January 2026 - Why was there no blog in December?

Well. I was travelling and I didn't get much time in the network lab. It also ended up in yet again another overhaul... Which meant I bought more hardware... and I bought a lot (for realitivly cheap)!.

Okay Maxine what overhaul did you do?

So let's start with what's new.

  1. A Cisco 3750X (this is now the core)
  2. A Cisco 3750G (core 2)
  3. Newer 3750Cs (not the original, these have dual 1 gigabit ports).
  4. My first Jupiter device (I had plans to use this as a core, however I experienced weird issues with Bandwidth Test on the MikroTiks despite not seeing this on the old Cisco core which was a 2911).
  5. Another ASA (this time a 5508).
  6. A full blown cabinet.

Now let's start with the diagram to get an idea of what's in here.

We're still a mixture of Cisco and Mikrotik, however the core got a massive upgrade and we've reorganized the lab.

The Cisco 3750X is the new core. A full layer 3 switch. It has 2 SFP+ 10 gig links that we will certainly make good use of. We have one 10 gig link through to the production network, and another to Iwatodai, the main Proxmox host.

The Cisco 3750G is our second core(purely for Christchurch and splitting off into our slower customers). This only has a 1 gig link and is only capable of 1 gig links across all 28 ports (4 of them are SFP, rest are RJ45) and is also doing some layer 3 goodness.

We got two 3750Cs (newer metal white bodies), one of them had a faulty console chip. So I had fun configuring Director to self provision it so telnet worked over a IP DHCP client on one of the gig ports. It worked! That has been donated to my fiancee who is also learning the CCNA. The second one is fully functional and so far isn't used but it is in the cabinet.

Right, I mentioned the cabinet... let's talk about it. Or actually... Let's show it off.

Ain't she pretty?

We also got RADIUS for PPPoE. That alone is a blog worthy subject standalone.

The Cisco journey will resume next month. That's as much as I've got to say.

Jan 30th edit: I rebuilt the lab again this information is now completely wrong lmao and I am currently writing up a new blog which will include the umpenthtime rebuild of the lab.