https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f97c938bb9.gif

This is basically what I spent last Sunday doing:


I wasn't shooting the video, I was under the chopper inside the building. Sears* Tower is very slightly shorter now.



* = Yes, we will always call it that, regardless of which corporate overlord owns it.

Shifter is neat.

But holy shit I need one of those engines in my life.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...a838d5418e.gif

FUCK THESE FUCKING THINGS! FUCK!
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...30fafa7238.jpg

This is why I drink at work.

http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/ed/ed153...0191f06c3d.jpg

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...e33d42b80d.png

All our core stuff is Cisco, thank god.

Unfortunately the predecessor of my predecessor did shit like this because he had zero budget.

Management from 10 years ago: "We need 3 more APs in the back of the distribution center but we aren't going to give you any money to hire a contractor to run wire. Do it now!now!now!now!now!now!now!now!now!now!"
Network Engineer from 10 years ago: "That's fine, I'll just use the home run on this existing AP as an uplink and hide this hub up in the ceiling. Zip tie the cables to the fire sprinkler pipes aaaaaaaand done! I'm sure I can come back later and rewire this correctly."

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GIxJA0V5z7...ears+later.jpg

Me today: "WHO THE FUCK DID THIS SHIT?!"

I'm not our Network Engineer, but I do get to play one from time to time.

We use those all the time. They make great configuration-free monitor ports.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f6fa17594c.png

Yeah, when they fucking work. Why the fuck anyone would hang a chunk of their infrastructure off one is beyond me. Besides, I have a mirror port setup on the catalyst in my office. BITCH I SNIFF WHAT I WANT! Our previous NE set it up for me on our last leg when I started getting into Wireshark. Current NE either doesn't know about it or doesn't care.

These are more fun: Inline Ethernet Tap - diyEvil.com:~# ?

http://diyevil.com/wp-content/upload...p2-300x212.png

We are finally getting gigabit to our cubes. I cannot wait for ALLOFTHESPEED.

Yeah, back at Harris I always kept a couple around for precisely that reason. All of the stuff we designed (audio consoles and routers) used OC3 for payload transport, but 10/100 ethernet for control.

These days, the good stuff all has configurable snooping, and can even mirror traffic from a single port to a snoop port, which cuts down on the clutter a lot.

Besides, hubs are pretty much a dead product, especially with a lot of stuff requiring 1GbE these days.

OTOH, I'm always amazed when I do something moronically simple like build an RS232/422 tap to intercept serial comms, and everyone acts like I just decoded the Matrix.

Never thought about building a physical Ethernet tap. I mean, not since the 10base2 days, anyway.



https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...3c5f302053.png

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...cfd9d6044e.png

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...95e8690a9f.png




If the esoterica of networking and computer security interests you, particularly in the context of the 1980s (Milnet, Tymnet, etc), read the Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll.

Yeah, I'm still at Harris. Not sure how much longer though as Bill Brown keeps cutting our benefits. He has a 30% approval rating (not sure why it's that high) and is #8 most hated CEO. We do have nice things as well, like Ixia taps and Spirent TestCenters. We just happen to have hubs, so why not make them useful. Most of what we do these days is virtualized, though, so we just mirror to a VM.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...b493711879.png

That's right- I forgot you were a fellow Harrisite.

To be fair, I was with the other Harris, which, ironically, was the original Harris; the one that got sold to Gores Group after the company morphed into a defense contractor, and then split in half and re-named to Imagine and Gates Air. I got out at just the right time- immediately before the split, and 3 months before they shut down the whole Carlsbad operation and made the rather interesting decision to fire all of the engineers and yet attempt to continue selling the PR&E product line.

Ironically, I still deal with Harris stuff every day. At WPIX, our main transmitter was a Harris Platinum:

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...7228fdc794.png



... here at WGN we have a Diamond primary:

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...d061f5ed00.png



... and a tiny little UAXT backup:

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...c088a0c066.png



... and of course the NOC is littered with these bastard little devices:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...64a5bc42d8.png

I just noticed that the building in which I live has a 13th floor:


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...8b36bb15a6.png


I think this is a first for me.

You live in a strange building.
There are two buttons for every floor.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...4dd242ef2b.jpg

Commie elevator:

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...cbc32ad148.png

So, while scrolling through some "this connection knows this connection knows this connection" list on LinkedIn I noticed a familiar name, with an unfamiliar face.

It turns out that the police chief for the Metra Commuter Rail system in the greater Chicago area is named Joseph Perez.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...d09fa787cb.png

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-perez-a5a82b60

I am not sure how and if this might ever intersect with your life, Joe, but somehow I felt that you should know.