Author Archives: Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

About Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

Network and Security Consultant, Trainer and Blogger who enjoys understanding how things really work. Troubleshooting and problem resolution is fun, especially if it involves packet. What's on your wire[s]?

How to Implement Priority Queuing on the ASA

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

Last week, I wrote about one of the typical scenarios that we run into with ASA implementation. As described here, that scenario is one in which the ASA can transmit traffic at 100Mb/s (or 1000Mb/s), but our service provider dropped … Continue reading →

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QoS Challenges with VPNs

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

Something that comes up regularly are questions regarding QoS on VPN’s. There are several challenges related to QoS in the typical Internet connected environments that I come in contact with. These challenges are not really a result of the VPN … Continue reading →

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Changes Required for AnyConnect in 8.4

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

A few days ago I wrote an article that explained the configuration steps required to implement a basic AnyConnect environment. That article was based on a pre-8.3 version of the ASA OS. Many organizations are starting to implement ASA 8.4 … Continue reading →

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ASA DSCP Preservation with IPSec

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

Cisco documents a feature called “DSCP Preservation” in regards to ToS Byte handling on the ASA. This basically means that the ToS Byte is left in tact as packets flow through the firewall. But what happens to the ToS Byte … Continue reading →

Posted in network, security | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

15 Top Paying IT Certifications–Not Really

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

Today, I received a newsletter from Global Knowledge. The first article listed was “15 Top Paying IT Certifications for 2012“. I wanted to pose an interpretation to this article. It is not the certifications that are valuable, but what those … Continue reading →

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Getting Started with Cisco Anyconnect

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

For the last few years, Cisco has been attempting to do away with what they call the Cisco EZVPN client. This has been the solution used by many corporate users in the mobile workforce for secure access to enterprise data. … Continue reading →

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CCIE Routing and Switching Written Exam Resources

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

Last week I took and passed the CCIE Routing and Switching Written exam (350-001). The first and foremost reason for taking this exam was to re-certify my current CCIE Security certification. Cisco requires any CCIE level written exam to be … Continue reading →

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The Future of the OSI Model

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

The OSI model is that thing that everyone seems to love to hate. The OSI is actually just a model that has its roots in the International Organization for Standardization. We’ve all had disagreements how certain protocols map to certain … Continue reading →

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Migrating ASA NAT Exemption Configuration

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

NAT exemptions are often required when a single ASA appliance is performing NAT and terminating VPN connections.  In ASA configurations prior to 8.3 and 8.4, NAT exemptions were configured with “nat 0 access-list <acl name>” and a related access-list.

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ASA L2L VPN Spoke to Spoke Communication

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

It seems like some of the more challenging things to do on an ASA involve some sort of traffic being redirected out the same interface it was received on. This article addresses the requirement for spoke to hub to spoke … Continue reading →

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No SSH After Upgrading to 8.4

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

There are several changes when an ASA is upgraded from 8.2 to 8.4(2). The most notable of these are the ones dealing with the syntax of the NAT configuration. However, there is another gotcha that you might not be expecting. SSH will … Continue reading →

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Typical NAT/PAT Configuration Comparison for ASA 8.4

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Paul Stewart, CCIE 26009 (Security)

A little while back, I posted an article that took a very simple ASA configuration and migrated it to 8.4. This article takes it a step further and focuses on NAT and PAT, as well as the related access control … Continue reading →

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