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Some New Old Books

The Lean Startup approach is for companies that want to be more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively.  It relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.

The products lean startup builds are really experiments: the learning about how to build a sustainable business is the outcome of those experiments. That information is much more important, because it can influence and reshape the next set of ideas. And it uses the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop at the core of Lean Startup model.



In short: build Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or Minimum Viable Service (MVS), launch, collect data to learn in order to perfect the ideas. Or if it doesn't work, fail fast, and pivot to another ideas.

Rather than wasting time creating elaborate plans for new product, it's better to launch quickly and find a way to test the idea continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late.

How to decide which ideas Continue reading

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Six Phases of Network Evolution

Last month I was asked to speak about Next Generation Networks at Indonesian Network Operators Group (IDNOG) forum. Whenever I speak about this subject with my customers, I usually use top down approach: started by talking about the business drivers and requirements, NGN architecture, to high level and low level design, before going deep into details to each supporting technology.

This time I decided to take a different approach. Instead, I tried to demonstrate how to build a new SP network from bottom to up. The objective is to show how the network can be transitioned from the simple one that offers a single service, to the one that carry multiple services and become resilient Next Generation Networks. I don't know if the message was received by the attendees, but I run out my 30 minutes time so I continued that effort by conducting the webex session few weeks ago.


The presentation I made for that session inspires me to write down about the six phases of network evolution below. And the phase will end up with the one thing that has become hot topic these days: Software Defined Network (SDN).

Phase 1: It begins with connectivity
When we build Continue reading

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The New Cool

I thought it was cool to be an MCSE.

The year was 1999. I didn't have any background in IT. I had just graduated and got my degree in Mechanical Engineering, and was struggling to get a job in that field. That's why I switched to IT, and the first thing I learned (FYI my previous computer skills were Warcraft and Doom) was Windows NT server and workstation. For someone without any IT background, Windows NT looked very interesting at that time! So I thought it was cool to be an MCSE, until I attended a CCNA course.

I thought it was cool to be a Network Engineer.

I felt in love to computer networking since the first day of CCNA training. I loved every moment during the 10-day course and in the last day I passed the CCNA exam. There were not many CCNA around during that time, so the certification landed me my first real job as network engineer early 2000. I thought OSPF was so cool, IGP redistribution was amazing, and BGP policy between different AS was an art. And I thought it was cool to be the guy who managed and monitored the corporate network, received Continue reading

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How Much Are You Worth?

"I have a CCIE. But why my salary is not as high as expected?"
"I've just passed CCIE. Why don't I get salary increase?"
"Why my salary as CCIE is far below the market's salary survey?"


Have you heard such questions before?
It's 2014 and I'm surprised I still get emails from time to time asking either one of those questions. I thought the answers are straight forward. But in case you are one of them who sent the email, please allow me to enlighten you.

Most companies pay you based on "perceived value". It's based on opinion of your value to the company. It may have little or nothing to do with the salary range in the market. And it depends on the your ability to satisfy company's requirements.

The opinion can be shaped based on the certification that you have. It may use the market's rate as guideline. It may include your experience into consideration. And usually the opinion is associated to the internal company's rank and salary range.

Now let's go through the following questions:

Do you think you deserve your CCIE?
Do you really have the skill set of a CCIE, Continue reading

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DEW Testimony

Thanks to God !! Finally all the effort to be Design Expert is paid off!
I really appreciate to Himawan for his knowledge and passion about CCDE mindset, insight and learning strategy to help my CCDE journey.
They are really enlightening and accelerating.
“Learn from the best to be the best” really works for me.
Thanks Him, great to have you as my mentor!!
All the best, brother :)
(Hinwoto – CCDE #2014::4 / CCIE #15026 RS & SP)

Thanks, Hinwoto, for the kind words.
And congratulations once again for your CCDE.

I can't make anyone to pass CCDE. And I don't think anyone can give promise that he or she can make you pass CCDE exam. The only person who can make you become CCDE is yourself. I, and all other CCDE study groups, training vendors, or individuals who spend time to help others to pass CCDE, can only help with knowledge and tips to prepare for the exam. You are the one who has to push yourself to continue learning. You have to gain experience and real design skills. You are the one who will make decision to get certified or not.

I can only show you the Continue reading

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DEW: SP Design in Jakarta – March 2014!

The final installment of DEW trilogy will happen in Jakarta, 15-16 March 2014!

After the first Design Expert Weekend in Riyadh focusing on IPv4/IPv6 Routing Design, the second DEW in Dubai for MPLS/Tunneling Design, the third and last DEW will be held in Jakarta, Indonesia, for Service Provider Design.

