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September 20, 2007

Cisco MIB: Interfaces on the 3845 Router

Recently I needed to check traffic on specific interfaces of a Cisco 3845 Router. I didn't have a MIB file uploaded to our SNMP workstation, and descriptions of measures were not in synch with the router. Thus I needed to figure out which interface was which. There were 8 valid instances of interface metrics on the router. I was interested in BitsIn/Sec, BitsOut/Sec, and IntSpeed. From IntSpeed, I got the following numbers:
1. 1,000,000,000
2. 1,000,000,000
3. 4,294,967,295
4. 44,736,000
5. 45,000,000
6. 44,736,000
7. 45,000,000
8. 4,294,967,295

Thus I figured out that Serial 0 is 5 and serial 1 is 7. Gig 0 and Gig 1 are 1 and 2. We have two DS-3 circuits (ATT calls them DNECs) in. SNMP may be wonderful but MIBs are a pain. I thought I would write this down before I erase my whiteboard with tomorrow's problem and solution. You can find Cisco's guide to it's MIB and SNMP here.

Posted by Larry at 2:44 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 27, 2006

The Dump Cheney Rumor

Anyone reading Drudge today will notice that there is a report that Bush will dump Cheney
following the 2006 elections. Those people taking this report at face
value would do well to remember what Bush's father, George H.W. Bush,
did in 1992 with his own Vice President, Dan Quayle.


Like Cheney, Quayle had a few liabilities with the press corps (Murphy Brown, e.g.), and his
Chief of Staff, William Kristol, was determined to prop his boss up,
like any good CoS. Thus, Kristol leaked a story that Bush would replace
Quayle. The press corps forced Bush to issue a denial, solidifying
Quayle's number two spot on the GOP ticket.



Dumping Cheney after the elections won't make any difference for this
year's results, which is what Republicans worry most about.  Next
year is Bush's last term in office, and installing a new Vice President
isn't that easy when you consider the vetting process and the Harriet
Myers withdrawal.



Historical moments in Dick Cheney's life: His opinion of Adam Clymer.

Posted by Larry at 6:10 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 18, 2006

HDTV Page Updated

I just checked the logs for my site, and while more people
continue to look at this blog, more are looking for HDTV information in
Washington, DC. I think a lot of people are trying to figure out why
they're not seeing the Olympics in HD on their new HD sets. Thus I have updated the page.

Posted by Larry at 12:40 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 11, 2006

The Neurochemistry of Schadenfreude

After reading Slashdot’s latest on
lie-detection using an MRI (Magnetic
Resonance Imagery), I read a submission to Nature on “Empathic
neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others,” which
also used MRI to detect emotional states of its subjects. (The title is from
the cover of Nature’s 26/01/06 issue.)  Basically,
a team from CalTech,
the Wellcome Department of Imaging,
Neuroscience, and the Institute
of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College of London, used the
Prisoner’s Dilemma game to induce liking and disliking of opponent players. Emotional
reactions could be located in specific regions of the brain. 

Being able to “see” emotions in the brain sounds pretty cool, but these emotions have been known to be “real” since Homer told the story of Apollo helping Paris kill Achilles. The new technology for lie detection sounds like it could be used for great profit, but how would you feel being asked for a “lifestyle MRI?” The lifestyle polygraph is rather feared because the more conscientious you are, the more likely it is to trip you up. (Remember that pen you “stole” by failing to return it?) However, the polygraph is inaccurate and hasn’t caught any spies yet. (They’ll say it helped, but it didn’t stop Aldrich Ames or Robert Hansen.)

Who will administer the lie-detection MRI? It’s not like you can go get a six-week degree in radiology and neurology, as you can for the polygraph. It takes a board-certified radiologist just to find something actually wrong with you in an MRI, not just a subtle change in a specific area during the subject’s response. I doubt highly that if any companies start setting this up that they’ll even use scientific staff to run it. I doubt that many doctors would even testify to its reliability, but that won’t stop it from being used for profit. Fortunately, the courts have refused to admit polygraphs as evidence and will do the same for MRI lie detection.

Posted by Larry at 6:08 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 11, 2006

Someone Used My Photo

A blogger linked to my photo from her page. I'm flattered. I thought it was almost a throwaway photo, but posted it anyway just because I liked the view of Times Square from a New York Taxi. Since she didn't copy it outright, I could tell from the referrals to my site and I added a credit to the photo. I still have no idea how she found it.


The depressing part is how totally un-hip and geeky my blog is. But that's me.


original photo

Posted by Larry at 12:15 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 22, 2005

Red Hat vs. Mandrake

I grew tired of updating every package that came with Mandrake. The
most frustrating part was not finding what I needed to install, or
installing it but then configure didn't find it.


I re-downloaded Fedora Core 4 in the DVD image, burned it on the Mac.
Macs can open, create and burn ISO images using the standard Disk Tools
utility. I checked the sha1sum on the Linux box that was the FTP
staging area, because OS X doesn't seem to have a sha1sum utility, and
I didn't feel like spending time downloading, configuring and
installing one. CuteFTP balked at downloading a 2.6 GB file, too,
insisting that there wasn't space on my hard disk for it, even though
there was plenty of space. Once again, Linux command line to the rescue.


Red Hat is now installed on my antique Inspiron 7500, and it's not
perfect yet -- I'm still working on the display. But much more software
works without endless downloads configure-make-make install cycles....

Posted by Larry at 1:52 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 12, 2005

Progress

Back in the old days, (1990s) I had ISDN at home. It was the fastest bandwidth available, and it afforded me voice and fax and data all in one interface. (ISDN-BRI, with two B channels and one D channel for signalling, if you get technical.) Billing was awful. I paid two cents a minute per B channel during peak hours, and it took some tweaking to get it down. (Windows really does broadcast every eleven minutes, and that would bring up the data at two cents a minute.) Needless to say, I stayed up late at night to do large downloads.

I have gone through DSL and now I have cable at about 5 Megabits per second. I just downloaded Fedora Core 4 (Redhat's free testbed) and installed it on an old P3 system I have here. Federal Core 4 is 4 CDs, about 650 MB each. I had some trouble with the media checking, and the SHA-1 checks didn't check out, so I had to download them all again.

All in all, I think I downloaded over 5 GB of data over the past 24 hours. Back in 1998, this would have been unthinkable. Back then, you had to order the CDs, wait for them to arrive, and then install it. And installing Redhat 5.x, you had to know the IRQs and DMAs and which chip set your NIC had (I started hoarding DEC Tulip cards). Today, Redhat (and the other Linuxes) load up all my hardware automatically. I don't have to know anything about my hardware.

And the new linuxes have nice GUIs that launch by default. To log in at runlevel 3, you need to start tweak inittab. And VI has now been replaced with VIM.

All I wanted was a command line interface like I'm used to.

Posted by Larry at 1:29 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)