What Is Sum1 Up To Today?

At Home In Central Illinois

Date: Week of December 31^st


Locale: Central Illinois


         I'm home for the third week in a row, and frankly, I'm going a little stir crazy.  That's not entirely true, but I do feel an itch to travel again.  A week from Sunday I will head to Yakima for my next field class, and teach a class on line here at home next week.  Would send some of you the link to it (could log in with just your name provided), but I know my boss wouldn't like that, plus you'd get very bored quickly.


         I've spent the past two weeks (and this week) working on a class called 'Network Essentials'.  As I've stated in previous entries, I haven't taught this in about 6-7 years, and it's been changed greatly since then.  So I've been learning the new course materials, as well as familiarizing myself with the new equipment.  We use HP 2620 switches, and Cisco 2811 Routers in this class.  For those of you who aren't into this kind of thing, Switches and Routers reside in your Internet Service Provider (ISP) distribution centers.  Servers and other devices connect to these.  Servers contain the webpages  (Like WDC) that allow us access to websites, the routers and switches router us around the Internet so we can view these millions or webpages.  People with far greater skills than I have modify these webpages (Think The StoryMaster here).  In this class, we teach the basic knowledge of networking.  What's a MAC address, IP Address.  What is DHCP, and a routing protocol called OSPF.  We don't go in depth on anything though, because we're not teaching these technicians to a CCNA level, just how to perform basic tasks.  So, I've been teaching myself how to do everything in the lab book for this class.  Along the way, I've learned what not to do, and what is seen when you don't do tasks correctly.  In the end though, I've done everything in the lab book, and completed the steps correctly.  I only had one thing I couldn't figure out, and have asked the instructor who wrote this manual for help.  I'll have an answer soon I know.  He has real life family issues right now, so it may be a couple of days.  What couldn't I get to work correctly?  I configured each router (I have three I'm working with) for OSPF (Open Shortest Path First).  What's that mean?  It means the router will send out (broadcast) Ethernet packets, advertising it's 'existence', and what paths are on it.  I verified the paths exist, I can see the paths when I run a command on the router, but I cannot ping the other devices like I should be able to.  I am not too concerned, I've been through the lab manual and the Powerpoint slides in detail, and know I am ready to deliver this class.

In Closing

         I will spend the week finishing my studies on this class, teach a different subject on line next week, then another different subject in Yakima the week of January 13th.  Til next time, be good to yourselves and those you love, and WRITE!




Jim Dorrell