Meraki – Wireless Field Day 2

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Our final presenters of the first day of Wireless Field Day 2 were Meraki. We jumped in the Tech Field Day Token Bus and headed up to San Francisco. A nice drive with lots of interesting sights. We pulled up to the Meraki offices and jumped out ready to see what they had in store.

A quick word about the Meraki offices. Should I ever find myself able to build the perfect office, I think Meraki would be the company I would pattern it after. They have a great “startup” vibe that allows a lot of freedom and collaboration among all the employees. The support department and developers sit just a few feet away from marketing and design. Each floor feels like a great place to work and it looks as though everyone has their own sense of style and fun. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the prodigious amount of snacks available to everyone, from cheese puffs to healthier options like protein bars and almonds. And there may be a kegerator or two.

I went into this presentation knowing little to nothing about Meraki. I had heard the name before and I knew they had some kind of wireless access devices, but beyond that was an unknown. Meraki jumped in quickly with a bit of a history lesson about the founding of the company at MIT with a rooftop campus-wide AP wireless project. I found it quite fascinating that three college kids with some big ideas took what they had learned about deploying rooftop wireless access and created a company around it. Their MIT project formed the core of Meraki.

What Meraki offers from the hardware perspective on the wireless side isn’t nearly as important as they manage it. The real power is in the Cloud Controller software that they use to manage and collect information about the environment. The APs use a small 1 Kbit channel to send information and statistics back to the Meraki cloud that allows for control and reporting. If you have an environment that uses plenty of Meraki gear, the control channel could grow rather large, but the packets are rather small and shouldn’t impact your overall Internet bandwidth and performance.

Speaking of bandwidth, one of the features that caught my attention was the ability of the Cloud Controller software to identify and categorize traffic. If you’ve ever seen Netflow data collected by a tool like Solarwinds, you know that the network has an impressive amount of information that it can share with you. Meraki uses their own identification and fingerprinting tools to help classify the traffic that they see in your network and present it to you in an easy-to-digest format. This helps you to identify bandwidth hogs and top talkers quickly and easily, as George Stefanik found out when we checked the conference room AP and found George pushing it to the limit. You can easily shift focus from an individual user to protocol to find out if there is a lot of undesired traffic, like Bittorrent or peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, either encrypted or unencrypted. You can even choose to create profiles that allow you to restrict the amount of bandwidth that a particular user or device can consume in a given time.

You might say, “That’s great Tom. But what about all the BYOD clients in my office that I can’t manage?” Well, Meraki feels your pain as well. The Cloud Controller software allows you to identify iDevices in the network and do all kinds of interesting things. You can pull a Meraki app down onto the device that gives you visibility into the Mobile Device Management (MDM) APIs that Apple uses to create restrictions. You can turn off applications, push profiles, and even implement things like parental restrictions from a single menu. You can also apply these profiles to a single device or a group of devices. For someone that works in a K-12 education environment, this would be a huge advantage to allow a group of “corporate owned” iPads used in the classroom to be locked down to provide learning resources, while at the same time providing a default profile that can restrict the bandwidth utilization of “non-corporate” devices or even prevent them from connecting entirely.

The skeptic might say, “Fine. They’ve got great stuff for the wireless network. But I’ve still got users out there that have wired-only connections. What good does cloud-based awesomesauce do then?” Well, Meraki thought of that too. They’ve taken their innovative management platform and started moving it horizontally to things like firewalls and even down into switches. The merchant silicon explosion now allows a company like Meraki to provide a reliable hardware platform at a fraction of the cost it would take to fabricate chips and have long research and development cycles. Instead, the can just buy pre-fabbed Broadcom or Atheros chips and let the Cloud Controller do all the work. The common theme among all their various connection points means that you won’t have to concern yourself with being confused by a foreign interface when jumping from AP controller to to firewall. That will make it easy to manage not only for administrators on site or in a central location, but also for anyone that may use it in a managed services type of configuration.

Meraki had a great Oprah Moment with gift bags on the way in containing a Meraki t-shirt, reusable water bottle, pen, keychain/bottle opener combo, and a Meraki MR16. Some nice trinkets to keep on the desk and a really nice trinket to put through it’s paces.

If you’d like to see more about Meraki, you can head over to their website at http://www.meraki.com.  You can also follow them on Twitter as @Meraki.

Tom’s Take

I think Meraki has some great software running the show. It’s intuitive, concise, and provides me with the depth I need to do my job efficiently and completely. The culture of Meraki also lends itself well to a group that is focused on getting a great product out there and showing us the “power of the cloud”. I’m going to give the AP a decent chance to not only prove to me what’s capable with the new fusion of merchant silicon and good-old-fashioned programming know how, but also to harness the ability to deploy them to a multitude of remote sites and manage anything, anywhere, anytime. Meraki may not be for every use case, but for many small to medium businesses in need of connecting remote sites with wired/wireless connectivity while still maintaining ease-of-management, they appear to have a good grasp of things. Also, for anyone interested, the word “meraki” is Greek and has no real direct English translation. The closest translations are either “to do something you love with soul and creativity” or “to set a very elegant table”. While I’m sure that Meraki the company prefers the first definition, they’ve more than earned a place at the Wireless Field Day table.

Wireless Field Day 2 Disclaimer

Meraki was a sponsor of Wireless Field Day 2.  As such, they were responsible for covering a portion of my travel and lodging expenses while attending Wireless Field Day 2. In addition, they provided me with a Meraki t-shirt, MR16 access point, Meraki Camelbak water bottle, and bottle opener key chain  They did not ask for, nor where they promised any kind of consideration in the writing of this review/analysis.  The opinions and analysis provided within are my own and any errors or omissions are mine and mine alone.

Ekahau – Wireless Field Day 2

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The third Wireless Field Day 2 presenter was Ekahau (ek-uh-how).  This was a new company to me, so I was greatly interested to see what they were going to bring to the boardroom table in the San Jose Airport Doubletree.  Ekahau is a company that focuses on two primary areas in wireless – site surveying and real-time location services (RTLS).  The site surveying piece really piques my interest since having a good site survey is crucial to a useful wireless deployment.  I reviewed AirMagnet’s site survey tools at the last Wireless Field Day, so hearing there was another group that has this capability is good.

Ekahau started off with a quick overview of the company.  It was nice to hear from Jussi Kiviniemi, Senior Product Manager, who decided to join us all the way from Finland.  He gave us the background of Ekahau, which is based around deploying RTLS to verticals like healthcare and universities.  This gives them a unique perspective on challenging radio frequency (RF) environments and seems to have driven development of not only location services but their site survey tools instead.

