Resource Library

Switches play a vital role in moving data from one device to another. Specifically, switches greatly improve network performance, compared to hubs, by providing dedicated bandwidth to each end device, supporting full-duplex connectivity, utilizing the MAC address table to make forwarding decisions, and utilizing ASICs and CAM tables to increase the rate at which frames can be processed.

Complexity has always been a part of projects. But today, globalization, new technologies and changing markets have combined to add to the complexity. Today's projects have more stakeholders, more ambiguity and more politics than ever, and project managers need new tools and approaches to succeed. Join Alexander Stanisic and Michelle Moore of Global Knowledge for an information-packed hour on how to manage the complexity of the 21st-century project.

This paper explains uplink strategies for traffic coming in and out of a Cisco Unified Computing Solution (UCS) chassis. An uplink can be Ethernet, Fibre Channel, or FCoE and is a physical connection on the FI that leaves the UCS domain directed away from the B Chassis.

This paper covers the configuration of IP Multicast with Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) including the basics of Multicast with the Group Encrypted Transport VPN (GETVPN).

A Dynamic Multipoint Virtual Private Network (DMVPN) can be used with other networks like Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), but streaming multicast is accomplished quite well using "Default" and "Data" Multicast Distribution Trees (MDTs) with MPLS.

Cisco Unified Computing Solution (UCS) is a very popular and powerful solution. Cisco continues to provide updated UCS management options for the full range of data center installations.

The first big push toward implementation of IPv6 was mobile devices. Now, one of the driving forces is the Internet of Things. As the name implies, this means everything, including machine to machine communication (M2M).

In many organizations, the Program/Project Management Office (PMO) is viewed as purely a cost center, so it becomes marginalized by additional layers of bureaucracy, oversight and cost. But the essence of the PMO and portfolio management in general is to add value to the organization. So how do organizations reconcile the cost of the PMO versus the value it adds? The short answer is to flip the conversation on its head and talk about the PMO as a revenue driver rather than a cost center. In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge PMP-certified senior product manager Daniel Stober will explain how, by focusing on efficiencies gained and reduced waste, you can shift the conversation from the PMO being a necessary evil to the PMO being critical for organizational success.

Like it or not, Internet of Things (IoT) is upon us. There are a number of factors that will impact its adoption rate, and the inevitable privacy (or lack of) discussions will likely happen sooner than later. This is going to change the world as we know it, in many cases for the better. But we will need to keep an eye on the extent to which it invades our personal lives if it is going to be the positive force it has the potential to be.

While there are differences between the IP Multicast configuration in the IOS and the Nexus OS, the Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) protocol remains fundamentally the same. If you feel comfortable configuring Multicast in the IOS, you should be able to acclimate fairly easily to the changes in the Nexus OS.

Multicast Sparse Mode and its derivatives are supported in the Nexus OS. This white paper explains how it has been implemented in the Nexus platform to provide optimum performance in both virtual PortChannel and FabricPath environments.

Now that we are moving towards IPv6, the logical move would be to also run OSPF for that protocol suite, which makes sense and reduces the learning curve for implementation and support. But, that would mean that you have to run two OSPF processes — one for IPv4 unicast and one for IPv6 unicast. That means two sets of policies have to be applied, including security for OSPF itself. Running OSPFv3 for both IPv4 and IPv6 reduces the number routing protocols and the configuration that goes with that. It makes it easier to implement policy in a consistent way for both protocol suites.

What is PBR? Policy-Based Routin (PBR) is the process of using a route map to match on something more than the destination and then defining the path out of the router based on those conditions. PBR could match on destination only, but typically we would match on more. PBR is considered to be an exception to the RIB and is looked at before examining the RIB.

Cisco provides a wide array of connectivity and isolation tools within the datacenter. This white paper addresses Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF), which is a Layer 3 isolation mechanism for routing protocols.

As I’ve stated before, I like Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). I think it’s an interesting protocol, and yes — it’s complicated, but I guess that part of why I like it. There are a lot of knobs to tweak in BGP, maybe too many, but that’s another post. Anyway, we are now running BGP version 4 and it has had extensions written that support more than just IPv4 unicast routing. We now have IPv4 multicast, IPv6 unicast and multicast, VPNv4, VPNv6, and a few others.

