The Changing Face of Cisco Training

Companies looking to cut costs and increase efficiency are turning toward software virtualization in order to cut down on hardware and increase their versatility. For the IT professionals that work on virtual machines, this development has been a turn of good fortune. Businesses are hiring aggressively for IT professionals with virtualization expertise, as this CNN Money article points out.

As businesses continue to hire virtualization specialists, network certifications are also popping up. Both VMware, a world-leading virtualization company, and Cisco are offering new certification courses. A senior manager at Learning@Cisco, Marcello Hunter, has said that

"Network virtualization is a key component of next-generation datacenters, and it is clear that virtualization skills are essential to ease the adoption of these networking technologies and maximize the return on enterprise investments. We now incorporate VCP training into two of our Cisco Data Center Unified Computing certification programs. Teaming with top organizations in virtualization like VMware to develop authorized training, education and career certifications underscores our commitment to providing organizations and individuals with the technical knowledge and expertise needed to capitalize on the evolution of networking technology."

The certifications available from VMware, VMware Certified Professional (VCP) and VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX), are growing in popularity throughout the IT industry. They are designed for system administrators, system operators, systems engineers, consultants, architects, and enterprise designers. IT professionals with a VMware certification are thought to earn from 15% to 19% more than non-certified IT professionals. Presently, there are approximately 40,000 VCP-certified IT professionals. The rest of the article has lots more interesting information. If you’re interested in virtualization and Cisco IT training, you should check it out!

Cisco Training Resource

Here's a great article about Cisco training and certification courses. It offers some sound advice, such as beginning with the CCNA and gaining some experience before going after the CCNP. They also advice not using an online-only training course due to the sometimes unpredictable nature of Internet access. The article also goes into why you would even want to participate in a Cisco training course, which is always a good question:

A lot of trainees presume that the school and FE college route is still the most effective. So why then are commercial certificates becoming more in demand? With 3 and 4 year academic degree costs climbing ever higher, together with the IT sector's general opinion that vendor-based training is closer to the mark commercially, there has been a large rise in Microsoft, CompTIA, CISCO and Adobe certified training programmes that educate students at a much reduced cost in terms of money and time. Academic courses, as a example, clog up the training with a lot of background study - and much too wide a syllabus. This prevents a student from getting enough core and in-depth understanding on a specific area.

If you're thinking of getting Cisco certified, keep in mind that you can always visit Cisco's own Support Community Forum.

For The Set of All People Who Enjoy Tattoos and Cisco

Look at this ardent Cisco fan's tattoo! (via Geekologie)

Cisco To Add Two New Certifications Soon?

There is a recent story about Cisco waffling over completing an acquisition that will have an impact on the existing state of Cisco training and certification. Cisco is unsure whether it wants to complete a deal to acquire Tandberg, a leading video conferencing technology supplier. Tandberg has over 40% of the global teleconferencing market. Cisco wants to complete the deal only if it can secure 90% acceptance from the Tandberg shareholders for the deal.

If Cisco does complete the acquisition, it would bolster significantly its collaboration technologies offerings. Additionally, two new certifications would be added to validate the skills that IT professionals need to implement and support Cisco TelePresence deployments.

Cushing Anderson, the program vice president of IT Education and Certification for IDC, a Cisco certification and training company, is quoted in the story as saying,

Market-focused education and certification programs for new job roles such as video, voice and telepresence specialists are essential to assure the return on enterprise investments in these new technologies is fully maximized.”

Sri Lanka's IT Industry Needs Training, Growth

Sri Lanka is experiencing some growing pains in its burgeoning IT industry. Since 1962 when the country passed a special act inviting IBM to establish a local branch to increase its data processing power in its government-run Insurance Corporation. Since then, many leading government companies have widely adopted IBM IT solutions, including Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, the Department of Census and Statistics, and the Department of Examinations.

There have been some problems, however, that accompany fast growth. There are questions surrounding whether the IT tools have been used well for management, whether they fit into a robust Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) strategy, and whether they are being well implemented by well-trained IT professionals. This last concern has trumped many, since without properly-trained IT staff, expanding computing and networking power lays fallow.

The Sri Lankans liken themselves to the Indians, who also entered late into the IT field. India has become a center of business process outsourcing, including call-center operations and computer support networks. Sri Lankans are aware of a need to expand its IT operations in order to keep pace in the global economy. The Daily News proposes a few steps to stay in the game.

