JANUARY MONTHLY MISSION
PRIZES
January 15: Phillips Smart Bulb Kit
January 22: CORSAIR Gaming Keyboard & Mouse
January 29: Hyper X Gaming Head Set
Grand Prize
MISSION SHORTCUT
MISSION RULES
Correctly answer all 20 questions by February 4 and get entered to win the Grand Prize! Nest Cam Indoor Security Camera
Monthly Mission Terms and Conditions: US, UK, and Canada | Germany | Australia
Mission Shortcut Terms and Conditions: US, UK, and Canada | Germany | Australia
As long as wabbott keeps tossing us soft lobs. I'm waiting for the fast ball down main street!
With the graphics on this mission it's pretty appropriate that my son just gave me this.
Cmon baby... momma needs a new keyboard
See this is the week that I am like Eh, I am holding out for the big prize....
When I finally won a few months back I think I got a good prize... it was the new hammock before everyone else and a 50$ Amazon gift card... I liked the gift card idea a LOT! I wouldn't mind maybe getting one of those cameras that go on the outside of the house and you can talk to the people out there. The keyboard and mouse do look good though!
I'd do some research on those. You've got to be careful with them as it turns out quite a few models will set up a P2P connection with a host server which, obviously, exposes your internal network (not to mention the risk of the server owner (or someone who compromises the server) viewing/storing your video). Apparently they're quite good at poking holes in your firewall all on their lonesome, too. I have no idea if the prize falls into this category but I firmly believe that any IoT device should be fully vetted (what ports does it require, can I change the local credentials, are there any backdoors, etc) before connecting it to the same network your banking or tax data may traverse. Worst case? If your router offers a guest WiFi option connect it to that. The only issue is that you wouldn't be able to view it at home unless you're on the same SSID - but that's not exactly what they're for.
I plan on setting up some cameras at my next house. I'm going to use a DVR and wired cameras, though. Ideally I'll be able to generate email alerts but there won't be any access from the open internet. If I want to view cameras remotely I'll VPN to the thing. I'm very lucky in that my boss let me participate in the Meraki demo webinars and let me keep the hardware. My home network is all Meraki - MX64, MS220-8P and MR33. It gives me quite a lot of flexibility in my network design ... and it makes me very, very happy to see that my external IP yields zero results when I put it into Shodan or Censys (NMap results are pretty awesome, too ).
I love the 23 window bus! The most classy of hippie vans.
With the paint job on the model you should hack some RGB LEDs underneath and a bluetooth speaker in there
Nice idea.
Have you seen Gabriel Iglesias' collection
Jay Leno Admires Comedian Gabriel Iglesias's VW Collection | CNBC Make It. - YouTube
Your Hyper X link is missing a colon and therefore doesn't work.https//www.amazon.com/HyperX-Cloud-Gaming-Headset-Line/dp/B01MTLMV89/ref=dp_ob_title_ce
These demos don't work for DoD users.
i do not see any of the mac addresses on the list i am wondering if i am looking in the wrong spot
Here's the pertinent info:
Look at the 5th one down. I'm not saying it is the correct answer but it is the only one on the list.
Yes look at the rouge device list specifically as pictured. I do not have the module and was looking it all over and my eyes locked onto MAC addresses in the "Active Alerts" area filled with rogue MAC's over 16 days old. The question is definitely referring to within the last 7 days.
Thank you for letting us know!
I'm always surprised when I find rouge access points... usually they're beige or black-ish...
Mine are all a pretty pale white. A little rouge would do them some good, I think.
Wow sounds like a nice setup and hardware you got to keep!
I love the US Cyber Command logo. The AF Cyber Warfare Training logo is neat too:
That's satisfactorily creepy.
Yeah, it's pretty awesome ... until I have to license it all again in 3 years. Then? Well, it's expensive (cuz I doubt I'll be able to pull in the free gear again).