Where should you apply the CSS, and why are there two places to apply it? One approach is to pick one of the parameters and apply the permissions there. Quite often, an administrator will pick the phone-level CSS and configure it there so that it applies to all calls made from all lines. The goal is to specify what partitions are allowed to be called. 

For project managers, meeting stakeholder expectations means that you have to know what the expectations are to begin with if you are ever expected to meet them. After expectations have been set, follow up with your stakeholders to ensure that the expectations haven't changed. People change their minds often, so communicate in order to influence their perceptions and expectations. You may be surprised how simple communication and understanding expectations can positively affect your next project.

For smaller companies, configuring a dial plan to account for variations in dialed numbers is often not a problem. However, companies that are larger and more global in nature encounter a number of issues when designing their dial plan approach.

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a fascinating protocol because there are a lot of things that can be done with BGP. However, there has always been an issue with BGP, which is convergence (the time the network or protocol takes to accept change). BGP was designed for scale, not speed, so it’s something that we’ve had to tolerate from its inception.

License provisioning has always been a bit of a challenge in the CUCM environment. Prior to CUCM v9.0, licensing was managed on a per-cluster basis with each cluster requiring its own license files that were tied to the media access control (MAC) address of the cluster’s publisher. This approach to license management was limiting in the fact that one cluster might have unused licenses while another cluster may be at its limit and sharing between clusters was not possible.

In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor and PMP-certified project management expert Daniel Stober will look beyond the triple constraint model and focus on the true essence of project success: stakeholder satisfaction. Many project managers (PMs) fall into the familiar habit of managing based on the constraints of time, cost and scope. While all of these are important, managing them effectively doesn't guarantee project success if the PM fails to conduct proper stakeholder management. To manage stakeholders effectively, the PM has to set expectations. Once expectations are set, the PM must influence the perception of project performance with the stakeholder. Tune in as Dan explores methods you can use to accomplish that goal.

Occasionally I am asked to configure the ability to block calls based on Caller ID. Prior to Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) v8, the only way to block these calls was to configure voice translation rules and profiles on the gateway receiving the calls. This has changed in CUCM v8 with the introduction of an additional parameter in translation patterns: Route Next Hop By Calling Party Number.

Moving data from one networked device to another requires several different functions. Each function has its own protocol or protocols that define how it is accomplished. Also, the process of delivering data from one device to another can vary. The main factor in data delivery is determining whether the two devices are directly connected or remotely connected.

Moving data from one networked device to another requires several different functions. Each function has its own protocol or protocols that define how it is accomplished. Also, the process of delivering data from one device to another can vary. The main factor in data delivery is determining whether the two devices are directly connected or remotely connected.

While most organizations have not yet fully (or in many cases even partially) adopted cloud computing, the trend is growing in all but the smallest businesses.

The process of learning how to subnet IP addresses begins with understanding binary numbers and decimal conversions along with the basic structure of IPv4 addresses. This paper focuses on the mathematics of binary numbering and IP address structure.

While the Internet uses IP addresses assigned by an Internet authority such as the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), there are too few of these numbers to uniquely identify the millions of computers and computing devices in the world. Therefore, most enterprises use private addresses which allow them to identify the aforementioned computers. Of course, these IP numbers cannot be allowed on the Internet because all private networks use the same ones so there would be vast overlapping of addresses, and the addresses are not compliant anyway. Therefore, it is necessary to change the identity of a private host to a legal public host. This process is called Network Address Translation (NAT) and may be implemented on Cisco firewall products and Cisco routers. The firewall device(s) at the Internet demarcation point is by far the more popular way to implement NAT, but routers are used in small offices or small-to-medium-sized networks in which a separate firewalling solution is not possible or affordable. The focus of this paper is on the router-based NAT solution.

This power session is an introduction to Managing Stakeholder relations. It offers new ways of managing and dealing with projects, which focus more on communications, understanding stakeholders' needs and managing their expectations, as well as learning about organizational politics and culture, and performing value-add activities. It provides a practical approach to managing issues that matter most for project success - communication, stakeholder expectations, risk, change and quality; so that the scope, schedule and cost end up on target, achieving the desired outcomes for the organization.

Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) is dead, or at least it should be. It’s too slow to converge when there’s a change, and it causes issues with performance because there is only one forwarding path. It was developed in 1985 by Radia Perlman at Digital Equipment Corporation to allow for redundant paths within a Layer 2 topology, which was great in 1985. In fact, it was huge! So much so, that it was later standardized by the IEEE as 802.1D, and we’ve been living with it ever since.

Cisco Access Control Lists (ACLs) are used in nearly all product lines for several purposes, including filtering packets (data traffic) as it crosses from an inbound port to an outbound port on a router or switch, defining classes of traffic, and restricting access to devices or services. Knowing how to design, configure, and troubleshoot ACLs is required for all network engineers working within a Cisco network.

RTMT provides a set of canned views of both system resources and application counters that provide you with a snapshot of your environment right out of the box. Read on to learn how you can make RTMT even more helpful by customizing it to show you different views of your resources and CUCM environment.

The project manager (PM) and business analyst (BA) have to be key allies in the management of any project. That can be difficult when project work is duplicated because of the overlapping tasks defined by the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA®) and the Project Management Institute (PMI®). Still, as long as roles are clearly defined and understood, the two can cooperate and collaborate, instead of competing. In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor and PMP-certified project management expert Daniel Stober will explain how to delineate the roles.

Samuel Brown, project management instructor and consultant, has taught Global Knowledge courses for more than fifteen years. In this video clip, Samuel discusses Global Knowledge's unique and effective approach to helping students prepare for PMP certification.

Kirsten Lora, Global Knowledge Senior Product Director, discusses the benefits of our IT Project Management course.

Global Knowledge Course Director Samuel Brown introduces the Work Breakdown Structure and why it matters to project management.

In the spring of 2013, Cisco announced major updates to their Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) curricula, including a new version of the CCNA Routing and Switching exam (200-120 CCNA). This paper provides a review of the CCNA Routing and Switching exam's critical concepts, as an aid to students preparing to pass the latest version of the CCNA Routing and Switching exam.

Many companies are already using VoIP while incorporating video capabilities into their portfolio of services. One question that I am often asked is, “How can we ensure that the voice and video quality is good and consistent when using VoIP?”

Whether you're a Project Manager or a Business Analyst, you can certainly relate to a situation where you've felt like your cohort on a project was from a completely different planet! This panel discussion webinar between our PM expert, Ori Schibi, and our BA expert, Cheryl Lee, will explore some of the misconceptions that each role has and learn how to play nicely with each other in the project world.

Most organizations quickly realize that knowledge management must be integrated with incident management in order to improve the quality of service and the efficiency of providing assisted service. What is not as quickly recognized is the value of integrating knowledge management with problem management.

If you’re in IT, you’ve likely heard the saying, “In technology, the only thing constant is change itself,” and boy is that right! For technical companies, if you are not moving forward, then you’re falling behind. There is no such thing as standing still! A perfect example of this mindset is in Cisco’s evolution of video conferencing and telepresence.

According to Cisco marketing, Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN) “will lower capital and operation expenses, simplifies branch communications, reduces deployment complexity, and improves business resiliency.” Okay. But what is it, really, and why should we care?

Today, every project comes with limited resources and an impossible timeline. You have to prioritize, but how do you determine what's most important? The answer is to do more than just prioritize. You have to fully understand your company's strategic direction and make every action align with that strategy. In this hour-long webinar, project management expert Yvan Bastien will show you how to reach that full understanding and make the kinds of informed decisions that lead to success.

With the advent of video use in our everyday communications, a number of questions commonly surface. One of them is the question of terminology. What's the difference between video conferencing and telepresence? What is meant by immersive technologies? Frankly, there is no one single right answer.

The short answer (and a common one in our industry): it depends. When comparing Cisco IOS with Juniper Junos, the decision to choose one over the other is difficult and often boils down to cost. Of course, there are other factors to consider.

Instructor Carol Kavalla talks about the advantages of taking a Cisco Data Center Unified Fabric Implementation class from Global Knowledge.

Global Knowledge Senior Business Skills instructor Samuel Brown covers tips for preparing and practicing for the PMP exam.

