Today's the first full day of the Networker's conference. It's a busy day, in part due to the 7:30AM start, and in part due to being the day before the customer appreciation event. Seems that every year, the best day to schedule any kind of smaller party, meeting, or event is that one evening on the day before the Networkers party - so three different places to be for me tonight. Anyway, I wanted to take a few minutes and mention some highlights so far. I'm not approaching this like I'm covering the event - I'm just mentioning things that stuck out to me.
First off, I'm so thankful that I have a nice comfy hotel room 2 blocks from the Moscone Center in San Fran. Bad news is that the wireless access at the event is again spotty - otherwise, I'd still be at the show. Seems a bit ironic...
John Mordridge (former CEO and Chairman) and John Chambers (current CEO and Chairman) both spoke at the opening general session. Mordridge talked a bit about the early Networkers conferences, with 100 attendees or so at the first one. He also showed a picture of the house the founders of Cisco used at company startup: a couple of DEC 20's in the garage, the living room as the manufacturing floor, and the extra bedroom as engineering. Pretty cool.
10,000+ attendees this year (a record) plus 3000 virtual attendees.
Chambers did his usual type of pitch, for those who have heard him, other than the fact that he left out the lawyer disclaimers about stock prices. However, he was very optimistic about economic recovery happening, and being really big when it does.
New Cert 1: Solarwinds (www.solarwinds.com) got to put nice glossy brochures on all the seats in the hall of the general session this AM. In it, amongst other things, they announced a new certification - The Solarwinds Certified Professional. I'll probably take a day to blog on it when I return, but go to http://www.solarwinds.com/certification/ for more info. This is NOT a Cisco authorized cert.
New Cert 2: Cisco formally announced the CCNP Wireless. Yep, not Cisco Certified Wireless Professional (CCWP), but CCNP Wireless. Go to www.cisco.com/go/certifications and follow the links. No time today to wax poetic on that one, but I'll look at it soon as well.
Favorite new product and blatant plug - Pearson Education (parent of Cisco Press) brought their tons of books to the bookstore, including the new CCNA 640-802 Network Simulator that I worked on more than a few hours over the last year. www.ciscopress.com. Really, a product in a box you could see/touch/buy if you want. (It took a quite a while...) The Simulator is for CCNA preparation, but not meant for other certs at this point. TONS of labs. But we think it turned out pretty good for CCNA.
Being the 20 year anniversary, Cisco put up a wall with memorabilia, timeline, fun facts, and a marker board asking "What were you doing 20 years ago?" Some wrote things like "attending 3rd grade", but my personal favorite today:
"Living in a van down by the river"
If the joke didn't click, you might have missed that episode of SNL, so click:
http://www.heavy.com/video/11109
Closing for today, for the minorly curious, tonight's agenda for me, which gives some insight to what's going on:
CCIE NetVets (aka those CCIE's who come to Networkers a lot) get a chance to hear from John Chambers in a smaller group, and ask questions. That's from 5-7PM.
Cisco Press reception 7-9PM - Hang out and ask people "so what'd you write?"
CCIE/CCDE party - We're generally dressed a little nicer than Chris Farley in the motivational speaker video at least... just a place to see/chat/network.
And missing the reception for all attendees at the World of Solutions area from 5-7PM. So, lots to do here. Later...
Odom, CCIE No, 1624, splits time between writing books for Cisco Press and teaching classes for Skyline ATS. In his 25-ish years in the networking industry, he has worked as as a pre-sale and post-sale SE for a few networking vendors, as well as a network engineer implementing network technology. Wendell has spent the majority of the last 15 years teaching, consulting, and writing about networking technologies, most of which in some way relate to Cisco products. His books include titles on QoS, CCIE R/S, as well as several titles related to CCNA certification, including the September 2007 book CCNA Official Exam Certification Library (CCNA Exam 640-802) (Read a sneak peek of chapter 7). Click for the list of current titles by Wendell.
The Leader in Network Knowledge
Thanks for the post Wendell.
Thanks for the post Wendell. I look forward to further coverage of Cisco Live from you!
Any Mention of the new CCA?
I'm curious to see what CCIE's are saying about the new CCA cert.
I'm asking about CCA today
AS,
I couldn't catch anyone to ask about it Tuesday - hope to today. Scuttlebut just talking with random folks at the show was a concern that with a CCDE pre-req, given that CCDE is in it's infancy, particularly with the number of CCDE's, that the CCA becomes too unattainable. But I've not heard enough yet to make any broad observations about it yet. It was the usual Tuesday zoo at the show - I figure today will be a bit calmer. More later this week...
Wendell
Simulator?
Wendell,
I thought the consensus around here is that simulators are bad news.
And according to your polls, even the pro-dynamips (an emulator, not a simulator) camp thinks that CCNA candidates would be better off shelling out for real gear than any software solution.
What's different about this package?
Emulators, gear, and real gear have applicability for CCNA prep
Hi CCM,
I'd be happy to share a bit about the Sim, but first, let me take a to comment on your assumptions.
I don't think that there's a consensus that Sims are bad news, because I think "consensus" implies a pretty high percentage. I do agree that inside this blog we've had some pretty strong opinions that tell us to stay away from Sims, but I think the voume of comments for/against each of the hands-on prep options is but I don't think that's anywhere close to a consensus. Even if we surveyed folks, it might end up that a high percentage prefer real gear and/or Dynamips to Sims, or may not, but I think the fac that there's long been a market for Sims tells us that there's certainly enough interest in Sims for it to be considered as an option.
That said, even before I said yes to Pearson to work on the Sim, I thought all three (real gear, Sims, Dynamips) had, and still have, a role to play. So, on to the answer to your real question.
This particular Sim is valuable for CCNA for these reasons, in my opinion.
1) The volume of lab exercises. 250 CCNA-related labs. Even the most energetic CCNA candidate should not run out of things to try with this product! ;-)
2) The progression of types of lab exercises. The Skill Builder type labs are short, 12 steps or so, worded so someone who has never seen a router or switch can do the lab. The goal is to see a config command work right, or see the important output of a show command. These give you tactile learning of individual points. Config scenarios are much longer, typically 40-ish steps, with each step being much broader, giving you more freedom to learn, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes. These help you correlate, master, and memorize config options. The troubleshooting labs are similar to the config scenarios in length and complexity, but begin with a busted config - and you find/fix the issues. These help you practice your analysis skills, which are needed for the exam.
3) Labs designed with exam question types in mind. The lab types help you prepare for different CCNA question types. The Skill builders focus on 1 or 2 commands or concepts at most, typical of multichoice questions on the exam. Config scenarios essentially mimic, in must longer form, Simulator questions, by having you build part of the config, and asking questions that you'll need to be able to answer in order to solve Sim questions. And the tshooting labs help you on both Sim questions and Simlets.
4) time efficiency: We wanted this product to help people prepare for CCNA hands-on skills with as little time as possible. Getting gear and learning Dynamips for CCNA candidates takes time, and once ready to do the commands, you have no lab exercises to guide your study. This Sim should take just a few minutes to install (there's a download option at www.ciscopress.com if you don't want to wait on the box to ship), and you're already learning for the exam, with labs that tell you what to try.
5) CCNA focused to keep the scope/price reasonable. Every decision about the Sim was filtered with the question "does it help the user prepare for CCNA?". If no, we didn't put it in the Sim. If yes, we tried to add it. That helped us control scope, keep the price reasonable (projected at a little less than $100 actual online price at the usual web sites).
Sorry for the longer answer, but I think that answers the why it's different question. Feel free to follow-up.
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