Look at its popularity it was a right move by Cisco Systems to introduce the Cisco CCT Telepresence Certification, which focuses on the on the skills required for onsite support and maintenance of Cisco TelePresence Systems. Technicians in this area must be able to identify Cisco TelePresence models, accessories, cabling, and interfaces; understand the Cisco TelePresence operating modes and identify commonly found software; and be able to use the Cisco Command Line Interface (CLI) to connect and service products and make basic Cisco TelePresence system adjustments.

The only prerequisite for Cisco CCT Telepresence Certification is Cisco CCT Routing and Switching.

For further details do check the Cisco Learning Network Website

Personally I welcome the introduction of Cisco CCT Data Center certification, especially after Cisco announced their Nexus 7000, Nexus 5000, and Nexus 2000 Series Switches which are specially designed for Data Centers. Certainly this move by Cisco System empowers the Data Center operators or Technicians to demonstrate the knowledge and ability required for the onsite support and Maintenance of Cisco Data Center Products.

The Cisco CCT Data Center Certification ensures that the certified individual have knowledge of the Cisco Nexus 7000, Nexus 5000, Nexus 2000 and MSD 9000 (SAN Switches) product line along with the basic knowledge of the NX-OS and simple commands required to perform tasks such as password recovery.

In order to be  Cisco CCT Data Center Certified the only prerequisite is to have valid Cisco CCT Routing and Switching Certification.

For further details do check the Cisco Learning Network Website

Currently Cisco Systems are offering three Cisco Certified Technician (CCT) Certifications.

1)      Cisco CCT Routing & Switching certification

2)      Cisco CCT Data Center certification

3)      Cisco CCT TelePresence certification.

The Cisco CCT Routing & Switching certification which certifies that an onsite technician has the required skills and knowledge to work with Cisco Routers and Switches performing task such as troubleshooting, repairs, hot-swap of specific components, and create TAC tickets as required. The Cisco CCT Routing and Switching certification serves as a prerequisite for the Cisco CCT Data Center certification and the Cisco CCT TelePresence certification.

Exams & Recommended Training for Cisco CCT Routing & Switching certification are as follows

In my next post I will talk about Cisco CCT Data Center certification and the Cisco CCT TelePresence certification. It’s a good move from Cisco and for sure this certification is very handy and provides a solid foundation to all those technicians who are aim the sky (CCIE)

The  CCNP Switch 642-813 Official certification guide is an amazing title, which can trust for Switch # 642-813 Exam. The author David Hucaby CCIE 4594 carries an honor of writing many titles for Cisco Press especially when it come to switching he is master.

The  CCNP Switch 642-813 Official certification guide comes with seventeen chapters covering wide range of topics

The first chapter emphasizes on the importance of planning for CCNP Switch# 642-813 Exam. In this chapter Cisco Systems have made very clear what they are anticipating for the CCNP Switching and Routing professional and what skill he/she should possess to be CCNP R & S.

In this chapter the author talks about Cisco’s approach to the life cycle of the Network, it is PPDIOO

Prepare - organizational requirements, strategy, financial justification

Plan - network requirements, gap analysis with existing network infrastructure, project plan

Design- design specification created (used for implement phase)

Implement – network is built, additional components added

Operate – maintaining network health, day-to-day operations

Optimize – proactive management, potential to spir network redesign

Tips for the implementation plan

The implementation plan consists of several phases ( for eg : installation of hardware, IOS check, configurations,-over to production, etc.).  It is important to remember the following steps for each phase:

Description of the step

Reference to design documents

Detailed implementation guidelines

Detailed rollback guidelines in case of failure

Estimated time needed for implementation

When it comes to CCNP Routing and Switch Certification I personally prefer to start with Switch# 642-813 Exam. As switching exam should not be a hard exam for CCNA certified Network Engineer.  The Switch # 642-813 exam tests your skills on following topics.

