BSpendlove

I'm so glad I was lazy yesterday and didn't install the 3900x. I've just returned it and I'm going to be waiting for the 3rd Generation Ryzen to be announced next month... Bring on the 4xxx series...!

I'm probably going to go all out and get the 3090 and not worry about price to performance etc... But my opinion may change when we get to see some benchmarks between the 3080 and 3090

This isn't an amazing custom built case or fully custom hard tube watercooling greatness, but it's mine... I've built the majority of this setup in the past 2 months and I'm proud of it (more upgrades to be done... which I will note in this thread). I'll go through the past 2 months and include some pictures I've managed to grab along the way but my plans are to potentially purchase a new case, get better/more RAM, upgrade to the 3xxx series when they arrive and potentially start my first custom water cooled project... (along with custom sleeving my cables, I was tempted to just purchase the pre-sleeved bundles, but my last build I custom sleeved the cables, it took a few hours but the outcome was fantastic...) Current part list for those who don't like reading: Case: Corsair 760T V2 White CPU: Ryzen 7 1800X Motherboard: MSI X370 XPOWER Gaming Titanium RAM: Corsair Vengenance LPX 16GB @ 3000Mhz Cooler: Corsair H150i Pro XT RGB GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1080 Gaming RGB Storage: Samsung 1TB 970 M.2, Samsung 500GB 850 Evo, Samsung 250GB 960 M.2 PSU: EVGA Supernova 750 G2 (First time I've ever used anything other than Corsair...) Monitors: 3 x MSI MAG272CQR Mouse/Keyboard: Corsair K95 Platinum RGB/Logitec G703 Mouse Headphones: Sennheiser GSP 550 Where do I start... technically I built this computer a while back when the GTX 1000 series came out and have just been upgrading it along the way. Firstly, I actually gave away my i7 6700k and gigabyte motherboard to a friend because I wasn't playing games and I was saving for a motorbike... I was mainly using my laptop for work (a lot of the time I was travelling around the UK) and so the first thing I purchased after having the base of a computer to work from (psu, case, etc...) I went and tried the new Ryzen chips, I've never owned an AMD chip before but wanted to see what Ryzen was all about... I don't have any pictures of the installation but that was the initial click in my head that urged me to keep spending more and more money.. Anyway, I'll skip a few upgrades/purchases until I have some pictures... (I managed to snag a brand new K95 and the mouse from a colleague at work for less than £100 and he had used it once or twice... it was in top condition with 0 visible marks and literally looked brand new...) What a heck of a year it's been, I started working remotely at the start of the year and needed an upgrade to my desk. My desk was extremely tatty and worn and I had a cheap Acer 1080p monitor so I went ahead and order a fairly large desk along with a new monitor.. The MAG27CQR (more to come on this...) (I would decorate the room, but I'm on the brink of finally putting a deposit down for my own home so not too bothered about the walls and flooring) Here is my temporary work space while I wait for another order before I start cleaning up a little bit... I instantly started noticing that soon, the cable management behind the desk is going to start becoming a mess... But again not too bothered until I move out in a few months... These bloody games are taking up all of my storage on my SSDs and I refuse to put them on my 2TB hdd that I store useless data on... So I went ahead with the 1TB M2 since it was like £30 off... I installed it and thought, ewww... I haven't cleaned out my case for some time... Just look at the dust.... I then started looking at my cable management... it was horrible since I didn't care but since I'm buying more and more stuff, I better start taking care of my cable management... I don't have any before and after pictures to compare but just know I am planning on custom sleeving all my cables black/white or even trying to find a nice colour that pops out in a black and white build... Look at the awful cable management... It isn't too bad but I need a PSU shroud to hide those hideous cables... And what idiot installed the Hyper evo 212 like that lol... Whoooops I swear I've had like 3 PCs with this cooler and have never installed it that way before... Look at all the room at the top for a 360 Rad in the future....!!! Let's come back to the monitors... Knock knock... delivery...... You would of thought I'd be able to purchase a better camera for less than the cost of 1 of these monitors lol... But the whole choice of having a triple monitor setup was really for my work flow (I'm a network/netdevops engineer and we all know the more monitors, productivity is only increased... ) About 5/6 years ago, I had a triple monitor setup with Alienware monitors and I rarely played games on all 3, I just love the