Afew weeks ago, I made a blog post for those of you working towards your CCIE Collaboration certification. It covered how to configure a Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express (CUCME) router to register a SIP-speaking Cisco 9971 IP Phone. If you missed it, you can read it HERE.

This installment in my CCIE Collaboration Lab Lessons series is more strategic than technical. Specifically, it’s a strategy for how to approach your lab tasks. I’d heard a variation on this strategy a couple of times from different instructors as I was going through my studies. It was called the Device-Based Approach, and I’ve have modified it just a bit. That is what I want to share with you – the Modified Device-Based Approach.

First, let’s discuss what the Device-Based Approach says about tackling our tasks on lab day. If you go into the lab , open up your lab book, and say, “There’s task 1.1 – I’ll do that first. Then I am...

For years, my main Cisco focus was voice. I taught the the CCNA Voice and CCNP Voice courses for over a decade and earned my Voice CCIE in 2012, and then migrated that to a Collaboration CCIE in 2014. However, since then I’ve mainly been focused on creating video courses and books for routing and switching technologies, and I’ve been aching to get back into the voice (now “collaboration”) world.

So, I’m thrilled to announce that I’m starting to develop some Collaboration training products, beginning with a Collaboration CCIE video course. It’s in production now, and will be coming out this Fall (2015). Along the way, I’m coming across some tricky or challenging topics that can bog down your study for days. This blog posting covers one such topic, and I’ll sprinkle in other Collaboration CCIE topics among my other blog postings over the next few months.

Specifically, there’s a new IP phone to contend with on the CCIE...

John Chambers has been the CEO of Cisco since January of 1995, but on July 26, 2015 he is stepping down and going into semi-retirement. Replacing him at the helm of Cisco is Chuck Robbins.

To honor John for his leadership of Cisco, in this blog posting I want to point out three specific life lessons I’ve learned from him.

Lesson #1: Have An Overcoming Attitude

Several years ago while attending Cisco Networkers (the predecessor to Cisco Live), I was sitting in the audience waiting for John Chambers to deliver the keynote address. Interestingly, prior to the presentation, he was walking around talking with various audience members. After the keynote, I had a few moments to chat with him. At that time, I did a lot of public speaking; specifically, I led lots of live classes for a Cisco Learning Partner. So, getting some insight into his public speaking skills would be super valuable. I asked him about his preparation for the keynote. I was surprised that he was walking around,...

Just a few days ago, I returned from Cisco Live 2015, which was held in San Diego, California. As always, is was an educational, exhausting, and exciting week.

Enjoying Cisco Live 2015 With My Wife, Vivian
While learning lots of cool technical stuff, there were a few statements in various presentations that really resonated with me. Personally, I like to collect insightful and inspirational quotes and thought you might enjoy these three:

(1) The moment it’s not hard to do, others do. -John Chambers

One of the big buzz words (or acronyms) at Cisco Live this year was ACI, which refers to Cisco Application-Centric Infrastructure. ACI is a technology that can use Software Defined Networking (SDN) to dramatically reduce IT administration tasks and speed up large deployments (e.g. in data centers). The concern expressed by some CCIEs was that since ACI could do many of the jobs they regularly do, their value might be reduced.

During a Q&A period at the CCIE NetVet...

Did you know you can make a wireless router act as a wireless access point to extend the range of your network?

This video shows you how.

This video is a sample from my new CompTIA Network+ (N10-006) Complete Video Course, and it’s available for preorder HERE.

Also, be sure to check out my other Complete Video Courses:

CCNA Complete Video Course

CCNP R/S 2.0 Complete Video Course Library

ROUTE (300-101) Complete Video Course

SWITCH (300-115) Complete Video Course

TSHOOT (300-135) Complete Video Course

Enjoy your studies!

Kevin Wallace, CCIEx2 (R/S and Collaboration) #7945, CCSI 20061

The new CompTIA Network+ exam (N10-006) is out, and one of the little-known exam topics is SCADA.

Find out what it’s all about in this video.

This video is a sample from my new CompTIA Network+ (N10-006) Complete Video Course, and it’s available for preorder HERE. 

Also, be sure to check out my other Complete Video Courses:

CCNA Complete Video Course

CCNP R/S 2.0 Complete Video Course Library

ROUTE (300-101) Complete Video Course

SWITCH (300-115) Complete Video Course

TSHOOT (300-135) Complete Video Course

Enjoy your studies!

Kevin Wallace, CCIEx2 (R/S and Collaboration) #7945, CCSI 20061

In the first three parts of the Lessons I Learned from Disney series, we’ve talked about lessons learned when I was working at Walt Disney World. However, in this installment, let’s discuss a lesson learned from studying the history of Walt Disney. That lesson is about adversity, and how we can deal with adversity.

In our networking careers, we are going to have adversity. We are going to have troubleshooting issues. We are going to have failures on certification exams. We might lose a contract. We might lose a job. Adversity is going to happen.

Let’s begin with a quote from Walt who said:

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles have strengthened me. You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

Way back in 1928, Walt Disney and his brother Roy, at the Disney Studios in California, had a successful animation business. They had a character named Oswald the...

This video identifies the need for Quality of Service (QoS) and gets you acquainted with several QoS tools.

This video is a sample from my new CompTIA Network+ (N10-006) Complete Video Course, and it’s available for purchase HERE.

Also, be sure to check out my other Complete Video Courses:

CCNA Complete Video Course

CCNP R/S 2.0 Complete Video Course Library

ROUTE (300-101) Complete Video Course

SWITCH (300-115) Complete Video Course

TSHOOT (300-135) Complete Video Course

Enjoy your studies!

Kevin Wallace, CCIEx2 (R/S and Collaboration) #7945, CCSI 20061

At some point in your networking career, you are almost certainly going to face the dreaded technical interview. In this blog posting, let’s answer the question, “How do you go in and come across as the candidate that the company wants to hire?”
Certainly, there are lots of books, and there is lots of advice on how to answer different interviewing questions, but in this blog posting I want to give you three specific tips that have worked for me in different interviews.

Tip #1

Tip #1 is to establish rapport. I remember many years ago, I was interviewing with one of the big ten accounting firms for an IT  position. On my drive to the office to be interviewed, I was listening to one of my many Anthony Robbins tapes – that shows you how long ago it was. I was actually listening to a tape, not a CD or not an mp3.
On that tape, Anthony Robbins tapes was talking about the importance of rapport. He was making a statement that, “We tend to like people...

This video shows you how to troubleshoot a route redistribution scenario with multiple redistribution points.

This video is a sample from my new CCNP R/S v2 Complete Video Course Library (which includes the ROUTE, SWITCH, and TSHOOT Complete Video Courses ), and it’s available for preorder HERE.

Also, be sure to check out my other Complete Video Courses:

CCNA Complete Video Course

ROUTE Complete Video Course

SWITCH Complete Video Course

TSHOOT Complete Video Course

Enjoy your studies!

Kevin Wallace, CCIEx2 (R/S and Collaboration) #7945, CCSI 20061