If all difficulties were known at the outset of a long journey, most of us would never start out at all.
Started online course for Routing and Switching Solutions for Systems Engineers (RSSSE). Somehow it is kind of interesting to follow. SONA in combination with TOGAF is a great starting point for architectural designs of networks.
13:27 Update: Got my certificate for the course.
This day was all about the lectures….. so it started off wrong. Peter (what’s his name) made a lousy effort of talking hackers to adapt to the corporate world. The next presentation was about modifying BGP and MPLS. Realy interesting but the wrong presenters, sitting behind a desk with little or no interaction with the crowd.
The next presentation was about securing DNS by the maker/creator of PowerDNS. A lot of pointers of how-to-not-do-DNS. Great speech. Next, XS6ALL talking about their initial IPv6 implementation. Really funny and it gave me ideas for our own organization.
After all this power-speeching my head got dizzy. I turned to FOX-IT to mellow this mood down. It worked, got drunk but just a little, again…
This Kaminsky guy, he is supposed to be a legend and maybe he is, but not giving speeches about certificates and DNS. Nonetheless there were a lot of zeolots to see him. Funny (see photo’s on the right).
Returned to FOX-IT to have some beers etc. Before I noticed, the whole crew was in the water (really see pictures). Marika broke her nail……
Turning in now with a little sway……grtz
Yesterday morning started very good with a fair amount of alcohol induced headaches. Sleeping in a tent contributed to me having backaches as well. Having said that, all the aches were gone within the hour so no real trouble.
After a bit of freshening up, the conference was openend with a speech by the organiser about “…how we are the consience of the community and keeping the governments on its toes.”
The first workshop I went to was about “AutoNessus”. We all know Nessus as a vulnerability scanner. AutoNessus does excactly the same but has some features that make repetitive scans easier. Really cool if you want to do those scans on a regular basis.
“Rootkits are Awesome” was a lecture about DataLoss Prevention. The guy had asked/tested some of them from the big corporations (McAfee/Symantec ect.) and found out they were installing legitimate rootskits on your PC. Better still, they made arrangements that they don’t detect eachothers ! Worth a rerun on www.rehash.nl
Last but not least, Defending networks from an ISPs perspective. That was really basic, nothing new for me and I stayed sober for that so I was really disappointed.
Turned in quite early to make a fresh start. Lot’s on the menu 
(ommitted) Had some stuff to write here but I scratched it because it was mostly how yesterday went logistically, no interesting stuff.
In the evening, walked around to see if there were any good-looking chicks. Nada, njente, nossing.
Today AutoNessing lecture at 15:00, Rootkits at 17:00 and at 22:00 (while most likely intoxicated) Securing networks from an ISP perspective.
All presentations are online at www.rehash.nl
As some of you know (or not) over the last few years I have picked up lockpicking. Not really as a profession but more as an interest of how mechanisms work. To broaden my horizon and to assist my lockpicking friends I will be attending HAR2009.
The next few days I will be reporting/photographing this event and publishing items on my blog.
Since my failed endevour at Cisco Barcelona, it has taken me a month to get my affairs in order to re-commence the quest for my CCIE status. From this point on, this blog has been converted to my new CCIE blog which I will use to dictate all the topics I have come across to becoming a CCIE.
On a side note, I am not sure how long this will take but there is only one way to find out
After the ‘Get drunk with Cisco’ (GDWC) event yesterday evening, today’s goal was simple. Or at least it should have been. Today I would skip my registered sessions and go over the stuff for the CCIE R&S Written exam once more.
Because of a lot of exercise yesterday during the GDWC, they had a Wii, I was feeling pretty good this morning. Went over the topics a bit and started a Boson Exam. Got a score of 67% the first time. Not too good but not bad at all. The topics I failed were IPv6, MPLS and Multicast.
So I got the book again and looked in to it. Thats when it hit me, I skipped these as they were part of the CCI Service Provider track. Big mistake. All and all I prepared myself for the exam and hoped there would be little to no MPLS/IPv6 or Multicast.
…and there was. Failed with 60%.
