Something never seizes to amaze me when it comes to IT, especially networking........

Hello everyone,

It’s been a while now and nice getting back to you guys. Something never seizes to amaze me when it comes to IT, especially networking. One of our clients, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has relocated from its UN Drive, Mamba Point office to the Pan African Plaza building, formal United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) Headquarters in Sinkor, Tubman Boulevard. Our task was to create a new Local Area Network (LAN) and terminate all ends in a mounted rack in the server room, transfer and setup all IT equipment including security cameras to function.

The client already had an initial internet service provider therefore, connecting all devices back to same network would have a plug and play setup. Instead, they decided to get connected to another UN agency. Out of 15 LAN ports the new provider offered to connect 6 users which include a network printer and a file sharing server. I entered the server room of their provider and saw a lots of huge Cisco devices; I mean latest Core routers, switches HP & DELL blade servers all mounted in a freezing environment. This was so amazing, getting a glance at them. I have always wished to work in an environment and on live devices as well and that’s going to be soon. The customer provided us with a 24 - port Net-Gear switch which was being used at their old office to connect to their provider, the UN agency, but they condemned the equipment that it was far way below the UN standards. They preferred a Cisco Meraki MS 225-24P HW (PoE Managed Switch) which cannot be found locally and would take up to a week to be delivered if ordered. We left with the option of connecting to the 6 available ports given.

All four users were connected to a real-time high speed internet connection via a Cisco Meraki MS 225-24P HW switch except for the network printer and the file sharing server. To connect the printer and server, I had to get a static IP from the IT officers. All the printers are on a different Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) therefore an IP must be given from the VLAN range. It took us nearly a week from one floor to another in getting the information from these guys until finally that morning they were able to generate two static IPs addresses for our client, JICA. I started by configuring the addresses into the printer. After several re boots, the printer could not be accessible on the network. Than I compared the subnet mask given to me by the IT officer with that of the one I gathered via windows command interface, I noticed the guy had made a mistake by giving me a slash /24 small network eg (255.255.255.0) network instead of slash /27 eg 255.255.254.0 medium and large networks. Rectifying this issue had the printer hooked up to the network as well as the mini server. As of now, our client has upgraded to a more big and high-speed internet. I am glad to have a hand on these equipment as I am also preparing for my Official CISCO Certifications Exams (CCNA) coming up soon!

Daniel Collins