One of the pieces of the Ekahau solution that I really enjoyed was the Ekahau Site Survey for Android Mobile.  Site survey tools for laptops and laptop OSes is nothing new.  But I’ve been informed recently that we are now living in the post-PC world.  This means that I now must have a tablet device in order to perform site surveys, right?  Thankfully, the people over at Ekahau have embraced the tablet form factor for those devices running Android.  The Mobile Site Survey app is currently available in a 1.0 revsion, but the WFD2 delegates got a chance to look at version 2.0 running on a ton of Android devices.  In fact, you can check out which devices are supported by Ekahau’s MSS app here.  Yes, even the Cius.  That’s a pretty impressive amount of supported hardware.  You get the capability of visualizing the areas you are walking through to check AP power and coverage.  That is a killer idea for those that need instant access without worrying about the time needed to boot up and laptop.  You get many of the features of the Ekahau site survey tools in an easy-to-carry form factor.  I was also impressed by the capabilities of the full featured site survey suite.  I especially like the ability to tag maps with a distance reference and wall construction type and let the program crunch all the numbers to help you figure out the best wireless coverage for your area.  That’s something that would come in very handy for me when I’m working on RFPs with no notice and no ability to do a proper site survey.

The other piece of the Ekahau portfolio is real-time location services (RTLS).  I’ve seen some RTLS equipment before from other vendors, and I’ve even experienced it’s use when my children were born.  But seeing it up close and personal was much more interesting.  During the Ekahau presentation, we could hear chirping in the background but I couldn’t make out what it was.  Turns out it was a collection of Ekahau wireless tags that can be attached to almost any surface and used to track equipment via RTLS servers.  The tags also have light sensors that allow you to determine if the tag has been removed from being attached to a surface.  One of the user cases that I never thought of was using the tags to attach to the back of TVs in hospitality or healthcare.  That way, if the TV gets moved from it’s perch or the tag is pulled from the back, appropriate people can be notified immediately.  They can even carry a lanyard-attached notification device at all times, which can scroll the location of the tag sending the alert.  Very cool stuff, and very useful in the verticals I am usually involved in.

Ekahau’s Oprah Moment of Wireless Field Day 2 was a bag containing coffee, a coffee measuring spoon, a coffee cup with the recipe for high-performance wireless on one side and high performance coffee on the other, a collection of dummy Ekahau RTLS tags that we can show off, an Ekahau USB wireless adapter, and a copy of Ekahau Site Survey that will be shipped at a later date.  I’m very interested in trying this product out, so I can’t want until it gets here!

If you’d like to learn more, you can check out their website at http://www.ekahau.com.  You can also follow them on Twitter as @Ekahau.

Tom’s Take

Seeing what Ekahau has to offer in the realm of site surveys was very refreshing.  I don’t often have the time necessary to go out and do a truly complete site survey.  At the same time, I feel bad if I’m trying to just toss something together without at least taking signal strength patterns and contstruction types into account.  With Ekahau’s suite of tools, I can do just that, whether it be from my laptop or from an Android tablet.  I think the next time someone asks me which site survey tools I’d recommend, I will likely point them in the direction of these fine Finns.

Wireless Field Day 2 Disclaimer

Ekahau was a sponsor of Wireless Field Day 2.  As such, they were responsible for covering a portion of my travel and lodging expenses while attending Wireless Field Day 2. In addition, they provided me with a bag containing coffee, a coffee measuring spoon, a coffee cup, a collection of dummy Ekahau RTLS tags, an Ekahau USB wireless adapter, and a copy of Ekahau Site Survey that will be shipped at a later date.  They did not ask for, nor where they promised any kind of consideration in the writing of this review/analysis.  The opinions and analysis provided within are my own and any errors or omissions are mine and mine alone.

MetaGeek – Wireless Field Day 2

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The second session of Wireless Field Day 2 saw us back at the Tech Field Day San Jose Headquarters of the Doubletree to see the Boys from Boise, MetaGeek.  Ryan Woodings (@ryanwoodings) and Trent Cutler (@firemywires) were  presenters at Wireless Field Day 1 and I’ve talked about my love for the story of MetaGeek building their innovations before as well.  I’ve never been disappointed talking to these guys, and I was sure that Wireless Field Day 2 wasn’t going to disappoint.

Compared to the nervousness from WFD1, Ryan and Trent were like old pals for us at WFD2.  We had some laughs at the beginning about things while the guys were getting set up and Sam Clements decided to play his own practical joke.  While Trent was showing us a live packet capture of the wireless frequencies in the room, Sam flipped on his pocket Wi-Fi jammer.  The soft blues and greens of the Wi-Spy interface jumped up to angry reds and filled the screen with a rainbow of bad conditions.  You know you’re in a room full of Wi-Fi nerds when they start gasping at a picture of a packet capture.  Sam’s joke gave us an excellent chance to see the Wi-Spy in action.  The tool is an outstanding way to visualize the airspace in the room and see sources of interference from all types of devices, not just Wi-Fi sources.  We delved into the now familiar interface as well as some recorded packet captures that Trent just loves to share.  As a side note here: Trent was running some advanced code on his machine, and as such it crashed once or twice trying to load packet captures.  He was a little flustered from the application crashes.  Trent (and others reading) – you’ve got nothing to worry about.  If you’re stuff is so cutting edge and cool that it has an occasional issue, I’m cool with that.  I’d rather see you pushing the envelope and having the odd issue.  It’s much more real to me if there’s a bug or two.  Besides, I know you’ll get it fixed.

Once we worked through the Wi-Spy and Channelyzer stuff, we got a chance to see what MetaGeek had been working on in the Boise Skunkworks.  The first was a portable scanner device they called “Sputnik”.  It’s a little server of some kind that has been retrofitted with a Wi-Spy and some antennas.  It’s a great way to get a device into the hands of people for on-site testing.  You can collect data about the airspace in a given area without the need to have a Wi-Spy or Channelyzer installed on a laptop.  They even showed us some packet captures they’d taken at Interop Vegas this year with Sputnik.  I had no idea the Interop show floor was such a hostile RF environment.  We also got to see the work they are doing with Channelyzer on tablets.  Right now, the iPad supports viewing packet captures.  But since there are Android Honeycomb tablets on the market that support full-sized USB ports, MetaGeek has a way to do packet captures from them as well!  Can you imagine handing your Wi-Spy-enabled tablet to an intern to go chase down some interference for you on another campus?  This is a great idea and I’m interested to see where it leads down the road.  Heck, it might have even given me a use case for a non-fruity table device.