aesthetics (beware, I still haven't found a nice looking triple monitor stand that I like)... The feeling of having 3 monitors all the same brand/model is pleasing... I was running the single MSI monitor along with the small TV in the picture above for a week or so. The problem is that I haven't still made the time to get the monitor positioning fluent across all 3 monitors and fix the gaps/heights between monitors... Shame on me.... I will get round to it... A bonus upgrade (with no pictures...) was that my hyper-x cloud 2 headphones were broke (mic stopped working) so I opted to purchase a new pair of headphones. After reading many reviews, I gave the Sennhiser GSP550 a go, I hate the green/black combo in the picture but they also provide you with black cover that you can swap out the green. I wanted to mention these because they are extremely good quality... I still need to purchase a connector so I can hook them up to my piano and try them out on it... Also, silly me... The cables that come with the monitors did not reach my PC on the floor, so I opt'd to put my PC on the desk... They still didn't reach... So I went ahead and bought some nice DP cables... Mmmm very nice... P.s I've started to notice that my desk gets dirty within a week of cleaning it so I've tried to make it no food/sticky drinks at my desk which also helps me to get away from the PC during my working hours for lunchtime... So remember me mentioning about the cooler? My temps on the 1800x were shocking.... I not recently cleaned my PC since I let it build up with quite a lot of dust (you can probably see some dust in these pics I took some time ago)... Let's pop off this chunk of metal... (Anyone notice that dust? I didn't... and I've cleaned it since the picture was taken! It wasn't time to build a full custom loop yet and I thought the h150i wasn't expensive so went ahead and..... made a quick cheeky purchase last week....! I watched a review on the new Lian fans along with the fan controller starter kit (3 fans + controller?), not sure how long it's been out but I really like how slick they look but they're all out of stock. I will be purchasing that soon along with changing out my current fans (front and back) with the Lian 120 rgb fans (can't remember the model...)... Anyway I haven't showed my full setup with the 3 monitors yet because the picture would of gave it away... Apologies with the picture quality, you can even see some of the awful cable management routes that I done and I was too lazy during the h150i install that I just told myself, I'll wait until I get that new case... Who knows what case... (p.s I've noticed in the picture the h150i looks like an extremely tight bend but I can assure you, it isn't as bad as it looks in the picture, there is some slack, I did rotate them slightly to get more slack but it looked ugly and made them more straight) So, with all of that... Here is a half-decent quality picture showing my full setup. The monitors look better in the picture than in person (with the gaps etc..) but I'm enjoying them... I still have a few items to arrive (Saitek rudder pedals and yoke for my FS2020 needs but I'll be upgrading to the 3xxx series when we can pre-order them because I need the most I can squeeze out... Thankfully, you don't see too much of the mess behind my desk with cables at the bottom in this next picture... T Triple 1440p 100+hz monitors with a 1080 pftttt? Yeah it struggles... Only game I've tried so far on surround was modern warfare... I won't really need these monitors during my FS2020 gaming when they release VR compatibility While I'm at it... Here is a little surprise..... I wanted to see how the Ryzen 3900x performs so.... yeah That bad boi is ready to be installed since it arrived today... It's listed as a compatible CPU for my motherboard (probably needs a bios update?) but my plan is to take my 1800x, mobo and old ram and build a docker server/dev server for personal projects since I just currently do personal projects in a vm on my current system (hence why potentially I wanted to change my ram out, maybe a 64gb kit)... I'm currently looking around to purchase all the needed tools to depin the modular cables and sleeve them myself but trying to figure out if I should just go black/white or add an extra colour... Open to suggestions on that one... Other plans as previously mentioned is to rip out the 1080 and replace it with a 3080 or 3090.... Potentially introduce a custom loop (rip money I wasted on a h150i... lol), maybe upgrade the PSU to a 1000w, purchase a new case and also get some RGB fans... Buying new memory would force me to go RGB because we all know that is the rules in 2020, RGB everything... I'm also debating to perform benchmarks on my most played games to compare the 1800x to the 3900x but I just don't really have time to be faffing around with stuff like that... Maybe I'll try over the next few weekends if I'm not eager to install the 3900x.

