There are several options that you can consider. With most of them, the last mile can still be part of the problem. In the case of a wide area outage, even some of the wireless options I can think of could still be affected. That leaves the various satellite offerings which can be expensive and subject to their own type of outages related to snow or rain events.

One option is to look at the cellular cards available that allow you to connect over networks such as Verizon and ATT. The challenge here is that the bandwidth will be less than a T1 in some cases. You may need to look at an external antenna depending on how far you are away from the cell tower that services where your office is located. Look at where your offices are located and see what carriers provide service in the area. Ideally you should be able to use the same carrier for all your offices. A question to ask the carriers you will be look at is what bandwidth is available from the towers nearest your offices (this is where having a list of street addresses for your offices to give to the carriers will be helpful for the carrier). Since you will be sharing bandwidth with the wireless modems that plug into laptops, be prepared for less than T1 speed in some cases.

Another option is to get a DSL connection installed to the router. Using Cisco's DMVPN offering, you can have the offices come back to corporate when needed or go direct to another office when they need files from another location so they dont have to come all the way back to corporate in order to get the files. Using the interface tracking function in IOS, you should be able to engineer an auto-switchover function that will bring up the VPN tunnel from the remote office when the MPLS connection goes down. Once MPLS comes up, they should automatically switch back over. If MPLS starts flapping, you might want to look at some type of delay before the office would try to switch from the VPN to MPLS connections.

Neither of these options will be as good as a redundant circuit but unless you are willing to pay extra (if it is an option for each office), you will still have the same problem with the last mile of the connection coming from the same CO. I mentioned satellite earlier. The first thing I would suggest is looking at all the options. Put together a cost vs speed vs pro/con list to help see which option(s) are the best for you. This will help you go to management and show them the real costs for always having a connection up for an office.

This is a good question. I dont know if there is a good answer to this.

The first thing to look at is whose network are you using for the VOIP traffic ? You are using their's, right ? This is where the whole net neutrality argument begins. The internet service providers are pretty much in a no win situation. They are trying to have a network where anyone can do what they want without adversely impacting as many people as possible. Easier said than done, isnt it ?

Here is where the balancing act starts - the cell phone provider is providing cell phone service as well as internet service. Not everyone has an unlimited plan on their phone, so if you go over your monthly package of minutes, the cell phone provider makes more money on the minutes you go over on the plan you are on. If you make an international phone call, your cell phone carrier stands to make even more money since most plans that I know of dont cover the cost of international calls in your plan unless you have purchased the additional service that may not cover the country that you are calling.

Look at it from the provider's standpoint - do you want someone telling you how to run your network ? As the user, you are paying for internet access and should be able to use it however you want, right ? An example of this balancing act is the difficulty with getting VOIP apps on the Apple iPod platform. Supposedly this is at the request of the AT&T and the load it would put on the Internet side of their wireless network.

Going to a class on QOS is a very good thing to do. You will also find several good references on QOS at http://www.ciscopress.com. At a minimum, it will help get you familiar with the terminology and basic process of setting up QOS. There are several pieces of information that werent in your message, so I will try to help fill in the blanks. In getting this together for you, I talked to a CCIE I know, Andy McCullough, the Network Architect at HNTB in Kansas City, Mo. I had the chance over the last year to sit down with him while he was designing and leading the implementation of QOS that they are using.

Several things came up during our discussion of your email. The first thing thing to look at is the supervisor engine in your 6509. You will need one of the newer SE's available with the MSFC and PFC add-on daughter cards to give you the layer 3 routing and QOS options that you will need. It is possible to use one of the older supervisor engines but you will need to make sure that you have these two daughter cards plugged in. Also, make sure that you have one of the latest versions of IOS available so that you get a relatively bug free version of IOS to work with.

As to the 3560G's, have a newer version of IOS installed on these as well is just as important. While not as important for QOS purposes, it will also serve you well if and when you implement the port security functionality that is a good thing to consider to protect your network. While the 6509 can handle most of the work, by having the edge switches do some of the work will help keep the 6509's from getting hit hard during times of peak network traffic.