We also got one of the first looks at the new packet visualization tool that MetaGeek has been working on, Eye P.A.:

MetaGeek has taken a Wireshark packet capture (.pcap file) and breathed life into it.  No longer must you sit and try to decode headers and decipher payloads.  Instead, you feed your packet capture into Eye P.A. and you let the magic happen.  It reads all the pertinent data and draws a very pretty stacked pie chart to help you visualize things like authentication headers and retransmit packets.  “Cool” doesn’t even begin to describe this tool.  I can now get a big picture view of PCAP files in seconds without needing to spend a lot of time decoding things.  Thanks to MetaGeek, we were all provided a beta copy of Eye P.A. to put through the paces and play with.  I’m actually excited to feed it some packet captures and see what kind of beautiful, nerdy art I can come up with.  Just start calling me Leonardo da Nerd.

One thing that MetaGeek did do toward the end of the presentation that I liked quite a bit was take a few minutes to ask us what we wanted to see from their product.  It’s very easy to sit in an ivory tower and assume that all the features you are cramming into a product are cool and necessary.  It’s something else entirely to solicit feedback from the users and get a feel for where you need to take things.  Especially if it’s going to involve a lot of extra work, like coding Channelyzer for the Mac or releasing inSSIDer for Linux.  I can’t wait to see where MetaGeek is going to take their products in the next year.  Of course, it wouldn’t be MetaGeek without an Oprah Moment as well.  I’m already a huge fan of the Wi-Spy I got last year.  Now, I have another!  MetaGeek gave me a new Wi-Spy DBx as well as the 900 MHz model, a Device Finder antenna, Channelyzer, Channelyzer Lab, and a beta copy of Eye P.A.  They even gave me a snazzy case to put in my laptop bag and carry with me wherever I might roam.  I can’t wait to try out these new toys and maybe even put them in the hands of my junior rock stars to get them interested in wireless interference scanning.

If you’d like to learn more, you can check out their website at http://www.metageek.net.  You can also follow them on Twitter as @MetaGeek.

Tom’s Take

MetaGeek is the best example of everything that is good about Tech Field Day.  A little company from Idaho that wasn’t well known outside of a copy of Engadget articles.  They come out to Wireless Field Day 1 and hit a home run on their first at-bat despite being in the room with some notoriously hard-to-please people.  Eleven months later they come back the seasoned WFD veterans and manage to top themselves.  I hope that WFD has generated a lot of buzz for MetaGeek because I want to see them keep coming back and sharing with us.  They’re a great group to talk to and they love to have fun.  If anyone deserves to thrive in the wireless industry, it’s the Boise Boys of MetaGeek.

As a special bonus, here’s the WFD 2 Day 1 wrap up video showcasing Trent Cutler’s outakes.  The most genuine video ever from Tech Field Day, and my new favorite.

Wireless Field Day 2 Disclaimer

MetaGeek was a sponsor of Wireless Field Day 2.  As such, they were responsible for covering a portion of my travel and lodging expenses while attending Wireless Field Day 2. In addition, they provided me a Wi-Spy DBx, a Wi-Spy 900 MHz model, a Device Finder antenna, Channelyzer, Channelyzer Lab, a beta copy of the Eye P.A packet capture visualization tool, and a carrying pouch containing all of the above equipment.  They did not ask for, nor where they promised any kind of consideration in the writing of this review/analysis.  The opinions and analysis provided within are my own and any errors or omissions are mine and mine alone.

Aerohive – Wireless Field Day 2

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We kicked off Wireless Field Day 2 with a visit to the Aerohive offices.  Since my first interaction with these folks, I’ve been very impressed by their dedication to the wireless industry.  I had to laugh when I realized how many Aerohivers I follow on Twitter.  They’ve also done a great job of keeping in touch with me during the past year to let me know about new product launches, such as the BR100 branch router.

Aerohive was waiting for us with a smile and a handshake from the very start.  The never-shy Devin Akin (@DevinAkin) welcomed us all to the Aerohive offices while we descended on the breakfast we were going to need to fuel the Tech Field Day “Firehose of Information”™.  I must take a second here to highlight one of the best puns I’ve seen in a very long time:

#Brownies? Well played, Jeni. Well played.

Once settled with food, we were invited to take a shot of the Devinator’s favorite liquid substance, Diet Peach Tea Snapple, which I should probably start referring to as “Aerohive Kool-Aid”  Our first presenter was Matthew Gast (@MatthewSGast), one of the chief archtects at Aerohive as well as a member of the 802.11 committees that drive wireless standards.  His presentation was very technical, diving deep into concerns about 802.11n and issues that are already being seen with throughput on controllers today.  This segued into the future of Wi-Fi, 802.11ac Gigabit Wireless, and the impact that Aerohive’s design philosophies have on the increased capabilities that wireless devices will have in the near term once 802.11ac sees wider adoption.  Matthew really cranked up the Nerd Meter on this one, and I thank him for letting us get our hands dirty with all the talk about layer 1 discussion, which is probably one of the most neglected layers of the OSI model when it comes right down to it.

After Matthew finished melting my brain, we moved on to the newest Aerohive product, the BR100 branch router.  Aerohive had given me a briefing on this device before, so much of it was a review.  I like the form factor of the BR100, especially for remote offices or teleworkers that don’t need anything more fancy that simple connectivity.  My personal use case would be something along the lines of having it available for trips to allow secure wireless connectivity in my hotel room without the need to rely on the hotel’s often-unstable wireless solution.  We went through some more particulars of the device, mostly around the new options enabled by the additions to the Aerohive HiveManager interface that allow networking configuration on top of the wireless configuration options.

As the live demo was readied, we got hit with our Aerohive Oprah Moment – chocolate covered bacon!  I must say that this was a first for me as a bacon fan.  The hog parts were high quality, and the chocolate added a sweet compliment.  I doubt it’s something I’m going to eat every day though.  Thanks Aerohive for giving me the opportunity (and the extra cholesterol).  We also got an Aerohive backpack filled with goodies.  An Aerohive water bottle, notepad and pen set, and…a BR100!  Yes, I now have a little Aerohive branch router to try out.  I plan on putting this little guy through his paces.  The unexpected Oprah moments really help me get a chance to evaluate the equipment.

