Tag Archives: networking - Page 2

How To Create Static Routes to Route IP Traffic

Posted by on October 22, 2015 7 comments
Static Route

By default all network traffic will normally be configured to route via the default gateway, that is the router attached to the network interface. It may not always be the case that you want all traffic to take the same path, in these instances we can set additional static routes that will forward specific traffic out of a different interface rather than the default gateway. This may be required if you need to be able to reach a particular network that your default gateway router does not know about.

Here we’re going to cover how to configure a static route in Linux.
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How To Enable Telnet Client in Windows Server 2016

Posted by on August 22, 2015 3 comments

By default the telnet client in Microsoft’s Windows operating systems is disabled, this is unfortunate as it is an extremely useful tool which can be used for testing TCP connectivity to external hosts on a specified port.

This is great when you’re trying to troubleshoot network connectivity problems, for example, say we have a web server which should be listening on port 80 to serve HTTP traffic but we are not able to load a web page, by using telnet to connect to the web server on port 80 we can verify the connectivity.

It may be that the connectivity is fine but there is a problem with the web server, or that the web server is stopped and the port is not listening at all, for instance. With telnet we can get a better understanding of what’s going on.


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Updating Solaris via Squid Proxy Server

Posted by on July 8, 2015 4 comments

If you have a Solaris server that does not have direct access to the Internet and cannot perform an update, what can you do? Configure a proxy server that has Internet access of course! Here is how it’s done.

In this example we will be using the popular Squid Proxy. While this can also act as a cache we are only concerned with its proxy functionality here. We will also be configuring the Solaris publisher to make use of a proxy server so that updates are downloaded through the proxy.

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How to enable the Telnet Client in Windows 10

Posted by on April 18, 2015 65 comments

By default the telnet client in Microsoft’s Windows operating systems is disabled, this is unfortunate as it is an extremely useful tool which can be used for testing TCP connectivity to external hosts on a specified port.

This is great when you’re trying to troubleshoot network connectivity problems, for example, say we have a web server which should be listening on port 80 to serve HTTP traffic but we are not able to load a web page, by using telnet to connect to the web server on port 80 we can verify the connectivity.

It may be that the connectivity is fine but there is a problem with the web server, or that the web server is stopped and the port is not listening at all, for instance. With telnet we can get a better understanding of what’s going on.

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How to “ping” a port

Posted by on March 11, 2015 2 comments

Most of us would be familiar with the simple ICMP based ‘ping’ command which allows us to test for a basic response from some network connected device. While great for basic troubleshooting it does not allow us to confirm if the particular host at the other end is responding on TCP or UDP ports where the majority of services are likely to be provided.

Ping isn’t the be all and end all of network troubleshooting, if a firewall blocks inbound ICMP traffic then a ping will not succeed which can produce a false perception that the host is down as it is not responding to the ping, however other services could still be responding fine.

Alternatively while ping may come back fine with a response it doesn’t indicate if a web server is responding on port 80 for HTTP requests, the web server may have failed and no longer be responding.

So if ping is ICMP based, can we hit a TCP or UDP port for response instead? The answer is yes, let’s take a look.

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How to test network connectivity with telnet

Posted by on February 18, 2015 7 comments

This post is a follow on from my post last week regarding how to install the telnet client. The telnet client is simple yet extremely powerful in helping us gain a quick idea of where a problem may lie with TCP connectivity, it’s one of my first go to tools to use when testing a network connection to a server.

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How to enable the telnet client in Windows 8.1

Posted by on February 11, 2015 3 comments

By default the telnet client in Microsoft’s Windows operating systems is disabled, this is unfortunate as it is an extremely useful tool which can be used for testing TCP connectivity to external hosts on a specified port.

This is great when you’re trying to troubleshoot network connectivity problems, for example, say we have a web server which should be listening on port 80 to serve HTTP traffic but we are not able to load a web page, by using telnet to connect to the web server on port 80 we can verify the connectivity.

It may be that the connectivity is fine but there is a problem with the web server, or that the web server is stopped and the port is not listening at all, for instance. With telnet we can get a better understanding of what’s going on.

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70-642 Microsoft Network Infrastructure exam – Passed

Posted by on May 10, 2013 1 comment

Since passing the Active Directory 70-640 exam four months ago I have been learning all about Microsoft network infrastructure on Windows Server 2008 R2 in order to take the 70-642 certification exam. I took this exam on the 7th of May and passed successfully, now just one more to complete the MCITP.

I posted about the Active Directory exam here, so this is just a follow up to mark my current progress.

At the moment I am studying for the MCITP: Server Administrator, which basically requires the following 3 exams:

70-640: Configuring Active Directory – Complete!
70-642: Configuring Network Infrastructure – Complete!
70-646: Server Administrator

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