Monthly Archives: June 2016

Internet Performance Monitoring that Makes Sense

Do you ever wonder how the Internet is performing? Latency, packet loss, etc??? I do…mainly because I’m a curious type of guy. I’ve looked for different monitoring sites on the Internet, but most seem to be crude, simplistic, or just plain dumb! However, I did find this site that actually has valuable information in a simple presentation…

http://www.internethealthreport.com/

Internet Health Report

Internet Health Report

The “Focus” settings don’t really do much, but do play with the “Metric” and “Period” settings…there is some very interesting data you can get doing this. And when you hover above a cell, a small pop-up shows additional information. This site is hosted by “Keynote by Dynatrace”…I’m not familiar with them, but they provide solutions in the programming area concerning mobile application testing…very cool!!

Enjoy!

“Auth Fail” Error Message on Cisco Phones

We use a lot of Cisco 7941 phones at my work, and as you might know, they were end-of-life by Cisco back in 2009, and no longer had hardware RMA support as of January 2015. (For you curious types, here is the EOL announcement for the 7941 phones, TAC login not needed.) Since then, we have been using a third party company for hardware replacement…and for the most part it has worked out well. Occasionally though, we will get an old replacement 7941 phone that boots up with an “Auth Fail” error message.

What this means is the phone is running a  firmware version that is too old to upgrade to the existing version that our Call Manager is pushing out. The fix is simple…you need to upgrade the phone to an intermediate firmware version, then upgrade it to the current version. First step is to figure out what older version of firmware to use…for me it’s “SCCP41.8-5-2S”.

Next, go to Call Manager and find the phone in question…scroll down the page and you will see something like this…

Blank phone load field

Blank phone load field

Next, copy the intermediate firmware name into the field…

Phone load field with firmware name

Phone load field with intermediate firmware version

Then click “Save” and reset the phone. When the phone comes back up, it will then proceed to properly upgrade the firmware to the intermediate version. Once that is complete, go back to Call Manager and clear the Phone Load field…click “Save” and reset the phone again.

Now when the phone boots up, it will successfully upgrade to the current firmware version.

ComputerWorld Salary Survey 2016

I participate every year in completing the salary survey for ComputerWorld…it doesn’t take long to fill out, and I like knowing that I help contribute to the data that makes up their annual salary report. It is always a good read, with helpful information on average salaries for various IT positions, along with trends in the IT marketplace, and what IT careers are hot (and what are not). I’m not looking for another job, but I like knowing where I stand in terms of salary and benefits, and what my fellow IT workers are seeing. Gaining and maintaining knowledge about your career is always a good thing!!

ComputerWorld Salary Survey 2016

If you are not signed up for ComputerWorld’s newsletters and monthly digital magazine, I would encourage you to do so here.