• IT education and training institutions must understand the country’s needs and develop professionals to meet market challenges.
• Our institutions must formulate prudent IT visions follow-up with IT strategies of practical nature.
• The commitment of senior management and the involvement of operational staff are essential in IT investments.
• IT investment should not be merely a profitable business for the vendor, but also, it should give the required competitive edge to the user’s business.
• Integrated software connecting different databases/ a centralized database of government institutions will improve the efficiency of public sector decisions.

Clearly, IT training and technological development needs to continue for Sri Lanka to stay competitive. It is important to maintain an emphasis on IT training and infrastructure development with an eye toward improving the country as a whole and not simply as a for-profit enterprise.

Cisco Rolls Out New Cisco Training Program To Help With Unemployment

Cisco has started a pilot program to train for free out-of-work individuals interested in working in the IT field. The program is currently centered in Vallejo, CA. These Cisco training classes are an attempt to lure government investment in the idea in the hopes of scaling it up. On the free market, such Cisco training classes can cost up to $3,000.

Company spokesman David Everette has said, “We could train up to 50,000 people,” and that Cisco simply wants to demonstrate that such training can be done and is effective. Cisco hopes to roll out the program nation-wide by next year.

Vallejo County has an astonishing 11.5% jobless rate. Cisco hopes to impress California Congressman George Miller and gain money from the federal Workforce Investment Act. The Solano Employment Connection, which is a jobsearch and employment resource center, is hosting the classes. Prospects look good on paper for the program. Given a $3,000 cost for the classes, students can better hope to gain employment in the IT field, where average salaries are about $65,000 annually. The program has so far been hugely popular with a second session boasting thirty-seven people on a waiting list.

Hopefully, this pilot program can gain national attention and funding, thereby increasing the number of qualified IT professionals, who are needed in a variety of industries and employment sectors.

Coffee and RFID?

I've heard that coffee and cigarettes go well together, but I've never heard of anyone making a film about coffee and RFID. But an ingenious inventor has found a way to make the pairing nearly as sublime. Chris Hallberg has created an insulated travel coffee mug that houses an RFID tag. The RFID tag allows would-be coffee purchasers simply to wave the cup to pay for that morning cup of joe.

Hallberg’s invention is called the Smug Mug, and it being tested in limited trial by the London Underground and some other coffee shop chains. There are hopes for the Smug Mug to find use by next year in Milwaukee at the coffee chain Stone Creek Coffee, as well. The suggested retail price for the Smug Mug is $15, and that includes a $5 credit for use in the store at which it is purchased.

This seems like a brilliant idea. It promotes re-using your coffee mug, which is good for the environment. And it precludes the need to dig bleary-eyed through your pockets, purse, or wallet to pay for that morning wake-me-up.

Mind-Blowing RFID Video

Check out this video from Timo Arnall of the Touch project and Jack Schulze of BERG. It depicts a technique they've devised to show the functional range of an RFID reader. It is very cool.

Immaterials: the ghost in the field from timo on Vimeo.

New Fujitsu RFID Can Handle The Heat

There’s a new RFID application, driven by an advance in the technology. While RFID tags are already appearing in school uniforms, they are now finding their way into the uniforms of medical supply and semicondunctor manufacturers. A barrier to entering these fields was that their uniforms call for being sterilized regularly with high temperatures. Now, Fujitsu has created a flexible, UHF-band RFID tag that can withstand temperatures of up to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

These 1 gram, flexible tags can help track and update the status of batches of up to 100 uniforms, scanable simultaneously. They withstand much more than the 212 degrees Fahrenheit that such uniforms undergo for sterilization.

RFID Technology to Aid in Education of Deaf and Hearing-Impaired Students

In our last post we gave you a pretty broad overview of RFID technology and mentioned that we’d be focusing on RFID for a little while, since it is one of the more exciting emerging networking technologies for which ingenious people are finding ingenious applications. Well, here’s one of them.

The process of education is fraught with philosophical difficulties. How do you teach a student that a picture of an apple corresponds with the letters a-p-p-l-e corresponds with the word-sound “apple?” If you really think about it, it’s a miracle we learn anything at all. And now imagine how difficult it is for hearing-impaired students. Two researchers at Southeastern Louisiana University
are working on this very problem--and they’re using RFID technology.

