Pavel Stefanov’s Blog

Тази година Сиско Експо ще се проведе на 28 и 29-ти октомври, както през миналата година в кино Арена Младост. Цената за вход е 48 лв. с ДДС. Регистрация можете да си направите в сайта на Сиско България – www.cisco.bg до 27-ми октомври. На пръв поглед се отличават някои по-интересни презентации в програмата на експото, сред които тази за Catalyst 6500, DWDM, Service Control Engine, CallManager 7-ца и 6500 VSS. Това последното е много интересна технология, позволяваща да се pool-нат 65-ци заедно , все едно имаш 1 такъв switch. Ще ми е интересно да чуя повече за нея. Допълнително инфо на http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9336/index.html.

Един приятел ми прати това, което изглежда, че е източника на едно от най-великите транс парчета – Energy 52 – Cafe del Mar, за което съм писал тук. Оригиналът наистина е велик и както един приятел го описа “той е едно от най-великите парчета на пиано”.

I believe it is very essential for anyone pursuing a career in IT to be always able of taking a step forward when he sees others are trying to push him backwards. So just before I started my last year in High School I decided to make that one little step that I hope will probably prove to be of great importance.

I made the decision of quitting my job. A year or two ago while, I posted a topic in GroupStudy on whether I should go first for CCNP and then for CCIE or just directly give it a shot. I received a great support from some of the people most active on the threads then like Joseph Brunner and Jun Kim, which told me to go for it. I remember Joseph Brunner once posting a topic that teaching a CCNA course or any such Cisco courses would be of great help to your future career. That is one of the main reasons I joined my previous company where I was dealing with CCNA trainings in the Networking Academy at my High School of Mathematics. And now after looking back at those 9 months of my career, I squared accounts.

Teaching a course in networking even at my age of 17 was a great experience. I improved my presentation skills as well as my teaching and explanatory skills, but also remembered some of those essential but easily forgettable details. I build the rack, I build the Networking Academy network and infrastructure, I build RA VPNs, and I loved being the one building it! I met new people, some of them are already my friends and are also seeing their future in the networking field. What else did I got? Despite the financial reward was not to be the best, I can only be happy that I had access to Cisco boxes. Although I use Dynamips for my current CCIE preparation, there were 6 2960 switches in addition to the 1845 routers. I used them to test lots of catalyst features, although many lack in comparison with the 3550s and 3560s. I attained CCAI certification which is just something extra, but one of the great benefits were the free Cisco vouchers, for which I wrote in a previous topic. In addition, when I first joined the company, I was sponsored for the Cisco Express Foundation Specialization. So when I look back at my time in the company, I can pull out a lot of positives from it!

However, it was time to let go. I needed more time, more freedom and more space. So now was the problem with the hardware that I used for running the IE topology using Dynamips. Before that, I used the Networking Academy’s PC’s through an IPSec VPN and the topology was running on 4 PCs with 1 gig of RAM and about 1.7-1.8 Ghz processors. So I knew I needed something powerful and although I did not meet much support on the forums for hardware recommendations, I bought a rather powerful desktop machine with 4 Gigs of RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz and a Gigabyte motherboard. With all the other peripherals, that thing cost me 700 levs, which is approximately 350-360 euros. Not bad, huh? Well, I didn’t buy a monitor because I have my laptop and use Remote Desktop.

How is Dynamips performing?
Well, if you use Windows and 3725s, you’re gonna have some problems. With Linux distributions, everything worked perfect and pings traversing 10 routers running with all tasks completed had a very low value – 100-200 ms. Unfortunately, I am a bit lame with Linux and decided to use the good old Windows XP. Running the full lab with 3725s can be quite an issue. This is also because with Windows and 32-bit systems only 3 gigs of RAM are available and 2 gigs per process at maximum. Now I am back with the 3640s and although they are not as stable as the 3725s, I cannot bitch about it, everything works fine. I could also have the second Dynamips process running on the laptop, which has 2 Gigs of RAM and Intel Core Duo processor at 2.16 Ghz, but I encountered some issues with the NAT being done on the Desktop machine, which I haven’t resolved yet.

So that’s pretty much what I consider a good step in my career and an important one to my CCIE preparation. I’ve already booked my date for the lab and now have the time ticking. Time will go very fast and I know that so I try to remain 100 % focused on it. I’m now on Lab 5 of IE’s volume II workbook and I really enjoy labbing. Time for completions is not that important at this point of my preparation so I am just trying to complete all of the tasks. Many of my problems are with the wording of the questions, but I expect to get better at interpreting questions as I go through the rest of the workbook and the IPExpert one as well.

So this much time I had to waste ;) Now back to my studies…

Today is the day I certified as a CCNP. Do I feel happy? I wouldn’t say so. When I received my last score report and the VUE admin congratulated me on becoming a CCNP, I just politely said “Thanks”. You have already probably guessed why I don’t feel certifying as CCNP is something I am excited about. It’s simply because of the quality of the exams. First, as a side note, Cisco is making a big commitment to its Networking Academy instructors by offering any instructor who has taught at least 2 classes in the last 12 months free vouchers for all CCNA and CCNP exams with 100% discount! So when I got the news last week, I scheduled my exams for this week.

On Monday, I took the BSCI. It’s a pretty straight-forward exam and there is not many traps you can fall in. However, I encountered a few questions that either had false answers (but were considered the right ones) or there was some silly wording in it. I cannot understand why Cisco would ever use silly wording in its written exams. I can see the CCIE lab being a place where wording has probably have its place, but why would you use vague wordings of the question in a CCNP exam? If you’re not a native speaker or are not used to those types of traps Cisco lays in, you will have your hands on your head wondering what is going on. This is not a testing of understanding the technology, it’s a testing of being able to interpret their questions.

The BCMSN was a rather good exam and although it was easier than BSCI, it tested your understanding in some cases to a deeper level. I enjoyed it and although there were again questions with no right answers or no wrong ones, it might show your theoretical understanding of technologies.

On both exams, I used the comment option and even provided them with steps to verify their answers, however, I do not expect my comments to be taken into account.

Although I cannot give any details about the other two exams as I do not want to break the Cisco NDA, I can just say be prepared for testing of skills that no good network engineer would ever use. There are some ridiculous questions on the exam that can put at least a big smile on your face. That being said, practice in the ONT and ISCW is essential to passing those two exams so take your time practicing with Cisco hardware and applications.

So why am I a person not appreciating this certification as an achievement? Well, this exams among many other Cisco ones have been devalued by a load of brain dumpers who make this exam less and less valued in the IT.

I almost fully agree with what Greg Ferro has written on his website regarding the possessing of professional level certifications. And although there are many in the CCIE world out there who will say the same thing about the CCIE programme and have even let their CCIE certifications expire, I still think that being a CCIE is something that is worth going for!