San Francisco on the Cheap

If you?ve ever visited San Francisco, you know it can be a very expensive city. Hotel costs, restaurant tabs, valet fees and cab fares can add up quite quickly. But, if you know where the values are, that trip to San Francisco can actually fit into your budget quite nicely.

First, let?s start with lodging. Yes, it?s nice to stay at the Grand Hyatt on Union Square or the Mark Hopkins. But, let?s face it, they?re expensive. For budget considerations, I suggest you consider Lombard Street. No, not the crooked part of Lombard Street, but the section of Lombard Street which runs through the Cow Hollow and Marina districts in the northern part of San Francisco, near the Golden Gate Bridge.

You can find a nice room on Lombard Street for just under $100 a night, which is a far cry from the hotels on Union Square. But, what kind of room will your $100 get you? Of course, you?re not going to get the luxury of a fancy hotel, but you?re not paying for luxury. You?re paying to enjoy San Francisco. Your $100 will buy you a comfortable, clean room. Also, you will generally receive free parking. If you drive to San Francisco or rent a car in San Francisco, free parking is a big deal. The luxury hotels usually charge for parking, as well as a in & out fees when you retrieve your car for a day trip or night out.

Lombard Street is also a great location. Just north of Lombard Street is Chestnut Street, with a movie theater, shops and wonderful food. To the south a few blocks you?ll find Union Street, with upscale shops and, again, wonderful food. Lombard Street is also a good location for bus service to all parts of San Francisco, eliminating the need for expensive taxi rides.

You have numerous choices for lodging along Lombard Street. I?ve stayed at the Cow Hollow Motor Inn (415-921-5800) and find it to be good, inexpensive choice, with free parking, with a nice, inexpensive Italian restaurant located just north on Steiner Street (Ristorante Parma). One caveat I have about Cow Hollow, which can probably be applied to any of the motels on Lombard Street, is that you will probably want to request an inside room off the main streets, as they can get quite loud. Another motel you might consider would be La Luna Inn (415-346-4664), a recently renovated inn with some luxuries you wouldn?t expect from a budget motel, such as pillow-top mattresses, flat screen TVs, wireless internet access and complimentary muffins, breads, coffee, tea and juices served every morning. All that for just under $100 per night for a single king or queen bed.

Restaurants can also add up to the cost of a vacation. San Francisco has a large amount of wonderful restaurants at inexpensive prices. Of course, you have to know which ones they are. Those would usually be the ones the locals frequent, so if you want to avoid over-priced restaurants, you?d stay away from restaurants in tourist traps like Fisherman?s Wharf and go for neighborhood restaurants, such as those found in Cow Hollow and the Marina District, 24th Street in Noe Valley, or Potrero Hill. One very inexpensive restaurant I?d recommend in Potrero Hill is San Francisco Bar B Que, 1328 18th St., a wonderful little Thai BBQ restaurant that serves great food at cheap prices. If there?s a wait, just put your name on the list and bop into Bloom?s Saloon a couple doors down for a drink and great views of the downtown skyline.

As for inexpensive things to do in San Francisco, check out the free walking tours offered by San Francisco City Guides, a non-profit organization of more than 200 trained volunteers who lead free walking tours in San Francisco. Their website at sfcityguides.org lists all the many different walking tours of such sites as Chinatown, Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, and even ghost walks of supposedly haunted locations.

San Francisco is truly a great city to visit. It?s even better when you know you can visit and experience all the city has to offer without breaking the bank.

Shari Hearn is a writer and creator of Top Vacation Spots, where you can learn more about things to do in San Francisco.

 

CCNA Certification: Three Occasions To Reload Or Reopen A Cisco Router Interface

Passing the CCNA certification exam means that you know how to configure and troubleshoot a Cisco router instead of using what I call the "hope method" - you know, "Let's reload the router and hope that takes care of it." The majority of Cisco router configurations take effect without the need for a reload, but every once in a while you just have to reload a router or shut and reopen an interface. Let's take a look at three such scenarios.

The first is when you change an OSPF Router ID from its default. For the new RID to take effect, you must either reload the router or clear the OSPF process, which means that all existing adjacencies will come down. Cisco routers are kind enough to tell you this with the following message after you configure a new RID: "Reload or use "clear ip ospf process" command, for this to take effect".

In a previous tutorial, I showed you how to configure an Etherchannel. You have to place each port into the Etherchannel with the channel-group command, and if you do so individually, some of the ports may go into error-disabled state, or "err-disable". This can also happen as a result of port security enforcement. You can see this with the show interface command:

sw1#show int fast 0/1

FastEthernet0/1 is down, line protocol is down (err-disabled)

A syslog message putting that port into err-disabled state will look like this:

04:10:23: %PM-4-ERR_DISABLE: channel-misconfig error detected on Po1, putting Fa0/1 in err-disable state

If this happens during an Etherchannel configuration, just finish the config and then shut and reopen the ports in err-disabled state. They'll come back up and be placed into the Etherchannel.

