I recently stacked 3750x-48pf-s running ip base with 3750v2-24. I originally attempted to use 12.2(55) but the stack failed to initialize, almost like the stack ports on the 3750x were err-disabling.

After some hair pulling I downgraded to 12.2(53) ( lowest version supported by both) and it did a full EEPROM rewrite on the 3750x. The stacking worked properly after that.

That is exactly my problem!

I’m currently installing 12.2(53) and it’s running a lengthy microcode update. I mean lengthy. This better work!

Update: Downgrading all of the switches to 12.2(53) worked although the new 3750x decided to be master and wiped out my config. Good thing we had a backup.

I’ll have more detail later about what I’m trying to do but, my immediate issue boiled down to my use of $ in my passphrase. The RN-XV and actually the RN-171 it’s based on has a nice feature of escaping spaces in SSIDs and passphrases with a $ by default. This took some digging to find out but once I did I was able to change it.

Connect to the RN-XV from your console. I used the Adafruit XBee adapter kit through a com port on my PC. Do $$$ to get into CMD mode. From there you can do a couple of things. For my purposes I needed to do the following:

<2.30> get opt replace
JoinTmr=1000
Replace=0×26
DeviceId=WiFly-EZX
Password=
Format=0×0
Signal=0
Average=5

You can see I’ve already changed it here but the default would be Replace=0×24 which is $ in ascii. To change it:

set opt replace 0×26

Then don’t forget to “save” or it’ll revert to the wrong character. You can also check the saved WLAN settings with “get wlan”.

Now that I have it successfully connecting, getting it to do something might be a little more of a challenge. I’m trying to work with this library but it’s proving to be a challenge. More here as I figure that out.

I figured this out by downloading the log from the phone, finding : Error: cc_cfg_table is null and googling for that. No one comes right out and says it’s broken but everyone having problems is running a 9.x version.

Otherwise, vSphere is running pretty nice.

I’ve started to install SageTV but it’s not done yet. So far everything’s got plenty of pep. No quality problems with PIAF so far either.

Speaking of PIAF, the years old post about SIP trunking between Asterisk and a Cisco 1760 that has gotten so much attention, yeah, that’s old school now! I just converted to a Linksys SPA3102 for my PSTN connectivity and it’s working perfectly. I think it might forward calls through a little more quickly too. The 1760 developed a bad fan and I couldn’t see spending money on it. I’ll probably try to ebay it.

Finally, I’m thinking about passing through the USB bus for SageTV to take advantage of the improved throughput but I believe I’ll need to be careful not to allocate the same bus that has the keyboard (KVM) on it. More later…

I’m using an Intel DQ67SWB3 motherboard with an i5-2400 CPU. Of course I had to get a separate Intel NIC since the onboard isn’t supported.

My plan is to use this for a number of servers including my CCTV security camera system. This is using a PV-149 PCI video capture card which would have to be passed through via VT-d for the VM Guest to see it. I’ve successfully installed ESXi 4.1 update 1 via a USB key and I’m in the process of adding some VM’s. A couple of issues have come up. First, I don’t have performance stats updating in vSphere client. I’m not sure if this is a driver issue with the “unsupported” motherboard or if it’s a problem with the ESXi install. I can see the overall utilization on the summary pages though so it’s not like I’m blind. Also, I’m able to add devices via VT-d but it’s not clear to me yet if I can pass-through multiple devices to a single Guest.

I’m installing XP in a Guest right now and as soon as that’s done patching (lot’s of patches) I’ll be working on getting that capture card visible.

I also plan on running PIAF (Asterisk) and SageTV in other VMs. I’m probably going to need a really basic DNS server as well. At some point I might try passing through the onboard NIC to a firewall VM, perhaps PFSense or Untangle. Not sure about that yet.

My focus was on the switching section so this review really only addresses that part. I’ve been taking Cisco tests for a while so the process was familiar to me. I also had a good foundation in switching technologies. The book does a good job of breaking down the separate areas that the test focuses on. You couldn’t use this book to study for the CCNP if you’re coming right from the CCNA. It’s strictly a refresher level of knowledge. What I found was that there were several parts of the test that were more obscure but were referenced in the book. It wasn’t verbatim of course, but it was familiar enough to help me pass.

Another thing I found relevant is that the distilled information in this book is good for reminding me of the little things that can be done to tweak a network. I think most of us are content to worry about HSRP priorities and STP roots. We don’t so much focus on the other loop prevention tools that Cisco’s made available. Thanks to the short and direct content in this book, you can quickly get a sense for the other technologies at your disposal.

And I passed. Highly recommended!

On the Cisco switch:
interface Port-channel98
no ip address
switchport
switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport mode trunk
!
interface GigabitEthernet8/5
no ip address
switchport
switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport mode trunk
channel-group 98 mode on

etc...


On the Extreme switch:
enable sharing 1:1 grouping 1:1,1:2,1:3,1:4 algorithm port-based
configure vlan "out_of_band" ipaddress 172.16.0.254 255.255.254.0
configure vlan "out_of_band" add port 7:1 untagged
configure vlan "out_of_band" add port 1:1 tagged

out_of_band was used for testing. I put a PC on port 7:1 on the Extreme switch to make sure I could get to a PC on the Cisco switch.

Turns out I did full documentation on the test process and actually kept the doc! I was amazed! My notes suggest the only delay was when re-connecting ports that are part of the group they would not start forwarding for about 3 seconds. Otherwise it worked great!

To turn on the video capability you have to add the following to sip_extensions_custom in the asterisk directory:

videosupport=true
allow=h264
allow=h263

Don’t forget to reload the configs!

Next up is getting Google Voice to work.