In this report, I've reviewed the 15 most popular certifications according to our more than 12,000 North American respondents to our annual IT Skills and Salary Survey. For each certification, you'll find a brief description, the average salary, and some insight into why it is popular.

You know you need to invest in training, but how do you get the best return on investment (ROI) from your training dollars? To help you make smart training decisions, we've put together this guide, which illustrates some alternative and little-known payment options, the types of discounts and promotions available with training and a suggested list of courses that give you excellent value.

Global Knowledge Senior Business Skills instructor Samuel Brown covers tips for preparing and practicing for the PMP exam.

Need to control the digits contained in the telephone number that enter or leave a gateway? Digit manipulation involves adding, subtracting, and changing telephone numbers. You can manipulate calling numbers, called numbers, and redirecting numbers, as well as the numbering plan and ISDN number type. Learn about the techniques that are applied to incoming or outgoing calls, or globally to all calls. You can also manipulate telephone numbers before or after a dial peer is matched.

Frequently, questions come up in the Cisco Contact Center Express classes I teach concerning the ability of the system to perform this or that task. In this blog post, I will cover some of the more popular questions I get during class.

Instructor John Harmon explains subnetting using binary numbers and decimal conversions.

Instructor John Harmon continues his explanation of subnetting by showing how subnet masks can be used to sub-divide networks.

In numerous Cisco classes, students learn about IPv4 and IPv6 address subnetting, complex subnetting, variable length subnet masking (VLSM), summarization, prefix routing, and address aggregation. These are valuable skills. In order to apply these skills efficiently, a network designer should possess one additional skill. Planning the IP address space for a Class A or B IPv4 address is necessary to apply the complex skills listed above properly. Complex subnetting, VLSM, and IP address summarization can be implemented simply and efficiently with proper planning.

John Barnes, Global Knowledge's Cisco Course Developer, discusses enhancements to our UCS Troubleshooting Boot Camp and suggestions for students in preparation for this course.

For a project manager (PM) who has served as a military officer on a battalion or higher staff, the parallels between the military decision-making process (MDMP), the orders production process, and project management doctrine prescribed by the Project Management Institute (PMI) are difficult to ignore. Both the MDMP and the processes outlined in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge—Fifth Edition (PMBOK® Guide) are iterative in nature, allow for the introduction of changes to the original plan, assign tasks and responsibilities, and involve the concept of managing the scope of the operation or project.

Meet Global Knowledge course director and lab topology architect Joey DeWiele, a specialist in Unified Communications. Joey will walk you through the benefits of our exclusive Cisco UC lab architecture - a more scalable and stable approach to the all-important labs featured in unified communications courses. Our labs feature upgraded hardware and software including Custom Lenovo T61 PCs, 7965 IP Phones, 3560 Switches and Call Manager 7. With our flexible UC architecture, students are able to view and experience the full lab architecture regardless of which Cisco UC course they are taking or the skill set they are seeking. The lab architecture features a realistic network with redundant environments that are made rich with multiple machines, pre-deployed tools with shortcuts, online documentation that is particular to individual pods, and multiple OS support for all virtual machines (Windows, Linux, VMware).

Global Knowledge instructor Doug Notini discusses the benefits of our FIREWALL 2.0 - Deploying Cisco ASA Firewall Solutions course.

Diane Teare, Global Knowledge's Cisco Course Director, discusses the advantages to taking our CCNA Boot Camp.

Global Knowledge Course Director and Lab Topology Architect Joey DeWiele, a specialist in Unified Communications, explains presence.

A video covering our Cisco Unified Communications courses - ACUCW1 & ACUCW2 - by Global Knowledge Course Director and Lab Topology Architect Joey DeWiele, a specialist in Unified Communications.

Global Knowledge Course Director and Lab Topology Architect Joey DeWiele, a specialist in Unified Communications, discusses Cisco Unity, Unity Connection & Unity Express.

Once an organization has categorized suppliers, one of the benefits that is quickly realized is an understanding of how supplier changes affect the buying organization and vice-versa. Changes are the modification, addition, or removal of something from the environment. The scope and scale of each change can be different. Change management covers everything from regular, low-risk, operational modifications all the way to significant organizational strategic shifts.

Course director Jim Thomas explains how our custom labs, which utilize external hosts, ISR routers, and DMZ, provide a real-world environment for students.

