Let's say you have one or more IP routes that you don't want appearing in a router's IP routing table. The reason might be for security or for router performance, as a couple of examples. With OSPF, there are three primary ways to accomplish this route filtering:

• Filter a route coming in from another autonomous system, as part of a redistribution configuration.
• Filter a route between areas, using a filter list.
• Filter a route from being installed in an single router's IP routing table, using a distribute list.

This video discusses these three approaches, and it demonstrates the configuration of two of these approaches (because redistribution is a topic unto itself).

Enjoy the video!

Kevin Wallace, CCIEx2 (R/S and Collaboration) #7945

If you’re one of the 200,000+ Cisco customers using a Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) server to support your Cisco IP Phones and soft clients, this blog post is for you. Specifically, Cisco recently introduced their latest version of CUCM, version 12.0, and this post will identify a five of the major changes in this new version.

1. Support for Hybrid Deployments

For the past year or so, I’ve been getting questions from people concerned that CUCM is going away, and that Cisco Unified Communication (UC) customers will gravitate towards Cisco’s cloud-based call management solution, called Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS). To get some answers, at Cisco Live US earlier this year, I asked one of the Cisco UC engineers about their plans. He assured me that Cisco is committed to going forward with both solutions (i.e. their cloud-based solution and their on-premises CUCM solution). He also explained customers don’t have to choose...

The Need to Know MQC in a World of Automation

These days, Quality of Service (QoS) can be configured relatively easy. If we’re using the APIC-EM as a network controller to manage our routers and switches, we can simply point and click our way through the EasyQoS utility and have a very robust QoS configuration applied to our devices. Even at the command line interface (CLI) of a router a switch, we could invoke the power of AutoQoS VoIP (to optimize QoS settings for voice traffic, or (just on routers) AutoQoS for the Enterprise (to discover network traffic patterns and create a customized QoS configuration to reflect our network’s specific characteristics).

However, what if you need to make an adjustment to such dynamically generated QoS settings? If you examine the underpinnings of any of these QoS automation tools, you’ll see they all use the same approach to configure most (of not all) of their QoS settings. This approach is called Modular QoS CLI, or MQC for...

A common question I hear from people just getting into the Cisco world is, “Kevin, what would you do if you were starting from scratch?” Sometimes, that question takes the form of, “Which track (e.g. Collaboration, Route/Switch, etc.) has the biggest job opportunities?”

For years, my response was the same, “If you get really good in any track, there are plenty of opportunities. So, pick the track that’s most interesting to you. After all, you’re going to be spending a lot of time studying that track’s technology. So, you’d better love it!”

While I still believe that advice is sound, I’ve got to admit my answer to that question changed a bit. The reason is, while there is certainly demand for IT professionals in all of Cisco’s certification tracks, a couple of technologies recently leapt to the forefront:

1. Network Programmability
2. Cyber Security

This blog post answers the question of what I would do if I...

The Auto Smartports feature available on Cisco Catalyst switches allows a port to automatically detect that you’ve attached a device it can recognize (e.g. a Cisco IP Phone, wireless access point, video surveillance camera, etc.)

Then, it runs a macro on that port to apply a "best practice configuration," including QoS, STP, and security settings.

This video introduces you to this exciting feature and gives you a configuration demonstration.

For scaling automatic configurations beyond a single switch, check out Cisco’s Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions. In fact, you can sign up for my Free SDN Mini-Course by clicking HERE.

Kevin Wallace, CCIEx2 (R/S and Collaboration) #7945

Some of my blog posts (most of them, in fact) focus on teaching you some technical content or offer career advice. But, sometimes, I just need to share a major milestone with you. That’s what I’m doing in this post (actually, a couple of major milestones), and I hope you can (virtually) celebrate with me.

The first milestone is my 3-year anniversary of being in business full-time as Kevin Wallace Training, LLC. Specifically, on Sept. 26, 2014, I walked away from my 14-year position as an instructor for a Cisco Learning Partner (CLP) to run my own business.

During the past three years, I’ve released a ton of training videos. However, I hadn’t actually taught a live online class, allowing me to interact with participants. That all changed this month, which brings us to the second milestone.

Earlier this week (I’m writing this on 9/15/17), I wrapped up my first live-online training class in about three years. I was given the opportunity to...

Software Defined Networking (SDN) can use a network controller to help orchestrate the monitoring and configuration of multiple network devices, allowing for faster configuration and more scalability. While these controllers have graphic user interfaces (GUIs), allowing them to be individually configured by an administrator, they can also be controlled with programs (typically written in Python).

Fortunately, network administrators don't have to create all of their Python programs from scratch. Instead, they can download sample code (which they can then modify for their needs) from other programmers. They can also share their own code. GitHub is a very popular way to share such code samples. This video will introduce you the the fundamentals of GitHub and show you how to get started with your own free GitHub account.

This video is a sample from my new Fundamentals of Network Programmability course.

You can get more of my FREE network programmability training videos sent to you by...

Before Cisco had a Collaboration track, they had a Voice track. One of the courses in that track’s curriculum was the CVOICE course, and it really got into the configuration of H.323 gateways. I actually loved that course. I write three versions of the CVOICE book for Cisco Press and taught the CVOICE course for many years.

Sadly (for me anyway), the CVOICE course went away when Cisco moved to the Collaboration track. One of the main topics in that CVOICE course was the configuration of H.323 gateways.

Although, H.323 gateways are still touched on in the Collaboration curriculum, it doesn’t receive the attention it used to receive. Yet, it’s still a critical technology to master.

So, this video seeks to demystify how to configure a Cisco IOS router to act as an H.323 gateway. 

Enjoy the video!

Kevin Wallace, CCIEx2 (R/S and Collaboration) #7945

Many people ask me what technology (e.g. route/switch, collaboration, data center, etc.) they should pursue, based on industry demand. For years, my response has been, “There’s demand in all of those areas. Just pick the one you’re most interested in, because you’re going to spend a lot of time studying and working with that technology.” While I still contend that’s sound advice, I’ve got to admit there is one technology forecasted to be disproportionately in demand. That technology is cybersecurity.

It was a recurring theme at Cisco Live this year (Las Vegas, 2017); the demand for cybersecurity professionals is massive. Former Symantec CEO Michael Brown projected 6 million cybersecurity jobs by 2019, with a whopping 1.5 million of those jobs being unfilled. In the United States, the average salary for a cybersecurity professional is $67,000. However, with a few years of experience, cybersecurity professionals in the aerospace, defense,...

A BGP-speaking router, by default, will not advertise an Internal BGP (iBGP) route to an iBGP neighbor. One solution for this issue is to create a full mesh of neighborships within an Autonomous System (AS). However, that approach doesn’t scale well.

A more scalable solution is to use a BGP Route Reflector. That’s the focus of this new video I created for you. You’ll see the issue BGP has with iBGP-learned routes and how to overcome that issue with a BGP Route Reflector configuration.

Enjoy the video!

Kevin

Kevin Wallace, CCIEx2 (R/S and Collaboration) #7945