ü  Network design, implementation, and verification plans

ü  Switch operation and port configuration

ü  VLANs, trunks, and VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP)

ü  Aggregating switch links

ü  Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)

ü  Multilayer switching

ü  Enterprise campus network design

ü  Router and supervisor redundancy

ü  IP telephony

ü  Wireless LANs

ü  Switched network security

Now come the main question what resources you should use to pass the Cisco Switch#642-813 Exam, lot of resources are available, but when it come to self study guides Cisco Press is the leader and they come with pretty helpful titles.

To begin with you can start preparing with CCNP Switch 642-813 Official certification guide which can be easily ordered from Cisco Press watch out for eBook of day deal too who knows you can own the book for just 9.95 dollars.  For non US residents no worries as Cisco Press ships world wide at very competitive shipping cost, seems that they have some deal with FEDEX as for the last four times when I ordered Cisco press titles they charged me 9 dollars for International shipping thru FedEx and it took 4 days to reach me. In upcoming posts I will try to review the CCNP Switch 642-813 Official certification guide in detail so that you folks can get benefited.

This command can give a good idea of the size of the CAM table and how many hosts are using the network.

 From the above example you can notice how many mac address are used by each vlan and how many free mac address are available

A useful command for troubleshooting purpose as well as it’s a part for CCNP Switch 642-813 curriculum.

I am always a great fan of David Hucaby; he comes up with pretty good titles, which can be easily used for achieving Cisco Certifications by self-study. His latest addition to the world of Cisco Certification is CCNP SWITCH 642-813 Official Certification Guide.  Thanks to Cisco Press and David to release this title so soon.

Thanks to Cisco Press and Jamie in especial for making this happen. I don’t believe that I have a CCNP SWITCH 642-813 title with me. As we all know Cisco came up with a new version of CCNP Certification which requires only three exams to pass compared to four in the prevision version of CCNP.

The current CCNP SWITCH 642-813 book is much lighter compared to the CCNP Switch 642-812 book.  It’s divided into 6 parts. I liked the way topics are distributed. This book is written in an easy way it covers all the exam topics and also provides some good troubleshooting steps especially I liked the VTP troubleshooting part.

Pic Courtesy: Cicso Press

A chapter dealing with Securing Switch access is amazing I liked the best practices used for securing Switches. The Author David Hucaby did a commendable job. The CCNP Switch 642-812 title come with 100 practice questions for the CCNP 642-813 exam developed by Cisco Press and delivered by Boson. The CCNP SWITCH 642-813 title is up to date and most of the info referred deals with the latest IOS versions.

Overall this entire book is an excellent source for preparing for Cisco CCNP 642-813 exams, my advice is to buy this book along with CCNP Routing and Switching Quick Reference  book. With these two, you should have everything you need! Best of luck to you all CCNP Certification aspirers.

During base lining or troubleshooting activity you may need to determine out the CPU Utilization of your Cisco router or Switch. While exploring to find out the top 10 ten CPU utilization process in a Cisco router, I discovered the sorted option of the “show processes cpu” command.

The sorted option is really a beneficial option in the “show processes cpu” command which can help you to find out the load of your Cisco router or a Switch over the last 5 seconds, 1 minute and 5 minutes. Starting in IOS 12.2 T, the “show processes cpu history” command gives a nice CPU utilization graph.

At times it is helpful to sort the processes by their percentage of CPU utilization. To do this you can use the show processes cpu sorted command as follows:

Some of the sample output is as follows

…. rest deleted……

If you want to reset the Cisco Aironet 1250 Access Point to factory default settings you have to use “Write erase or erase/all nvram” command, these commands resets the Cisco Aironet 1250 Access Point to factory default settings except the static IP Configured. This feature is really helpful if you reset the Cisco Aironet 1250 Access Point accidentally. Still you will have an option to access Cisco Aironet 1250 Access Point  using a web browser interface.

Mindful thinking from Cisco.