Cisco Announces Version 3 of the CCIE Wireless Blueprint
The wait is finally over and version 3 of the wireless CCIE blueprint has finally been announced. On September 14, the new version of the written and lab exams will go live. This will bring a very long-in-the-tooth version 2 blueprint to an end after a nearly 4-year run. While we tearfully say goodbye to WCS, let’s take a look at what version 3 is bringing to the table.
New Lab Exam Format
First off, let’s look at what has changed in the format of the lab itself. The wireless track is following suit with the R&S and SP tracks and including multiple sections to the lab. The wireless lab will now begin with a 1 hour Diagnostic section, followed by a 7 hour Configuration section.
The Diagnostic section is similar to what was done in R&S and SP. This section tests your ability to assess and diagnose issues in a network without any access to the devices themselves. Basically, you are given access to a number of pieces of information (emails, topology diagrams, logs, etc) that describe an issue and give the needed information to figure out the root cause. You Continue reading
CCIE Data Center Rack Rental Scheduling Changes
In an effort to make our CCIE Data Center Rack Rentals have a better fair scheduler, we’ve implemented a new QoS policy for them as follows:
- Users can have a maximum of 3 concurrent sessions scheduled
- Sessions can be a maximum of 9 hours apiece
- Maximum hours per month limit is now removed
- Base sessions (Nexus 7K/5K) and add-ons (UCS/SAN & Nexus 2K/SAN) are now 8 tokens per hour
Note that these changes will only affect new session bookings, not any sessions that you already have reserved.
For those of you looking for more dedicated rack time I would suggest to look into our CCIE Data Center Bootcamp, where students get 12 days of 24/7 access to all hardware platforms in our racks (Nexus 7K/5K/2K, MDS, & UCS).
Happy Labbing!
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Use Cases and Requirements for Service Centric SDN Management and Orchestration
Use Cases and Requirements for Service Centric SDN Management and Orchestration
by Cengiz Alaettinoglu, CTO - March 17, 2015
Ever since we unveiled our SDN MANO (management and orchestration) prototype at the Cisco Live event last May, we have been demonstrating it to many service providers, industry analysts, and partners. The response has been very positive due to the simplicity and depth of our approach, facilitated by the 10+ years of rich analytics in our arsenal. Aside from demonstrating the prototype, we have also been collecting SDN MANO requirements. The feedback indicates SDN MANO needs to be service centric.
Currently, Packet Design has the right foundation for service centric SDN monitoring and management, including the real-time topology, both current and predictive future traffic matrices, and the service awareness that these devices, paths and traffic flows encompass. Using these ingredients, we compute shortest and constraint-based non-shortest paths for these services.
For us and for the industry, the next step is service activation and policy. For example, for one of our mobile operator customers, the main use of these traffic-engineered paths is fast-re-route. When a link (or a router/switch) fails, they would like to pre-setup a bypass path so that packets are Continue reading
Insecurity Guards
Pick a random headline related to security today and you’ll see lots of exclamation points and dire warnings about the insecurity of a something we thought was inviolate, such as Apple Pay or TLS. It’s enough to make you jump out of your skin and crawl into a dark hole somewhere never to use electricity again. Until you read the article, that is. After going through a couple of paragraphs, you realize that a click-bait headline about a new technology actually underscores an age-old problem: people are the weakest link.
Engineered To Be Social
We can engineer security for protocols and systems until the cows come home. We can use ciphers so complicated that even Deep Thought couldn’t figure them out. We can create a system so secure that it could never be hacked. But in the end that system needs to be used by people. And people are where everything breaks down.
Take the most recent Apple Pay “exploit” in the news that’s been making all the headlines. The problem has nothing to do with Apple Pay itself, or the way the device interacts with the point-of-sale terminal. It has everything to do with enterprising crooks calling in to Continue reading
Show 228 – Standards Bodies vs. Open Source with Dave Ward & Lauren Cooney
Cisco's Dave Ward and Lauren Cooney join Packet Pushers' co-hosts Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks for a discussion on the value of standards bodies in the age of open source software.
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The post Show 228 – Standards Bodies vs. Open Source with Dave Ward & Lauren Cooney appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
Deploying VMware NSX with Horizon
As part of the recent launch of Horizon 6, Tony Paikeday, senior product line manager, End-User Computing, VMware, takes a look at the value proposition of deploying the VMware NSX network virtualization platform together with Horzon.
Deploying VMware NSX with Horizon
VMware NSX, deployed with Horizon, offers a better alternative to securing east-west traffic between VMs, turning data center security from a perimeter-centric view to one that gives each individual desktop VM its own virtual network container – creating if you will, a network of “one.” This approach, also known as micro-segmentation, has been an ideal for network teams, but traditionally unachievable due to the cost, and the operational complexity involved. With the number of user VM’s introduced by desktop virtualization, and the sprawl of firewall rules needing to be manually added, deleted or modified every time a new VM is introduced, this has been untenable in the past. With VMware NSX, we have a completely new model for networking and security, delivering virtualization of the network, much as we did for server virtualization – reproducing it in software, with a logical library of networking elements and services including switches, routers, firewalls, load-balancers and more that can Continue reading