Geek Speak Blog

Dude, cut the cord already - Part Two

Josh Stephens — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:10:00 GMT

As you may have seen, a couple of weeks ago my friend and fellow blogger Michael Morisy over at Tech Target wrote a great blog post on his views of why today's network technology doesn't support the all wireless office environment. You can go...(read more)

Evolution, Justice, and the Art of Being a Geek

Josh Stephens — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:14:00 GMT

I've mentioned it before, but The Big Bang Theory is one of my absolute favorite TV shows and if you're a geek like me you really ought to check it out sometime. Spoiler alert - if you watch the show I'm just about to discuss this week's...(read more)

It's time dude, cut the cord already...

Josh Stephens — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:11:00 GMT

Some things really are a matter of opinion. My buddy Greg Newman prefers spinnerbaits while I prefer to fish with plastic worms. My brother Zach prefers to shoot a pump gun while I shoot an over/under. And apparently my friend and fellow-blogger Michael...(read more)

Understanding When to Deploy a Distributed Network Management Architecture

Josh Stephens — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:49:00 GMT

Here at SolarWinds we offer a product called EOC - or Enterprise Operations Console. EOC is used when you want to deploy Orion in a distributed management architecture. Today I received a question about when you should think about deploying such an architecture...(read more)

Understanding the difference between NetFlow and IP SLA

Josh Stephens — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:38:00 GMT

One of the most common things I'm asked to explain is the difference between Cisco IP SLA and NetFlow. At a glance, they have a lot in common: They're both supported on many Cisco devices (routers, swithes, firewalls, etc) They both can help you...(read more)

Analyzing Web Traffic

Josh Stephens — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:21:00 GMT

One of the most difficult aspects of analyzing network traffic is that so much of today's network traffic is web traffic riding on either port 80 (HTTP) or port 443 (HTTPS). When you analyze network traffic using a technology like NetFlow, sFlow,...(read more)

Understanding how the Weather affects your Network

Josh Stephens — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:06:00 GMT

Not too many years ago I ran a large network for the United States Air Force. For the first several years I was there we had an old copper-wire backbone and it was amazing to see the havoc that weather could wreak upon that network. Sometimes you practically...(read more)

SolarWinds Makes the Move to Storage

Josh Stephens — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:59:00 GMT

Well, the news is out. The geeks from Tek-Tools have joined the team here at SolarWinds and as usual, I'm pretty freakin' excited. If you want the details you can go here , but in a nutshell - you asked and we're delivering. The need for comprehensive...(read more)

New SolarWinds Free Tool - Network Config Generator

Josh Stephens — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 01:18:00 GMT

Sometimes doing things the hard way can get a bit tiresome. Don't get me wrong, I love the CLI. I love the God-like power that I feel when I'm sitting in front of a router and the entire team is standing behind me watching while I bring forth...(read more)

Come see us at Cisco Live in Barcelona Next Week!!!

Josh Stephens — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:47:00 GMT

Well, it's that time of year again. It's starting to feel like spring here in Austin Texas, the Super Bowl is only weeks away, the World Cup is only about 141 days, 5 hours, and 9 minutes away , and I'm packing for Barcelona for Networkers...(read more)

How to find your firehose...

Josh Stephens — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:48:00 GMT

I'm sure you've heard the term " drinking from the firehose " used to describe being fed information at an insane, maybe even overwhelming rate. For most people this is probably a bad thing, but for geeks like us sometimes it's just...(read more)

A New Home for the Head Geek at SolarWinds - /geek

Josh Stephens — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 22:04:00 GMT

In case you've been locked in a cave somewhere for the last couple of years and haven't noticed, here at SolarWinds we've been creating some great, free learning material for network engineers, network administrators, system administrators...(read more)

Head Geek's Top 5 Things to Focus on While Working thru the Holidays

Josh Stephens — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Here it is, December once again and we find ourselves in the office working as usual. Not an uncommon occurrence if you're a network administrator, network engineer, system administrator, consultant, DBA, Storage Administrator, VMWare Administrator...(read more)

Estimating your number of IP SLA Devices

Josh Stephens — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:45:00 GMT

A few months ago here at SolarWinds we released a new add-on module to Orion called the Orion IP SLA Manager . The IP SLA manager leverages Cisco IP SLA and other protocols to measure and report on network performance from different perspectives across...(read more)

Thoughts on the HP and 3Com Merger

Josh Stephens — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:28:00 GMT

As many of you are probably aware, on November 11th HP announced plans to acquire 3Com for about $2.7 billion. I've received several e-mails asking for my opinion on this subject so I thought I'd take a few minutes here to share my thoughts as...(read more)