Knowledge is like LOVE, the more u give the more u get.

I came across this from one of the blogs and though i would post so the visitors can read the same.

An Ancient Chinese scholar Confucius once said:

I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.

And to that, my college professor added;

I teach others and I understand more.

Catalyst 3560 Cisco IOS QoS.

Well, sometimes i feel like the best way to understand a technology is to write about it. I was reading about QoS for Cisco based switched networks and i though maybe i could share my understanding of the technology with all visitors of this blog.

Qos which is an abbr to "Quality of Serice" according to Cisco; refers to the capability of a network to provide better service to selected network traffic over various technologies, including Frame Relay, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Ethernet and 802.1 networks, SONET, and IP-routed networks that may use any or all of these underlying technologies. The primary goal of QoS is to provide priority including dedicated bandwidth, controlled jitter and latency (required by some real-time and interactive traffic), and improved loss characteristics. Also important is making sure that providing priority for one or more flows does not make other flows fail. QoS technologies provide the elemental building blocks that will be used for future business applications in campus, WAN, and service provider networks. This chapter outlines the features and benefits of the QoS provided by the Cisco IOS QoS.

Now that we all know what QoS is, lets see how it can be implemented on a Cisco 3560 Catalyst layer 3 switch.

Will start by classifying the type of traffic or application we need to implement QoS on.

Router#enable
Router#config terminal
Router(config)#class-map match-any junk-internet-traffic
Router(config-cmap)#match protocol kazza2
Router(config-cmap)#match protocol Gnutella
Router(config-cmap)#match protocol fasttrack
Router(config-cmap)#exit

Router(config)#class-map match-any important
Router(config-cmap)#match protocol ipsec
Router(config-cmap)#match protocol smtp
Router(config-cmap)#exit

After classifying we now need to Mark the above applications/traffic.

Router#enable
Router#config terminal
Router(config)#policy-map marking
Router(config-pmap)#class junk-internet-traffic
Router(config-pmap-c)#set precedence 0
Router(config-pmap-c)#exit
Router(config-pmap)#class important
Router(config-pmap-c)#set precedence 5
Router(config-pmap-c)#exit

After Marking the traffic we can now apply the policy to the interface.

Router#enable
Router#config terminal
Router(config)#int fa0/0
Router(config-if)#service-policy input marking


With the above, we have achieved to implement QoS with one Policy called Marking which contains a number of different classes of traffic i.e. important and junk-internet-traffic.

Google vs Locally based Search Engines

A very good friend of mine one time wanted to buy some item from the local stores in Dar-es-salaam. But in his quest to purchase the item, he spent almost 1 if not 2 days wondering around different shops and stores seeking for the same item...but with no luck.

If there is something he could not take anymore, was fatigue. Immediately he called me and asked me one simple question!!!. Noah, how long do you think it would take someone to find the an item they are looking for, in case some sort of a search engine similar to Google with information (database) about the local market and economy was available?, Well i though for a minute and then told him, it would take them a minute if not 2, and they would have the answer. He then laughed and said that is the point....1 or 2 minutes and you have what you're looking for.!!!!

The point here is, as much as Google can help us in Africa to find information globally and somewhat locally, it is not that efficient enough as very less information is availed to Google regarding our Africa's local economy. And for that matter, projects such us TAFUTA (www.tafuta.co.tz)and BONGOZA (www.bongoza.co.tz) are becoming more significant and important in East Africa.

It would also be much wiser if Google localized its information database based on local economies/countries for instance for Tanzania, www.google.co.tz would useful for searching withing Tanzania and www.google.com would be reserved for global purposes.

This of course would enable the searching of anything locally more easier...than walking street by street looking for some item which probably is just next door.

./noah