The 15 minute, 15 branch deployment demo from an iPad was pretty impressive.  The ability to have no restriction on the configuration device interface is a welcome change from the Java/Flash/client restrictions from other vendors, and it appears to be becoming a drive in the industry to provide that kind of flexibility.  A word of caution, however, to those thinking of doing live demos at presentations or other events:  Be sure to keep your audience engaged and riveted on the demo.  It’s very easy to lose your audience with demos.  Not that Aerohive did, but I noticed we were getting a little restless toward the end.

The restlessness seemed to trigger the Devinator’s Oprah Gland again, because he announced that we had reached the end of the presentation and that it was time to award the coveted Gregor Awards.  We didn’t know it, but Gregor Vučajnk (@GregorVucajnk) had been monitoring the #WFD2 hashtag during the Aerohive presentation and handed out the awards for the best tweeters.  Somehow, I managed to win!  I guess the extra snark I packed in my carry-on helped my out on this one.  I got an Aerohive AP 350 for causing so much trouble.  This impressive piece of hardware is going to get a great workout both at home and the office, as I now have my own “hive” of APs to test and play around with.

If you’d like to learn more, you can check out their website at http://www.aerohive.com.  You can also follow them on Twitter as @Aerohive.

Tom’s Take

Overall, Aerohive was a great start to Wireless Field Day 2.  I enjoyed the interaction with Matthew Gast and the ability to pick his brain about the nerd knobs of wireless.  While the information about the BR100 wasn’t necessarily new, I think this speaks volumes about Aerohive’s ability to keep bloggers and technical people in the loop about new developments and keep their products fresh in our minds.  While the Oprah Moments are never a required part of Tech Field Day, it’s nice to see that companies like Aerohive believe so strongly in their products that they are willing to put a few out there in the hands of people that will pick them apart and tell you the good and bad without reservation.  That’s a lot of confidence, folks.  Something that I’ve never sensed that Aerohive is short on.  Keep up the good work, Aerohive.  And keep drinking that Diet Peach Tea Snapple Aerohive Kool-Aid.

Wireless Field Day 2 Disclaimer

Aerohive was a sponsor of Wireless Field Day 2.  As such, they were responsible for covering a portion of my travel and lodging expenses while attending Wireless Field Day 2. In addition, they provided me with an Aerohive backpack, water bottle, pen and notepad set, an Aerohive BR100 evaluation unit, and an Aerohive AP 350 evaluation unit.  They did not ask for, nor where they promised any kind of consideration in the writing of this review/analysis.  The opinions and analysis provided within are my own and any errors or omissions are mine and mine alone.

CCIE Numbers Skyrocket – Red Alert?

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Congratulations to Chris Martin, CCIE# 34310, according to IPExpert’s Successful Candidates page.  Thanks to Windows Calculator and my non-binary math skills, that means we’ve had 5,000 new numbers since my pass back in June.  That’s not counting the repeat passes that keep the same number.  The new numbers have been skyrocketing in the last 3 months, shooting up over 2,000 since Blake Krone passed his lab at the end of October.

I’ve heard a lot of interesting theories in the past couple of weeks about why the numbers are shooting up so quickly.  Some attribute it to the official Cisco 360 training program churning out candidates left and right.  There are also those that believe there is something hinkey is going on with the numbering scheme.  Is Cisco pre-allocating numbers to each lab seat every day and then discarding them if the lab isn’t passed?  Are they counting by even numbers now?  Is the numbering now logarithmic?  Add in the recent troubles that Marc La Porte has had with Cisco and his unofficial CCIE Hall of Fame Webpage and the conspiracy theories started spreading like wildfire.  Why is Cisco trying to take down the page?  Are they trying to hide something?

After listening to all the theories and rumors and some of the more outlandish theories that I didn’t even bother to put down, I keep thinking back to a conversation that I had with Terry Slattery back at Cisco Live 2011.  Being the fanboy that I am, I had a chance to ask Terry what he thought about the CCIE numbers climbing ever so higher.  Some of the thoughts he shared with me were rather intriguing and got me to thinking about things in a light that I hadn’t really considered before.  With the acceleration of the new numbers being spit out, I think now more than ever that Terry might have been on to something.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that there isn’t anything funny going on with the numbers.  Let’s also assume that there isn’t rampant cheating going on, as some have suggested to me.  That means that we have a large number of people taking and passing the lab.  But we aren’t hearing about them.  They don’t have blogs or spend time on Groupstudy or post success stories on LinkedIn.  There isn’t any information about them out there.  Almost as if they didn’t really have a big presence on the Internet.  As if they weren’t really looking to market their skills to others and instead were either already at jobs that required the CCIE or had one lined up and ready to go.  Where would such a thing be possible?

China.

Stop and think about it for a minute.  According to Cisco, China is seeing explosive growth in networking, everything ranging from power systems to survellience.  They’re ramping up and infrastructure that’s going to need to support over a billion people all looking to get connected somehow.  China is leading the way in deploying IPv6 internally as a way to alleviate the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses.  Ask yourself then: Where are they getting all these engineers?  How many of your friends and colleagues are flying to China to work on these massive projects?  I’m guessing hardly any.  Why’s that?  Where is the supply coming from to meet this massive demand?

I believe that there are sponsored learning facilities inside China that are essentially functioning like advanced technology vocational technology centers in an effort to train a workforce to go out and assume the roles needed to build and maintain advanced networking and computing infrastructures.  That way, they don’t need to sort out all the details of arranging for a large number of visas to allow foreign engineers to come and work for months at a time.  They also don’t have to worry about bad press from said foreign engineers coming back home and discussing things like the Internet filtering policies.  Instead, they can focus on creating a highly-skilled group of workers to go out and tackle these huge projects.  Because these facilities are likely sponsored or run by the government, profit is of less concern than results.  And if you have a populace that is willing to clamor toward a job that doesn’t involve manual labor or other undesirable work, you would have a motivated pool of talent to pick from.  Taking into account the mind-bending numbers of people available for these jobs, passing even 1,000 extra CCIEs into the global pool is a blip on the radar for China.

One other thing that I’ve mentioned before lends credence to the Chinese CCIE theory in my mind.  Remember those dastardly Open Ended Questions that I hated so much?  Guess which testing facility instituted the in-person interview process that led to the OEQs before the new troubleshooting section?  That’s right, Beijing.  I’m not accusing anyone of wrongdoing.  But the fact that the OEQ program originated there means they must have had a very high pass rate they were suspect of in the first place.  What if the pass rate is still legitimately high even with the new safeguards against impropriety?  Since Cisco doesn’t release numbers on pass rate per lab, I guess we’ll never know.

