Technology Rulez

so here’s a short funny side of technology -

i saw my aunt calling from Faisalabad (Approx. 200 Kms away from Lahore) to my mom on PTCL landlin number and asking her to call her husband (who is also in Faisalabad) on cell phone so that he can bring bread and eggs while coming back to home. Weird isn’t it ? here’s the key – since my aunt got PTCL Unlimited Nation wide calling – she called on a landline for free and my mom’s cell phone is of same service provider as uncle’s is – so its a win-win on both side

howzaat ? funny isn’t it

do you have any first hand account of your family/friends using technology to the most – feel free to comment.

Propaganda against PK ?

Indian Propaganda

 Click on the picture to see it full -

OKay today i was going through my mailbox when i notices this banned – interesting isn’t it ? so i did a little bit digging and i found that domain name was registered on a fake person’s name in Faisalabad. And amazing thing is the hosting company (http://www.clocktowercity.com/webs/index.php) mentions itself to also be from Faisalabad but forgot to remove the indian icon on their website -

So another proof of international efforts to demoralize our nation I hope our politicians – especially mister 10% 100% grasp it before its too late.

BGP Multihome and my fluic condition :|

So finally i made up my mind to finish up an old research i was working on – this to multihome with two ISP between two different locations.

I ended up waking around 4 AM in the morning due to my flu and then thought to use my time for this task.

As many people end up with questions and problem and dream to achieve it without any issues, i’m gonna post out the details .

Task Details:

Subnet : 2x.1x.2x.0/23 needs to be advertised via two ISP for redundancy between datacenters.

 

Upstream providers:

Global Crossings, Level 3

I’m assuming following steps has been followed already before configurations:

Step – 1 : would be to own and register a public ASN

Step – 2: would be to talk with both upstream providers and get appropriate filters updated so that you can advertise your IP block as you want on both providers. Some ISP’s dont allow to go under /24 – ideally in filters i would break a /23 like below:

• 2x.1x.2x.0/23
• 2x.1x.2×1.0/24
• 2x.1x.2×2.0/24

This way you have two options,

1. Redundancy by prepaending AS PATH
2. Load-balancing by subneting and advertising more specifics

- Scenario:

 

Both routers needs to run IGP between, my personal prefference is EIGRP which is NOT COMPLEX and is MORE FLEXIBLE than running OSPF (i beg to differ)

As both routers are not connected directly, but have IP routing internall, i have made up a GRE IP to IP Tunnel between both routers:

Philadelphia Router:

interface Tunnel9999
 description %TUNNEL TO LEVEL3 DIA ROUTER%
 ip address 192.168.192.1 255.255.255.252
 ip tcp adjust-mss 1436
 ip summary-address eigrp 1 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 250
 keepalive 10 3
 tunnel source 10.x.x.x
 tunnel destination 10.x.x.x
end

Pittsburgh Router:

interface Tunnel9999
 description %TUNNEL TO GBLX DIA ROUTER%
 ip address 192.168.192.2 255.255.255.252
 ip tcp adjust-mss 1436
 ip summary-address eigrp 1 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 250
 keepalive 10 3
 tunnel source 10.x.x.x
 tunnel destination 10.x.x.x
end

 

EIGRP Configs:

Philadelphia Router:

router eigrp 1
 passive-interface default
 no passive-interface Tunnel9999
 network 192.168.192.0 0.0.0.3
 no auto-summary
 eigrp router-id 10.x.x.x
 eigrp stub connected
!

Pittsburgh Router:

router eigrp 1
 passive-interface default
 no passive-interface Tunnel9999
 network 192.168.192.0 0.0.0.3
 no auto-summary
 eigrp router-id 10.x.x.x
 eigrp stub connected
!

I’ll post out the BGP configs in another post as can’t any more. Current challenge i have to cover is the ICMP/TRACEROUTE requests which are being tagged by 192.168.192.x address when primary ISP is down and traffic is routed from Level3 over to Philadelphia by GRE Tunnel. Its a bit complex and requires a debugging. Good practice is to always make a very specific ACL and use it for debugging instead of open debugging as your router will immediately sieze it self in processing DEBUG messages and you would end up loosing connection.

