CCIE Flyer and the TS workbook

Just finished our Troubleshooting labs, I partnered with a VERY GOOD FRIEND OF MINE CALLED Dan Shechter, what a gentleman, a Triple CCIE with unbelievable amount of knowledge. ... We thought that each lab was going to take 5.5 hours to complete but they will take 8 hours each. ... They cover all aspect of CCIE R&S, and ALSO the NEW, YES the NEW “CCIE 2.0 Protocol specific Mock labs” hahahaha, these labs are really tough, I should put a warning and a disclaimer on the bottom of each page, guaranteed to frustrate the best of us.

Ticket #06

Please follow the instructions found here about how to use the lab file. ...R2 can't ping both R1's Lo11 and R4's Lo44 at the same time from all its interface. ...For the solution Click here

Ticket #03

Please follow the instructions found here about how to use the lab file. ... R2 has two BGP paths to R4's Lo0 IP address, however only one route is installed in it's routing table. ...For the solution Click here

Soon…

I have been working on a new project, so the blog was a little delayed. I have tons of trouble shooting cases/tickets to share with you, so stay tuned. I’ll publish the next Ticket on Monday.

Data Storage: The Foundation & potential Achilles Heel of Cloud Computing

In almost anything that you read about Cloud Computing, the statement that it is ‘nothing new’ is usually made at some point. The statement then goes on to qualify Cloud Computing as a cumulative epiphenomenon that more so serves as a single label to a multi-faceted substrate of component technologies than it does to a single new technology paradigm. All of them used together comprise the constitution of what could be defined as a cloud. As the previous statement makes apparent the definition is somewhat nebulous. Additionally, I could provide a long list of the component technologies within the substrate that could ‘potentially’ be involved. Instead, I will filter out the majority and focus on a subset of technologies that could be considered ‘key’ components to making cloud services work.

If we were to try to identify the most important component out of this substrate, most would agree that it is something known as virtualization. In the cloud, virtualization occurs at several levels. It can range from ‘what does what’ (server & application virtualization) to ‘what goes where’ (data storage virtualization) to ‘who is where’ (mobility and virtual networking). When viewed as such, one could even come to the conclusion Continue reading

The Silicon Choice for Cloud Networking

These days there is much discussion whether switches or routers should be built with proprietary custom ASICs or standard “merchant silicon” chips. At one level, the question is “Why does it matter?” After all, networking vendors have been building custom silicon chips since the invention of the LAN switch in the early ’90s.

In my own career, I have led the development of several generations of very high volume network switch silicon. However, even I could not design better silicon switch chips than what is available now on the merchant market. To me this is an inflection point for the industry that is not unlike what happened in the computer industry with the adoption of industry standard architectures.

While CPU and switch silicon architectures differ in many ways, the underlying economics are very similar. In the 1980s and 1990s, CPU architectures flourished: there were MIPS, PowerPC, SPARC, ARM, and X86. Each architecture staked out their position in the market. The RISC architectures led the server market with 64-bit addressing and multi-processing capability, and also focussed on embedded applications. X86 was the standard for desktop computers. However as the years passed, most of the volume growth in the market has Continue reading