Connecting the XBOX One - Avoiding the wireless lag

The XBOX One is the first XBOX that is truly meant as a media center AND gaming console. Reminds me of the original Xbox chipped easily allowing video and gaming. With connectivity comes networking considerations and the question of wireless versus wired becomes vital. Or does it?

How much lag is too much? The all important ping time for proper gaming and a wireless connection is considered sacrilegious for a true gamer causing all sorts of drops and additional lag. Or does it?

Take a current result I'm doing from my wireless connection while I type this. I have a fiber connection to my home with a 100mb/s down and 20mb/s up. What is important is that the results are almost identical with a wired connection. The ping time are always under 10ms. Perhaps I live in an area without a ton of wireless users? Not true. Break out NetStumbler (or IStumbler for OSX) and the results may surprise you.

My connection (highlighted) shows that I'm only getting a 35% signal strength and I'm surrounded by active wireless APs. What is the trick?

The answer lays in the channel 153 and band I'm using. In a typical wireless home 2.4GHz has long been the radio of choice. Newer laptops, phones and yes even XBOX consoles now natively support both the 2.4GHz and the preferred 5GHz radio. Think of the difference as AM radio versus FM radio (kids ask your parents). AM is like the 2.4GHz of yesterday that goes a greater distance. But FM radio is preferred even with a shorter distance for much the same reason as 5GHz is preferred today. It is typically not distance that is a problem but quality. Using the 5GHz channel space means far more non-interferring with your neighbors channels. The 2.4GHz only has 3 channels that are non-overlapping with each other where as in the 5GHz you can find up to 23 non-overlapping channels. Being on your own channel space means avoiding collisions with your neighbors devices, which means less resending of packets, which means less lag.

With the additional of channel space comes the ability to use wider channels and jump your speeds from 54mb/s maximum to up to 150mb/s per antenna with spatial multiplexing and MIMO found in using 802.11N the current standard of choice. Which means the XBOX One with 2 antennas compared to the 360s single antenna gives double the throughput and additional signal.

Yes XBOX One supports a gigabit ethernet wired connection and all the benefits that come with it as far as security and lack of complexity. But give wireless a shot. Change your home access point to support auto channeling in the 5GHz. Microsoft recommends on their site a broadband internet connection of 1.5Mb/s. And while using the 5GHz channel space won't make our internet faster it will allow you to use it with nearly the same experience as a wired connection with all the benefits of going wireless.

Cabling gone bad (or sympathy for Ted Stevens)

Cabling gone bad (or sympathy for Ted Stevens) 

I wanted to address a growing concern I find when using Facebook, LinkedIn, or at Competencsolutions. While I'm a huge supporter of Networking students building home labs I am always concerned by the number of cabling nightmares that get posted even by seasoned students on their way to a networking career. Messy cables are the signature of a deployment up against a deadline and the deadline usually won.

I will not be posting any of the examples that have motivated my post to protect the innocent. It is worth noting other network admins cannot help but cringe at the sight of a rack that looks as if it vomited blue, red, and yellow Cat5e cabling. May it is because it is this first foundation of a tight physical layer that so many new to the field feel as if it is of little consequence. Or maybe they just don't know better. But there is something truly inspiring and beautiful about the symmetry found in a solid cable deployment.

Here then are three tips I feel will get you started in the right direction:

Measure twice, cut once; or don't cut at all.

Pretty but can you guess the error made here? Read below....

If you are running a drop to a patch panel for example it is important not to leave cables dangling and devices hanging. Figure out what you need and group the end of the cables together before you cut/tip them. Another strategy I personally employ is to purchase the cabling in bulk at standard lengths of 3,5,7, or 10 feet for labs with a lot of interconnections. Using a formula to judge length of 1.75" per RU between devices plus an additional 36" to cover looping out and back in. Round up to the nearest precut length. The advantage is deploying standard and consistent cables with a far lower rate of failure.

Keep colors consistent.

Many times the beauty and simplicity of a deployment are sacrificed to the convenience of just grabbing whatever cable around is long enough to get up and running. Don't give in! Cut/Buy enough cable to keep the colors meaningful. Running all the same color may sometimes be just as bad as using dozens of colors. Either it means something or it doesn't. Green for endpoints, Gray for core links, Orange for console, or whatever makes sense to you but stick with it. A follow up is to keep extra lengths of those colors handy for repairs and growth.

Wrap it up velcro style.

Turns out that Ted Stevens wasn't completely wrong; the interconnections while not quite tubes they do suffer when you kink the cable. Certainly fiber will easy damage if the cable takes a sharp 90 degree angle. The same problem will plague UTP copper and the culprit is usually the zip tie. Seems harmless enough when loose but who can resist the cool noise they make when you tighten, tighten, tighten them up. Remove the temptation and switch to velcro. They are cheap, tidy looking, and come with their own equally entertaining noise.

Using LLDP (CDP) with HP Comware and Provision switches.

The topic came up at CompetencSolutions as to whether HP switches can run CDP or do network discovery with Cisco devices. And the answer is yes and know. Yes they run CDP but only halfway and even less with the Comware. Some clarification is in order. 

So the basics of what is LLDP? It stands for link layer discovery protocol. What it does is it allows you to discover devices from the switch you are currently logged into. It is running by default out of the box on all HP devices and is exchanging information about the switch locally to the neighbor directly connected. Most importantly LLDP is an open standard IEEE 802.1ab which means it works across other platforms where as Ciscos CDP is proprietary.

