Ch. 13 lab, building a routed, switched and wireless network.

We didn't do this exact lab in class but we did make a wireless network a couple times and we also made a routed and switched network so if I combine the two ideas.  I would have a wired in router getting internet from the outside which I would find a router that could work as a firewall as well.  I would then connect that to a switch that would connect to a wireless router that would provide internet to the network.

This is a picture of a router and switch!

This is the wireless router's configuration screen to fix your own internal IP on.

The above picture is the router's configuration screen.  Showing what interface is currently being worked on.

Ch. 12 Secure a wireless access point lab

We didn't do this in class or I might not have been there but I imagine it would go something like going into the wireless router and setting it to not broadcast its SSID, do mac filtering and manually add the devices you approve.  Also don't forget to set to wpa2 security protocol and for a firewall I recommend zone alarm.  Apologies if I miss the lab but we did something similar to this in preperation for the final which will come in handy with my home network.

Tour of the campus network

This tour was great.  We toured the campus and we started at the wiring closet just outside the classroom.  The wiring closet nearest us was the neatest of the lot but as we went on and saw the different switches and terminals it was like going down the rabbit hole in alice in wonderland.  It was a wonderous journey but it made me fear inside for ken's sanity.  This is a set of pictures of the different wiring closets.  I must say I am envious of ken's skill to divine the madness which is that server room.

The above is one of the cleaner setups of wiring closet.

Another view of the orderlyness of the wiring closet in wayne west.

The above is a hot mess and I hope for all that is holy that someone has a network diagram for it.

Ken playing off the server room like he planned it the entire time.

Virtual pc lab

I forgot to take a screenshot of this lab when we did it but I did not use the virtual pc7 like brad said to.  I used windows 7's built in virtual pc software.  It comes in an update I should say but it is built into windows 7 itself.  All I had to do was have the iso and use the software to install iso file.  It went like a breeze and I could use networking with it when I switched it on in options. 

Wireless Network Lab

This is the wireless lab aaron and I did.  We got out our wireless router and connected the cord to the internet first which gave us the 10.40 ip's  We were given ip and masks to make our subnets from.

All we really did in this lab was change the ip's and made sure they were functioning.  I was able to connect wirelessly to the router which was nice after seeing how to set it up.  The following screens are of the router configuration page initially found at 192.168.0.1.  I wish I had screens of the dhcp part where we set an ip range.



Wireless Lan Project

Wireless Access point for home use-

     The wireless access point I chose for home use is also a bridge!  I am full of surprises am I not?  The D-Link DAP-1522 is wireless b/g/n compatible and it is quite fast.  It has 4 ports which is fine for a home network.  You could have the device in your home office and picking up the wireless you pick up from another room for your desktop. 
      This is also a dual band device which means you can use your higher band for high intensity activities like gaming.  The low band could be configured for your other wireless devices so you can just pass routing information between them and use the higher band for gaming.  I would recommend this for anyone looking to extend the range of their wireless network.  It is cheap at $69.99 on newegg.com.



Wireless Access Point for business-

     The access point I chose for business is the Hewlett-Packard JD015A#ABA A7760 Wireless Access Point.  It has a wide variety of security settings and is dual band.  It has power over ethernet capability which is neat because it can conduct electricity and charge devices that are compatible!  A great buy for any business. 
     Another good reason to buy this is how compact it is.  It will not be hard to fit this in most any business even if you are the most sweat shoppiest of sweat shops.  You can farm monster amounts of gold when your computers are connected to this hot little number of a wireless access point.  It has speeds up to 108 Mbps and supports 802.11b/g.


Another Wireless Access point-

     For the last access point this is what I would choose this one, the NETGEAR WNDAP350-100NAS ProSafe Dual Band Wireless-N Access Point.  It is a decent access point with a lifetime warranty.  It has internal antenna's and dual band functionality as well. You can dual band 802.11 n with one band and another protocol with the other or you can have 2 802.11 n's  which I don't understand now how that would be useful but I will ask you later brad.
     Another neat feature is the kensington locked slot for anti theft purposes.  It is plenum rated so it can go above the ceiling and still function.  I always say you need more plenums!  Most businesses set up their wireless like this with a central router in their office.  Like burger king and mcdonalds have theirs set up like this.

Routed WAN network

For this lab we wanted to simulate a WAN network.  We divided up into 5 groups of people and we all got routers.  We used serial port connections between each router and we were given a ip and the subnet and we were told to make a routable ip from that and then see if we could ping across the network.  We went along and went into the router's config with telnet and we set up the interfaces and the clockspeed to see how its done.  The commands we used were enable then config.  Then we used the int s0/0 and int s1 commands to check the interfaces and change the ip's of the serial ports.  We found out later when we tried to route across the network we used an incorrect IP setup.  We were trying to use a private ip to work the subnets off of.

