A Network Blog by a Network Engineer

Up for a House Party? ready to go The Distance? are you Coming home? like Refugee? Wanted Dead or Alive?

Jeff Fry published on 2018-04-23 included in Cisco Live

I am sure you are asking yourself what is up with that title? Well, as you can tell from the image above – this post will be about the Customer Appreciation Event – in other words – the BANDS! (Yes, plural!)
The CAE will take place, as has been previously announced, at Universal Studios Florida on Wednesday, June 13th at 7:30 PM. In past CLUS CAE parties, the band has been located shortly after you walked in on the right. I circled the past band location on the map below.

So without further ado, here is the entertainment lineup:

Get Juniper Certified – AT HOME! (updated 20-Apr-18)

Jeff Fry published on 2018-04-19 included in Certification Juniper

Are you looking to get started with Juniper certification but having a hard time finding the time to travel to a test location, get signed in, and actually take the test? Is your closest testing location too far for you? Or are you just too lazy to go take the test (always have an excuse)? Well, Juniper has a solution to that problem! Juniper has finally announced that they now support Online Proctoring for Certification Exams. You can take your Juniper certification exam in the comfort of your own home or office. The currently eligible exams are their associate level exams:

JNCIA Junos
JNCIA Cloud
JNCDA

***********************
** UPDATE 4/20/18**
Juniper Education reached out to me and informed me that ALL JNCIP exams are available via Online Proctor

Juniper – NXTWORK 2018 – Save the date!

Jeff Fry published on 2018-04-16 included in Juniper Nxtwork

Juniper has finally released the dates for 4th annual partner and customer Juniper NXTWORK conference – and the event has grown so much that we now get to go to a new location! This year the event is October 9th – 11th at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, NV. Can you believe it, we are going to VEGAS BABY! The Mandalay Bay has hosted many very notable technical conferences over the years, and now they get to add Juniper Nxtwork to that list. Registration is not open yet, so save the date and hope to see you in October! _**May 2018 Update** – Juniper has posted the official announcement as well as a registration link. _ _Official Page: https://fryguy.me/2rFmv1d_ _Registration: https://fryguy.me/2wO20Ft_

CCIE Recertification Continuing Education Review

Jeff Fry published on 2018-04-13 included in CCIE Certification Uncategorized

Way back in 2008 I passed the CCIE R&S lab to obtain my CCIE #22061. Over the past years, I have taken recertification written exams including the CCIE Voice, CCIE Service Provider, CCIE R&S, as well as the CCDE written tests to maintain active CCIE status. Last June, Cisco announced a change to the recertification procedure and made available the ability to use a Continuing Education Program as well to the standard written tests. This time around I chose to take advantage of that program to recertify and wanted to share my results and experiences with the process.
To access the Continuing Education Program dashboard for your certification, you just need to navigate to https://ce.cisco.com/#/dashboard. Once there you will be able to see your current certification status (CCIE and any other certifications associated with your account). To renew your CCIE certification, you are required to earn 100 credits and submit the appropriate proof of attendance. For more FAQ information, see the Cisco FAQ at https://fryguy.me/2sc8hXG.
I took three courses, all online and delivered by Cisco Learning Systems, in order to recertify:

Cisco Live 2018 – Big Ideas Theater

Jeff Fry published on 2018-04-12 included in Cisco Live

We are just around 60 days or so away from Geek Summer Camp 2018, or more commonly known as Cisco Live 2018. Cisco Live is trying to step up their game this year with the introduction of a Big Ideas Theater at the conference.
What is the Big Ideas Theater? Well, Cisco Live has defined it as “_a diverse line up of thought leaders, strategists, technologists and other provocative voices from across industries designed to inspire and provoke your imagination and the exchange of ideas.” _It will be located in the middle of the Orange County Convention Center.
Also be aware that there is a good chance that the Cisco Live wireless will not reach this location, so be ready with a battery pack when you attend these talks.

