. : Dexter Cole, CCNP, CCDP : .

Wow…so it is quite apparent that my server is the focus of quite a few spammers in Russia (as evidenced by IP and email domain) of registration requests, blog responses, etc. from several websites hosted on this server. The fun will come to an end soon. As much as I appreciate the attention…I’m lying… I don’t. Please learn to speak (at least type) proper English.

I was not able to squeeze in training this year to start on my track toward achieving the CCVP which is a personal goal of mine and part of my job’s MBO’s. So I guess I will work on it through self-study starting with the CCNA Voice.  IIUC, here I come (although I was planning to start with CVOICE if the training was approved; why waste my  tuition reimbursement allocation…Management and HR)?!

Adding JunOS Cookbook to my list of “ToRead.” I need to play with Olive.

I am so impressed with  Google Voice (Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, Siemens, Shoretel…pay attention to Google…nevermind…I forget you’re trying to make a profit!)…especially the single number reach, simultaneous ring capability. Then there’s free voicemail with speech to text (email and SMS notifications)…whoa! Free? Nothing’s free. Really?

And with their purchase of Gizmo5 with whom I was in the process of getting a free SIP trunk for inbound and outbound calling (after MagicJack flipped the script on the birdies that told us our MagicJack SIP credentials; oh the joys of Xlite softphones making calls from Macs and PC’s ), I look forward to what Google plans with this acquisition (free SIP trunks, please).

And to think I design and sell VoIP solutions (well among an exponential list of  presales solution engineering responsibilities of which Cisco-based MPLS solutions was my forte according to some).

I used to bite my lips not to  mention Asterisk to our customers, although I love sharing the story of how Bluepeach Communications (my former life) saved a small business customer thousands of dollars on a manageable phone system (that’s right, folks, you don’t need a PBX administrator for this one after an hour or so of training) with SIP trunks from Cbeyond.

They are reaping the benefits to this day. Hmmm…I wonder if there is an opportunity for me to introduce Google Voice integration with their highly successful e-Commerce business (ask me how I turned a negligible ~$300/on a good month in  online sales business to $30k consistently after I redesigned and hosted their website,  re-engineering their e-commerce backend, and deploying marketing strategies that included among others offering promos in exchange for emails to grow a small email list from a couple of hundred to tens of thousands in a matter of months used in ‘email marketing campaigns.’ Can you say chuh-ching…and no it wasn’t spam as this folks gave us their email!). Now the company is  listed in the Inc. 500 2009 as a  successful, growing Atlanta-based business with $2M in revenue selling jeans.

Thanks fryfrog (my favorite Linux extraordinaire) for hooking me up with a Google Wave invite. Now that I think about it, fryfrog hooked me with a Gmail invite back in 2000 (wow!). Now, if only I can get more contacts. I guess GoogleWave is still in preview/beta mode and there were a few glitches (i.e.  browser reload requests/error while creating a wave). Come on, Google (in my childish impatient voice)!

I got a call today from a friend and former colleague looking to upgrade his Cisco PIX 505 due to constant reboots. Being a Network Engineer, he did what any of us would do in this situation. He examined the logs, checked the CPU and memory utilization,  etc…but most importantly increased syslog logging level to Informational (though since it was his home network,  I would have been tempted to set the level to Debugging) and sent  syslogs to a Linux server (because every Network Engineer with Cisco gear at home needs a Linux TACAS+ and syslog server

Well, he couldn’t isolate the problem and decided he wanted to upgrade. The PIX is obviously quite old, having been replaced with the newer ASA’s.  So, he was thinking an ASA5505 and wanted to know if I could give him a discount through Bluepeach Communications.

I guess we forgot to mention that despite the fact that we managed to become  a Cisco Premier Partner by achieving the Wireless specializations (boy, do I remember those tests!) back in 2005, we were never a reseller (not to mention the fact that we allowed the specialization to lapse when we all rejoined the ranks of Corporate America….why, why, why? I already knew what was going to happen looking back .

Needless to say, I couldn’t provide better pricing than he found through eBay and resellers. Personally, I’d get an old PC with dual NICs and throw IPCop or Smoothwall on it or maybe even find a hackable Linksys WRT54G wireless router to push the DD-WRT firmware…if I didn’t have the UC520 (Sweeeet! Thank you, Cisco, for the best, if not most expensive, gift I’ve received this year! Gotta love random name drawings)!

I am foolishly wondering why the  Cisco Configuration Assistant freezes when accessing the uc520 no matter which version of Java is installed.  I tried different PC’s all with different versions of Java some updated in the background without my knowledge.

I am embracing why I prefer the ‘old school’ command line instead of the the slick, ‘new school’ GUI.  Cisco has come a long way…a long, long way (still remember the horrible http interface on the old 2500 routers)…but who wants to worry about what version of Java is installed? A frequent problem. Off to Google for the latest answer.

I am currently working on upgrading a Cisco router to the new IOS on the 15.x train. I’m not expecting any significant changes.

So, I was fortunate enough to win a UC500 this past year which I can use with our old cordless phones and an IP Phone given to me.  I have yet to make it  our primary phone system which is one of many projects I will undertake before the end of the year.  I currently have a MagicJack hooked up to one on the FXO ports providing dial-tone and inbound and outbound calls work great after tweaking the dialing plan.

So to dabble around with a few different server configurations options to rebuild my server at the data center, I decided to try Sun’s Virtualbox (free) comparing it to vmware Server (also free). I  found for my current setup, an old quad core 2.4 Ghz Dell Inspiron 530N with 3 GB or RAM, vmware performed alot better under stress, I created vm’s for Windows XP Pro, Windows 7, PBX-in-aFlash (too busy to go native Asterisk on *nix), and Server 2008.  Perhaps, virutal box needed a little tweaking but I’m sticking with tried and true market leader for now.