Interesting Packets On The Web – 8/21/2010

In my last Interesting Packets post I linked you to an excellent TSHOOT post from @showlette describing and providing his TSHOOT Dynamips/GNS3 setup. Over a week later he nailed it and has successfully passed the TSHOOT exam – Go give him warm congrats as well as snag his setup if you’re working on the TSHOOT or if you just need general a troubleshooting lab environment. Congrats dude!

Speaking of TSHOOT – Did you sign up for the Free TSHOOT webinar from @PearsonITCert?

Pearson IT Certification presents our Webcast series where our authors connect with you via the web for live and on demand webcast workshops to help you as you prepare for your certification.

Take advantage of these FREE workshops – delivered by the Experts and hone your skills and round out your knowledge as you are preparing for your upcoming certification exams.

Cisco CCNP TSHOOT: Troubleshooting HSRP
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
3:00 – 3:30 PM Eastern Time — FREE

The Cisco CCNP TSHOOT 642-832 exam presents certification candidates with a unique testing experience. Candidates must discover the true underlying issue for the problem being reported and must perform the majority of the exam in a simulated hands-on environment.

Kevin Wallace, expert trainer and best-selling author of the CCNP TSHOOT 642-832 Official Certification Guide and Network Troubleshooting Video Mentor, take you on a tour of a troubleshooting scenario that is typical of what you might see on the CCNP TSHOOT exam. Kevin walks you through an HSRP trouble ticket. You will review the theory of HSRP followed by a live troubleshooting demonstration and concluding with a Q&A session.

Sign up Now!

As always @packetlife brings us some quality with his in-depth view and perspective of the CCNP ROUTE Official Cert Guide (OCG) vs. Foundation Learning Guide (FLG). In short, his opinion is that the OCG is made is a lighter study resource for maybe the more experienced or versed networking candiate. The FLG is where is at and is much better reading material for the less experienced candidate – “akin a textbook” is how he put it. It’s a great post including his comparisons to both resources in particular topics (Routing protocols, IPv6, Redistribution, etc).

@oblakeerickson has a blog post in interview style with some of the most infamous tweeps on twitter and in networking you may know  He took the time to touch on an often mentioned topic – 7 Great Cisco Networking Engineers to Learn From (College Degree vs. Certifications and Changing Career Paths). I’ve always felt that the fine line between these 2 subjects really depends on what your end goal and agenda is. Hey, but why listen to my one opinion when you can get the it from 7 players in the industry – between them all they cover the main message well.

@LauraChappelle and the Wireshark University team have officially launched the Wireshark Certified Network Analyst (Link explains the whole program) program. I attended a webinar yesterday that Laura gave on the whole certification process, price, prep and maintenance. I have to say that I am very interested and I’m considering this certification ASAP. As a network engineer, groomed with great skills in Wireshark – it can only help you a hell of a lot. I’m wondering how soon the impact and importance the certification will increase with employers. I can only imagine them as highly desirable and a valuable addition to an engineer’s certification deck. A clear symbol of a strong troubleshooting engineer and traffic analyzer. Who else is going after it? When? Why?

If you are an aspiring CCNA and you are looking for labs to get you up to speed and transition from reading to applying what you’ve been reading about, then you need check out this site – Free CCNA Workbook. Awesome site .. Plenty of [FREE] labs to prepare you for your exam. Some of the labs also have a video to accompany them to help you along the way. There are currently 13 labs and they are all built around a particular topology that is available for download – sweet! The format of the site is very clean, easy to navigate through and labs laid out very well. All the labs are in “challenge” format giving a great opportunity to practice and prepare for the exam. You can also check out GNS3Vault as well for labs for CCNA and CCNP candidates – Follow him on Twitter as well @GNS3Vault.. Heavy labs on this site, the vault is growing daily with all sorts of labs – multicast, IPv6, all routing protocols and much more!

A @PacketPushers podcasts you should really check out.. via PacketPusher’s post: Following the career discussions in some of our earlier podcasts, and his recent Blog Post “So you Want to be a Network Consultant” Kevin Bovis got in touch with me to talk about what sort of skills an engineer needs. We decided to record the discussion and so you have even more Networking in your ears. Runt Packet No 5 – A Technical Services Manager Speaks

First ever Ioshints Live event (San Jose, September 2010) – Our fellow tweep and blogger Ivan Pepelnjak (@IOSHints) is holding his very first _live in person_ event. He plans to talk on VPN Solutions and Data Centers. @Etherealmind will also be presenting with Ivan.. I’m sure it won’t be the last, but I wish I could come out to this event – The topics are juicy and to dialogue with the such knowledgeable presenters is definitely a nugget of educational value – Sign-up!

@Blindhog has a pretty good post over on his site in regards to how using protocols/services like RDP, logmein, Citrix, gotomypc, etc or VDI solutions can choke out your network if you don’t fully understand them or how the mis-use of them can cripple your network.  These solutions have huge advantages when it comes to user privileges and security among the no-brainers .. But it can be like spinning the “wheel of fortune” if you don’t do you homework before you deploy Just check out Josh’s quick demonstration of how fat and “thin” client really is to get an idea of the considerations you should look out for.

@gp_ifconfig shared links that I favorited some time ago – Awesome share and resources .. TAC Security Show Podcast & Cisco Podcasts

Wow! It’s been one interesting week .. I’ve had a lot going on. Unfortunately I cant really speak about much of it, but I’m emotionally and mentally drowned and feeling wasted.

Anyway, moving on .. I’ve had to put my SWITCH studies on pause for a second to ramp up in other areas mainly in regards to routing protocols and VPNs. So that set my schedule back by about a week and a half, should have been done on Thursday with Bryant Advantage BCMSN material. Seems like I’ll need just another week or so. After that, into the TrainSignal BCMSN CBTs. Then onto the CP SWITCH FLG. Hopful for new CBTs, I was thinking of skipping the CBTs now and complete the CP book since by the completion of that there should definitely be some new SWITCH CBTs out. Either TrainSignal or CBTNuggets will be ready by that time – I hope :/

One resource that I’ve been strongly considering is the @BosonSoftware CCNP package. They recently released version 8 of the Boson Netsim and it includes the new CCNP track subjects aimed at SWITCH, ROUTE and TSHOOT. Now I’ve heard good things about Boson and the labs and quizzes they pack into their products. This is why I’m thinking about getting the package. Not necessarily for the Netsim application, we’ve got GNS3 for that. You too should check it out! Boson Netsim CCNP Network Simulator & Router Simulator 8.0 (@ecbanks also says they are great )

Well – That’s all for now .. Back to studies Have a good week everyone!

@LBSources