Created by - Orhan Ergun
In this post, I will share many network engineering blogs which will be very beneficial for network engineering and for those who want to learn more about network design. Almost every day I receive a message through social media or via email from the connections. What should we study? I am new to networking what path I should follow etc. I think many of the people which are listed below receive the same messages. Unfortunately, it is impossible to respond to each and every message, in the least timely manner. What recently happened let me tell you the story. Couple of months back through Linkedin, someone sent me a message and asked, I want to learn the design, I just finished my CCNA R&S. What should I do. I replied to him and said, start reading each and every blog post (Except the training advertisement ones) on my website. In the end, I think I have more than 400 blog posts on the website and most of them are design related. After a while, the same person sent me another message and requested to join my class. I said, did you go through the posts on the website, He said no. I told him, do you really think you can join my class just after CCNA? It was impossible but He didn't realize it. Thus I recommended him again, to read all the blog posts and a couple of basic books (I remember I recommended him, CCDP Arch v3 at that time but now the new version came out I am the technical editor, You can find it here). He recently sent me another message and asked for more resources. And I thought it is a good idea to share the free resources which can be found on the Internet. I recommend all of my readers to have a look at below networking blogs at least once every week or better to subscribe if they have a mailing list. If you haven't followed the below website, I recommend every one of you start following and reading as many posts as you can from these websites. By the way, start writing a blog post on your own website is a good learning method too. Just click on the person name who runs the blog and if there is a mailing list subscribe. If not bookmark them, follow via RSS, and so on. Network Engineering Blogs: Daniel Dib Russ White Ivan Papeljnak Packet Pushers NetCraftsMen Packetlife Network Computing INE Blog These are the ones that have a lot of free content and very good resources. Also, Malcolm Booden and Michael Zsiga started blogs and podcasts and when they increase the number of resources I will update this post. Hope to see more from them too. If you follow other blogs, or podcast which you think is useful, share your comment. Just an hour ago, I published a post on MPLS Traffic Engineering. I wanted to use one of my topologies, thus typed on Google ‘ Orhan Ergun MPLS Traffic Engineering ‘ and realized that at least two websites, copied and pasted my entire MPLS Traffic Engineering series on their websites. Please, at least, next time, ask permission. I like to share my thoughts, most of the time freely but your action badly affect my websites rankings so people can't find these materials when they search on search engines. I complaint about this because, I know, this is not happening only to me but to some of the websites which I listed above as well. Ask a permission, it is good for everyone (Game Theory !)
Published - Tue, 16 Mar 2021
Created by - Orhan Ergun
OPEX and CAPEX are two important network design considerations. From the high level we should understand these two design requirements. OpEx refers to operational expenses such as support, maintenance, labor, bandwidth and utilities. Creating a complex network design may show off your technical knowledge but it can also cause unnecessary complexity making it harder to build, maintain, operate and manage the network. A well- designed network reduces OpEx through improved network uptime (which in turn can avoid or reduce penalties related to outages), higher user productivity, ease of operations, and energy savings. Consider creating the simplest solution that meets the business requirements. CapEx refers to the upfront costs such as purchasing equipment, inventory, acquiring intellectual property or real estate. A well-thought design provides longer deployment lifespan, investment protection, network consolidation and virtualization, producing non-measurable benefits such as business agility and business transformation and innovation, thus reducing risk and lowering costs in the long run. Last metric in the COST constraint is TCO (Total cost of ownership). TCO is a better metric than pure CapEx to evaluate network cost, as it considers CapEx plus OpEx. Make your network designs cost-effective in the long run and do more with less by optimizing both CapEx and OpEx. There are certainly other network design attributes such as Flexibility, security, modularity and hierarchical design. On the website, there are many other design requirements explained. If you find this post useful, please share your comment in the comment section.
Published - Sat, 08 Aug 2020
Created by - Orhan Ergun
CCDE Study Guide – Are you looking for a book that will teach you all the topics on advanced technical networking? If so, I would be very pleased to recommend CCDE Study Guide written by Marwan Al-Shawi to you. As one of the professionals who contributed immensely to this book, I must admit that Marwan wrote this book in collaboration with a number of savvy designers. IT experts who contributed to this wonderful book include Russ White, Andre Laurent, Denise Fishbourne, Ivan Papeljnak, and Orhan Ergun. In fact, all the IT concepts in this book are enlightening! The book has many drawings, which will assist learners to understand network design. Today, I spoke with one of my old friend, an expert in CCDE, who read Marwan's book, and his comment was this: “The book contains pictures that explain a thousand words." The most important topics of the networking design, especially for the CCDE exam, are layer 3 technologies such as IGP, BGP, MPLS, Inter-AS MPLS, and IPv6 and VPNs. These topics are extensively covered in this book. These topics are very important because CCDE exam is a layer 3 infrastructure exam and because these technologies provide an infrastructure of underlay network. IPv6, QoS, multicast, security, and other topics on network design can be considered less important because they could be assumed as an overlay. Another boon about this book is that it has many comparison charts, which would assist readers to have a solid grasp of the concepts. In CCDE exam, you should expect questions that would ask you to compare the technologies since one of the main ideas behind any network design is to know when and where to use the optimal technology. You should read this book as well as other recommended resource books before reading other important books on CCDE. It is pertinent that you should have a basic knowledge of the technologies before reading this book. In addition, I would be very pleased to recommend this book – Ciscopress CCDP Arch by John Tiso – to my students and followers. I expect anybody that wants to pass CCDE to read Ciscopress CCDP before perusing other relevant books on network design. Cisco Press CCDE Study Guide is a complimentary book to Orhan Ergun's CCDE Practical Workbook which consist of CCDE practical case studies and the design scenarios. I want to use this opportunity to express my gratitude to CiscoPress and Marwan for offering my readers an excellent promo until the end of this year.
Published - Fri, 27 Dec 2019