Router Induced Issues

[Robert Dinse <nanook@eskimo.com>]

     The night before last I had to upgrade our router because the floppy
containing the boot code and configuration died.  Drive would not respond so
the router would not boot. 

     So I took the opportunity to install a new CEC (basically the brains of
the unit) which has two faster CPU's, and a flash-rom drive.

     Because I couldn't read the old configuration I had to configure this
router from scratch.  And there were a few things I missed.

     Some of the things I initially missed include:

	LMI configuration for the frame relay link which resulted in the lack
	of working congestion control and this seemed to negatively impact at
	least one customer.

	RIP configuration between the router and the communications servers
	used for the v.34 dialups resulted in routes not being propogated for
	dial up PPP connections on the V.34 lines.

	Filters misconfigured somewhat caused some problems for mail SMTP
	connections.

	Hardware with nothing connected enabled caused stability problems.

     All of these things have been resolved.

     Sprint has moved the due date for the third T1 to 6/18, but we're all
ready for it now, DSU/CSU is connected and ready to go as soon as it's turned
up. 

     I loaded new software for the router at the same time I upgraded the
hardware, and it has support for expanded firewall capabilities, and expanded
ATM capabilities, and DHCP server.  These capabilities were the reason we
needed the Cisco which has not yet arrived for the DSL connection.  I'm going
to connect the DSL port to this router and see if we can get it to talk.  It
would be preferable to have it in the same router because it eliminates an
extra hop and an extra opportunity for things to go wrong, and it also provides
no location to intercept (sniff) packets.  And of coarse if I don't need a
$5000 router with a command set I'm not familiar with that's only a plus! 

     At some point in the not to distant future we'll be moving from FDDI
backbone to 100-base-T backbone.