Please note: this is NOT a free event. I'm going to visit several universities in Indonesia to share my knowledge and experience during the same week. The profits we make from this DEW will be used to fund my trip. If you have to fly from outside Indonesia to attend this, we will provide all the food and accommodation during the weekend.

What:
Design Expert Weekend in Jakarta on 15-16 March will focus on Service Provider Design. Agenda will cover:

- Physical Network Design
- Layer 2 Design
- IGP/MPLS/BGP/Multicast as Transport
- MPLS Based Services L3VPN, L2VPN
- Internet Services
- IPTV Services
- High Availability Design
- SP QoS Design
- Security and Management
- CCDE exam tips and tricks
- CCDE sample questions and scenario to practice ability to analyze design requirements, develop network designs, implement network design, validate and optimize network design

The other two DEW are Continue reading

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CCIE and CCDE Certificates

Which design do you prefer? My heart goes with the 2001.

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CCDE Experience – Free Webex Session

The next CCDE practical exam will take place on 20th February 2014 at 275 Pearson Professional Centers (PPC) testing facilities worldwide. I'm planning to conduct free webex session of "CCDE Experience" on next Sunday 9th February at 6 am UTC to explain about CCDE program, how to prepare for it, and tips and tricks based on my personal experience taking the exam several times.

The webex session will be conducted in English. This is my personal initiative to promote CCDE program, with disclaimer: no guarantee you will pass the exam after you follow my suggested study plan. I use public material for the session. And I will use the opportunity to introduce my idea of Project DEW. Anyone can join this webex, you just need to register using the link below. I expect no NDA question during the session.

Topic: CCDE Experience
Date: Sunday, February 9, 2014
Time: 10:00 am, Arabian Time (Abu Dhabi, Muscat, GMT+04:00)

-------------------------------------------------------
To register for this meeting
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1. Go to https://cisco.webex.com/ciscosales/j.php?ED=253413112&RG=1&UID=2234307082&RT=MiMzNg%3D%3D
2. Register for the meeting.

Once the host approves your request, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions for joining the meeting

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Why We Need to Learn During Weekend

We are group of design architects/consultants who do network design in daily basis. We are spread in different countries across Asia, Europe and Middle East. We happen to have CCDE certification too. And all of us have the same dream to build the community filled up with real design experts, those who actually do design work to solve real world's network design problems. And we want to teach real design skills based on our experiences. To help those who want to become the next design architects/consultants, or to pass CCDE exam. To achieve this, we conduct design expert workshop in various locations, during the weekend.

Wait. What?

Why do we need to learn during the weekend?
It might be a good workshop. It might be an opportunity to hear real world's network design examples. It might be a good chance to meet another design professionals.
But come on, attending technical workshop during the weekend?

I hear you. I know how it feels.
After long hours of work during weekday, we deserve our weekend. When we need to learn something related to work, we should do it during workday. When we need to learn design, we can ask the company to Continue reading

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DEW: MPLS/Tunneling Design in Dubai!

Update: I received lots of request to reduce the fee. After considering it, I decided to create "DEW - No Frills". The fee is now 30% lower but please don't expect fancy hotel meeting room, no lunch included, no coffee break, no print out, no notebook or other gift to attendees. It will be only geeks in a room discussing network design.

After the first Design Expert Weekend in Riyadh focusing on IPv4/IPv6 Routing Design, the second DEW will be held in Dubai, UAE, for MPLS/Tunneling Design.


What:
Design Expert Weekend in Dubai on 24-25 January will focus on MPLS/Tunneling Design. Agenda will cover:

- MPLS Refresh
- MPLS L3VPN Design
- MPLS L2VPN Design
- MPLS VPN Inter-AS
- MPLS Traffic Engineering
- MPLS VPN Resiliency
- IPv6 over MPLS
- Other non-MPLS Tunneling: GRE, L2TPv3, IPSec, DMVPN, IPv6 Tunneling
- CCDE exam tips and tricks
- CCDE sample questions and scenario to practice ability to analyze design requirements, develop network designs, implement network design, validate and optimize network design

The other two DEW are held in separate session:
DEW:Routing Design (IGP IPv4/IPv6, BGP, scaling, inter-AS, HA, and include PIM, ASM, SSM Multicast)
DEW:SP Design (Physical, L2, IGP/BGP/MPLS/PIM Continue reading

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Not Another CCDE Study Group

The world needs more network design experts.

That's what I believe. That's what I see.
I will not call myself as a design expert. But I've been traveling intensively the past 6 months, meeting different customers in different countries, to conduct design workshops in multiple projects. I may not be the best but it seems like not many people can do what I do. Or willing to do what I do. Or combination of both.

