Case of the Missing Switch -- Solved

A month or so ago I posted a plea for help in reference to a strange problem I was having with a customer's switches.  The basic problem was that the network worked fine except that the management interfaces on the IDF switches could only be pinged or connected to from the MDF switch.

One of my astute readers, Eric Lund, hit the nail on the head with his comment:

Is ip default-gateway x.x.x.x set on the switch? It should be on the same segment as your management SVI.

This lead me to look again at the IDF configurations.  Sure enough the ip default-gateway was set to the default gateway of the old network.  We had been using the management ports on the switches to access and configure them from the old HP Procurve production network.  When I cut over, I forgot to change those default gateway statements.  Thankfully it didn't impact production, but it was one of those head scratchers when it came to managing the network.

Review - Fluke Network One Touch AT

Earlier this summer I had the privilege to participate in Fluke Network's beta test of their OneTouch AT Network Assistant.  Many of us have our favorite software tools on our laptops that we use for troubleshooting.  Unfortunately a lot of times, it's not convenient to lug around a laptop (not everyone gets a Macbook Air to use).  Also there are some tools like network cabling qualifying that just can't be done by a laptop.

This generally leads to one of two scenarios.  Either you have budget and you buy a bag full of tools or you don't have budget and you make do without specialized tools.  For those with budget you will generally have a list of tools something like this:

• Cable Toner and Probe Kit
• Copper Cable Qualifier
• Fiber Cable Qualifier
• Wireless Tester

With the OneTouch AT, you have all of these tools, plus some of the best software tools all in one package.

Picture (c) Fluke Networks

Picture (c) Fluke Networks

As seen in these pictures the OneTouch AT packs in two Gigabit copper ports, two SFP fiber ports and an 802.11a/b/g/n wireless antennae.  The screen is a touch interface.  It's not quite as responsive as your average iPhone or Android, but the screen looks more robust which is good in a testing tool.  In addition to the tool itself, Fluke has various accessory packages that include a directional wireless antennae, wire locators, and a USB fiber scope.

Because of the dual ports for fiber and copper, the device can (with the right license) serve as a TAP to capture traffic.  From reading the manual, I don't believe that it is capable of full line speed. However, for most applications this TAP will be useful in troubleshooting.  The captures can either be copied over the network or via USB thumb drive.

The real place that the OneTouch AT goes beyond what you would expect in a network troubleshooting tool of its size is in the software.  Fluke has provided many predefined tests that can be applied against different tiers of networks and applications.  Once a profile is setup, an engineer or help desk staffer can hook it up, press Test and have a picture of everything from the client to the services it would access.  This alone could help narrow the troubleshooting time of a problem immensely by showing what tier in a multi-tier application is slow or failing from a client's perspective.

One of the predefined tests is also rather unique.  This is called VeriFi.  It uses the wireless adapter to connect to your network and do a throughput and latency check against a defined host on your network.  This lets you confirm usability as well as coverage.

My Take


If you have the budget, get this tool.  You'll save money and space compared to buying the individual tools.  My only complaint is that I don't have one in my toolkit yet.  There have been a few times since I had to ship it back that I wish I had still had my beta unit.  Take a look at the Fluke website for more information and details because I barely scratched the surface of the "apps" on this unit.

Disclaimer


Fluke Networks sent me a free beta unit that was the basis of this review.  Because I participated in the beta and case study process I may end up receiving a OneTouch AT.  My review though is my own and what I really think.

Not your Father's CiscoWorks...

It's budget time and as such I've been playing with several demos of Cisco products trying to figure out what is worth fighting for and what isn't.  While budgeting for SmartNet renewals I discovered that my Wireless Control System (WCS) software was EoS next February.  WCS has been one of those applications that "just works", so I haven't really worried about replacing it before.

Knowing now that WCS needed replaced I went out to Cisco to figure out what the replacement was.  Cisco is migrating WCS customers to Cisco Prime Network Control System (Prime is their overall branding for all things network management).  The number one difference with NCS is that it has the ability to show both wired and wireless clients on the network in one tool.  For the most part the interface is the same as WCS, but it has been polished a bit with fancy new graphics.

The real surprise for me was that Cisco Prime NCS is bundled with Cisco Prime Lan Management Solution (LMS).  My first thought was that Cisco has had too much trouble selling CiscoWorks LMS so they just renamed it.  I have been pleasantly surprised.  Prime LMS is not your father's CiscoWorks.  The web interface is clean and for the most part easy to use like NCS or WCS.  Every so often you can see that the GUI designers ran back to the mothership as CiscoWorks-esque screens do still pop up in some areas.

Overall I've been impressed with both my demo of Cisco Prime NCS and Cisco Prime LMS.  My one complaint is the size of the VMWare appliance.  I have a relatively small network so I have chosen to use the "small" appliance version of both applications.  If I chose to thick provision both appliances, the combination would have been almost 512GB.  Now I realize that disk is "cheap" on laptops and such, but for Enterprise storage on a SAN, that's quite a chunk of change.  Surely for a network under 50 switches and 200 APs, the applications don't need that much space.  Maybe Cisco needs a ultra small tier too?