Gns3/eveng/VIRL works perfectly fine for the majority of layer 2 concepts, some have a few bugs or plain don't work like ether channels and private vlans but not being able to simulate asics isn't a problem with labbing, it's perfectly fine as I said for majority (90-95%) of layer 2 concepts with vlans, stp, layer 2 security, etc..

Now now ladies, we all know my router is bigger than both of yours. ?? I don't see anything wrong with the above comments, sure 99% of the ltt community won't understand things like BGP or how something like NAT work, I think you both are having a good discussion but then it got a bit heated. But let's be serious here, by reading the Ops initial post, he probably doesn't need anything more than just NAT just for the purpose of the post. But you've listed many scenarios which are good

Yeah because the UK only do that....

You won't need access to the upstream device. You'd simply create a destination NAT rule, if pfSense sees traffic going to c.c.c.c then translate to nas ip address. This method is still considered as hairpinning or Nat loopback, depending on the vendor or whatever you want to call it Create a Nat rule and set the interface to your inside/lan interface, fill out source and destination networks and then use the redirect target ip for the NAS internal ip address.

Yeah if everything is working, I wouldnt worry too much. Cns you specifically see that is 100% is a member of the stack within the management/cli?

The stack cables are fine with a single cable but you reduce half of the backplane bandwidth for the stack. Similar with meraki and cisco, you typically would have something like 160Gbps of bandwidth on the stacking backplane, using a single cable will reduce it to 80Gbps. Not entirely sure on the throughput for the stack in those switches. (stacking throughput that is) I'll take cisco because I haven't worked with dell stacks but typically a cisco stack would auto provision itself, I think it's the same with these switches. Have you stacked them before? If not then check some basic things such as have you cabled up the stacking correctly? Cisco stacks port 2 to port 1, from top switch to the second member and carry on... Are the switches running the same firmware? Did you connect the stack cable prior to boot up the 2nd switch? If they are not the same firmware, dell has an auto firmware synchronisation for this that should initiate straight away when adding members into a stack. The 3000 series you need to cable bottom port of the first switch to top port on the next switch, did you do that? A reference for the 2000 and 3000 series https://www.dell.com/support/article/uk/en/ukdhs1/how10356/dell-emc-networking-how-to-stack-n2000-or-n3000-switches?lang=en

Remember my friend, ip helpers with cisco (and equivalent for other vendors) are mainly for specific use cases. They won't forward all broadcast messages between subnets with that command alone, obviously the common ones being dhcp discovery, tftp, netbios etc.. and a few others but if you generated just a plain broadcast message the device will not forward it with the ip helper-address command. Just to clear up as well for others (I'm certain you should know this so it isn't aimed at you Juan) but the ip helper-address command is typically referencing an ip address with the command in Cisco eg. ip helper-address 10.1.1.1 The broadcast is in effect, now a unicast. Where ever the broadcast was received on (eg an interface or vlan svi), then the source IP address of that interface is populated in the source address of the IPv4 header, and the address within that command will populate the ipv4 headers destination address, making it a unicast. It is no longer a broadcast.