These talks will be moderated by Glenn Thayer, The Voice of Meetings and Events. Looking at some of his videos on his website with a cool URL ( http://www.emcee.com/ ), he is a professional moderator. ‘
There are few of these talks that I am looking forward to, definitely Hakeem on Monday and Grant on Tuesday look interesting. Who are you looking forward to seeing/
Below is the schedule of the talk with videos on YouTube for you to check out. These all look to be very motivational, inspirational, and educational talks to attend. It will be a nice break from all the technical talks we always get – these are worth checking out and scheduling!

Cisco Live 2018 – Fun for grownups!

Jeff Fry published on 2018-03-05 included in Cisco Live

Cisco Live 2018 is just around the corner in in June from the 10th – 14th in Orlando, FL. Hard to believe it has been just about a year since the last “Geek Summer Camp” of Las Vegas, NV. There is still time to register for the discounted price – if you are reading this and have not registered, might want to do that as the 1st discount expires on March 7th.
Once again we are back at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fl. This is a HUGE convention center location, so be prepared for lots of walking between sessions. This is a welcome change from Las Vegas, NV – while I do love when the event is in Las Vegas due to the nightlife and restaurants, being a little closer to my home on the East Coast is welcomed.

Leading up to the event there are always a few cool contests that Cisco Live runs, and this year is no different. These are the current contests that I am aware of, you may find more at the Contest site.

Juniper NXTWORK 2017

Jeff Fry published on 2017-10-01 included in Junos

In just over two months it will be time for the Juniper customer summit known as NXTWORK 2017. This is an awesome chance to meet with other Juniper customers, Juniper employees, our awesome peers, and if you are lucky some of the amazing Juniper Ambassadors (pictured below). The event is scheduled for December 11 – 13 at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, San Francisco, Ca.

This event is similar to what other vendors offer for a conference (Cisco, VMWare, Dell/EMC) yet much more intimate. There are breakout sessions available that you can attend to learn more about technologies, services, education, and much much more. You can be assured that you will have a good seat for any of the speakers, no stadiums here where you feel disconnected – here you will be up close and personal with all the different speakers.

Juniper SRX Password Recovery

Jeff Fry published on 2017-09-28 included in How To Junos

I can imagine that is how I looked when I got my “new” Juniper SRX from (insert favorite auction site) and booted it the first time. All ready to play with my new toy – lab some new ideas – and boom, it has a password on it already. Grrrr…. Since I had to recover the root password, figured I would post the procedure here in case others are looking for it. Not only in case others are looking for it, the next time that I need it as well! 🙂 So the first thing we need to do here is to make sure the device is powered off and we have a console cable connected to it. I will assume you know how to use your terminal program and access the console already for this post otherwise I suspect you would not be here. Now that you are connected we can go ahead and power the SRX on and watch it boot. In order to boot the system into single user mode, we need to press the space bar when prompted. It will be right at this point in the boot process – right when you see _Hit [Enter} to boot immediately, or space bar for command prompt. _Here you need to press the SPACE BAR quick to interrupt the boot process.

FreeBSD/MIPS U-Boot bootstrap loader, Revision 2.5
(slt-builder@slt-junos15.juniper.net, Tue Apr 2 12:36:46 PDT 2013)
Memory: 2048MB
[0]Booting from nand-flash slice 1
Un-Protected 1 sectors
writing to flash…
Protected 1 sectors
Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf
/kernel data=0xb99284+0x13c8b4 syms=[0x4+0x91b00+0x4+0xd5dfb]

