Why I got back on the ccie wagon!

Well my written had expired, pursuing it (the ccie) was no longer fun -I have had more exciting projects this year- and other areas of my life were not keeping up with the extensive study required to get the ccie lab done.

However: I find that there are now several good, quite good reasons with actual practical application to go back to it. So I re-took the written v4 -twice (I had underestimated and grossed over some topics! assembled an actual lab and I think Im in pretty good form to go for the lab now.

And yes the main motivation is now a job swap or go independent. After this project Im working on (a huge major mobile core redesign/migration from the good old tdm to the IP wonders featureing a no small number of CRS-1's (P) and 7609's (PE)) - throw in multivendor CE's and the fun just never stops. I can only foresee boredom and trouble tickets after this :-( unless something changes within the organization (from structure to compensation policies).

JGitau

African Peering and Interconnection Forum: Unlocking Africa’s Regional Interconnection

The internet society is for 3 days sponsoring a conference :
The African Peering and Interconnection Forum: Unlocking Africa’s Regional Interconnection

Now for most that know me, I started my career working for a startup ISP that has since grown way bigger than I had imagined. I also happen to have been around when we had to technically justify peering and answer questions like what is internet peering, why peer, how does it work etc etc...and finally the KIXP was set up.

Im interestingly caught up in another transformation (IP/Buusiness transformation for a large telco). so see you there...

I moved on quite a bit, but the opportunities to catch up with old friends is always welcome.

http://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/africanforum2010/

registration is still open, slides will be availed and live streaming is available here:
http://wavu.kixp.or.ke:8001/afpif

IM conference Service and Email
================================

(a) Those with jabber clients can join the AfPIF conference room,
afpif@conference.isoc.org.

A list of jabber clients can be found at
http://www.jabber.org/software/clients.shtml

(b) Those without can send their comments and/or queries to
mwangi@isoc.org, karen@isoc.org and morris@isoc.org

Gitau

Cisco SAMI blades....and ASA 5580's

I have worked for the last 3 or so years now with the cisco GGSN/CSG aka CMX (Cisco Mobile Exchange) supporting gsm,gprs and UMTS on the 7613 platform.

The old boxes were getting sort of old and tired, They also have the new ASR5000 (starent acquisition) that I believe to be by far more superior than what they were pushing.

Anyway pending some decisions, cisco being the nice guys they are actually sent some brand new toys for me to test. Please see attached....this is going to be a great week:-) I get to lab up the entire topology and integrate the new toys:-)

**Last three images are the sami blades







I also get to play around with the Cisco ASA 5580 with GTP inspection licence. Now this has been on my wish list for a while now. Swapping out the almost old firewalls for re-deployment will be easy. The fun is mainly in the higher number of supported interfaces and their capacity (10G), the gtp inspection will save our GGSN's quite alot of resources....oh well some photos (yes I opened them up to see what's in there).....

I'll post a review of both next time.....
I have some requests for easy to understand terms when dealing with gsm/gprs/umts mobility....I'll see about that too...Its just so wide I don't know where to start so if you have some ideas please let me know....

New direction?

Every once in a while I remind myself to update this blog. Trouble is most of the material Im working on for the CCIE has been posted somewhere. So apart from having some sort of online diary to keep track of stuff, I rarely see sense in making posts. so I don't. I keep detailed notes though...

I however realize that third world networkers can be about something else. How we do things here. I have been lucky to see/visit other networks for good enough comparisons. I can tell we are lagging behind in some areas .... I also happen to work on a large mobile network.

I can make this about how we run networks a bit differently on a tighter budget to satisfy totally different customer needs.

It can be about how we don't have a terrestial network to speak of and how we manage to get by.

It can be about how since I set up my first network until late last year (8years now), all international traffic was on satellite.

It can be about how a straight forward PCEF <==> pcrf<==>IN implementation can suddenly become complicated due to vendor use of proprietary protocols and how that has (a/no) place on tomorrows network.....

It can be tips on how to scale a CSG to carry more traffic than what Cisco originally posted on their page. Or how the Huawei GGSN compares to the ASR 5000.

It can be about me and what Im thinking about and all the cool stuff Im playing with...yes it can be about the ccie which is more a means to an end now....there just is no excitement....just need the digits to move on....cisco have made too many changes and contradictory remarks about this program its just tiring ... but i've worked too hard to stop now so.....lets see where this leads to....see you around

still on track...i think!!

oh well...figured I have a few minutes to type up.....yes Im still on, if financials allow I think Im good to go in April .... I like that i can now pretty much book the lab with a week to spare, heck i can book flights,visa's before the lab if i wanted to:-) R&S seats are not as full as late last year... -- so I won't rush the booking (I have found booking the lab three months in advance to be some sort of motivator in itself in the past)....

wish me well...

jgitau