Google Gtalk - Finally Dead

Google Talk was one of those applications that I have been using on almost daily basis for years. Although google was keep sending notifications that they gonna stop gtalk for any further use and suggested to use Hang Out application, I think still many people out there were preferring to use old gtalk . But today they seem to kill the application finally

Anyways... Let's see how new Hangout App works. I need to install it's plugin into my chrome browser.

Also expect some interesting Technical posts in march... I know it's been a while.

HTH...
Deepak Arora
Evil CCIE

Cisco Exam Prices - Increased Again

Cisco has increased the prices again for certification exam including famous mammoth CCIE. The Lab Fee has been increased by 100$ and now is 1600$ where as written fee has been increased by 50$ and now is 400$.

 

HTH...
Deepak Arora
Evil CCIE

Old Is Gold ?

Last weekend got a call from my Boss, he asked if I can perform a activity for one of my colleague's customer account since he wasn't well. During the activity I was supposed to create Site To Site AKA Lan-To-Lan IPSEC tunnels from a customer NOC towards customer Data Center & customer DR site. Now that's fine, I mean I know how to setup such tunnels from Routers or ASA firewall but to surprise the customer was running Checkpoint R-75 based UTM on NOC side while they had Cisco's old 3000 Series VPN concentrators on the DR/DC sites. Now it's been almost 6-7 years I had worked on checkpoint and had never worked on VPN Concentrators. But 6-7 years back I worked on Nortel Contivity box which was much like Cisco's VPN concentrator. 

So it was like Dahhh!!!!

So day before activity I went back home and starting thinking about how can I complete that activity. I had couple of options to begin with actually.

1. To call any of friends good with Checkpoint or working specifically into Security domain for quite a while and of course there was long list of SOC Engineers :)

2. Why don't spend some time to study the stuff and do it myself.

And of course I chose second option :)

I remember I had CBT Nuggets some where covering cisco's old CCSP CSVPN exam. Later Cisco stopped making VPN concentrator boxes and exam died. So I spent nearly 2 Hrs going through CSVPN Vidoes from CBT nuggets and Also spent almost 2 hrs more on reading through my old checkpoint books. Did I tell you back in 2007 I passed by Checkpoint CCSE NG exam which was a expert level certification from checkpoint. Though R-55 I worked on was significantly different from today's R-75. But since Checkpoint is a GUI based firewall so it doesn't take much to figure out the stuff.

Anyways I reached at customer site on weekend after 2 hrs drive and all it took were 20 mins approx to setup up tunnels and making other network changes to complete the activity successfully.

So it was worth to keep that old stuff on my HDD some where and it saved my tale :) years later.

HTH...
Deepak Arora
Evil CCIE

Spanning Tree for Dummies - Poem From Radia Perlman

“Algorhyme”

I think that I shall never see

a graph more lovely than a tree.

A tree whose crucial property

is loop-free connectivity.

A tree that must be sure to span

so packets can reach every LAN.

First, the root must be selected.

By ID, it is elected.

Least-cost paths from root are traced.

In the tree, these paths are placed.

A mesh is made by folks like me,

then bridges find a spanning tree.

 

 

Further Readings: http://www.intelfreepress.com/news/the-many-sides-of-radia-perlman/

 

HTH...

Deepak Arora

Evil CCIE

My Music Zone

Some More Cool Dancing - Off Topic

Over 12000 Page Views Since June 2010...Ummm Not Bad

Just pulled out this information this morning from my blog console. Looks like many people are finding this helpful.


Looking forward to help people and new comers as much as I can :-)

Wishing Everyone A Very Happy Diwali

Off Topic - Some Non Technical Stuff from Childhood days

I guess this is the second off topic or non-technical topic so far on my blog, but what else can say except I simply can't resist myself to do this.

This is regarding a a book on Children Stories called "Roosi Lok Kathayein" AKA "Russian Folk Tales". This book was basically written by Russian Writers around 70's I guess. Later some people translated this into Hindi and gave it this hindi name. 

I think I was of 10 when my Grandpa gave me this book. I read each story several times. But as i grew up I lost it some where with time. I tried to find it out many times later with no luck.

But finally I googled it today and found it's PDF. I wish I'll be able to find it's hard copy somewhere as well.

So If you still love and remember those great stories of your childhood, you will definitely like this :)

http://www.ojas.asia/russianfolktales/

Regards,

Deepak Arora

India's Missile Woman

This is the first non technical post on my blog but I couldn't stop myself about this news. This shows Indian people can rival any one in world when it comes to technology.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Missile-woman-to-handle-ambitious-Agni-V-project/articleshow/4721682.cms

Thanks!
Deepak Arora