If you've got a similarly inclined management team you could always look into it. Meraki gives stuff away all the time since they're a license-based model. Listen to a cool webinar for an hour, contact a sales rep and they'll send you some gear. The AP alone is worth it and has cloud based management, guest capability and a built in firewall (configurable). I really like Meraki stuff and wish I could use it where I work. Alas, they say the cost is too high. Too bad for me - the automated firmware updates and automatic config download on replacement gear is so, so what I really need. Plus then I could set up SD WAN cuz ... fun (and bandwidth). Oh well.
We recently put in Meraki AP's in some of our locations. We needed a guest wireless network for customers and wanted to provide our employees with wireless capability for their phones as well. We have a social media presence for the bank however we restrict access to social media to just the small marketing department for security, bandwidth and productivity issues. The wireless allows employees to access the sites without impacting our bandwidth and keeping our network secure. The wireless uses a separate internet connection than our production network. As for productivity, that is up to the managers to monitor.
With Software Defined Networking & SaaS on the horizon (and steadily getting closer) we were able to move forward with a pair of resilient Meraki 250's in our two data centers, which will form the basis of retiring our Cisco ASA 5505's (about 80 of them), which will be replaced with Meraki Z3's.
It was the ASA's that tipped the scale in Meraki's favor. With the ASA's on the EOS list, we have a couple of years to get the last of them off the network.
We'd hoped the ASA 5506's would be a perfect replacement for the 5505's, but that's not the case. VLAN restrictions, cost increases, no POE, and a LOT more trouble setting them up for our home users' needs means the 5506's are coming out of homes, to be replaced by Z3's.
The 5506's are fine for a small neighborhood or regional site's BGP MPLS WAN connectivity.
But that left us with a large need for home connectivity that's secure and flexible. The up-front cost of the Meraki 250's isn't free, but the labor saved and their flexibility and portability made all the difference.
One BIG area that Merakis are reducing down time and expense is their ability to create a secure remote connection without requiring a reserved address. We've experienced MANY occasions where ISP's say they are reserving IP addresses for our ASA's at homes, and then they charge us extra for them, and we discover that if the user goes on vacation and powers off their ASA for a number of days, their "Reserved" Internet address is handed off to a different customer of the ISP. When they come back home and power up their ASA, it won't establish a VPN tunnel to us, and we have to drive there and reconfigure it or bring it back to troubleshoot it, and possibly replace it.
The Meraki Z3 doesn't care whether it has a static or reserved external address. It just powers up and connects to our data centers, and the user is online just as if they were at work.
These offer the best part of DM-VPN, and the only problems I have with them are:
On the other hand, the Meraki's are:
One more thing in Meraki's favor: If a unit fails in someone's home you can have Meraki ship a replacement and all the end user needs to do is plug it in. I really appreciate that aspect as our current hardware replacement model is ... wanting in comparison. Old gear and remote sites makes that part of the gig pretty unfun. I just can't justify replacing our old Cisco switches with new Meraki stuff - I ran the numbers myself. No way they'll buy into it (especially in our current financial state, lol). I'm just happy I have it for my home and, for now at least, that'll have to do.
I do really like it, though. That said, I find myself thirsting for some CLI action every now and again. Just feels better (and faster). The cloud model has some real advantages but it doesn't win the fight on all fronts.
I hear you there. In-person CLI management, whether remote via SSH, or local via USB console cable, takes others out of the Management equation. I seriously don't feel comfortable with invisible third parties approving & connecting my remote users.
ugh... again with the demo questions...
For our DoD friends:
Just a note...todays hint says to use the top 20 applications module and the referred to page only has a top 10 applications module.
The correct answer was obtained using the top 10 application module so the module name was probably a typo....
Mostly love Meraki except for one really quite large thing to watch out for - never ( really, NEVER EVER) let your subscription expire.
If a single, solitary device subscription drops, Meraki will kill every single device in your management cloud.
I've seen an entire site cease to work when all the Meraki switches, security devices and AP's all drop dead when that happens
forward the link to your phone and open it there
One would think our DoD friends wouldn't see this type of graph in their normal workday, but who knows?
