Tado Smart Thermostats

I recently bought the Tado Smart Thermostats for my house to attach to my radiators. You’ll be familiar with such things as Hive and Nest which are Smart Thermostats, essentially these just make your Heating Thermostat you’ll typically have in your hall or landing into your home Internet enabled, so you can control it from … Read more

MTA-STS (Mail Transfer Agent Strict Transport Security) and TLS-RPT (TLS Reporting)

Emails crossing the internet use secure connections encrypted using Transport Layer Security (TLS). However, there remain vulnerabilities in this method of protecting the confidentiality of emails, whereby a person-in-the-middle can trick incoming connections to send to another server and/or send information in the clear. MTA-STS is a standard designed to address these vulnerabilities and is … Read more

Kemp Load Master – SAML via OKTA with KCD to Microsoft Exchange OWA (Outlook Web Access)

The Kemp Load Master allows for the configuration of authentication offloading to itself (from the Microsoft Exchange server supporting Kerberos) to allow for the Kemp Load Master to act as a sP (Service Provider) against an IdP (Identity Provider) for example OKTA. The use of SAML via OKTA allows for any SAML (and Kerberos KCD … Read more

Extreme Networks X695 – 40Gbit, 100Gbit QSFP(28) Ports and Port Paritioning Explained

The Extreme Networks X695 switches have a special port configuration arrangement that you need to be aware of when configuring the switch for use. Verified on: ExtremeXOS version 30.6.1.11 30.6.1.11-patch1-4 by release-manager on Tue Jul 7 10:36:05 EDT 2020 The switch supports the following: 48 x SFP28 1Gb/10Gb/25Gb Ports 8 x QSFP28 40Gb/100Gb Ports Up … Read more

Extreme Networks Switch – “Error: VLAN Default cannot be disabled because it is configured for an L2 Protocol.”

It is pretty standard practice to disable the default VLAN and renumber its tag ID for security reasons, from version 22.4 and above we often go this issue when performing these basic commands: We’d get the error as below. In our case we don’t want to run STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) because we’re using either … Read more

Monitor Rx and Tx Errors on Extreme Networks Switches via SNMP Query (using NagiosXI)

It is helpful to monitor the RxErrors and TxErrors on ports on Extreme Networks switches to get a heads up on any issues before they begin to impact service. The Extreme Networks MIB can be downloaded from the Extreme Networks support portal to assist you in finding the relevant SNMP OIDs, the below is an … Read more