If you are replacing one technology with the other, these questions you should be asking.

This may not be the complete list and one is maybe more important than the other for your network , but definitely keep in mind or come back to this post and check before you replace one technology with another one !

Is this change really needed ? Is there a valid business case ?

First and most important question, because we are deciding whether this change is absolutely necessary. If the technology which you will migrate won’t bring any business benefit (OPEX, CAPEX , New Revenue Stream etc.) then existing technology should stay.

This is true for the new software release on the routers as well. If there is no new feature which you need to use with the new software release and if there is no known bug that effects the stability of the network, having a longer software lifecycle is better than upgrading the software frequently.

What is the potential impact to overall network ?

New technology might require extra resource usage on the network. Can your network devices accommodate this resource usage growth ? Opposite is true as well. New technology Continue reading

Hi Everyone,

I would like to inform you that Instructor Led CCDE Class in South Africa/Johannesburg Training is full. So please don’t register for it.

Having more people will reduce the time required for discussions. Those who attended any of my earlier class know that we have already very packed agenda, approximately 2000 pages documents and so many real life discussions in 5 days. Hopefully we will schedule another training session in SA next year, and please when I announce, just hurry up for registration.

I will be in Johannesburg between May 13 – 18, if you would like to meet me, please send me an email to [email protected]

Even if you are not considering any network design training, still that is okay, would like to meet and know as many network engineer as I can while still I am able to

I missed writing , missed writing a post lot on the website specifically !. Because I know you are reading right now and wonder where I have been.

I just checked and seen that my last post was on October 26. More than 2 months , I didn’t share anything on the website. I wanted to come here and share something , technical or social , but believe me guys November and December 2017 was so busy from my side.

One of the activity which took my time during this period was Telecom Operator design training which I did in Kenya/Nairobi on November. Safaricom Kenya – Incumbent Telecom Operator/Internet Service Provider.

It was 5 days training and IP/MPLS Backbone planners , Transport network engineers, mobile access and core engineers , fix and mobile wireless service engineers (They have very good fiber penetration in the country) many people attended this training.

Most of the topics were from my CCDE training blueprint but after couple discussions with their lead engineers, we removed CCDE Practical scenarios and couple other topics , as they won’t attend CCDE exam , but added other technologies which they are considering to implement and some of those technologies is Continue reading

Many of my students have been asking whether CCDE Practical/Lab Exam Result policy is still the same.

As you might know after CCDE 2017 May exam cancellation , practical exam results can be learned after 8 to 12 weeks. This mean, if you attend CCDE Practical exam, you cannot learn the result (Pass or fail) on the same day. It was the case until CCDE 2017 May exam.

You used to finish the 8 hours exam and when you click the end exam button, exam result was just there !

This is not the case anymore. Last CCDE Practical exam was on November 2017 and the attendees are still waiting their results as of today. There is no any new announcement by Cisco and I would expect the same thing for February 27, 2018 CCDE Practical exam.

Learning exam result is good probably for the exam security but I hear complaints from the students and i think some of my readers are thinking the same.

They say, if they knew that they failed , they could schedule the next exam. Exam results of the previous one arrives right before the next one , thus , candidates cannot find a time to Continue reading

GLBP stands for Gateway Load Balancing Protocol. In this article, I will explain where GLBP is used , where it shouldn’t be used with the topologies.

GLBP is a Cisco preparatory protocol. In most networks, design requirements might be to use only standard based protocols. If that is the case, GLBP is not a standard based protocol and business cannot use it.

Unlike HSRP and VRRP, GLBP supports flow based load balancing.

HSRP and VRRP can only supports active/standby redundancy or Vlan based load balancing.

GLBP was invented to provide an active-active traffic forwarding the network traffic but there is almost no use case in today networks.

In some cases, GLBP has create more problem than it should solve.

Figure – GLBP at the Enterprise Internet Edge

In the above picture, I depict classical Enterprise Internet edge network. Firewall, Layer 2 switch and Internet Gateways.

Service Providers don’t use stateful devices such as Firewall at the Internet edge.

If in this network, GLBP is used, firewall would send an ARP for the default gateway and only one of the Internet Gateway routers would be used as a default gateway. If there would be two firewalls, another firewall could Continue reading

What is urban and rural area ? What is underserved area in networking ?

These definitions are heavily used in networking. And all broadband network designers take always these definitions into an account while they do their design. I think knowing these definitions as a network engineer is valuable for you.

In general, a rural area or countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities

Whatever is not urban is considered rural area though some people uses less populate than urban but more populated than rural area as suburban area

Typical urban areas have a high population and large settlements

Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements

Underserved areas where there is no good network coverage (Broadband , Voice or any other data types)

Unserved areas where there is no network coverage at all

For example,if mobile operator will place a cell sites in an urban area, since the population density will be too high, they consider to place more cell sites than if they place those cell sites in a rural area.

FTTx planers consider to change their ODN (Optical Distribution Network) design entirely depends on they are doing FTTx deployment in Continue reading