Finally, our old friend the SPID often makes us shut and reopen the BRI interface. If the BRI interface is open and you configure SPIDs on it, the SPID can be absolutely correct and you'll still see this in the output of show isdn status:

spid1 configured, spid1 NOT sent, spid1 NOT valid

At least the Cisco router puts "NOT" in caps, right? It's easier to see that way! With SPIDs, before you call the service provider or check the SPID you entered about 40 times, just shut and reopen the interface. That usually does the trick.

When you earn your CCNA certification, that means that you know what you're doing instead of hoping that you do - and part of that knowing is knowing when a simple reload or open/shut will take care of the issue.

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of over 200 free certification exam tutorials, including CCNA certification training articles. His exclusive CCNA study guide is also available!

Visit his blog and sign up for Cisco Certification Central, a daily newsletter packed with CCNA, Network+, Security+, A+, and CCNP certification exam practice questions! A free 7-part course, ?How To Pass The CCNA?, is also available, and you can attend an in-person or online Cisco CCNA training boot camp with The Bryant Advantage!

 

Cisco CCNA Certification: The Proper Use Of Default Static Routes

Earning your Cisco CCNA certification means knowing the details of Cisco routing, and that includes knowing when Cisco routing terms don't quite mean what they sound like they mean. For example, the general meaning of "default" is a setting that is used unless you or I change it. On the other hand, a default route is a route taken by packets that have no other route they can take. Let's take a look at how a default static route is configured and used on a Cisco router.

Here's our current routing table:

Gateway of last resort is not set

1.0.0.0/32 is subnetted, 1 subnets

C 1.1.1.1 is directly connected, Loopback0

172.12.0.0/16 is variably subnetted, 2 subnets, 2 masks

C 172.12.13.0/24 is directly connected, Serial1

C 172.12.21.0/30 is directly connected, BRI0

If we have packets destined for the network 15.1.1.0 /24, the packets will be dropped by this router. There's no match in that routing table for that network and the gateway of last resort is not set.

We could configure a static route to the 15.1.1.0 /24 network, but instead we'll use a default static route. The hardest part of configuring that route type is getting used to the odd syntax! As with any other static route, we can use the IP address of the next-hop router or the local router's exit interface. Here, we'll send any traffic with no more-specific match in the routing table out the local router's Serial1 interface.

R1(config)#ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 serial1

Let's take a look at the routing table now.

Gateway of last resort is 0.0.0.0 to network 0.0.0.0

1.0.0.0/32 is subnetted, 1 subnets

C 1.1.1.1 is directly connected, Loopback0

172.12.0.0/16 is variably subnetted, 2 subnets, 2 masks

C 172.12.13.0/24 is directly connected, Serial1

C 172.12.21.0/30 is directly connected, BRI0

S* 0.0.0.0/0 is directly connected, Serial1

A gateway of last resort has now been successfully configured, and the S* means that last route in the table is a static default route. Remember, the default route is not the route that all packets will take - it's the route packets use if there is no other possible match for their destination in the routing table.

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of over 200 free certification exam tutorials, including CCNA certification training articles. His exclusive CCNA study guide is also available!

Visit his blog and sign up for Cisco Certification Central, a daily newsletter packed with CCNA, Network+, Security+, A+, and CCNP certification exam practice questions! A free 7-part course, ?How To Pass The CCNA?, is also available, and you can attend an in-person or online Cisco CCNA training boot camp with The Bryant Advantage!

 

CCNA Certification Training: Configuring Static Routes On A Cisco Router

 

Knowing how to quickly configure a static route is a valuable skill for both the CCNA exam and working with real-world networks.  Learn all about static routes from Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933.

The great thing about CCNA certification training is that the skills you learn will truly come in handy when working with Cisco routers and switches in production networks.  That's particularly true of static route configuration.  While most networks use dynamic routing protocols such as RIP, EIGRP, and OSPF to build routing tables, static routes still come in handy sometimes - especially if a routing protocol configuration goes awry. 

Let's say that you just added a new segment to your network and you've successfully added it to your network's routing tables.  Suddenly, on Monday morning, users on that segment can't get to a network resource such as an email server, or they can't get out to the Internet.  We all know what it's like to try to fix something while the phone's ringing like crazy.  That's when we have to do two things.

First, resist the temptation to say ?I would fix it, but I?m too busy talking to you?.

Second, use a quick fix to get the issue resolved temporarily while you resolve the issue.

Static routes are a great quick fix.  You can use a static route to get the users where they need to be, which gives you time to find out what the problem is with the dynamic routing protocol. (You must also resist the temptation to apply a static route and declare the problem fixed!)