There's a ton of training on YouTube these days (it's why we have a Sophos policy specifically for it) so I imagine they may see one or two of those. That said, I wouldn't be surprised at all to find they saw none.
No winner chosen for last weeks prize?
And I really need this system for my network. But I cant have it dang pre-chosen systems.
Winner has been posted!
Congrats datsde
Be very, VERY careful with Q13! "Exactness" is the key word for today. And, you have to do some digging. Told you wabbott would be sending a heater down the middle of the plate! Well played, Ms. Abbott! ;-)
lol. This has never happened to any of us...(read in sarcastic tone)
So yeah, I selected the ones that specifically say they include the dashboard and got it wrong.
Active heat map sounds good, by you forgot to say that it's only for Cisco. My Aruba WLAN is out of Solarwinds scope of monitoring (((
I found these active maps don't take into account signal strength from APs on other floors either. Manual measurement of signal strength on a middle floor was always way different than these maps would show. The client location wasn't accurate for us either as it was only updated on intervals. In our case, we had to slow that down so as not to drag down our smaller NPM instance at my last job.
Link to Amazon site for Hyper X gaming head set is broken. Missing a ":" in URL.
brett.holzhauer
Netpath really is some awesome stuff cobrien!
Question 15, January 26: The embedded video in the Clue seems to have problems--I'm not able to get it to play:
Worked for me on:
Glad you like it!
yup, it was blocked for me so I had to guess, got it wrong... there goes my perfect streak
I'm working on question 11
I included the list of Rogue devices that I'm seeing. I can't roll the clock back to the 22nd.
Any suggestions for filtering back to that day? I'm not asking for the answer, but I know when you look at the time-sensitive questions you have to modify the date range.
For my fellow DoD friends like cabarnes
Today's question #16 (January 29, 2018) highlights a shortcoming in Solarwinds' ability to tell us quickly and easily which ports have not been used in X Days, Weeks, Months, or Years.
The example test lab's open ports may have been down for a few minutes, or a few years. That's not so critical to know in a test lab, but in the real world, how long each specific port has been down IS important.
My switch port count exceeds 50,000 physical Ethernet ports, and my IT Department has over 400 members. Some of them do a great job unpatching unused network cables when a client moves cubes, and frees up an unused switch port.
Some Techs do NOT do a good job at this.
The result is no ports are open when a tech needs to patch a new computer into a switch. They call the Network Team and we can quickly and easily tell them which, if any, ports have not been used in the preceding weeks and months--up to the point where the switch last rebooted--by following this procedure:
How to create a report displaying the Last Time Data was Transmitted or Received on a Switch Port
Solarwinds, I have UDT, and it does show unused ports. But not in this detailed and granular manner. Here's hoping you can add the details of this report into UDT--and better yet, into NCM or NPM, for folks who don't own UDT.
There is a picture of the info that was posted by stevenastem at Jan 22nd at 8:47am if you are still looking for the answer
Congrats ChrystalT
Attn DOD:
Yay ChrystalT
can some one post a screen shot of Q16 29 Jan 2018? Unable to see the demo since the application was blocked on solarwinds-npm.
Go back a page I posted it here in this thread on 1/29. Let us know if you can't find it.
found it thanks
Thanks, everyone!
The super blue blood moon lunar eclipse is happening right now!!! NASA Live | NASA
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-science/2018/01/26/how-see-super-blue-blood-moon-over-arizona-wednesd…
I was watching on Slooh the feed was from LA - Incredible. Sadly here in Victoria BC we were under heavy clouds and rain, but the streamers provided a fantastic show.
I tuned into the Netflow "Clue" twice today, and I could swear I heard two different versions of Leon discussing the potential culprit--one in which a specific series was named, the other in which a generic provider was named. My mind must be slipping. At least it was the same user both times.
Yeah not just you, I ended up double checking the Text - - just in case...
So far so good but we still have one more day left!