Tom’s Take

At this rate, we’re looking at seeing CCIE 40,000 before the end of the year.  That’s really going to hit home for people if it took almost 3 years to go from 20,000 to 30,000 and then only takes a year to climb up to 40,000.  I don’t like to think about the idea that lab cheating is so rampant that Cisco has given up trying to protect the value of the CCIE.  Quite the contrary, I’ve heard rumors that the difficulty of the lab is as strong as ever and people are working as hard as they can to get their digits.  To me, that says there is a large contingent of people passing the lab and not talking about it, either by their own choice or the choice of someone above them.  And since we in the U.S. aren’t seeing the workforce flooded with new CCIEs daily, that must mean those passing are someone other than the U.S. (or Europe).  Add in the fact that there aren’t many network rock stars studying Mandarin or watching Ni How Kai-Lan and I am guessing that means that many of our new unknown CCIE brethren are from the Orient.  No crazy conspiracies or funny math.  Just a group of dedicated people doing their best to make it in the world.

Clarification On Comment Policy

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Before I get into the Wireless Field Day 2 posts coming up next week, I wanted to take a second and clarify the commenting policy I have on my blog.  That way there isn’t any confusion about comment approvals and such.

I have a pretty open policy when it comes to commenting.  If you take the time to post a comment, I will usually approve it.  I respect the opinions of those that read my blog and welcome any and all feedback.  If a particular post inspires you enough for you to take the time to put keyboard to phosphors and create a response, it is my duty as a blogger to make sure that your voice is heard.  It doesn’t matter if your opinion is different that mine or  if you are correcting misinformation.  I will publish all comments in my queue.  There are two exceptions, however:

1.  Spam – I detest spam comments with the fury of a thousand fiery suns.  I don’t need magic pills, Free*** devices (where *** is a ton of crap restrictions and offer signups) or SEO tips, thank you very much.  I have managed my blog so far without your help kind marketing people of the underbelly of the Internet.  I think I’ll make it a few more posts without you as well.  Comments that are definitely spam are approved to /dev/null and forgotten.  I will usually err on the side of caution when it comes to non-obvious comments.  I also go through the spam folder regularly and rescue non-spam comments.  I do see every one of them at some point, so the bad stuff is really bad stuff in my mind, not just a sorting algorithm.

2.  Hateful Comments – I don’t mind a good discussion, even a heated one.  Hell, I’ve even made a couple of pointed comments myself.  But, there has to be a point to the pointedness.  If you disagree with a particular position and can elucidate that point, even with some harsh or off-color language, I’ll likely approve your point of view.  If your comment is nothing more than “F*** off and die you stupid a**h***!!!!!111!!!”, I will delete it.  That comment adds nothing to the discussion and only seeks to inflame people into being dragged down to a low level of name calling.  When in doubt, remember that even during the height of the American Civil War, when states were shooting at each other, the members of Congress still referred to each other as “The Distinguished Gentlemen from […]” even as they were yelling obscenities.  A little decorum goes a long way to ensuring your voice is heard, even if it is a bit antagonistic.

With that said, there are times when things slip through or are taken out of context.  While I approve every comment without (much) reservation, I also feel it is my duty to leave comments up and not delete them out of spite.  I will, however, agree to delete a comment should the commentor contact me with the request to remove a specific comment.  I want to be sure that the opinions and positions expressed are accurate for all represented parties.  In the event that a comment reply chain spirals out of control, I reserve the right to remove comments of both parties back to the point where the flaming started.  I’ll leave the original comments unless otherwise asked to remove them.

I’m not a journalist.  I’m not a celebrity blogger.  I’m just some random nerdy guy with a keyboard and some thoughts that I want to share.  Many of you readers out there want to share your thoughts on my thoughts as well.  This post just ensures that we’re all on the same page when it comes to what gets approved and what doesn’t.

Mythbusters – Tech Field Day Edition

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Minimalist Mythbusters - Image by Joey Vestal

On today’s episode of Mythbusters, we look at Tech Field Day.  The brainchild of Gestalt IT and Stephen Foskett, Tech Field Day gathers technical bloggers from all over the world and puts them in front of vendors for 2-4 hours at a time.  Far from a normal presentation, the delegate bloggers get to ask tough questions and hear real answers about capabilities and concerns.  In this episode, we will look at three myths commonly heard about Tech Field Day to see if they hold water.  Remember, we don’t just tell the myths.  We put them to the test.

Myth 1 – Tech Field Day Delegates Are Paid Vendor Shills

The number one most-repeated myth about Tech Field Day (TFD) by far.  There are many that believe that the TFD delegates are simply brought to a vendor’s office and told what to write.  The delegates are merely supposed to regurgitate the party line and “kiss up” to those providing funding for the trip.  Supposedly, delegate’s posts must be approved by company PR before going up and being advertised to death to reinforce vendor PR.

Let’s look at this one.  Firstly, the delegates aren’t paid.  Yes, we have our travel and lodging costs taken care of by the vendors by way of Gestalt IT.  But we don’t get a dime to come.  In fact, some delegates must use vacation or personal days to attend.  We get a good meal or a nice hotel bed, not a paycheck from Vendor X.  It’s not all that uncommon for vendors to do this kind of thing for PR people and other types of bloggers.  Would it make a difference if the delegates all paid their own way?  Probably not.  That’s because we aren’t shilling for the vendors.  Delegates attending TFD are under no obligation to write only good things about the presenting sponsor companies.  In fact, we’re under no obligation to write about anyone at all.  I never wrote a post about Embrane, the embargoed presenter from Network Field Day 2.  Why?  Because I didn’t understand the technology well enough to do it justice.  Just because they provided a portion of our meals and hotel room didn’t make me an indentured servant required to regurgitate platitudes about them.  They do have a great product that has generated a lot of buzz in the industry.  But I doubt I’ll get around to writing that post any time soon.  You don’t even need to be a blogger to attend.  There are delegates that have attended without any blog to their name. It just happens that the majority are known in the industry by their blogs.  I’ve talked about my independence feelings before.  You know that I have no compunction about telling things like I see them.  My Infoblox review from TFD 5 was all that glowing.  My Cisco review from Wireless Field Day 1 was critical.  Coming from a CCIE, you figure that if I was going to shill for anyone, it’d be Cisco.  But I don’t.  And neither does anyone else as far as I know.  There are plenty of firms out there that will write whatever they are told for far less than it costs to fly people to San Jose (or wherever).  TFD delegates tell the truth about what they see and feel.  That’s no myth.