Rodger Foster, our senior Cisco instructor, reviews how multiple gateways are used to provide redundancy in the network.

This is another topic of heated debate, and it changes from network to network, but I found a simple approach that works in most cases. Since I have four queues and four classes of traffic, I need to categorize my important traffic into four classes. Strictly for explanation purposes I took some liberty in defining four categories of traffic that are very effective in both large and small networks. These classes are: Real Time Protocol (RTP), Network Management (NetMgt), Business Critical, and the Default.

That depends on their configurations. For example: While it makes very good sense to include redundant physical links in a network, connecting switches in loops, without taking the appropriate measures, will cause havoc on a network. Without the correct measures, a switch floods broadcast frames out all of its ports, causing serious problems for the network devices. The main problem is a broadcast storm where broadcast frames are flooded through every switch until all available bandwidth is used and all network devices have more inbound frames than they can process.

As we discussed previously, Cisco created the Nexus Operating System (NX-OS) to power its next-generation data-center switching platform. While this new OS shares many similarities to the original IOS, there are some definite differences that you need to be aware of as you begin using it.

The most obvious difference is that hubs operate at Layer 1 of the OSI model while bridges and switches work with MAC addresses at Layer 2 of the OSI model. Hubs are really just multi-port repeaters. They ignore the content of an Ethernet frame and simply resend every frame they receive out every interface on the hub. The challenge is that the Ethernet frames will show up at every device attached to a hub instead of just the intended destination (a security gap), and inbound frames often collide with outbound frames (a performance issue).

Lessons learned is a theory, or conclusion, based on evidence at a given time and describes what went wrong (as well as what went right) throughout the lifecycle of a project. Although it’s completed during the project closeout process, it should occur during the entire project lifecycle to ensure all information is captured and documented. Consequences of not having a project review of lessons learned are the increased likelihood of repeating actions that might have caused:

Global Knowledge Course Director and Lab Topology Architect Joey DeWiele, a specialist in Unified Communications, explains the difference between Cisco's Call Manager Express & Call Manager.

This week we'll review the IPv4 Address Classes including subnet masks, examples of Class C, Class B, and Class A subnet masks, and planning IPv4 addresses.

Both technologies, Ethernet and FC, satisfied the two conditions at that time, but there was a catch. Read more. 

In the previous post, we discussed the need for VXLAN in the cloud along with the issues it solves. In this post, we will focus more on how VXLAN works.

Global Knowledge Course Director and Lab Topology Architect Joey DeWiele, a specialist in Unified Communications, explains QoS.

Configuring a wireless lab for study and testing capabilities is a bit more involved than you might think at first glance. Most of the requirements take place on the management devices, but the underlying switch infrastructure requires some preparations as well. The tasks involved are as follows:

Anyone who’s managed switches over the years knows that the Spanning-tree protocol (STP) is both the best and worst thing to ever happen to the data center at layer 2 of the OSI model. On the plus side, the Spanning-tree protocol is what first allowed us to create redundant paths within our switching infrastructure, making our data center much more resilient to outages than ever before. Anyone who’s experienced a “broadcast storm” knows the full value of Spanning-tree in the traditional switching environment. We’ve also seen many improvements in Spanning-tree over the years to make it work faster and more efficiently (i.e. Rapid Spanning-tree, Bridge Assurance, and many others).

Previously, I talked about the logical and physical steps to building a basic certification lab, concentrating mostly on the CCENT/CCNA Routing and Switching level. Once you have that set of certifications under your belt, there are several options for specialization. Each of these advanced technology tracks serve as methods of enhancing your professional skill set as follows:

The Cisco UCS is truly a “unified” architecture that integrates three major datacenter technologies into a single, coherent system: Computing Network Storage Instead of being simply the next generation of blade servers, the Cisco UCS is an innova­tive architecture designed from scratch to be highly scalable, efficient, and powerful with one-third less infrastructure than traditional blade servers.

The official Cisco CCNP Security FIREWALL training course (as well as other documentation) recommends enabling the inspection of the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), even though it’s disabled by default. The image below displays the recommended practice as configured in ASDM, but the curious student might wonder what the unchecked “ICMP Error” box is. That’s what I’ll focus on in this post.