You listed how you wanted the different traffic levels handled but something else that you will need to think about how to mark the traffic on the edge switches so that when it makes it to your 6509 that in can handle the based on the way it is marked coming from the switches. You dont mention if this is for a local network or if multiple sites are involved. If multiple sites are involved, you will need to see how your provider will support the marked traffic once it passed from your router to theirs. That could have significant impact on how you design your QOS implementation. Say for example, your provider only support 5 QOS classes and you are using 7, you will have make some adjustments to get things to work right or you may have some unexpected results.

There are different ways that QOS can be configured for your network. One method could be to mark the traffic based on the vlan's being handled at the edge switches (one vlan for data, another vlan for voice, another vlan for a specific type of servers, etc). Once that traffic is passed back to the 6509, the work of enforcing how the traffic is handled can begin. You mention a 6500 and a 6509. I will assume that the 6500 is some flavor of 650x. If it is something different or it was a mistype, the same concerns for it apply in terms of being able to handle the QOS functionality you are looking to have.

Since this is your first time in doing it, to help save some frustration and learning how to implement and debug, you might want to consider bringing in someone that has experience in designing and implementing QOS. If you cant find someone that you are comfortable with, check with your local Cisco account team for suggestions. Be sure to ask for references and check the ones that they give you. I'm sorry that I couldnt be more specific in the response to your question but as you see, more information is needed before the design process can begin. Enabling QOS is not as simple as throwing a switch. You can expect to do some tweaking once you have the initial design in place as to refine how it is functioning on your network.

Without know the make and model of the cell phone you have, I cant provide a howto on removing java since each phone and/or carrier has a different way of doing it. The first suggestion is to look at the manual for phone you have for directions on how to remove Java. Dont expect you may find it here with what I have seen in most user manuals but at least you will have checked here.

The next suggestion is to call the support folks at the carrier you are using for help. Since there are some carriers such as Verizon that may "cripple" the phone and make it harder to do things that you would expect, you may have to do this to get the info you need. If this doesnt get you the information you are looking for, try talking to the customer service folks expressing your concern for being billed for something you dont use and ask for their assistance on stopping the bill for this service which could backdoor you into a way of either removing Java from the phone or disabling its use.

The next step would be to go to the manufacturers website and look at the support information they have for your phone. You should be able to find it here. One option I have used in the past is to call the manufacturers support folks and ask for their help. Depending on the phone, they may be a little surprised at your calling them but explain that the carrier who bought the phone from them has been unable to help you and they should be able to get you started in the right direction.

If all else fails, you should be able to find the information by using the search engine of your choice by searching for your phone name, model number and "remove java" for starters.

The site does have potential. It is easy to read. Without having access to any site traffic stats, it is hard to judge the growth of the site and how consistent the traffic to the site is. There are several suggestions that I would like to make for the site -

1) Search Engine listings - to get new visitors to the site, getting yourself as high as possible in the search engine rankings will be a big help. This is something that will have to be continually watched and adjusted. While there are companies that can assist with this, what I have read makes me question the value they provide versus what they charge. The main thing that I have read is the use of metatags so that when the spiders or information gatherers from the various search engines go through your site they find enough and unique information to help your site be found when keywords are used that are appropriate to what your site is presenting

2) Have content that is unique as possible to your site. Having information that others can get anywhere wont drive people to your site or keep them there once they get there. That will take time, revenue and industry contacts. In searching for your website, I found several others that appeared to offer a similar service. This makes distinguishing yourself from the competition even more important.

3) Consider some type of subscription service. People dont always value what they get for free. Having some content available for free as a teaser for what can be found at the site will be necessary. Keeping the really good content for your subscribers will help drive membership levels and the revenue for the site. Having a good revenue stream will allow you to further enhance the site and provide services that the subscribers will be willing to pay for.