Following is my output:

*Oct  5 01:39:43.526: IP: s=2x.2x.1x.1x (Tunnel9999), d=2x.1x.2x.1, len 28, rcvd 0
*Oct  5 01:39:43.526:     UDP src=49862, dst=33482
*Oct  5 01:39:43.526: IP: tableid=0, s=192.168.192.1 (local), d=2x.2x.1x.1x (Tunnel9999), routed via FIB
*Oct  5 01:39:43.526: IP: s=192.168.192.1 (local), d=2x.2x.1x.1x (Tunnel9999), len 56, sending
*Oct  5 01:39:43.526:     ICMP type=3, code=3
*Oct  5 01:39:46.522: IP: s=2x.2x.1x.1x (Tunnel9999), d=2x.1x.2x.1, len 28, rcvd 0
*Oct  5 01:39:46.522:     UDP src=49863, dst=33483
*Oct  5 01:39:46.522: IP: tableid=0, s=192.168.192.1 (local), d=2x.2x.1x.1x (Tunnel9999), routed via FIB
*Oct  5 01:39:46.522: IP: s=192.168.192.1 (local), d=2x.2x.1x.1x (Tunnel9999), len 56, sending
*Oct  5 01:39:46.522:     ICMP type=3, code=3
*Oct  5 01:39:49.522: IP: s=2x.2x.1x.1x (Tunnel9999), d=2x.1x.2x.1, len 28, rcvd 0
*Oct  5 01:39:49.522:     UDP src=49864, dst=33484
*Oct  5 01:39:49.522: IP: tableid=0, s=192.168.192.1 (local), d=2x.2x.1x.1x (Tunnel9999), routed via FIB
*Oct  5 01:39:49.522: IP: s=192.168.192.1 (local), d=2x.2x.1x.1x (Tunnel9999), len 56, sending
*Oct  5 01:39:49.522:     ICMP type=3, code=3

The best ever thing on PTV !

This clip is the last episode of Dhuwan ! the serial on PTV in 1990s – this was one of the best ever made drama by PTV in my opinion … the most interesting thing about this show was the reality – well most of the portion of this drama is true and applicable to most of the good police offers who were killed in the line of duty. I myself belong to a family full of law enforcement officers in police, intel and my own old affiliation with law enforcement, my khalo, my father, my mamon, myself , my younger brother and many others … i remmember a kidnap threat of me by a well known terrorist in punjab against my father when i was very young and one day for some reason, whole police in the town was looking for me while i was stuck in no where due to bad chain in bike with one of our bait officer … and then the hand grende threats .. those were some days leaving all apart – here’s the video which i found today :

Returning – Half way around the world

so finally after a long time, i’m returning back to Pakistan. Truly, this was my longest stay ever away from my home almost 3 months (except my boarding days at FC Colllege but i guess i used to see my family atleast in a month). It was a trip full of fun, travelling, learning and work.

I’m blessed to work in a company which has a unique vision, unique problems and unique infrastructure. Me along with my boss and our COO – share a strong ideology i.e. to get more and more jobs back in Pakistan – We started from 300 people 3 years ago and now we stand at a strong figure of 1000+ only in Pakistan. Hopefully we’ll be increasing this capacity in coming days in all fields starting from Software, IT till CSRs.

returning to my trip – it was part of my job duty as being global head of network operations which makes me travel annually to some places in and out of Pakistan. I travelled through Karachi, Doha, Dallas and returned to Philly’s town called “King Of Prussia”. Travelled throughout east cost starting from New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and till Florida.

The biggest achievement of my trip was to get hold of car provided by company and driving on interstate highways – so i finally got good grip on a right hand drive and it made my life easier in last 2 months – i was easily able to travel around – enjoy the Pizza at Tuscani, Coffee and late night sittings at Starbuck, and not to mention sandwiches of Taco Bell and Pot Belly

Though i hear bad things about PK here, but i’m anxious to be with my family, some jack a$$ :@friends and Hamza kiddo. I wish i was back in Lahore when he was there for a month – i miss these days when he has started speaking in beautiful kido language saying Mamoon and Nano GOD ! i wanna fly directly to him in Isloo and give him hugs and gifts

well i’m writing these lines from my office – sweeting all over – after cleaning up the data center along with my boss for AMEX visit on Wednesday. InshAllah i’ll write more when i get back in PK around 13 Aug.

 

tc amigos, tada

Priceless Moments

Travelling Plans & Narations ….

Damn … i’m again en-route to US. Somehow i wasn’t able to get a ticket from Lahore to Washington or NY …weired ; seems like summer holidays are making too many people flee from Posh Areas.