No certification program can make you a design expert. Not even CCDE. You need all of the following three instead:
1. Network
2. Skills
3. Experience

Network or strong connection to many subject matter experts is crucial because I don't know anyone who is an expert in all the technologies and in different vertical industries. You need to know whom to ask. An expert is not the one who knows all the answers, but the one who knows how to find the answers.

Experience doing various design work can't be replaced with any certification. Experience to lead design workshop can't be tested in the exam. Experience to capture customer requirement, to present the proposed solution, and to defend it, is very difficult to be simulated Continue reading

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Design Expert Weekend – 5W1H

This post is related to my new initiative called Design Expert Weekend.
The pilot workshop for DEW: IPv4/IPv6 Routing Design, will be held in Olaya, Riyadh, on Friday-Saturday 3-4 January 2014.

What:
Design Expert Weekend in Riyadh on 3-4 January will focus on IPv4/IPv6 Routing Design. Agenda will cover:

- IGP IPv4 and IPv6 Design (OSPF, ISIS, EIGRP)
- BGP Design
- Routing scalability and Inter-AS
- Traffic Engineering
- Routing Fast Convergence and High Availability
- Multicast Routing Design
- CCDE exam tips and tricks
- CCDE sample questions and scenario to practice ability to analyze design requirements, develop network designs, implement network design, validate and optimize network design

The other two DEW will be held in separate session:
DEW:Tunneling Design (MPLS-based L3VPN/L2VPN, tunnel protection/MPLS TE, other tunnelling include IPv6 transition)
DEW:SP Design (Physical, L2, IGP/BGP/MPLS/PIM as transport, MPLS-based services, Internet, IPTV, HA, QoS, security, management)

Why:
To help network engineers to gain real design skills. DEW can help with CCDE exam preparation, and beyond.
Our main goal is not to make you certified. But to give the real knowledge. The real skills. Then to be certified or not it's your decision not ours.

Who:
Any network engineers/architects who Continue reading

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Project DEW

I don't want to claim myself as Global Consultant anymore. It seems like many people have problem with that. Some called me showing off, some said I'm too proud with that title. Others even said I spent so much time marketing myself. Blah blah. Ok, ok, I get it.

But here is the fact: since I joined Cisco in 2006 I've traveled to many countries to do consulting projects. Below you can see some Cisco customers in Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa that I worked with in the past. And most of the time my role in the project is to lead the design work: to capture customer requirements and provide technical solution to address them. In many projects I also lead the implementation and migration. For some projects I'm responsible to lead the whole engagement from project scheduling, managing resources as well as quality assurance for deliverables. So call me anything you want, even Janitor, but it seems like I have some experiences working on design consultancy project, globally.


And actually before I joined Cisco I had already done many design project as well with many customers. I invented my own methodology and workflow for design work. Continue reading

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Superman, Immortal, Janitor

"What's the difference between Solutions Architect and Technical Leader?"

Someone asked me that question last week. We all know the answer: none. It's just a damn title. Title doesn't matter. It never does. Batman once said: it's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you.


In my current organization, that focuses on consulting services, there is a distinction between Solutions Architect and Technical Leader role in career path for technical person. (Himawan, but you said there is no such thing as career path? Well, let's save the debate for some other time).

As seen in below figure, Network Consulting Engineers (NCE) make progress from level I to level IV, and this is the point where he/she can make decision: either to stick as NCE then becomes Technical Leader someday, or to move to become Solutions Architect. He/she can actually move to any other position across the organization like pre-sales consultant or project manager or business development manager or even accountant! But let's keep the discussion between the path of Technical Leader and Solutions Architect.


So what's the difference between the two then?

Both must have excellent soft skills: communicate effectively, above average presentation skills, team Continue reading

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About Promotion

There is no such thing as career path.

I wrote this several years ago. And I believe it's still true. For those who don't understand why I wrote such thing, please spend few minutes to read that blog post before leaving nasty comment. (This means: you still can leave nasty comment after reading that post :))

Allow me to share my secret: patience is not my virtue.

Every time I want to change to new position, or to new job title, I move to new company. Some of my previous employers offered me promotion the moment I gave them my resignation letter. Some of them simply didn't care and just let me go. For those who offered me promotion, I never accepted the offer. I thought they should have offered that while I was still with them, not at my last moment in the company when I usually had decided to leave.

There was a time I even worked as independent contractor. Had to deal with the customer directly, defined the scope by myself, set the performance index, and delivered end-to-end solution to customer. No job title. No career. Hmm, good old days. Even it was only for several months Continue reading

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With SDN, Do We Still Need CCIEs?

"With SDN, we don't need CCIEs anymore. Anyone can run the network with a simple click-and-drag GUI." Really.

"SDN makes the knowledge of traditional networking is not relevant anymore. We need more people who can write code instead." Wow.

"SDN with Openflow removes all the current routing protocols. So why wasting your time to study CCIE?" Speechless.

Let's start with definition.

According to Wikipedia, SDN is "...an approach to building computer networks that separates and abstracts elements of these systems..." There are two important keywords there: separate, and abstraction. Separate means decouple Control Plane and Data/Forwarding Plane function. If in 'traditional networking' both Contol and Data functions are contained within a single device, SDN makes the separation so the Control plane can be moved to a device or system that is located at the central of the network. More intelligent control function that can see the whole network end-to-end.

And the Control plane can be customized, manipulated, re-programmed and so on, regardless the state of the Data plane. This is the first level of the abstraction.

Why is abstraction important? Because we want to separate the complexity. Think about building multiple layers that separate Continue reading

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Protect, Grow, Transform

It's been a while since I wrote something in this blog. Long holiday season, moving house, multiple projects in neighbor country, were really occupying my time the past several months.

Yesterday I flew 16 hours from Dubai to San Francisco, had to queue 2 hours, and drove about 1 hour to San Jose for some company meeting in Cisco Head Quarter office. Now it's early morning here and I can't really sleep due to 11 hours time zone difference with Dubai, so I guess it's the right time to post new blog.

Last month I was moved to Architecture group for the new Intelligent Infrastructure Center of Excellence team for EMEAR region, focusing on IP NGN and Network Programmability. My current role as Solution Architect is not only to lead complex NGN projects, something that I've been doing for many years, but as well as to grow Cisco Advanced Services business in those focused technologies within the region.

One strategy that we just came up recently is to define the objectives of this new team. We classify the objectives using Protect, Grow, Transform terminology. For example, Protect by focusing on renewal business and ensuring the quality of project delivery, Grow Continue reading

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How to Prepare for CCDE Practical Exam

I was a bit harsh when I wrote: you have to be CCIE to pass CCDE. Couple of friends of mine, who are not CCIEs, came to me after reading that post and said I had demolished their hope to pass the exam.

I won't lie. It's easier to become CCDE if you have already had a CCIE. But fear not, there is still chance for non-CCIE to pass CCDE exam as well. And several guys who are not CCIE but able to put their name in this Hall of Fame is the proof.

The next CCDE practical exam date is on August 27. So there is still time for both groups of CCIE and non-CCIE to pass it, and here is another version of "how to prepare for CCDE exam" that may help to do so:

1. You still need a good reason to do it
You need a good reason as your main motivation to keep continue pursuing this certification, after you fail the exam. Or after you fail the exam several times.
So find your reason.

2. You still need the experience
You can't skip experience. I'm not kidding.
From CCDE Techtorial it says "CCDE Practical is Continue reading

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Last 24

1. Went to Dubai International airport at 1 am local time
2. Stayed in Emirates business lounge, blogging to write about the recent Indonesian Networkers 17-19 June 2013 aka 100NGN Workshop in Jakarta
3. Got info there was delay for about an hour from the original 2.55 am local time
4. Continued blogging
5. At 3.30 am there was announcement the new schedule for the flight now is 6 am
6. Didn't want to sleep to avoid missing the flight, randomly browsing the Internet
7. Close to 6 am, no announcement about the boarding
8. Felt very sleepy so decided just to go to boarding gate around 6 am
9. Got into airplane around 6.30, flight finally took off at 7 am
10. Couldn't sleep during the 13.5 hours flight to JFK New York, watched lots of movies
11. Arrived 1.5 hours before my connecting flight
12. There was announcement from pilot, due to medical condition of one passenger all others must stayed inside airplane until the situation is cleared
13. Came out from airplane with only about an hour before the next flight to Orlando
14. Run to border security with Quick Connect paper Continue reading

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Indonesian Networkers 2013 aka 100NGN

I’m currently sitting at Dubai airport, waiting for my flight to New York, then Orlando for Cisco Live US 2013. It’s going to be epic with so many breakout sessions, keynote speech by Cisco CEO, customer appreciation and CCIE party and many other great stuff for those who want to get the latest update and new innovation in computer networking from the market leader. Last year, Cisco Live US 2012 in San Diego set a record breaking of 17,000in-person attendees!




With 100NGN workshop we want to prepare Indonesian professionals and students with best practices, soft skills and new direction in computer networking technology. And it’s been my personal obsession to bring world class event to Indonesia, just as Cisco Live.

Day 1 was started with keynote speech about building Network, Skill and Experience in order to become globally competitive professionals. Continued with Network Design lesson, MPLS VPN tutorial, and non-technical session like Killer CV.

Cisco Elastic Core, QoS Implementation in Mobile Network, next generation Data Center and Service Provider Wifi.