It’s no secret that I love Arista switches. When I wrote Arista Warrior, I was lucky enough to have a loaner switch from Arista in my home lab, but sadly they made me give it back. Since Arista is a relative newcomer to the world of Networking, there isn’t a pile of used Arista gear on eBay, so I can’t build a killer lab at home without spending thousands of dollars. As much as I love Arista switches, I’d rather spend my spare cash on guitars my wife and kids.

Understanding the plight of cash-strapped networking guys the world over, Arista has released a virtual-machine-ready version of their fabulous switch operating system, EOS. Currently this is only available to existing Arista customers, so see your Arista sales rep to get a copy. Please don’t ask me for a copy, since I will not send you a copy no matter how much you beg. Arista has hinted that they may release this into the general population, in which case I may build a Virtual Box appliance to share. Until then, you’ll need to read on and build it yourself. read more »

I am proud to report that I have finished the first draft of my new book, Arista Warrior. With the tagline, A real-world guide to understanding Arista switches and EOS, this will be the first published book about Arista switches that contains all original information. It should be available for purchase by November of 2012. (Edit: now available for pre-order from Amazon.com!)

If you’re not familiar with Arista switches, I urge you to give them a look. I discovered them while doing a vendor comparison study for a client, and believe it or not, I only found about them because the other vendors kept mentioning them. After visiting their headquarters and meeting the people behind the technology, I was impressed. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’m not easily impressed, so I figured there was something special going on, but it seemed like the world hadn’t yet caught on. I immediately contacted my editor and proposed the idea that has become this book. Roughly a year later, here we are. read more »

I’m excited to report that the second edition of Network Warrior is in the final stages of production and should be hitting the shelves of your favorite bookstore soon.

My goal in writing the second edition of Network Warrior was to make the new book even better than the first edition. I wanted to include as much new stuff as possible, but I also wanted to refine the original material to make it more current and accurate. I didn’t remove much information, except to replace it with newer or better examples.

What’s new in the second edition of Network Warrior? Here’s a bulleted list: read more »

I liked my Kindle. At least for the 30-some hours it worked. The screen suddenly stopped working as shown in the included pictures. I tried rebooting it through the menu and by holding the power switch on for 15 seconds. Neither technique solved my Kindle screen woes. The Kindle seemed to function fine. The menus worked and my computer saw it as a drive when connected via the USB cable, but the screen was toast. read more »

Like untold others, I got a slick new Kindle 3G + Wireless as a Christmas gift (2010). It connected easily to the 3G network, but it would not connect to my wireless network at home. This was baffling, because I live in the woods and my wireless security is as simple as possible. I wrote a book on networking, and my wireless security is woefully out of date. Why? Because I live in the woods. Anyone who would get close enough to hop onto my wireless LAN would be eaten by my dogs. My dogs love tasty wireless thieves. read more »