What you are looking for will be a challenge. One of the more important items on your list will be the video card. From the gamers that I know, the video card is the one of the more important things that you will need to choose. The consensus that I got indicated that the general preference is to get a laptop that has a video card that can be replaced/upgraded. That will take the price tag of your purchase above the $650 mark but will be a good purchase choice today and into the future. As the games improve, you stand a better change of being able to upgrade the card instead of having to get a whole new laptop.

As to memory, I would suggest at least 4 gig just to being able to avoid having to use a page swap file as much as possible. As to the hard drive size, I would also suggest something closer to a 500GB drive so that you can have as much of the game installed locally. As to brand and model, that is changing so frequently that anything that I would suggest today would be different tomorrow. For the best suggestions, I would look at the World of Warcraft forums or other sources such as Tomshardware.com to reach out to those who deal with laptop hardware at a very deep level.

Sounds like you are a student in a network classes at a higher ed institution. I will help point you in the right direction but wont do your homework for you.

1)Conditions that can cause packet retransmission - congestion at the source or destination of the communication. It can be noise on the wire or similar problem.

2)A DNS Transfer occurs mainly between DNS Servers. Search Google and you can find what port numbers and protocols are used for this and under what conditions.

3) Using wireshark will show you the communications exchange when telnet is used

4) Listing the commands for a file transfer will depend on how you are transferring the files between systems. SMB will be different than ftp or tftp.

5) Calculating the file transfer efficiently is a topic that requires more space than what I have here. Doing some searching via Google will also help you find the answer here.

6) The question you ask doesnt really specify what you are looking for.

I do not have all the answers for you but this Microsoft Library article, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772778(WS.10).aspx, outlines the configuration settings available for DFS referrals. If you do not want clients flipping to secondary targets across the WAN when the primary is not available you can set the DFS referral ordering method to "Exclude targets outside of the client's site". To enable client fail back so that clients will revert to the primary target when it becomes available again on the network you need to be running Windows 2003 R2 on the servers and need to install the Windows XP Client Failback hotfix on the client workstations as described in the article above. Windows XP Service Pack 3 includes that hotfix. To work with the enhanced referral control features in Windows Server 2003 R2 you will want to be sure you have the R2 DFS Management snapin Dfsmgmt.msc rather than the older Dfsgui.msc installed.

It seems the market has decided on external power bricks for now. Back in the 20th century there were portable computers that had the power supply built right in to the box. I had both Compaq and Toshiba 486 era laptops with built in power supplies that required only an AC cord to charge the battery. Both machines were considerably larger and heavier than most notebooks and netbooks in use today. Including the power transformer in the notebook case itself requires room and then cooling capacity to deal with the heat generated by the transformer. Pushing the hot heavy transformer out into the power brick makes sense even if it means we have to carry the darn things around. I did find one manufacturer, Norhtec (www.norhtec.com) making a netbook class machine called the Gecko Edubook that runs on rechargeable AA batteries and includes a built in power supply. It would be nice to not need the power brick.

I agree, the knowledge section should be beefed up quite a bit. For there to be several companies making money supporting a "free" product makes you wonder why Google is leaving money on the table that they could use to fund their operations. A good howto document with screen shots would be very helpful to helping those who havent done this before be able to get through with a minimal amount of frustration and problems.

The first few times I setup MX and A records, I ran into some challenges that took a while to deal with. Once you have dealt with setting up DNS using either Linux or Windows, you can work with DNS without giving much thought to is. Since not everyone has the option of having their own DNS servers, another option might be to use a service like Godaddy or Powweb, both of which I have used for my personal web stuff for many years with minimal problems.

Unless you have the time to deal through the web forums for a "free" product, your time would be better spent by using a commercial service. I understand the attraction of using a "free" or beta service but you also have to look at the hidden cost of your time and what you could be doing if you werent searching for an answer or dealing with a problem.