OK so here’s the story – I’m currently writing these words from Doha (well i planned that i have some time to kill before my flight and so i’ll update this blog)

i left from yesterday around 7 PM – reached Airport around 7:45 PM; flight to Karachi was scheduled at 9:30; After the Flight Drama (which i’ll tell below) – we took off around 10:45 and reached Karachi around 12 AM.  Again as usual (as discussed with Danish couple of hours ago) that Pakistani Airline flights are good for getting Gunah maaf; and it went exactly like that Bad Weather – some poor attitude people and the media fiasco ended up in my worst ever faced turbulance. It was quite quite horrible and plan was shaking like peas in a pot.

ok long story short – plan was stopped by CAA due to poor weather while we all were seated but after 1 hour – a guy (uncle actually) got angrey and started shouting to make the plan run and flight reached geo/ajj etc.. ect.. after couple of minutes CAA allowed for takeoff but when it reached up the guy who was shouting to bring it up was holding his seat together and he was cursed by everyone in plane that he is a stupid jerk ! going to get us all killed

At karachi, i just gave my self some internet shock – worked on hacked insecure internet and took a flight around 6 AM to reach here around 8:30 AM PKST ….

would be leaving around 12 PM PKST towards Washington ; i guess i won’t be able to write off from DC as i have to catch a flight to Philadelphia and i’m gonna be dead tired till that – not sure if anyone else but i’m kind of a guy who doesn’t get much sleep while traveling.

will update later hopefully….some pictures are already uploaded on facebook , i’ll send more soon.

adios

- shakeel

TOP TWENTY SIGNS YOU’RE AN INTERNET ADDICT

1. You joined a Facebook “Support Group for Uber User Internet Addicts.” TRUE
2. You’re surprised when people ask why your business card lists your email address as the same as your Facebook, LinkedIn, MSN IM, Plaxo Pulse, Gizmo Project and Yahoo IM IDs and even more upset if your boss will not let you list that fact on your business card. (submitted by Suzanne Bowen) TRUE
3. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is your best excuse for ending a conversation.
4. You’re seriously considering a laptop to accompany the magazines by the commode. (submitted by Jody Carbone) I DO CARRY ONE
5. People call you by your screen name more then you real name. TRUE
6. You extend your wireless coverage all the way to the community pool… well, just because you can do stuff like that and someone might want Internet access when they’re sitting at the pool. (submitted by Joel Barrett) - well i do extend my wireless range around my home but i’m mean about it
7. Your best pick up line is… I Stumbled Upon your Twitter, Reddit and found it Del.icio.us.
8. You have more networking gear in your home lab than the one at the office (submitted by Nathan Gregory) - Absolutely true – even more bandwidth then my previous office
9. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is your best excuse for ending a conversation.
10. Humnn, You know you are a internet freak when you actually blog your review of an ongoing movie halfway through in a movie hall during the interval on your GPRS enabled cell phone. (Damn, I actually did it ) (submitted by Sreeraj S Arasa)  - i’ll do that exactly if i go to movie hall
11. he last social function you attended was a LAN Party  - haha – joined many parties like these
12. You sit with your girlfriend in the living room, but instead of talking to each other you use messenger, Sametime, Skype to ask her for a cup of tea! (submitted by Isabell Otterbein) - well not girl friend but 2 of my brothers in same home and we talk on Gtalk
13. Your online gaming rig came with an integrated espresso maker.
14. If you launch a blog for your baby before he or she is born, track its search engine ranking on a daily basis, and actually consider the possibility of ad revenues – then you might be an Internet addict. (submitted by Jeff Brainard)
15. You can’t believe that “l8r, OMG, TTYL, and BFF” are not in Webster’s Dictionary. TRUE
16. You talk to your kids and collect family information through Facebook. (submitted by Debbie Zioni)
17. You haven’t watched TV on a TV since Al Gore invented the Internet. LMAO – exactly
18. You have pets named, “Avatar, “Linden,” and “Digg.” (submitted by Gabriel Garcia)
19. You can’t laugh anymore, you only LOL! -  how true :D:D:D:D:D:D LOLZ
20. Your Facebook page gets more traffic than a drive though window.

My recorded moves ! WAO !

So it’s been couple of days i have started tracking my moves around the city via my new GPS reciever – and today I traveled from my current home to a new home (very soon) – and its path on G-Map is amazing – its amazing how much distance i covered in 1 hour in a round trip here the pictures :

WAO !!

Back to Home !!

Live with Talat

This is very nice episode of a discussion between Ghamdi & Talat – must watch if you have some time.

http://pkpolitics.com/2008/03/21/live-with-talat-21-march-2008/