers, and 2 and 4 pair jumper wire that came in the craigslist deal with the racks ($125) were recycled today for $110.00 along with the 66blocks that sold on E-bay, I'm now cash positive on the deal, so the racks were FREE !

I also have about $500 worth of network install equipment on E-bay still from the deal.

Piece by Piece, coming together

Spent some time this morning before work, building. Unfortunately, the bolts that fit these lucent racks almost don't exist. 12-32 size is almost impossible to find and most racks use 10-32.

The 10-32 bolts I picked up work, but aren't giving me warm fuzzy's. As the rack is aluminum, I think there is a chance of the bolt hole's stripping out.

I'll have more time to get everything configured this weekend. My weekends run Sunday thru Tuesday, due to working in a busy, 24/7 Network Operations Center.

3x 3550's, 2x 2611's, and the remote reboot power strip.

The remote reboot power strip is pretty cool and will be fun to script into use.

The First 3560 came in last night as well, and two more 3550's.