Bad preparation and too little too late. Stupid and costly mistake. Next month I will try again.
The last real day of break-out sessions. This day was a packed schedule for all that had something to do with virtualization or simply had the word ‘advanced’ in it. Pushing the envelope.
It started with Advanced Techniques for Enterprise Virtualization and to be honest, I don’t know what is was about any more. Not that is was booring but this presentation was about stuff I already knew. The key concepts for this were VRF in an Campus Environment. As I advised this before (@ Bouwfonds) it was all too familiar.
The next session was about the deployment of WAAS and WAE with Sony Ericsson. Having done research on this topic, this was more of a checkup on how Cisco had advanced in this field, and they have. Out-of-the-box deployment is possible nowadays and it all looks very promisssing with the integration of Windows 2008 functionality. However, still no ‘real application’ recognition (like Packeteer, BlueCoat) so that was a bit of turn-off.
The next session I had planned was on Harden WAN Edges in the Health Care. I skipped this because VPSL and VSS looked very promissing. Layer2 extending of datacenters, very cool. Very difficult but after I pass my CCIE written, I need to have a look into that.
Lunchtime was dreadfull. Fish only. So on a virtually empty stomach I went to see Data Center Virtualization Concepts, or Datacenter 2.0 as they like to call it. Working with Berend Jansen, I came to know a bit about IO’s and SAN performance when you virtualize servers. It seems that this is changing for the better. 10GE is revolutionizing the way SAN manufacturers are looking towards networks. Really cool.
Last but not least there was Advanced DMVPN Deployments. No real news here as I did the Lab yesterday. However he had some cool features to show us, that weren’t in the lab.
Finally the day is over and I need to …….
…go to the ‘Customer Appriciation Event’ or
‘Get drunk with Cisco’ as they call it. I ordered a case of redbull for the late night study. Need to go over it all once more tonight.
Wish me luck
After the thrashing yesterday, I hoped this day would be more comforting. And it was.
At 08:30 I arrived at the venue and queued up for the keynote speech of John Chambers, CEO of Cisco. He had some general comments on the recession and showed us a way to save travel expenses by buying the Cisco Telepresence System.
After this, some interesting slides came up. He had slides from 1998 or so, about trend predictions of how internet would develop. He used this as signal that Web2.0 and increased colaboration between systems and services are the way to go. In a way, Cisco had almost succesfully predicted the future then and would like do so now.
After this impressive speech, I had “Advanced Campus Design and Architecture” on the agenda. The presenter (which name I forgot) was an excellent speaker and really funny. “Came here to stomp the chump ?” he notes to the NetVets and CCIE’s. The presentation was more a confirmation of what I already knew, but usefull.
The Media Nets presentation was more a marketing speech for Digital Signage and Media Encoders/Decoders, big disapointment there. The only thing usefull was “one picture describes a thousand words, but a movies says it all.” meaning that video will be 70% of all network traffic in the next 3 years.
The last session of the day was a Lab about Deploying Dynamic Multi-Point VPNs. This was based around a load-balancing scenario and BGP Route-Reflectors. There were some funny things about this setup that really got me thinking. How is it possible that multiple hosts send with the same IP address ? Tomorrow another session about this topic, can’t hardly wait.
Update: Hitting the books hard tonight. No Barcelona for me till thursday evening.
Today started crap in sooo many ways.It all began in the night with the loss of my ATM card. After blocking the card, the bank kindly informed my that it would send a new one in 10 days or so. Because me being in Barcelona, this new card will not help in any way. Furthermore I cannot withdraw any funds, not even with an ID.
The second mistake was the drinking. A lot of fun but definitely took a toll today.
Last but not least, my pride. Having studied for the CCIE Written exam I was convinced that I could do most of the assignments. Was I Wrong !
The Labtorial was more Lab then tutorial, which was fine. However it was a near copy of the CCIE Lab itself. It painfully showed me the holes in my learning. It means I have a lot of studying to do before I can even think of passing.
For know, I have to settle with the little knowledge I have and resume studying for the CCIE Written, on Thursday.