Static routes are configured with the ip route command, followed by the destination network and mask.  After that, you must specify either the next-hop IP address or the local exit interface.  Both of the following masks are acceptable:

ip route 172.10.1.0 255.255.255.0 210.1.1.1

ip route 172.10.1.0 255.255.255.0 serial0

Using IOS Help on a Cisco router shows the various options:

R1(config)#ip route ?

  A.B.C.D  Destination prefix

  profile  Enable IP routing table profile

  vrf      Configure static route for a VPN Routing/Forwarding instance

R1(config)#ip route 172.10.1.0 ?

  A.B.C.D  Destination prefix mask

R1(config)#ip route 172.10.1.0 255.255.255.0 ?

  A.B.C.D    Forwarding router's address

  BRI        ISDN Basic Rate Interface

  Dialer     Dialer interface

  Loopback   Loopback interface

  Null       Null interface

  Serial     Serial

  TokenRing  IEEE 802.5

Remember, you're specifying either the next-hop router's IP address or the local router's exit interface!

Configuring static routes is a great skill to have in the network room and in the CCNA exam room.  Be ready to configure them in either situation!

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of over 200 free certification exam tutorials, including CCNA certification training articles. His exclusive CCNA study guide is also available!Visit his blog and sign up for Cisco Certification Central, a daily newsletter packed with CCNA, Network+, Security+, A+, and CCNP certification exam practice questions! A free 7-part course, ?How To Pass The CCNA?, is also available, and you can attend an in-person or online Cisco CCNA training boot camp with The Bryant Advantage!

Cisco CCNA Certification Training: Etherchannels And Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)

 

Etherchannels and STP are major topics on the CCNA exam, but how do they work together?  Learn the vital details from Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933.

Cisco CCNA certification looks great on your resume, and it also teaches you vital real-world networking skills.  One exam topic that you'll definitely see in today's networks is the configuration of an Etherchannel on a Cisco router.  You need to know how to build and verify one - so let's build one right now!

In this Cisco training tutorial, we'll use two switches that are connected at ports 0/11 and 0/12 via crossover cables.  SW1 is the root bridge, SW2 is the non-root bridge.  Even though there are two separate physical connections, spanning tree protocol (STP) will only allow the use of one, as verified by the partial output of "show spanning vlan 1" on SW2.

Fa0/11           Root FWD 19        128.11   P2p

Fa0/12           Altn   BLK 19        128.12   P2p

It's a waste of network resources not to use that second physical path.  Additionally, there's going to be a delay in cutting over from 0/11 to 0/12 if the forwarding path goes down.  We can get around both of these issues by creating an Etherchannel.  An Etherchannel is a logical bundling of physical paths into one logical path.  By configuring an Etherchannel on both 0/11 and 0/12, we will be left with one logical connection that will actually use the full capacity of both physical connections!

SW1(config)#int fast 0/11

SW1(config-if)#channel-group 1 mode on

Creating a port-channel interface Port-channel 1

The channel-group command must be configured on each physical interface that we want to place into the Etherchannel, so we'll have to configure it on ports 0/11 and 0/12 on both SW1 and SW2.  Naturally, the group number used must match among all ports placed into the Etherchannel.

Did you notice the router message "creating a port-channel interface port-channel 1"?  You can verify the creation of that virtual interface just as you would a physical interface:

SW1#show int port-channel 1

Port-channel1 is up, line protocol is up (connected)

  Hardware is EtherChannel, address is 000f.90e1.c24b (bia 000f.90e1.c24b)

Note the readout "Hardware is EtherChannel".  Also, where we once saw two physical ports when we ran "show spanning vlan 1", we now see only one - the port-channel.  Also note that where the individual ports had a port cost of 19, the Etherchannel has a cost of 12 due to its increased bandwidth capabilities.

Po1              Desg FWD 12        128.65   P2p

Etherchannels give us a performance benefit and a fault tolerance benefit as well.  Performance is increased since all physical channels between the two switches can be used, rather than the one STP allows by default.  Fault tolerance is also increased, since a physical channel bundled into the Etherchannel can go down without an STP recalculation -- STP sees the Etherchannel as one single connection!  

Etherchannels aren't just important to know about for the CCNA exam, they're commonly used in real-world networks as well - so make sure you know how to configure and troubleshoot them!

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of over 200 free certification exam tutorials, including CCNA certification training articles. His exclusive CCNA study guide is also available!Visit his blog and sign up for Cisco Certification Central, a daily newsletter packed with CCNA, Network+, Security+, A+, and CCNP certification exam practice questions! A free 7-part course, ?How To Pass The CCNA?, is also available, and you can attend an in-person or online Cisco CCNA training boot camp with The Bryant Advantage!