Networkers wrap-up

Unfortunately I decided to skip my first session on Wednesday in favor of sleeping in, so my day started with "Cisco on Cisco: Inside Cisco IT." This was an intriguing talk, detailing how Cisco applies internally the same processes it evangelizes to customers and partners. In keeping with modern times, there was much emphasis on the network "as the platform" and software as a service.

Around noon I met up with Tassos from CCIE in 3 months, and we had a chance to converse for a bit before he got pulled away. Just a few minutes later I met with Greg Ferro again and we both attended "Advanced IPv6 Security." The first portion of the talk was very familiar to me, detailing first-hop attacks which exist in IPv6's Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) (for the uninitiated, these attacks are very similar in concept to ARP poisoning under IPv4). The second part of the talk was very interesting however, describing in detail how Secure Neighbor Discovery (SEND) can be used to authenticate NP exchanges on the local link. I hope to delve into this in more detail in the near future.

Last of the day was a particularly resourceful talk entitled "13 Smart Ways to Configure your Cisco IOS Network Elements." A number of very handy configuration tools and methods were discussed, perhaps most of interesting of which was Cisco's Enhanced Device Interface (EDI), which provides a very clean framework for managing a myriad of disparate devices. As the talk let out I also bumped in to Kevin Dorrell, making him the fourth blogger I had met in person during the conference.

After the close of the talks for the day, Cisco held a "customer appreciation event" downtown. I'm not one for parties, but the event was pretty neat and the entertainment varied greatly (see the pics). Fortunately I was able to meet up with Greg and Tassos, and we toured the place and conversed for a while before I headed back to the hotel around 2230.

We had planned a quick meeting the following morning for all five bloggers present at Networkers, but only four showed up. It was still neat to meet up in such a manner, just chilling in the midst of the educational orgasm that is Networkers.

I attended a practical breakout on Enterprise IPv6 Deployment before heading up to the fifth floor of the center for my CCIE R&S written exam. To this point I had done virtually zero studying since departing from Iraq, so my hopes weren't especially high. This was undoubtedly the largest Pearson VUE testing center I've ever seen, with approximately 80 testing stations prepared; the testing team working there gets double kudos for keeping everything running so smoothly despite the volume.

Through some combination of luck and preparedness I passed my written! That's one major hurdle I'm happy to have cleared before I move on with my job hunt. After the exam I was able to relax at lunch with Greg, and we both wrapped up the conference with a final breakout on "Monitoring, Mitigating, and Handling Threats." On my way out of the conference I also made sure to pick up my free copy of Global IPv6 Strategies, which I had "won" for being one of the first hundred people to badge in to the IPv6 discussion panel a couple days prior.

Networkers was a blast, and I'd really love to attend Cisco Live in the US this summer if I can get my employment situation settled. But for now at least I have Shmoocon in Washington, DC, to look forward to. Can't wait!