Myth 1 – BUSTED

Myth 2 – TFD Delegates Only Come To Get Free Stuff

TFD delegates supposedly show up with hat in hand to get vendor handouts and other free stuff.  They expect to get free items from every vendor and only write good things about those they give them the best stuff.

Um, what?  Really?  I started hearing this after Wireless Field Day 1.  Why?  Because a couple of the wireless vendors went out of their way and gave us evaluation units to test with.  I was especially called out because I won an AirCheck unit from Fluke Networks.  By the way, I gave that very same AirCheck away at the delegate dinner during Wireless Field Day 2.  I hope Matthew Norwood (@matthewnorwood) gets more use from it that I did, and I trust that he won’t write nice things about me simply because I gave him something.  Yes, it’s a fact that vendors at both Wireless Field Day events have given away products to the delegates.  Yes, some vendors in the past have given away discounts codes or products.  Guess what?  That’s not the reason I go to Tech Field Day every chance I get.  Sure, it’s nice to get your hands on equipment and put it through its paces.  What about all the other companies that never give us anything other than a pen and notepad?  Did they deserve a bad review for being cheapskates?  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Wireless companies are a bit of a deviation from the norm, since their equipment is all small and easily transported in a carry-on bag.  It’s also fairly inexpensive (overall) for them to give away a $100 access point in order to let us review them and generate good blog posts about the equipment.  How exactly would I transport a Nexus 7k switch?  Would I have to check a Palo Alto firewall or could I put it in the over head bin?  Some companies don’t lend themselves to having easy-to-provide evaluation equipment.  But even if they did, giveaways are not a requirement of Tech Field Day.  In fact, most of the time they happen without the knowledge of the event coordinators.  But in the end, you should ask yourself a question about the delegates receiving evaluation equipment.  Would you rather we not get anything to test out and put through its paces and then write about it?  Or would you rather see us trying out best to break something and really give it a good evaluation before talking about it?

Myth 2 – BUSTED

Myth #3 – The Same People Go To Tech Field Day Each Time

You have to be one of the “cool kids” to get to go to Tech Field Day.  The list isn’t really chosen democratically but instead the delegates are all just friends that get invited over and over again.  The organizers are afraid to hear new voices and inherently distrust those that offer opinions different than the party line.

I’m going to use strong language this one time – this is a bunch of bullshit.  There is no magical list of people that are “friends” and get to go every time.  And remember, that statement is coming from someone that has been to four out of the last six Tech Field Day events.  Every delegate is evaluated on their own merits and voted upon by the Tech Field Day community.  Why?  Because we evaluate technical ability as well as interaction capacity.  There are people in this world that are insanely smart and afraid to ask questions.  There are wonderfully social people that don’t have a lick of technical sense (these people tend to end up in management).  Tech Field Day is about bringing in people that can comprehend Matthew Gast from Aerohive or Victor Shtrom from Ruckus when they start talking about a deep wireless rabbit hole.  Those same people also need to be able to take what they’ve learned and put it down for everyone to see.  That’s why we called the Tech Field Day attendees “delegates”.  We stand as representatives for those in the technical community.  We take questions from interested parties and forward them on to those that can answer them.  We don’t shy away from being tough.  Ask yourself a question: How many blogs do you read?  Then ask yourself how often you read blogs from new bloggers.  Once a week?  Once every six months?  Never?  Blogging isn’t for everyone.  Blogs get abandoned every day.  People get busy and don’t post.  They lose their passion for the subject.  They just give up because they have no readers.  So the people that do the most blogging and stick around tend to get the majority of the attention. People like Ivan Pepelnjak or Greg Ferro or Brad Casemore.  You don’t have to agree with everything they say but you do have to admit that these folks have staying power.  So, when it comes time for the vendors to start talking to people, naturally they want to talk to the people that the industry reads.  That’s why it seems the same people get asked to come back to Tech Field Day each time.  We try to add new blood all the time.  People like Blake Krone and Derick Winkworth.  But, the vendors also get a say in things.  They feel uncomfortable when they see a delegate that no one has heard of before.  Would take a chance on being judged by someone that you don’t know?  It’s one thing to go into a TFD event knowing that I’m snarky.  It’s something else entirely to find out that one of the delegates has a pathological hatred of your product and will never be convinced otherwise.  Vendors don’t like taking those kinds of chances.  The regular delegates at TFD events represent a kind of “known quantity” for vendors.  They can predict how we think and what our reaction will be to things.  It’s a reflection of our influence.

Myth 3 – BUSTED

Tom’s Take

For my own part in this, I can kind of explain my attendance at so many events.  I’m a rock star at a very small VAR.  I have to spend a lot of my time learning every technology.  So while I don’t know MPLS as well as Ivan or wireless as well as Andrew von Nagy, I can hold my own in discussions about routing, switching, wireless, security, storage, voice, virtualization, video, or even comic books.  As such, I can fill in pretty much anywhere.  I fill many roles.  I’ll never be the Michael Jordan of any one discipline, but I can be the (somewhat) quiet guy that plays a couple of roles and gets the job done.  At Tech Field Day, I can play the network outside among wireless folks or I can be the firewall guy at a security event.  This speaks to the heart of what Tech Field Day is all about.  When you get different disciplines together to discuss things, you wind up with fun things like Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).  I was even having discussions at WFD2 about routing protocols.  I went from being the utility player to being the expert in short order.  I never want to displace someone from going to Tech Field Day who might be more qualified than me, but I also welcome the chance to see how deep the rabbit hole of these technologies can go and I love the interaction with a great group of people.  I won’t get to go to every Tech Field Day.  The logistics don’t work out and there are great people that will go in front of me to events like Virtualization Field Day and Storage Field Day.  But whenever the folks at Tech Field Day ask me to come, I can’t very well say no.  I owe it to the people that read my blog to learn all I can and dispel as many myths as I can.

Disclaimer

This post has absolutely nothing to do with the Mythbusters televison program.  I watch it and respect the talents and knowledge of the hosts.  And those that get to meet them in person in the VIP section (I hate you Rocky Gregory).

2012, Year of the CCIE Data Center?

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About six months ago, I wrote out my predictions about the rumored CCIE Data Center certification.  I figured it would be a while before we saw anything about it.  In the interim, there are a lot of people out there that are talking about the desire to have a CCIE focused on things like Cisco UCS and Nexus.  People like Tony Bourke are excited and ready to dive head first into the mountain of material that is likely needed to learn all about being an internetworking expert for DC equipment.  Sadly though, I think Tony’s going to have to wait just a bit longer.

