Spanning Tree portfast and uplinkfast: It’s all about time.

People are getting crazy about the time, which is a good thing in general. I remember when I worked at a multinational telecom company, they showed me their new, impressive triple-play lab. One of their guys really bragged about their triple-play product. In a world where competition is so fierce, the nitty-gritty detail of a product may become the tiebreaker. She said that we got a deal with Bell-Canada because our product has a very impressive feature.

She stopped for two or three seconds, and I waited..

Then she started changing the TV channel and said, “look! when you surf between the channels, our product does not have the blue screen which last for 0.5 – 1 second! When you press from channel 2 to channel 3, you will get channel 3 ASAP. No blue screen in between. This is big!”

Well, that’s one example how timing is really critical in technology. What’s the relation with spanning tree portfast or uplinkfast?
Alright, let’s go to our main dishes!

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Cannot ping, but can traceroute? Try extended ping!

Sometimes, after we configure the IP address for our routers, check the cable and make sure everything is right, we expect that we can ping everything!

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