The increasing energy costs and the declining economy has forced many governments to start thinking about efficient and optimal ways of consuming electricity in order to reduce consumption and costs. The “smart grid” is a concept that has started to be implemented in countries like the USA and has the ability to control consumer’s electrical appliances to be operational only at non-peak hours for example. The smart grid has the ability to route power flow in more optimal ways to respond to a very wide range of conditions, and to charge a premium to those that use energy at peak hour. The smart grid includes also an intelligent monitoring system that keeps track of all electricity flowing in the system and of the failures and errors that appear in power substations in order for utility companies to respond quickly and fix any power failure problems.

In 2009 Cisco announced its participation in the smart grid initiative, and one year later (May 25, 2010) Cisco has produced its first products to be used by utility companies in their smart grid networks. The new product offerings include the Cisco 2010 Connected Grid Router (CGR 2010) and the Cisco 2520 Connected Grid Switch (CGS 2520). The two new smart grid products from Cisco will enable utility companies to grab and analyze data from multiple intelligent electronic devices in a substation. The data can then be used to improve the monitoring and maintenance of power transmission and distribution systems, to find, diagnose and fix failures, and to more easily integrate renewable sources of power into the overall energy offerings. The two smart grid Cisco products are optimized to work in harsh environments (power stations) and include all major IOS features that are found in the other mainstream Cisco routers and switches.

The following is a very good article I have read over at Buzzle.com. It talks about the various opportunities that a professional will acquire after passing the Cisco CCNA exam and obtaining this entry level certification.

Software industries are desperately in need of information technology professionals certified in the aspect of networking. You are almost guaranteed a job provided you possess an excellent working knowledge of protocols such as IP, IGRP, Serial, Frame Relay, IP RIP, and VLAN’s as well as installing, configuring, operating, maintaining, and trouble shooting LAN, WAN and other networks. One way to be sure you have such proper networking experience and knowledge is through obtaining your Cisco Certified Network Associate certification.

This CCNA certification is an entry level certification for all certified IT professionals who specialize in computer networking. This certification is just the first step towards even higher levels of training, such as Cisco Certified Network Professional or Cisco Certified Internet work Expert certification.

A CCNA certification is often the best option for field technicians, IT helps desk engineers, and other professionals of information technology based on overseeing the computer networking process. It is considered to be the basic qualification for installing, operating, configuring and troubleshooting a mid-sized switched and routed network. A professional with CCNA training is trusted to work with a networking environment which would include a group of switched networks. They can manage a host of computer routed networks connected through switches with the greatest of ease.

There is an ever increasing demand for networking specialists as businesses reliance on computers grow and with that the value of a CCNA certification is also finding itself to be a hot commodity among the information technology industry’s job market. It is a benchmark for discovering who are the best and the most efficient technicians are who aren’t in network management. Think of it as a way to filter out the cream of the crop from the rest.

The certification examination is structured around a set of questions with drag and drop options, multiple choice single answers, multiple choice multiple answers, simulations and fill in the blank type of questions. While at first glance, that may sound to be quite easy, to be truly successful and pass this test professional training is required. The examination is built so that your technical and special knowledge of computer networking environments and solutions are pushed to the limits. Basically, not everyone can pass this test.

In today’s ultra-competitive job market, you need every advantage you can to market yourself. You need something to make yourself more attractive to a business compared to another IT professional. A CCNA certification, accepted and recognized all over the world, is the perfect tool to do just that. The CCNA examination is used as a tool for sorting out the best networking professionals who would be responsible for the management and maintenance of the networking environments.

I recommend this CCNA Training to help you pass this useful exam guaranteed.

Article Source: Buzzle.com

It is beyond discussion that the full implementation of IPv6 in all Internet services and infrastructures will take place sooner or later. However, a harsh reality has knocked our door a few months ago. The Number Resource Organization (NRO) has warned that the available free IPV4 address space has fallen below 10%, which is considered a critical level.

From this information, the organization has considered the implementation of IPv6 vital if we need to continue with the development of the Internet.

IPv4 addresses, with a length of 32 bits, helped to define the Internet address space that we have been using so far, and have 4,294,967,297 possible IP addresses. In January 2010 the barrier of less than 430 million IP addresses not yet allocated is what has caused this warning.

If we run out of IPv4 addresses this means a halt to the spread of the Internet which has grown in a steady pace since 1989, and that is the main business infrastructure in today’s technology. The key to overcoming this limitation: the global adoption of IPv6.

However, many experts argue that implementing NAT may extend the life of IPv4 a few more years. Personally, I believe that further delaying the full migration to IPv6 simply postpones the implementation of a technology that has long been awaiting implementation, which will enable significant improvements in the operation of the Internet while offering new services. The implementation of NAT at the ISP level will only result in limiting the services available, and also hinder the seamless operation of the Internet when IP addresses are translated.

Moreover, major Internet sectors are already operating with IPv6 (China, Japan, parts of Europe and USA), and Internet infrastructure design is ready to support the migration: there is an international backbone running in IPv6, DNS services have updated their record structure etc… in fact, there is already a fully operational IPv6 www. The full migration will simply allow further evolution of the Internet.

Of course, more important than the hardware requirements that the implementation of IPv6 will impose, are the training requirements for networking professionals. IPv6 will bring another opportunity for professionals to train and grow. There are many resources available to start learning about IPV6, some of them are listed below.

http://www.ipv6forum.com/
Number Resource Organization
http://www.ipv6actnow.org/

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In our day to day work as network administrators it is often necessary to compare configuration files of Cisco routers or switches. As we know, a characteristic of Cisco IOS is that the configuration files are stored in text format, but still a line by line comparison of different config files is tedious and in many cases almost impossible. For this reason it would be useful to present some methods that allow us to perform this comparison task with full automation.

Configuration files comparison using specialized software

One option to help us compare Cisco configuration files is to export the config files in text format and then use a program to perform line by line comparison. The easier way to export a configuration file in text format is to execute the command “show run” or “show startup“, press the “space bar” key several times until the end of the configuration and then copy and paste the lines from the Terminal screen to a text editor.

A free program available on the Internet to compare text files is Compare It 4. It can be downloaded from the official site: http://www.grigsoft.com/wincmp3.htm

Using Cisco IOS Commands

From IOS version 12.3 (4)T, the comparison can be made directly on the IOS command line.
The commands to compare the running configuration from the startup configuration are the following:

Router> enable
Router # show archive config differences system: running-config nvram: startup-config

Contextual Config Diffs:
+ ip dhcp excluded-address 172.16.1.106 172.16.1.254
- ip dhcp excluded-address 172.16.1.160 172.16.1.254

To understand the output above, you need to know the following:

• The plus symbol (+) means that the configuration line exists in the “startup-config” but not in the “running-config”
• The minus symbol (-) means that the configuration line exists in “running-config” but not in “startup-config”.

In our example above, there is a command in backup configuration file (startup-config) that excludes address range 172.16.1.106 up to 172.16.1.254 from the DHCP address pool.

The comparison shows that someone has entered and changed the range of excluded addresses, and replaced it by range 172.16.1.160 to 172.16.1.254 and did not save the changes. That’s why the changes are only present in the active configuration (running-config). The command which is present in the running-config is preceded by the minus (-) symbol.

In our example above, the only difference between the two files are the two excluded-address commands. If there were more differences they would be listed as well. The command only displays the lines of the files in which there are differences.

I hope the post was helpful. If you have any more information or you want to provide additional references on the file comparison feature feel free to comment below.