I don’t think we’ll see the CCIE Data Center before December of 2012.

DISCLAIMER: These suppositions are all based on my own research and information.  They do not reflect the opinion of any Cisco employee, or the employees of training partners.  This work is mine and mine alone.

Why do I think that?  Several reasons actually.  The first is that there are new tests due for the professional level specialization for Cisco Data Center learning.  The DC Networking Infrastructure Support and Design Specialist certifications are getting new tests in February.  This is probably a refresh of the existing learning core around Nexus switches, as the new tests reference Unified Fabric in the title.  With these new tests imminent, I think Cisco is going to want a little more stability in their mid-tier coursework before they introduce their expert level certification.  By having a stable platform to reference and teach from, it becomes infinitely easier to build a lab.  The CCIE Voice lab has done this for a while now, only supporting versions 4.2 and 7.x, skipping over 5.x and 6.x.  It makes sense that Cisco isn’t going to want to change the lab every time a new Nexus line card comes out, so having a stable reference platform is critical.  And that can only come if you have a stable learning path from beginning to end.  It will take at least 6 months to work out the kinks in the new material.

Speaking of 6 months, that’s a bit of the magic number when it comes to CCIE programs.  All current programs require a 6 month window for notification of major changes, such as blueprints or technology refreshes.  Since we haven’t heard any rumblings of an imminent blueprint change for the CCIE SAN, I doubt we’ll see the CCIE DC any sooner than the end of the year.  From what I’ve been able to gather, the CCIE DC will be an add-on augmentation to the existing CCIE SAN program rather than being a brand new track.  The amount of overlap between DC and SAN would be very large, and the DC core network would likely include SAN switching in the form of MDS, so keeping both tracks alive doesn’t make a lot of sense.  If you start seeing rumors about a blueprint change coming for the CCIE SAN, that’s when you can bet that you are 6-9 months out from the CCIE DC.

One other reason for the delay is that the CCIE Security lab changes still have not gone live yet (as of this writing).  There are a lot of people in limbo right now waiting to see what is changing in the security internetworking expert realm, many more than those currently taking the CCIE SAN track.  CCIE Security is easily the third most popular track behind R&S and SP.  Keeping all those candidates focused and on task is critical to the overall health of the CCIE program.  Cisco tends to focus on one major track at a time when it comes to CCIE revamps, so with all their efforts focused on the security track presently, I doubt they will begin to look at the DC track until the security lab changes are live and working as intended.  Once the final changes to the security lab are implemented, expect a 6-9 month window before the DC lab goes live.

The final reason that I think the DC will wait until the last part of the year is timing.  If you figure that Cisco is aiming for the latter part of the calendar year to implement something, it won’t happen until after August.  Cisco’s fiscal year begins on August 1, so they tend to freeze things for the month of August while they work out things like reassigning personnel and forecasting projections.  September is the first realistic timeframe to look at changes being implemented, but that’s still a bit of a rush given all the other factors that go into creating a new CCIE track.  Especially one with all the moving parts that would be involved in a full data center network implementation.

Tom’s Take

Creating a program that is as sought after as the CCIE Data Center involves a lot of planning.  Implementing this plan is an involved process that will require lots of trial and error to ensure that it lives up to the standards of the CCIE program.  This isn’t something that should be taken lightly.  I expect that we will hear about the changes to the program around the time frame of Cisco Live 2012.  I think that will be the announcement of the beta program and the recruitment of people to try the written test beta.  With a short window between the release of the cut scores and beta testing the lab, I think that it will be a stretch to get the CCIE DC finalized by the end of the year.  Also, given that the labs tend to shut down around Christmas and not open back up until the new year, I doubt that 2012 will be the year of the CCIE DC.  I’ve been known to be wrong before, though.  So long as we don’t suffer from the Mayan Y2K bug, we might be able to get out butts kicked by a DC lab sometime in 2013.  Here’s hoping.

Backdoors By Design

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I was listening to the new No Strings Attached Wireless podcast on my way to work and Andrew von Nagy (@revolutionwifi) and his guests were talking about the new exploit in WiFi Protected Setup (WPS).  Essentially, a hacker can brute force the 8-digit setup PIN in WPS, which was invented in the first place because people needed help figuring out how to setup more secure WiFi at home.  Of course, that got me to thinking about other types of hacks that involve ease-of-use features being exploited.  Ask Sarah Palin about how the password reset functionality in Yahoo mail could be exploited for nefarious purposes.  Talk to Paris Hilton about why not having a PIN on your cell phone’s voice mail account when calling from a known number (i.e. your own phone) is a bad idea when there  are so many caller ID spoofing tools in the wild today.

Security isn’t fun or glamorous.  In the IT world, the security people are pariahs.  We’re the mean people that make you have strong passwords or limit access to certain resources.  Everyone thinks were a bunch of wet blankets.  Why is that exactly?  Why do the security people insist on following procedures or protecting everything with an extra step or two of safety?  Wouldn’t it just be easier if we didn’t have to?

The truth is that security people act the way we do because users have been trying for years to make it easy on themselves.  The issues with WPS highlight how a relatively secure protocol like WPA can be affected by something minor like WPS because we had to make things easy for the users.  We spend an inordinate amount of time taking a carefully constructed security measure and eviscerating it so that users can understand it.  We spend almost zero time educating users about why we should follow these procedures.  At the end of the day, users circumvent them because they don’t understand why they should be followed and complain that they are forced to do so in the first place.

Kevin Mitnick had a great example of this kind of exploitation in his book The Art of Intrusion.  All of the carefully planned security for accessing a facility through the front doors was invalidated because there was a side door into the building for smokers that had no guard or even a secure entrance mechanism.  They even left it propped open most of the time!  Given the chance, people will circumvent security in a heartbeat if it means their jobs are easier to do.  Can you imagine if the US military decided during the Cold War to move the missile launch key systems closer together so that one man could operate them in case the other guy was in the bathroom?  Or what if RSA allowed developers to access the seed code for their token system from a non-secured terminal?  I mean, what would happen if someone accessed the code from a terminal that had been infected with an APT trojan horse?  Oh, wait…

We have been living in the information age for more than a generation now.  We can’t use ignorance as an excuse any longer.  There is no reason why people shouldn’t be educated about proper security and why it’s so important to prevent not only exposure of our information but possible exposure of the information of others as well.  In the same manner, it’s definitely time that was stop coddling users by creating hacking points in technology deemed “too complicated” for them to understand.  The average user has a good grasp of technology.  Why not give them the courtesy of explaining how WPA works and how to set it up on their router?  If we claim that it’s “too hard” to setup or the user interface is too difficult to navigate to setup a WPA key, isn’t that more an indictment of the user interface design than the user’s technical capabilities?