Becky Sue Parton and Robert Hancock, two assistant professors at SLU, have devised a project called the “Physical World Hyperlinking” teaching system. It is based off of the common Internet tendency to take a piece of text or an image and hyperlink it to something that expands on or clarifies its meaning. They’re applying that principle to everyday objects in order to teach deaf and hearing-impaired students their meanings and uses. Starting with an initial set of 500 objects--all equipped with RFID tags--the pair have created a system of reference whereby the objects trigger a computer to give information content such as an interpreter signing the word describing the object and photos or videos of the object in use.

For example, a student can pick up a pencil and then several photos of various pencils and variations of pencils will be displayed as well as a video of someone signing the word for pencil, the word pencil written in English, and a pronunciation guide for speaking the word pencil. The system can be used in the classroom or even adapted for home use via a laptop.

Parton and Hancock have been awarded a $390,000 grant from the US Department of Education to develop the Physical World Hyperlinking system. Traditionally, hearing-impaired students learn sign language by pairing classroom objects with drawings that depict the signs; this process is fairly slow, however, setting back such students five to six years behind the educational curve. Parton and Hancock contend that this new RFID-based system will teach students much more quickly by allowing them to interact with their environment on a more visceral and playful level.

Hopefully more education researchers will take advantage of RFID technology. This example really highlights some of the strengths of RFID. In a way, RFID allows the “real world” to catch up to the Information Age by imbuing everyday objects, from pencils to massive shipping containers, with a rich set of information.

On RFID

Picture this: It is 1946 and World War II has recently ended. Tensions are high, however, between the United States and the (then) U.S.S.R. Russian inventor Léon Theremin, who has twenty-six years earlier invented one of the first electronic instruments, the theremin, was imprisoned and forced to work on scientific research to help the Russians in the impending Cold War with the Americans. Under these conditions, Theremin invented a listening device dubbed "The Thing." It is the first electronic listening device (commonly known as a "bug"). The Thing used passive electromagnetic induction to transmit an audio signal. It was also the precursor to modern-day RFID technology.

Generally speaking, RFID tags are composed of an integrated circuit that stores and processes information, and modulates and demodulates a radio frequency signal. A separate component is comprised of an antenna, which transmits and receives the signal. There are three common types of RFID tag:

1. Active RFID tags, which use a batter to transmit signals autonomously;
2. passive RFID tags, which need an external source to make a transmission (like Theremin's Thing);
3. and battery assisted passive RFID tags, which also need an external source to provoke a transmission, but have a greater range than mere passive RFID tags.

RFID is actually one of the fastest-growing segments of the networking industry. It finds wide application across just about every field:

• Asset Tracking
• Asset Management
• Product Tracking
• Theft Prevention
• Inventory Systems
• Sporting Events Regulation
• Passports and Identification
• Mobile Payment
• Transportation Payment
• Transportation and Logistics
• Animal Identification
• Library Systems
• Education
• Museums

Over the next few weeks, we're going to delve into some aspects of RFID as it relates to networking. Stay tuned!

Is Chrome the speediest browser on the block?

It’s starting to look that way. Yesterday Google announced the official release of Chrome 3, its WebKit-based, open source (and Windows-exclusive) browser. It is vaunted to have a faster JavaScript engine, improvements to Omnibox, the ability to support themes (similar to FireFox skins), and a redesigned tabs page.

Even though the browser has only been around for a little more than a year, it has been a pretty big show over the bow in the browser wars, not the least because of the upcoming Google Chrome OS and the already-emerged Android OS for smartphones.

The latest version of the Chrome web browser is said by Google to handle JavaScript over 150% faster than the original version of Chrome. Its V8 JavaScript engine is now much faster than Mozilla’s TraceMonkey JavaScript engine and nearly as spry as Apple’s Nitro engine.

Chrome 3 underwent extensive user beta testing, so its official release is not exactly making waves; it does allow a wider user base to gain easy access to the browser. Some of its improvements are obviously aimed at the casual user, such as the theme system, which allows users to customize the browser’s look and feel and take advantage of pre-made styles, which are available from the Chrome theme gallery. For the power users, Chrome brings in support for several important HTML5 features such as the Video element.

Google’s pet browser is growing up fast. According to the analytics firm Net Applications, Chrome’s marketshare increased from 1.52% in January to 2.84% in August. It is now more widely-used than Opera and it is gaining quickly on Safari. Undoubtedly, these gains are just further Google’s plans for world domination.

