Cisco CCNA Certification

It is good to have CCNA credential if you would like to work as a network engineer. It shows that you have the basic foundation in the area of networking especially in the field of Cisco networking. Frankly, it would be easier when you are marketing yourself for a new IT job if you have this certification. Having CCNA may demonstrate that you are keeping up with technology. This is something important.

According to Cisco Systems,

The Cisco CCNA network associate certification validates the ability to install, configure, operate, and troubleshoot medium-size routed and switched networks, including implementation and verification of connections to remote sites in a WAN.

At a minimum, CCNA should have a basic understanding of the TCP/IP network technology, know how to configure Cisco IOS, Cisco access list, routing - static route and dynamic routing and install Cisco router, switch and even operating LAN and WAN.

Network Monitoring

One of the most important tasks of a network engineer or network manager is to manage his / her network. And one of the important items in network management is network monitoring. Through network monitoring, a network engineer will be able to know how his network perform - whether it is over utilized or under utilized. Based on this information, s/he will be able to plan for the network s/he manage.

I used to use MRTG in managing my network. As long as the network nodes - Cisco router, Cisco switch, server is having SNMP service enabled, it should be able to be monitored by MRTG. Not only MRTG can show us how much incoming and outgoing traffic through each of the network interface of a network node, we also can use an external program to gather data which should be monitored via MRTG.

How to attach photo or file in Hotmail

Following are the steps to attach photos or files in your email and send it to your friends. I will use Hotmail in this case.

Step 1:

In Hotmail interface, select New and compose your email. Select File from the Attach.

Static route configuration

It is important to understand the process of routing if you are interested in learning networking. One of the fundamental of this study is static routing. Static routing is not complicated, but it is the basic. We need to understand the basic in order to learn the advanced topics.

Static routing is the process of configuring network node with information necessary for successful packet forwarding. Routing table is constructed through manually entering routing information for every network that could be a destination.

An entire network can be configured using static route, but this is not fault tolerant especially if routing information has to be changed frequently. When there is a change in routing information, or network failure in any path in the network, network connectivity problem will occur. In this case, reconfiguration of static route manually to fix or repair the lost connectivity is required.

How to test if a port is open on a server or PC - Part II

In my previous post on testing of open port in a server, we have learned that telnet command can be used in confirming if a port is open in a server. However, even though a port is already opens in a server, it will show as not open in this testing.

How to find port number

In our previous post on How to test if a port is open on a server or PC, we have indicated that in TCP/IP networking,  port 25 is used in SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), port 110 is for POP3 (Post Office Protocol) and so on. Anyway, where can a user find the port number information?


Of course, the easiest way is to get this information by using search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN. However, this information is also available in your computer too. The list of port number information can be found in a services file available in Windows and Unix systems.

In Windows, the services information file is available at the following location in your computer hard disk:

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\services

There are other important files located here too, however, we will go through it in our future posts.

How to test if a port is open on a server or PC

Further info to my previous post on How to access web page without using web browser, you may use the same method to confirm if a network service is running on a server or computer.

For example if you like to test if pop3 is running on a computer PC1, you may execute the following command in your terminal:

How to enable Chinese in wordpress

The best solution to the character encoding problem in WordPress is to convert the charset or database and collation to UTF-8 or Unicode. UTF-8 Database Converter can be used to overcome this problem.

Download UTF-8 Database Converter,

1. Open the file `wp-config.php` set `DB_CHARSET` to `utf8` and leave `DB_COLLATE` with nothing. (Just for WordPress 2.2.x)
2. Upload `UTF8_DB_Converter.php` to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory.
3. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress.
4. Go to the sub menu called 'UTF-8 Database Converter'.
5. And just follow the instructions on the screen.