Tom’s Take

I resolve to spend more time educating people and less time making their lives easy.  I resolve to tell people why I’ve forced them to use a regular user account instead of giving them admin privileges.  I promise to spend as much time as it takes with my mom explaining how wireless security works and why she shouldn’t use WPS no matter how easy it seems to be. I look at it just like exercise.  Exercise shouldn’t be easy.  You have to spend time applying yourself to get results.  The same goes for users.  You need to spend some time applying yourself to learn about things in order to have true security.  Creating backdoors and workarounds does nothing but keep those that need to learn ignorant and make those that care spend more time fixing problems than creating solutions.

If you’d like to learn more about the WPS hack, check out Dan Cybulsike’s blog or follow him on twitter (@simplywifi)

Certification Merit Badges

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I had an interesting exchange with a couple of Twitter folks the other day.  Jason Biniewski (@Jason_Biniewski) started it off with this interesting tweet:

http://twitter.com/#!/Jason_Biniewski/statuses/154445884027965440

Jason, Fernando Montenegro (@fsmontenegro) and I engaged in a little back-and-forth about the relative value of certification.  This is something that I do hear from many people, though.  Many employers don’t see the value of certification.  Some supervisors (like Jason’s) don’t think certifications are worth the paper they are printed on.  I have a totally different stance, and not just because of the giant Wall of Shame behind my desk.

Next time you run into someone that doesn’t think certifications hold much value, ask them to show your their diploma.  If this person is a supervisor or management type, they are sure to happily point out their degree from a prestigious organization.  In some cases, more than one.  Guess what?  In my mind, those college degrees are the same as certifications.  I have a bachelor’s degree.  I have a CCIE.  To me, those are very similar.  They both involve a large amount of studying.  Both study programs are fairly regimented to ensure the student gains the proper amount of knowledge to successfully execute upon that knowledge base.  Both are expensive to chase after.  Both are far from easy.  It just so happens that one of those taught me how to be a business leader and database admin and the other taught me how to work on routers and switches.  In the end, for both of them I ended up with a piece of paper that had my name printed on it that I could hang on my wall as a banner to tell everyone what I had accomplished.

One of the smartest men I ever worked with had no college degree and very few certifications.  No A+, no CCIE.  However, he had an instinctive understanding of the way computers worked and was quick to fix most every problem he encountered.  People constantly underestimated him because they didn’t see his diploma hanging on his wall or noticed his Novell/Microsoft/Cisco certifications.  I only made that mistake once.  That was the moment when I started realizing that certifications aren’t a measure of knowledge in and of themselves.  They’re more like merit badges.

I was a Boy Scout back in the day.  I loved pouring over the scouting handbook and picking out all the merit badges I wanted to earn.  You might even say it was an early precursor to what I’m like today.  I found it interesting that I merely needed to demonstrate my knowledge about a subject and the scouting organization would give me a little badge or pin that told everyone I knew how to make a campfire or pitch a tent.  Whenever I encountered another person with that same merit badge, I knew instinctively that person knew as much about the subject as I did.  I didn’t have to wonder if they knew the ins and outs of something they had a badge for.  That’s what certifications do for you.  They give you a little badge you can put on your resume so you can announce to people that you know a certain amount of basic information.  If you are an MCSE, I know you are familiar with Active Directory.  If you are a CCNA, I know you know what a router is.

If these certifications are so great, why would an employer be hesitant to want you to get one?  I did some thinking and asked a few people and I could really only come up with a couple of reasons.  The first involves companies that aren’t focused on things like value-added reselling.  These companies might be manufacturers or law firms or schools.  They don’t resell their IT services to others but instead consume them in-house.  To these organizations, what you know is more important that telling someone what you know.  So long as you are familiar with setting up Exchange or configuring a floating static route, who cares if you took a test to prove it?  These types of companies typically gain little for paying to have someone certified.  They also don’t see the value in the learning process toward certification.  So long as you can do your job effectively, learning more than is needed isn’t necessary.  I would recommend finding ways to prove that certification can reduce costs or provide extra value for the company as an incentive to get funding or time off for study.  Also, don’t underestimate the potential increase in prestige for employing a higher-caliber technical person.  Some companies treat prestige like a currency.

The other major issue with employers when it comes to certification is fear.  This is usually manifested by the idea that the employer doesn’t want you to pass any tests because they are afraid that you’ll jump ship once you’ve become a CCNA/CCNP/CCIE and leave them holding the bill.  Especially in the VAR space, employers become squeamish if they spend a lot time training someone only to have a competitor swoop in and offer a premium to hire that person away.  The competitor gains a highly trained resource for a pittance compared to the time and effort of training them.  If these types of employers do decide to fund your studies, they will typically do things like have you sign a contract for a length of time or agreement to pay back a portion of the training and certification costs if you decide to leave.  These types of things can be hard to combat.  If you aren’t willing to go the route of certification totally on your own, you may have to sign the agreement or otherwise convince your employer of the benefits of certification.  Just ensure that if you do have to sign an agreement that the clock doesn’t reset for every certification passed.  I’ve heard of people that kept re-upping for a new term with every test passed.  The bill to get out of that contract wasn’t pretty.

Tom’s Take

When I first started working for my present employer, the owner interviewed me and said, “Boy, I’m going to put a quarter of a million dollars into training you to be the best.” Almost eight years later when I passed my CCIE, I asked him if he’d hit his quarter of a million yet. He laughed and replied, “Long ago, son.  And it has been worth every penny.”  I’m fortunate that I get to work with people that understand the value of certifications.  It also helps that I work for a VAR that wants to show them off and use them for competitive advantage in the market.

The next time someone tells you that certifications are a waste of time, ask them where they graduated from, especially if it’s a college.  Explain to them that a certification isn’t any different than a college degree and confers a similar level of knowledge, albeit a little more focused on one area than a general education degree.  Then remind them that the diploma hanging on their wall is worth the same amount at the paper your certification is printed on.  Just don’t ask them how much they payed for their paper.  I’m sure you got a better deal on yours.