10 popular 2008 posts by the Cisco Subnet blogger community

Cisco Subnet is a vibrant community of bloggers who are experts in their fields. We've collected 10 of this year's most popular posts by our team of bloggers, who've tackled such topics as security, Cisco security, Cisco jobs, CCIE salaries, Cisco competitors and more. In no particular order, here are 10 of this year's most-read Cisco Subnet blogger blog posts. Credit Card Skimming: How thieves can steal your card info without you knowing it

Back in October Cisco Subnet's security expert blogger Jamey Heary shone the spotlight on credit card skimming, a scam in which thieves retrofit a perfectly legitimate card reader like an ATM, with a camouflaged counterfeit card reader. The counterfeit reader records all of your card’s information as it passes through. Jamey showed several examples of where counterfeit card readers have been hidden, including keypad overlays.

Read the full post.

Building your own CCNA lab; Building your own CCNP Lab

Trainer and Cisco Press author Wendell Odom wrote two very popular series this year on building you own CCNA and CCNP Labs. The CCNA Lab series discussed everything you need to know about building a lab for your Cisco Certified Network Associate lab, including picking IOS revisions and memory, and selecting a switch based on history. Meanwhile, the CCNP Lab series discussed budgets, whether you really need an L3 switch, cheap options for BSCI, and ISCW features and feature sets.

Read the CCNA Lab series.

Read the CCNP Lab series.

Client Certificates offer a superior defense over OTP devices

Back in August, Cisco Subnet's security expert blogger Jamey Heary explained in an indepth post why using OTP token for second-factor authentication is weaker than using client certificates for SSL VPN. Heary wrote the blog after attending a BlackHat '08 demonstration of several new Man-in-the-Middle attacks on SSL VPN tunnels.

Read the full post.

H-1B crisis: Cisco has (had) 1,504 U.S. job openings to fill

hiring freeze.

Cisco is known for its support for a move to raise the number of H-1B workers allowed in the United States. In April, Brad Reese reported that Cisco is scrambling to fill 1,504 jobs openings in the United States., with the company saying that the skills shortage in the country is leaving U.S. companies at a disadvantage. Those were the heady days when Cisco had a glut of job openings. Now it has a

Read the full post.

Riverbed vs. Cisco One of the most commented blog posts made by Cisco Subnet bloggers is Larry Chaffin's post "Will Cisco ever catch Riverbed or should they just get out now?" Larry is a partner of both Cisco and Riverbed but he's not been shy in sharing his disappointments with Cisco WAAS. Is Cisco WAAS really in a bad shape?

Read the full post.

Nortel taunts Cisco: Nexus taint no Lexus

Cisco opened the year with the launch of its Nexus data center switch. The Nexus switch family features a unified switching fabric that combines Ethernet, IP, and storage capabilities and is optimized for high-density 10 Gigabit Ethernet in the data center. The 7000 was launched in January, and that was followed by the 5000 model in April. In February, Brad Reese reported on a blog by Nortel director of strategic enterprise technologies Tony Rybczynski, who questioned its quality, performance and reliability. Read Brad's post for responses by Cisco's Doug Gourlay and other readers.

Read the full post.

Network design templates best practicesProving that network expertise and best practices are never out of date, Michael Morris' blog post about network design templates, written in 2007 continues to be popular. In this blog, Michael discusses the purpose of templates and what they should cover. He also preovides an example of the logical design page for a midsize site.

Read the full post.

Understanding MPLS

Understanding MPLS VPNs, Understanding MPLS Explicit and Implicit Null Labels, and Understanding MPLS Label Distribution.

If you're a network professional, chances are you've read Jeff Doyle's Routing TCP/IP books. We're honored to have Jeff blogging for us. One of his popular series this year has been the Understanding MPLS series of blogs, which include

Access Jeff Doyle's blog here.

A CCIE job that only offers $150K - ummm...maybe...well...no.....

For many of us who are not lucky enough to be CCIEs we are in awe of their ability to pass one of the industry's toughest exams -- and the salaries they command. CCIE Michael Morris, in this post, wrote that he was approached by a recruiter looking for a senior network integrations engineer in the Washington DC area. And the salary that came with it? Between $130,000 and $155,000. That's a little low ...

Read the full post.

USB Key ... best hacking tool?

Jimmy Ray Purser of Cisco's TechWise TV started blogging for us this year and one of his popular posts is his review of the U3 USB drive from SanDisk. Purser writes: "What makes the U3 cool is the little "Launch Pad utility" that comes preinstalled. A Normal USB flash drives only has 1 drive letter but for U3 smart drive, it has 2 drives. One is the normal storage drive and the other one is an emulated CD drive. It is this two drive behavior that allows a hacker to turn a simple USB drive into an Auto-Run powerhouse!!"

Read the full post.