Juniper Junos Genius – Relaunched

Jeff Fry published on 2017-08-31 included in Training

A few days ago I received an email from Juniper that Junos Genius had been relaunched. If you have never used the old version, no worries as I rarely used it as well. With the new version, you have to setup a new account anyway. This re-launch however, looks a bit more interesting as it is more geared towards online classes and training and education. In fact, you can actually purchase real courseware (very limited at launch) on this site and attend a “virtual presentation” of the material. There are two variants of Junos Genius available. One is free and comes with limited content, the other is subscription based and has some additional content. You can access the new Junos Genius at www.junosgenius.net. Besides just the web interface, you can also get an iOS (iPad and iPhone) and Android app to help you learn wherever or whenever you want. [slideshow_deploy id=’4993′] The Free version grants you access to some practice tests (JNCIA-Junos, JNCIS-ENT, and JNCIS-SP), over 80 learning bytes (short and concise video tips), and hardware overview and deployment courses. While the content is still limited, it is a nice start and looks to have a promising future. [slideshow_deploy id=’4968′] I took a brief look at the free practice tests and was pleasantly surprised. There were 65 questions in total that reflected what one will find on the actual test. They were presented in a similar way to the actual test and do test your knowledge (I got a bunch of Binary questions, yech!). If you are planning to take any one of those tests soon, the free version can help you gauge yourself on the material that is tested. I also took a look at one of the free Learning Bytes, _Route Sharing on Junos Devices Using RIB Groups._ It can be a complicated to understand at first and is one that many have a problem with. I was impressed to see it as one of the free Learning Bytes. I won’t go into detail as to what it is, I will save that for to watch and learn on Junos Genius (or perhaps a future blog post). It was nice to see it there – it can be a tough one for people to grasp.

The subscription model is available in 6-month and 12-month options currently priced at $200 and $250 respectively. The subscription provides you with an additional 80+ Learning Bytes (160+ in total) and additional JNCP practice tests (JNCIS-SEC, JNCIS-SDNA, JNCIP-ENT, JNCIP-SP, JNCIP-SEC, and JNCIP-DC). There are plenty of free preview videos for the paid courses, so you don’t have to go blindly to see what is available. They play the first few minutes of the video for you to see what they cover. From looking around, it is easily worth the $250/yr for the content if you want to learn new Juniper skills. [slideshow_deploy id=’4969′] Also, if you are planning to take any one of the mentioned JNCIS ($300/test) or JNCIP ($400/test) tests, spending the $200 or $250 for this subscription is not a bad option to help ensure you are ready. While they won’t guarantee a pass, the tests should help you gauge your level of competence and readiness for the test. Lastly, there are some actual courses that you can purchase on Junos Genius. These are separate from the Plus subscription, these are actual classroom type courses. Currently, they offer:

[slideshow_deploy id=’4971′]

All these courses are the full courseware you would get if you attended in-person training and you also do get access to the labs remotely for the course. The prices for these courses is $5 more than attending an instructor-led course of the same title. One other important item to be aware of is that you only get access to the courseware for 30 days and 20 hours of lab access. You do not get any physical books, everything is delivered via the Junos Genius portal.
In my opinion that is very odd – the price is actually $5 more for the recorded content for some reason. The 30-day limitation on course access and 20 hours of lab access seems a bit light to me as well. I hope they consider extending the access to at least 120 days and increase the lab time to 40 hours. I also do not know how they course books are delivered; are they secured PDF; are you able to also order them if you want? I do not know the answers and if I find out I will be sure to update the post.
Overall though, if you want to learn Juniper or increase your Juniper skills, I would be sure to go and sign up for Junos Genius and kick the tires. I would focus on the free courses if you are starting out, and subscription if you are going for JNCIP level certifications and knowledge.
Update Sept 2017 – Juniper reached out to me on the price difference. The list price of Juniper classes is $2400. There is a training partner that discounts their classes by $5 and that is why we see the price difference.

Cisco Live 2017 – Tech Field Day Extra

Jeff Fry published on 2017-08-01 included in Uncategorized

Late last month (wow, has it been that long already?!) I had the honor of attending Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live 2017, as well as recording an episode of Network Collective. For Tech Field Day Extra, we had OpenGear (Love their stuff), Paessler (PRTG), and NetApp present to us and share their latest solutions. I am working on getting some posts up around these vendors, but work, travel, and an upcoming vacation have taken some priority (need to pay the bills and Happy Wife, Happy Life!). I just wanted to take a moment and share those recordings in case you may have missed them when Tech Field Day shared them. You can find much more recordings over at Tech Field Day as well. First up – Tech Field Day Extra: **OpenGear with Marcio Saito and Rob Waldie:** OpenGear Introduction: