Challenge Labs added to NVIDIA Cumulus in the Cloud

There are many aspects to developing the skills to be an effective network engineer and this skill set falls into a few different categories. Logically the first step to conquer is understanding the various networking technologies and protocols. This requires a more traditional form of learning— studying protocols through specs or RFCs, reading whitepapers etc. The next step is implementing this knowledge through configuring network devices. Learning this skill is more like trying to learn a different language. The BGP protocol itself adheres to a set of standards, but each network device might present the configuration of BGP in a different way. The final, and possibly most difficult skill to acquire is a combination of the first two: troubleshooting.

Effectively troubleshooting requires not just a solid foundational knowledge about the technology and how it works, but also the need to understand how to configure and validate that configuration on the network devices. The foundational knowledge permeates through the various implementations regardless of vendor, but configuration and validation vary drastically from one to the next. This leads to perhaps the most difficult aspect of troubleshooting. It’s not just enough to understand how a technology works, but you must also understand a Continue reading