This week’s training video takes a look at a section on the ENARSI (300-410) exam blueprint about troubleshooting BGP relationships.

Specifically, we cover the BGP multihop feature.

Happy training!

Cisco’s Embedded Event Manager (EEM), a topic on the CCNP Enterprise ENCOR (350-401) exam, is a feature that can watch a router for a specific event and, if that event occurs, can trigger an action or set of actions. 

In our latest YouTube video, we cover the theory of EEM and then watch a configuration demo to aid in your studies for the ENCOR (350-401) Exam.

Happy training!

You may have heard that Cisco has recently provided a new resource for CCIE studies: The CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure, Host VM. This custom Linux distribution allows us to experience the actual desktop environment used to perform tasks during the lab exam. 

In our latest YouTube video, we take a look at this new resource and how it can be used to help prepare you for your certification exam. 

Take good care,

Kevin

This year’s Cisco Live was virtual, given the current circumstances our world is in with the pandemic. Even though we couldn’t all travel and meet in person, Charles and I still enjoyed participating this year and wanted to share some of our highlights over the past couple of days. 

If you don't share a selfie, did you really attend CiscoLive?

One presentation I attended on the first day of Cisco Live was Chuck Robbins’ Keynote. During his presentation, he made some wonderful points, and identified 6 Strategic Objectives:

1. Secure, Agile Networks
2. Optimized Application Experiences
3. Future of Work
4. Internet for the Future
5. Capabilities at the Edge
6. End-to-End Security

Chuck also shared a powerful question to reflect on during his presentation: “What kind of future do you want to see?” 

The following day, I attended a great “A License to Design” session covering CCDE. Here were the big takeaways...

In this video, you’ll learn about Media Access Control (MAC) addresses. You’ll see the pieces and parts that make up the structure of a MAC address, in addition to a couple of examples of MAC addresses in action. 

Happy training! 

In my latest training video, I cover the theory of Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) routing protocol.

OSPF is the most popular interior gateway protocol used today. In this video, you’ll understand:

• How link state databases are constructed with information from link state advertisements (LSAs)
• The difference between an OSPF Neighbor and an OSPF Adjacency
• OSPF areas
• How OSPF performs its cost calculations

Enjoy the training!

Whenever someone asks me what direction they should focus their IT career, particularly in regard to cybersecurity, my answer is always the same: “It depends.” It’s usually not a very satisfying answer, but it’s an honest one. 

Early in my own career I learned the pitfalls of not specializing in something. While there’s always a place on a support team for someone who seems to know a little bit about everything, this makes for a very poor career move. On the surface it seems like a great idea, but in reality…

 

It’s simply not possible to be an expert in everything. Everyone hits their limits with time, memory, and determination eventually, so we must choose wisely what we want to specialize in. Having no specialty is a recipe for a mediocre career, especially in cybersecurity.

So, if you’re just kicking off your security career, or re-tooling and looking for inspiration, the best place to start is finding a specialty. A few...

In this week's training video, Charles takes a look at the configuration of VRF-lite. VRF stands for virtual routing and forwarding, or sometimes we see that called VPN routing and forwarding. This is a technology which allows us to create multiple routing tables within a router rather than having a single, global routing table.

Happy training!

We’ve all heard the saying, “Hindsight is 20/20.” However, a lack of clairvoyance about the future shouldn’t prevent us from boldly taking our next career step.

Steve Jobs told us, “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

Looking back on the dots of my career (thus far), I feel blessed that they have connected as they have. Of course, I made (and learned from) many mistakes along the way. In this blog post, I want to share three of my biggest mistakes in the hopes that my cautionary tale will help you avoid similar missteps.

Mistake #1: Not Getting Experience Early

I attended the University of Kentucky and earned my Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) degree. As I went through my college career, my assumption was that after earning my degree I would have my pick from multiple job offers. However, when I...