by Tony Mattke on August 1, 2011
This morning several CCIE candidates received an email stating that on August 1, 2011, Cisco will be raising the cost for the CCIE lab from $1,400 to $1,500. This is an interesting twist in events as the Internet trolls have been circulating rumors that the lab would soon be lowered to $1,000. Why has Cisco made this almost insignificant change? I assume this may have to do with the struggling economy and fewer attempts being made. Seeing as Cisco just implemented a layoff of 6,500 employees, you’d think they would be refocusing attention on their core fundamentals. Will raising the price of the lab affect the number of attempts? Probably not, but its not a risk I would be taking right now. Cisco should currently be embracing their learning candidates, not asking them for more money.
I’m really interested in what everyone thinks about this change. If you have something to say, feel free to follow up with me in the comments section. Thanks!
by Tony Mattke on January 24, 2011
Whether your networking lab has 3 devices or 30 an access server, also commonly called a terminal server, is the vital connection between you and those devices. For this purpose most engineers use routers with asynchronous serial ports to connect to console (serial) ports on other devices. There are a couple of ways this can be accomplished as these ports can be found on a few devices and line cards. One of the popular methods is to use older Cisco 2509/2511 routers with either asynchronous RJ45 ports, or a 68 pin SCSI II interface that uses a cable called a cab-octal, giving you 8 ports per interface. Another popular method seems to be the NM-32A network module which offers 32 async interfaces. See the following images for a depiction of each.
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by Tony Mattke on April 5, 2010
Ever wanted direct network access to your Dynamips lab? Have you ever needed to lab something that used the SDM, but you run Dynamips under OSX? You may have noticed using NIO_gen_eth is broken under OS X, communication between the Dynamips IOS and the local Mac box itself is not working properly. There is a solution using a tun / tap interface in OS X.
Required Software
Since OS X does not include the tun/tap devices by default, we need to download a bit of software to create them. Luckily tuntaposx from SourceForge does just that for us. Go ahead and download it and install it. Once you do you should see the following. (Yes, this is on my Hackintosh)
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by Tony Mattke on August 20, 2009
This is the first part of my Cisco voip basics series. ( Parts 2, 3 & 4 ) VOIP is obviously becoming a large part of networks, even now part of your CCNP requirements are basic voip knowledge. Recently I have been setting up Cisco Call Manager Express for my home / home office and I figured a short VOIP series would benefit those of you who have never had to deal with setting up a PBX or VOIP system. While I’m not going to delve into the nitty gritty details of voip ( since you could dedicate an entire blog to it ) I will try to point you in the right direction for setting up CME on your own.
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by Tony Mattke on May 18, 2009
So, I purchased a couple extra routers, and a second layer3 switch from @usedciscoguy. He gave me a really good deal and I plan on purchasing a 6500 series switch from him as soon as I can afford it. Anyway…. I’ve spent a little bit of time working on a new topology that should allow me some flexibility. I did realize today that I’ve run out of asynchronous serial ports on my 2511 though.. I am now in the market for a NM-32A and maybe a 3620 to run it on… maybe. I figure I can sell the 2511 for close to what I can buy a -32 for, so there wont be too much of a cost incurred there…
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