Fall 2015 Training Update

Fall is upon us in the Northern Hemisphere. The weather is getting cooler in my hometown, so it is time to head down to Central Florida for my next CCDE Practical Bootcamp class :)

Training Update

My next bootcamp class will include two all-new practice exam scenarios! I have been hard at work incorporating feedback regarding my previous practice exams and the notes of my beta tester (Thank you MD!). I am confident I will have them completed in time for class during the week of October 19th. Provided the classroom feedback is positive, I will review them for online students at the next review date (see below). If you are interested in attending my October bootcamp either in person or online, please take a look at the class web page.

The next live review of my CCDE practice exams is scheduled for Saturday October 24th (AmericaTel and MetalWorks) and Saturday October 31st (two new exams -- BrasCom and Canadian Fitness). Both review sessions will begin at 8am Eastern Daylight Savings Time. This is slightly early than prior start times, so returning students will need to adjust their schedules. If you are a new student and want to attend, please register for the sessions via the Online CCDE Practice Exam training page. For those who remember separate Online vs Self-Paced practice exam training, please note that I've combined the registration for the classes. There is no difference in content between the sessions and all students are welcome to attend the Webex recording sessions. Current students should send me an email to get on the Webex invite list.

Professional Update

I have been involved in several new and interesting projects for my primary customer network. WAN encryption, Performance routing enhancements (now IWAN) and IPv6 testing are all on the list or have already been completed. I hope everyone has heard that ARIN has given out its last IPv4 prefixes. If you haven't started with IPv6 in your Enterprise, please do not wait any longer. You can be the hero who saves your organization from getting too far behind the rest of the world :)

Is anyone else deploying IPv6 at an enterprise? I am interested to hear about your approach. My strategy thus far has been to start with VPN, then move on to web hosting. Cisco AnyConnect is a great starting point for IPv6, and I suspect it will be one of the first requirements for IPv6 access. We are now providing IPv4 VPN over IPv6 transport. It works well, although the default behavior of the client appears to be to try IPv4 first, then fallback to a AAAA record for the same DNS entry. I've had to disable IPv4 access on the client side to force AnyConnect to use IPv6 for transport.