Cisco overhauls networking certification to address skills shortage

Cisco has announced the addition of a new entry-level certification,
CCENT (Cisco Certified
Entry Network Technician), along with enhancements to the
popular Cisco CCNA associate-level certification.

Simultaneously, Cisco also plans to localise both the curricula and
certification exams to meet the worldwide demand for networking skills. Analyst IDC is predicting as much as a 40% gap between
the demand and supply of technical networking skills by 2012. To address these
needs, Cisco is making significant investments in its education and
certification programs to equip more people for successful careers in networking.

CCENT presents a new point of entry to those just beginning to build a career
in networking. As an optional stepping-stone to CCNA, CCENT validates the skills
required to successfully install and verify basic networks – a requirement for
most entry-level network support positions. At the same time, Cisco's
foundational CCNA curriculum has been revised to include a greater breadth of
networking topics and more focus on performance-based skills to differentiate
Cisco certified applicants in the IT job market. The CCNA curriculum will be
released in English on 26 July 2007, and the exams will be released in English
on 1 August 2007. Additional languages will be announced as translation plans
are finalised.

Wim Elfrink, chief globalisation officer and senior vice-president of
customer advocacy at Cisco, said, "We are dedicated to leading worldwide development
of the right technical expertise, in the right place and at the right time.

“The introduction of CCENT and localisation plans for our foundational
curricula, underscore our commitment to accelerate the learning curve for
technical talent across the globe," he said.

Laying the groundwork for more rigorous certification, CCENT validates the
knowledge and skills needed to configure and verify small routed and switched
networks, including the ability to configure IP addressing, implement basic
security measures and understand the concepts of wireless networking.

A comprehensive understanding of networking fundamentals is the focus of CCNA,
said Cisco.

Certification at this level validates the knowledge and skills required to
install, operate and troubleshoot a small to medium-sized routed and switched
network, including the ability to implement and troubleshoot protocols to manage
addressing and authentication.

Students must also be able to establish and troubleshoot connections to
service providers over a wide-area network.

The CCNA Prep Center is
available to anyone with a Cisco.com login to help candidates prepare for the
CCENT and CCNA exams.

Configure static NAT for inbound connections

How to configure Network Address Translation (NAT) so that computers on the Internet could access his internal Web and mail server through his Cisco router. This requires configuring a static NAT translation between the dedicated public IP address and the dedicated private IP address. Here’s how to do it.

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Cisco acquires e-mail security company

Cisco Systems is moving quickly to integrate technology it's gaining from buying e-mail security firm IronPort Systems.

Company officials said in interviews here about the US$850 million IronPort acquisition, which closed today, that e-mail and Web site reputation datastreams from IronPort appliances will be fed to Cisco firewalls by the end of this year, and then be extended to the company's routers, switches and other devices in 2008.

The service checks the source of e-mail and Web sites embedded in e-mail against a database of suspicious sites IronPort calls SendBase.

In addition, early next year IronPort's Layer 4 traffic monitor technology, which watches for spyware signatures, will also be added first to Cisco firewalls in the first quarter of next year and then to other products.

The capabilities should be able to pushed as a software upgrade to users of existing Cisco products, said Richard Palmer, senior vice-president and general manager of the company's security technology group, under which IronPort will operate as a separate business unit.

In buying IronPort, Cisco is expanding its security offerings from managing networks to include spyware and malware data inspection to begin offering what it dubs wide traffic inspection, correlating information from several network devices.

Spirent Communications Selected As Exclusive Test System Provider For Cisco IPTV

The European Advanced Networking Test Center AG (EANTC) selected Spirent testing solutions to analyze Cisco Systems' IPTV infrastructure in a test commissioned by Light Reading.

Spirent’s Global Services team collaborated with EANTC to conduct an independent test of Cisco Systems IPTV infrastructure to verify an end-to-end IPTV and triple-play solution focusing on the network service requirements of broadcast TV and video-on-demand (VOD) applications.

For this event, Spirent supplied Spirent TestCenter, Spirent Video Quality Test System and Spirent GEM Ethernet Network and Impairment Emulator. In addition to test equipment, Spirent provided a three-person engineering support team for the pre-staging and the intense two-week period of formal testing. The Spirent Professional Services team collaborated with EANTC to create the test scripts to run the test. With engineering support and equipment, Spirent offered load generators for emulation of 120 DSLAMs plus 65 service ports (GigE and 10GigE), performed video quality measurements, and conducted impairment generation for the duration of the test.

“IPTV is highly complex and requires a different, more holistic focus in implementation and testing than traditional broadband access technologies,” said Carsten Rossenhövel, managing director of EANTC. “We found that Spirent was a great testing partner for IPTV solutions and support services, and together we put Cisco’s network design under a rigorous test routine.”