While LLDP is not intended to be used as a configuration protocol (see Cisco ODR) it does allow the administrator to quickly build an accurate network map without having to rely on an outdated network topology map or worse having to trace cable. 

With Comware the command is relatively simple. The easiest is to go in and type:

For a slightly more detailed neighbor-information report use the "brief" command instead of "list":

If you want to see everything that a neighbor is advertising use:
<Comware-1>display lldp neighbor-information 



It is usually about now that the issue of security pops up and having all of your switches advertising in cleartext their ip addressing, model, and version information as well as what ports are used on both sides means that while you can build a network map then so can the bad guys. So to turn off LLDP globally or to disable it per interface the commands are as follows:

[Comware-2]undo lldp enable

-or for just the interface

[Comware-2-GigabitEthernet1/0/27]undo lldp enable

-or to prune whether you will just receive or just send...

[Comware-2-GigabitEthernet1/0/25]lldp admin-status ?

  disable  The port can neither transmit nor receive LLDP frames

  rx       The port can only receive LLDP frames

  tx       The port can only transmit LLDP frames

  txrx     The port can both transmit and receive LLDP frames

Provision switches follow suite so far as being enabled for LLDP out of the box and having the ability to enable/disable the service globally or per interface. To simply show information:

ProVision-1# show lldp info remote-device

ProVision-1(config)# no lldp run

ProVision-1(config)# lldp run

ProVision-1(config)# lldp admin-status 1-12 ?

 txonly                Set in transmit mode.

 rxonly                Set in receive mode.

 tx_rx                 Set in transmit and receive mode.

 disable               Disable.


CAUTION - DEEP DIVE SECTION
So where does CDP fit in?

The short answer is Provision will listen to CDP but not send it while Comware only uses CDP for Cisco phones. Here is the configuration to enable:

[Comware-2]lldp compliance cdp

[Comware-2]int g1/0/25

[Comware-2-GigabitEthernet1/0/25]lldp admin

[Comware-2-GigabitEthernet1/0/25]lldp admin-status txrx

[Comware-2-GigabitEthernet1/0/25]lldp compli

[Comware-2-GigabitEthernet1/0/25]lldp compliance admin

[Comware-2-GigabitEthernet1/0/25]lldp compliance admin-status cdp txrx

Provision on the other readily integrates CDP although does not send:

ProVision-1(config)# cdp

 enable                Enable/disable CDP on particular device ports.

 run                   Start and stop CDP on the device.

ProVision-1(config)# show cdp neighbors

 CDP neighbors information

  Port Device ID                     | Platform                     Capability

  ---- ----------------------------- + ---------------------------- -----------

  1    2c 59 e5 11 f5 00             | HP J9310A Switch E3500yl-... R S

  19   d0 7e 28 76 7b 7c             | HP Comware Platform Softw... R S

For reference here are a few documents you may want to read for more information. Included is a really nice Interoperability Manual that covers Cisco to HP made available from HP.

reference:

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1272069

http://h17007.www1.hp.com/docs/interoperability/Cisco/HP-Networking-and-Cisco-CLI-Reference-Guide_June_10_WW_Eng_ltr.pdf
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/networking/software/A-C12-LLDP.pdf

Comments? Suggestions? Found a better way? Let me know below...

HP Password Recovery Procedure explained for the E3500yl

Hello hello and a quick tip from my time at CompetenCSolutions on recovering a HP E3500yl-24G-PoE+ J9310A

E3500yl-24G-PoE+ J9310A

Find yourself staring at one of these in a switching closet with no idea how to recover or get logged in then here is a step by step on turning the unknown little beast into a tame puppy.

First a word about how you should be able to login. On the Provision line of switches there is local-user operator and then you can escalate to super-user manager privileges. These are the default usernames used (although you can pick whatever you want) when a password is protecting user-mode (read only) versus full fledged super-user-mode you get by logging in as manager. These can be set by an administrator who has manager privileges using the commands below:

Should this fail to give you access you will see this...

You do still have options before blowing out the config with a factory reset. The first trick is to use a paperclip to press the clear button indicated below in the double red circles is the button on the right inside the circle. You have to use a pen/paper clip because it is recessed into the front of the switch so press it for at least a second and console (and web) access should be cleared. 

Although you cant see it since you are locked out of console access there are front-panel-security settings at work here:

In this particular configuration above you can see that the Clear Password option is enabled. This "means that pressing the Clear button erases the local usernames and passwords 

configured on the switch (and thus removes local password 

protection from the switch)" -bizsupport HP document linked here

Reset-on-clear shown disabled above means that there is no automatic reboot upon pressing the clear button and whoever holds the paper clip would have to press reset to power-cycle after releasing the clear button. Take care NOT to hold the reset button then hold the clear button (20-30 seconds) then release the clear then release the reset. What does that do? Factory reset....not good however it does remove passwords.

Factory Reset enabled means the factory reset procedure just described is enabled. Disabling means restoring with just physical access is not possible.

Password Recovery refers to the one time password login available from HP support based on giving them your switch mac address. 

CAUTION - DEEP DIVE SECTION

So what happens if all four are disabled AND you forget the password? Believe it or not you are still in luck. The switch can be recovered and without doing a factory reset! What is required is a console connection (or terminal server to console connection) and a way to power cycle the device since the command reload is unavailable. Here are the steps below....

reboot the device

select "0" on reboot to enter the Monitor ROM Console profile in the first 30 seconds

ll "L""L" to list directory contents

cd cfa0/

ll

cat mgrinfo.txt

rm mgrinfo.txt

boot

Comments? Suggestions? Found a better way? Let me know below...