A Great Resource for Networking Pros

Here's a good resource for the networking and IT professionals out there: Tek-Tips forums. Here on their networking portal there are links to further portals that cover a range of manufacturers and devices:

• 3Com: Hubs
• 3Com: NIC's
• 3Com: Routers
• 3Com: Switches
• ADTRAN networking solutions
• Ascend(Lucent) networking solutions
• Cisco: LocalDirector load balancing solutions
• Cisco: Routers
• Cisco: Switches
• Compatible networking solutions
• Enterasys (Cabletron) networking solutions
• Extreme Networks networking solutions
• Foundry Networks solutions
• HP: ProCurve networking solutions
• Intel networking solutions
• Juniper Networks solutions
• Linksys networking solutions
• Lucent Technologies networking solutions
• Motorola networking solutions
• NBase-Xyplex networking solutions
• Network Appliance networking solutions
• Nortel networking solutions
• Shiva (Intel) networking solutions
• U.S. Robotics networking solutions

The forums are well-moderated and heavily trafficked. If you have a persnickety question about networking, or if you're feeling helpful, you should definitely check Tek-Tips out. Each sub-category also has a list of links, FAQs, jobs, whitepapers, and other resources.

Friday Links

NVISION is adding some new features to its enterprise routers.
PC World offers some tips on buying a wireless router.
Leoxsys is launching a new draft-N wireless storage router.
Will there be a Wi-Fi virus outbreak? Maybe...

Not Another Dual-Band Wireless Router?

Earlier in the week we wrote about how you should set up a dual-band 5 GHz/2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network in your home. Now, appropriately enough, it looks like Netgear is set to release its flagship router, the elegantly-named RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router WNDR3700.

The WNDR3700 is the company’s top-of-the-line draft-N router. It offers concurrent signal (that is, simultaneous) dual-band 2.4 GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi. It also has a feature called ReadyShare, which allows for high-speed wireless access across your network to a USB hard drive connected to the router. It also has broadband usage meter (which is a first in a consumer-grade wireless router). Netgear calls the router the “ultimate networking machine for gamers, media enthusiasts, and small businesses,” and we have to agree.

The router is supposed to be equipped with a 680 MHz processor and offer speeds up to 500 Mbps WAN to LAN, and up to 350 Mbps in “real-world wireless throughput.” It is also DLNA-certified, which will make it more proficient at streaming digital media.

The RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router WNDR3700 is currently available to purchase, worldwide and it comes with a one-year warranty. It has a hefty (but assumedly worthwhile) price tag of $190. If you’re looking to make a big upgrade to your home network, you could do a lot worse than the WNDR3700.

Are you interested in faster network speeds?

If you’re using a wireless router to connect your home network to the Internet, then you should definitely be using a simultaneous dual-band 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi network. There are currently several routers that support dual-band Wi-Fi, including the Apple Airport Extreme, D-Link DIR-825, and Linksys WRT600N.

Why go dual-band?

There are tons of wireless devices clogging up the 2.4 GHz spectrum: Bluetooth headsets, microwaves, cordless phones—even other Wi-Fi networks. Alternately, the 5 GHz spectrum is wide open and nearly as fast as a wired connection; however, you cannot abandon the 2.4 GHz network altogether without leaving behind your older devices. Therefore, you should go with a dual-band Wi-Fi solution.

How to go dual-band

First of all, you’ll need to make sure your computer hardware supports a 5 GHz 802.11n wireless connection. Newer MacBooks and iMacs with a Core 2 Duo support 802.11n Wi-Fi. If you’re a PC user, then you need to check your hardware profile under the Control Panel or check the manufacturer’s specifications. If your built-in hardware doesn’t support 802.11n Wi-Fi, you can purchase hardware that will hook up via USB or a PC Card adapter.

It is pretty simple to set up your dual-band Wi-Fi network. If you have a Mac, then it is as simple as turning on the 802.11n-capable router. Your Mac will automatically use the 5 GHz network while your other wireless devices will remain on the 2.4 GHz network.

If you’re more fastidious about your devices or if you’re using a PC, you’ll have to set up two wireless networks from the dual-band router: One 5 GHz and one 2.4 GHz. You’ll want to go to the router configuration screen by entering its IP address in a web browser. There, you can configure it to create two different networks. Now you can point your 802.11n-capable hardware to the 5 GHz network, and your other hardware to the 2.4 GHz network. You won’t miss your old speeds, we guarantee it!

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We're the Networking and Telecom Guys, and we'll be blogging about news, tips, and tricks having to do with... you guessed it: Networking and Telecom.