Covering four main areas that included quality of service (QoS), massive scalability of broadcast services, high availability of all services and user experience during high network load conditions, this test event exposed the realities of IPTV service deployment and need for thorough testing before the service goes live. Spirent’s test systems enabled EANTC to analyze QoS from the perspective of the user, often referred to as quality of experience (QoE), and by the handling of preferential services by the network including network resource allocation in the case of limited resources. Furthermore, with Spirent TestCenter the test was able to identify small sub-parts-per-million loss in all the data, and to analyze the associated flows in detail, identifying the less than 0.00002 percent packet loss in IPTV multicast service.

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Network Traffic To Grow Up To Six-Fold Annually

The increased use of video and further online collaboration will drive network traffic to an annual growth rate of between 300% and 500% over the next several years, said Cisco Systems Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive John Chambers, who added this is beyond most expectations.

"It's the second phase of the Internet - it will be about collaboration," Chambers said during a keynote address at the NXTcomm telecommunications industry trade show on Tuesday.

Cisco supplies the switching network equipment for government, corporate and carrier customers. But Chambers said he believes the next phase of growth will come from layering services through that network. The executive touted the combination of different services like video and music integrated into various environments such as the car, mobile handset or home.

"It won't be about transport, it'll be about the changing business model," he said, adding that the consumer is now driving demand for new services.

Other services include the expanded use of telepresence, a high-end video conferencing product that many companies are offering.

Touting the increased productivity of collaboration, he cited Cisco's own acquisition history. In November 2005, Cisco closed the acquisition of television cable set-top box maker Scientific Atlanta in 45 days. The company took eight days to close the acquisition of WebEx earlier this year.

On net neutrality, Chambers said he is more concerned with building out the network and considers dividing up the lines and speeds a second priority.

Making your apps faster!

Optimization is a constant worry of network executives who need to make unruly applications -- never designed to run over anything but a high-speed LAN -- perform smoothly on the WAN. These days, network executives need to boost application performance itself, as well as factor in how to optimize storage, encryption and server-to-server technologies, such as XML.

Cisco wants to help by putting everything related to optimization into an intelligent network layer. Then, for example, network executives can deploy optimization services as blades and software add-ons in their existing Cisco gear. The router giant's network-based application-optimization strategy splits along the lines of two product families: Application-delivery networks focus on user-to-application communications (including performance, security and so forth), while the Application Oriented Networking initiative centers on application-to-application communications. George Kurian, general manager for Cisco's application delivery business unit, explains how it all fits together in an interview with Julie Bort, a Network World editor.

Networkworld Interview

Cisco Meshes With Cable

Cisco today announced it is launching the Cisco Cable ServiceMesh solution, the industry’s first integrated, end-to-end wireless architecture designed for cable operators who want to extend indoor Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) to outdoor mesh networks in municipalities, tourism centers, small businesses and universities in North America. This new architecture offers the foundation layer for broadband mobility.

Building on the Cisco Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) architecture, the Cisco Cable ServiceMesh solution is a fully integrated outdoor wireless platform that helps enable operators to quickly deploy a variety of value-added, revenue-generating services via a single network infrastructure. By using the Cisco Cable ServiceMesh solution, cable operators can create new revenue opportunities through the deployment of an outdoor wireless mesh solution that utilizes existing infrastructure to cost-effectively expand their service offerings and their market reach, bringing the Connected Life to customers at home, at work or on the move.

The new Cisco Cable ServiceMesh solution is a comprehensive wireless broadband system comprising:

- Cisco Aironet 1520 Series Lightweight Outdoor Mesh Access Points, a new set of wireless access points with integrated Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) 2.0 cable interfaces used to create metropolitan-scale, outdoor wireless networks, providing access to any Wi-Fi compliant device;

- Cisco Wireless Services Modules, which provide the control, scalability and reliability needed to build highly secure, carrier-grade indoor and outdoor 802.11 wireless networks;

- Cisco Wireless Control System software, an industry-leading platform for wireless local area network (LAN) planning, configuration, management, troubleshooting, and mobility services for the Cisco Cable ServiceMesh solution;

- Cisco Intelligent Services Gateway, which delivers advanced subscriber awareness, resource provisioning and access control capabilities. The
Cisco Intelligent Services gateway also simplifies the creation and speeds the delivery of advanced IP services over Cisco IP NGNs. The Cisco Intelligent Services Gateway has been designed to support both IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and non-IMS based applications;

- Cisco Service Control Engine, a solution that controls packets on a Layer-7 application level while utilizing the existing IP wireless network infrastructure to provide a variety of services;

- Cisco 7600 Series Router, the industry’s leading edge router that delivers robust, high-performance IP/MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) features for a range of service provider edge applications.

This combination makes possible multiple applications, including extending data, voice and video streaming outside the home, police, fire and emergency services, as well as those for city operations, such as remote access to city applications, automated meter reading, and permit verification and compliance.