What is ARP? ARP or Address Resolution Protocol is a simple communications protocol used primarily today in IP and Ethernet networks.  It’s main purpose is to discover and associate IP addresses to physical MAC hardware addresses. How does ARP work? When a computer needs to send data across a network to another physical device, it [...]

Everyone remembers the original movie TRON where the character Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges, is sucked into the microscopic world of computer games.  In the movie the villain was the Master Control Program or MCP who would take programs OFFLINE if they misbehaved. Switches have their own MCP (of sorts) which takes network switch ports [...]

Entering the Nexus If you have a data center or if you have any services running in a data center then at some point you may have considered Cisco’s Nexus switching platform.  Rightly so, Cisco’s Nexus platform promises and delivers huge flexibility and scalability gains within the data center. FabricPath To provide this next leap in data center  switching [...]

Spanning Tree and Switches are a lot like the Highlander – “there can be only one”  (root bridge in your spanning tree).  The process of electing a root bridge is very similar to Highlander in that switches will battle it out until one bridge is the root.  And all designated ports shall forward to it! [...]