It's also the snow moon for those of us not in the warmer climates...
clicked too dang fast while listening to a mtg. don't thwack and work folks, you'll lose out on valuable points!
another reason I get to work before the masses...so I have a couple of hours to handle details of this sort without interruption. The only remaining constraint is whether I have achieved my minimum daily requirements of caffeine.
Another monthly mission nearly complete!!!! This is more enjoyable than actually doing any work
For question of Feb 1, I answer correctly base on the link for the tip, but its says that is wrong. Can someone please review the answer. thanks
never mind I find option I left out in the document.
wabbott Tweak to the survey required
*Points are applied during the week following January 7th.
wow Q20 was difficult
I had to think up a bunch of words
Day 20 is a busy morning for MVP's.
RT
Thanks wabbott and crew for another fun, and informative, mission!
Fingers crossed for the draw
Question 19 threw me as some of the text was in bold. It seemed to imply (at least to me) that one of the options required additional configuration
Woohoo! We're upgrading two Orion systems from NPM 11.5.3 all the way up to 12.2 and moving off Windows 2008R2 and SQL 2008 today so it's nice to have an easy question today! Nice challenge this month!!!
Enjoy your Friday! I hope all goes smooth for you. I hate Friday upgrades for the possibility of what could happen...
Bro, I'm pretty jelly. That was on my project list for last year and it got cut. Trying again this year - fingers crossed!
Friday upgrades/changes seem to invite Murphy into the fold...especially if you are heading out of town for the weekend....
We are in a similar boat; currently running on 11.5.2 (also Server 2008) and will be upgrading to 12.2 and adding HA on Server 2016 boxes. Been working on the project since November, we should be able to go live by the end of February. I'll probably try and take the new SCP this spring too.
at least the super nice installer makes that dramatically simpler than before
Who would have thought January would have been a green month in the Great White North...
Bonus points to be awarded after January 7th? 2019? It's ok I found myself signing the date as Feb 1 2008 What the heck?
Congrats! That was a great day here, we went all the way up to SQL 2016
Yep...it's the bandwidth hog pushing back the award date due to poor throughput.
ARGH! For the 5th straight month I got the last question of the month WRONG!
fixed!
I did this a few months ago but I went from 11.0.1 Was a long process to get to 12.1 but got there in the end.
That terrible, terrible sinking feeling when you miss the last week of questions because you were traveling... curses!
It was long alright... it took 44 hours to complete the upgrades. It took 11 hours alone to copy the netflow data from old to new noSQL server.
I was out of town on Friday and almost missed out. I've done that in the past and it feels awful. (One time I logged in from my phone - it was painful, but I didn't miss the questions or points - and of course that feeling of accomplishment when you finish the entire mission)
Noooooooo!
I was away last week and just logged in
Gutted!
Bummer!!!! I hate it when that happens, absolutely hate it!!!! Get to cracking today!!!
Congrats kip1979 and mattpearce
Congrats to the winners.
When should we expect to see the Thwack points for the mission shortcut?
I will have that done by tomorrow!
Wild
Alert Cleared.htmlHello, I would like to share the HTML template details we have prepared so that Solarwinds alarms can become more meaningful. It can list alarm object details and connected device details separately in HTML template. Except for object and device details, you can easily add custom property information…
Cisco ASR Devices.pollerCisco ASR Devices
SWQL is built on the framework of SQL and as such supports most of the standard clauses as part of a query. A very simple example query is: SELECT Caption, IPAddress, Vendor, ResponseTime FROM Orion.Nodes Dissecting this query is relatively straightforward: show some fields (Caption, IP address, Vendor, and Response Time)…
Active SSL Tunnels-ASA.UnDPThis poller *should* display the number of Active SSL VPN (Anyconnect) Tunnels currently connected to your box. However, I tried it with my 5520 running 8.0.4 and for some reason I get a OID Not Supported. Here's my post in the forum: *EDIT* This is confirmed working with at least Interm release…
