Etherealmind’s Favourite Posts of 2008

I have been going over the year and picked out some of my personal favourites as well as some of the most popular posts this year. Read more

Mediatemple Causing Intermittent Site Outages

My hosting provider is mediatemple and they are reporting service problems. Apologies if this is affecting you. Please wait a bit and try again. Read more

Review: How Close Was My Top5 on Cisco’s Viral Marketing for ASR9000

Couple of weeks ago I posted Top 5 things about Cisco’s Viral Marketing announcement. How did I do ? Read more

Number 1 Reason to Avoid Using the Cisco Learning Network | Cisco Study Blog

Brandon makes a good point about Cisco intervention in the Cisco Learning Network. In general, Cisco employees have a tendency to overstep the mark and can be rather taken with their imagined importance. They also get very defensive about looking after the ‘company image’ or their public profile.

Number 1 Reason to avoid using the Cisco Learning Network | Cisco Study Blog: “”

Most likely this is just one person who needs a slap on the wrist by their manager but it is a symptom of a greater sickness going on inside Cisco. With the economic downturn, the pressure to do things better will increase from managers who overcommitted to budget targets six months ago. Read this article at Network World on a Cisco employee acting poorly, I have certainly seen this, and this includes the TAC as well as AS :

Cisco’s Arrogance Bugs Me Again

Expect more of this crap in the future. It ain’t going away,

Cisco to Release a New Router for Metro Networks - GigaOM

Ah, the senseless futility of viral marketing by Cisco. Om Malik makes a few calls and finds out that the upcoming Cisco announcement is a new Metro router to improve Service Provider edge connectivity.

And Cisco thought that a ‘viral marketing’ campaign would generate interest ? In a Metro router ? WTF ?

Once upon a time, Cisco sold stuff. Now we have marketing and its not the same.

A metro router. marketing ? jeez.

Cisco to Release a New Router for Metro Networks - GigaOM: “”

CCIE Candidate:What Roles Do Security Teams Play vs. Infrastructure Teams?

Keith Tokash opens up a topic close to my own heart, and one that I am working on right now. Go there and add comments so that my job is easier
I believe that there should be a Security Design team and a Security Audit team. All security operations should be performed by Network Operations.

The SecAudit team should consists on consulting type people who love writing policies, working with management and reviewing the work that has been delivered matches the plan and design. This includes reviewing Securty Operations (which is most likely delivered by Network Operations). They do not perform hands on work, or any day to day activities.

The SecDes team are used to reference and validate all Security changes against the reference designs derived from Policy. They are Network Engineers with a specialisation in Security and can assess impact on Network Integrity.

Leave comments if you want me to expound more on this topic.

CCIE Candidate - What Roles Do Security Teams Play vs. Infrastructure Teams?: “”

No More Handbags at Dawn. Lets Get to Work.

Looks like Brian Dennis may have realised that handbags at dawn isn’t a good look.

Good. Lets get down to business,

For now, Internetwork Expert has a good program and a defined future to compete with Cisco 360 study offering and is probably superior (given that few people seem to publicly recommend NetMasterClass). For a brilliant article on product comparison go immediately to Brandon Carrol’s outstanding review.

Vendor Wars? - CCIE Blog: “”

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Openness Is Not Enough

Nick Carr is so clever:

“But in this early stage of the cloud’s development, openness means little to the buyer (or user). The buyers, particularly those in big companies, are nervous about the cloud even as they are becoming increasingly eager to reap the benefits the cloud can provide. What they care about right now is security, reliability, features, compatibility with their existing systems and applications, ease of adoption, stability of the vendor, and other practical concerns. “

Oh, OK. Did he miss anything ? In other words cloud computing is NOT meeting any of the the MINIMUM requirements for companies.

Not much to worry about then. Cloud Computing is already here ? What a load of tosh.

Cloud computing is much,much further away than anyone thinks.

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Openness is not enough: “”

The Difference Between Network Managers and Server Managers - Pictorial

As I am preparing the presentation to management on the proposed Cloud Computing infrastructure as a result of the consultation, I am put together the following pictorial representation of the data centre perceived scope for Network and Server Managers.

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The Difference Between Network and Server Engineers - Pictorial

I have been planning cloud computing systems recently, and had many long discussions with different teams. I have prepared the following diagram to show the perceptual difference between how each team perceives the data centre. Read more