If you've ever used Cisco Prime Infrastructure's CLI Templating, you'll find that Cisco DNA's (Digital Network Architecture) CLI templating is an enhanced version found within Cisco Prime. Of course, there are many other features within DNA but this is just a quick example while I have 15 minutes of free time to demonstrate CLI templating and how it can be used to effectively deploy unified templates to a Cisco infrastructure instead of using other methods such as: Python + CLI scraping, Ansible, or Python with a combination of Git for version control. The concept of a CLI template is very straight forward although you need some consideration before deploying this on a global scale. Some considerations are: CLI Template versions for specific IOS (is the command supported in all IOS versions across the whole network?) CLI Template versions for specific models (Are you dealing with 9300s, 3850s? 3750Xs? even plain 3550s and 3750s?, are the models even supported with Cisco DNA? Find the supported devices here) Are you designing a generic template that can be used across all locations in the network or only a selected area? If you are designing generic templates, have you considered to create templates based on HQ Core vs Branch Access vs Warehouse Wireless? The very basics of CLI templating can allow you to just design a template with specific variables that a network engineer or level 1/1st line tech could use to deploy an access switch. You can ensure a unified configuration is applied to all remote devices upon first deployment but what stops those monkey techs logging onto a switch and changing configuration manually? It isn't smart to block login access for users and demand any configuration to be performed via a central server (eg. the DNA appliance) because there comes a time where someone may need access to a device to troubleshoot or simply put a port in a different VLAN. You have the additional features that can be integrated into your network such as Cisco ISE and TACACS+ but let's get back to DNA CLI templates. Let's create a simple generic template to be applied to branch access switches. We need to be smart about the templating. Our branches have the same model switch, running the same IOS version but the difference is that Branch-C has another switch. We would probably want to configure an EtherChannel (no lacp/pagp, just static) between SW1 and SW2 (let's assume its 4 ports, g1/0/45-g1/0/48), so we don't want to include that configuration within our generic global template, but some global variables/commands we can deploy across all the switches would be: Service password-encryption Set hostname (per device which can be done via the template deployment) Set Timezone and summer-time Set VTP mode to transparent Set the domain name on the switch Configure 2 x Domain servers that are located at HQ Some generic commands won't require user input such as enabling services, but others such as hostname will need some kind of input from either the user, or if you plan on automating this deployment you can pull data from a database (eg. a CMDB that ties into your network monitoring solution). Let's dive into the DNA template: I've created a new project and then created a template called Generic - General Access Switch Within DNA CLI templates, you can define variables like such: $myVariable This then allows you to specific edit the variable from the input form that you will see when you deploy the template. The common variable would be a string but others include string > select, IP address, MAC address, checkboxes etc... If we take something a bit more complicated, you can see that instead of making the user input commands such as spanning-tree portfast on interfaces the engineer would like this feature enabled, we can provide the option if they would like it enabled for the range of ports he is considering to be access ports at the specific branch site. This isn't the best example because the engineer has to be competent to know why they would want to enable portfast and to ensure that if it's a recommended design (instead of configuring via global) then to ensure they configure this on every port. That is where templating can't help you. You need to ensure staff/engineers are competent in their job and will follow documentation if you have a well documented deployment for branch access switches. Anyway, carry on: Cisco DNA CLI Templating uses VTL language (velocity template language). Let's change this variables so that the engineer can only set portfast to True or False and run a simulation within Cisco DNA. The big improvement with DNA is that unlike prime, there is actually a syntax checker that confirms if the syntax is correct. Cisco Prime would fail to deploy a template and then tell you something is wrong, always a handy feature. Take a look at the test simulation of our CLI template: Now can this be done other than using Cisco DNA? CLI Templating can be done with Excel spreadsheets and Python for all I care. CLI Templating can be achieved via Ansible or even writing your own Python library with Netmiko + some templating format of choice such as XML, JSON or Jinja2. CLI Templating isn't new but that isn't what Cisco's DNA solution brings to the table. The problem that we face currently is that these templates are not compatible with other vendor configurations. This is a common problem and there isn't a single interface to allow us to interpret a configuration for different vendors, we need to individually create templates depending on the Vendor, version, model and even the device role. While Cisco DNA states some other vendors are supported such as Palo Alto (for DNA inventory), it is much easier to use Anisble for smaller environments that don't implement a lot of Cisco. Cisco's DNA licenses are required when purchasing the new line of CAT9Ks (9200,9300,9400 etc...) but doesn't mean you can start running DNA centre. The DNA appliance is required along with a device license so be careful when trying to make the decision to run DNA. It isn't cheap nor something you should deploy in a weeks time.

As I mentioned previously, it's rare and typically don't generate enough light to cause damage but it can in a 0.025% chance. It's happened to me with OM3/4 twice.

I've had 2 clients do this and it broke the sfp. So it does happen. Edit:probably rarely, but it does happen.

But yes, the TX part of the SFP will generate the actual laser and the receiving side would just kind of act passively and terminate that laser, so you're right in swapping them over.