This is what it looks like when you console into the router.  As shown by brad.  Weeeeeee!

We used putty to console in the router. 

Switch lab

Access level switch

      The switch I found for access level is the cisco catalyst 2960-c series.  This looks like a good entry-level switch.  It has alot of good security features and it is easy on the eyes.  It has Data-Link layer security threat detection features which I would love to see in action. It has zero touch deployment which allows it to pull configuration files from a dhcp server without having to console in which would have been awesome for class.
      Another great feature of this series is the auto-QoS and auto smart ports which will configure the quality of service for you.  The auto smart ports detects what device is connected to the port which is neat because in my house that can change from hour to hour and I don't want to have to go back and configure different things if I run out of ports.

Distribution switch

      I chose this switch because it has more upgradeable room and you can optimize the power useage of the switch.  I think this switch looks good for a distribution switch because it has plenty of ports.  It would be great for a wiring closet like we have in wayne west.  It has a nice browser based port configuration system which is alot better than having to console in.

      The way I would set up a network with these switches is to use the core switch I chose in my base of operations and having these switches in each floor wiring closet of the different buildings and then having the access point switch in the rooms if they have more than 4 computer devices. This switch has power over ethernet and all sorts of whizbang features as well.  I would hit it.

     
Core Switch

For the core of the network I chose the data center switch.  The one I chose is the catalyst 6500 series of switches.  This brand of switch comes with a load of modules built to facilitate large loads of traffic while keeping QoS up and bottlenecks down.  And the wireless service module 2 on there can integrate wireless and wired networks off the same switch which is pretty neat.  This switch looks huge though.  It is definitely not for small to medium businesses.  Although if I had the money I would buy it just to be all MUAHAHA I SWITCH EVERYTHING!
      Another cool module is network analysis module 3.  The three stands for three times the awesome.  It is optimized for 10 gigabyte traffic.  That is a supervisor module that moderates network traffic and resource utilisation.  I really like the idea of a ron popeil style switch that I can set it and forget it.  If I was buying for a data center I would buy from this switch series.

Switch lab

This was an interesting lab.  We had to figure out subnet numbers correctly would allow us to ping through the switch to each other. 

this was the class A ip address which is a bit harder when you are just figuring out how to calculate subnets.

this was the other ip we gave mine and aaron's computers.  the other subnet I mean.  we took a while but we could ping each other after a fashion.  I wish I had gotten pictures of the actual connections and device but I forgot to.

tcp-ip utilities lab

 I would use ipconfig to check my ip configuration and at times release and renew it from the dhcp pool so I can make sure to get a good ip address.  You can see what ip addresses all the devices on your network have with ipconfig /all You can find out more commands with /?  like /release and /renew.

 Use the netstat -a command to display active connections and sockets. Look for phantom connections -- those that still appear as active in the display that were terminated abnormally. If many appear, your network may run slowly, and you may need to stop and restart TCP/IP to flush the connections. The netstat -i command displays active interfaces (network card and serial interfaces).

 NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT) resolves NetBIOS names to IP addresses. TCP/IP provides many options for NetBIOS name resolution, including local cache lookup, WINS server query, broadcast, DNS server query, and LMHOSTS and HOSTS lookup. Here are some popular switches.

nbtstat -n displays local name table.

nbtstat -c shows the name cache

nbtstat -a also shows the adapters mac address

nbtstat -s shows session statistics

The TRACERT command can be used to determine where a packet stopped on the network. In the following example, the default gateway has determined that there is not a valid path for the host on 22.110.0.1. There is probably a router configuration problem or the 22.110.0.0 network does not exist (a bad IP address). Most servers though are not able to be tracert-ed because it is a network security issue.  They will simply block the tracert packets so they don't broadcast their IP's that way.

hosts

The host file is a way for computers to assign a human language native name for a websites address.  It can be used instead of the ip address in the browser address bar.  The way a normal route is added is that the computer sends the information using the default gateway if it has no ip of its own and it discovers the ip address of things along the way.  If it finds a new one it stores it in a table.  That table is integral to the internet as a whole because it is a giant repository of ip addresses and mac addresses.  When we do not have those we have to know the ip address of the individual server we are going to.  That is where a host file is used.  It provides a way for a computer to understand something like www.carteret.edu is actually 10.10.1.81.  Hope you all have a nice day!