The Cisco Packet Tracer is a tool for learning and simulating networks interactively for instructors and students of Cisco CCNA. This e-learning software is offered as part of the Cisco Networking Academy. This tool allows users to create network topologies, configure devices, inject packets, and simulate a network with multiple visual representations. Packet Tracer focuses on helping students to understand networking protocols better as taught in the CCNA curriculum.

This product is intended to be used as an educational product that provides exposure to the command line interface (CLI) of Cisco devices to practice and learn by discovery.

Packet Tracer 5.3 is the latest version of this Cisco network simulator, and it’s a key tool to use if you are a student pursuing the CCNA or dedicated to networking. This program creates a physical topology of network devices by simply drag-and-drop devices on the worksheet screen. After clicking on them you can access the configuration console of this device. All Cisco IOS commands are supported and even does the “tab completion” on a command. Once the physical and logical configuration of the network is build, you can do simulations of connectivity (ping, traceroute, etc) all from the device’s own console.

Main Features

The improvements to the new Packet Tracer 5.3 are:

* Support for Windows (2000, XP, Vista) and Linux (Ubuntu and Fedora).
* Allows multi-user and collaborative settings in real time.
* Support for IPv6, multi-area OSPF, route redistribution, RSTP, SSH, and multilayer switches.

Supports the following protocols:

* HTTP, Telnet, SSH, TFTP, DHCP and DNS.
* TCP / UDP, IPv4, IPv6, and ICMPv6 ICMPv4.
* RIP, EIGRP, OSPF multi-area, static routing and route redistribution.
* Ethernet 802.3 and 802.11, HDLC, Frame Relay and PPP.
* ARP, CDP, STP, RSTP, 802.1q, VTP, DTP and PAgP.

Well, actually not the latest news. Let’s say news from the past 2-3 months!!

Cisco is committed to release the TIP protocol:

After the acquisition of Tandberg , Cisco has pledged to release the protocol Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) on 1 July 2010. The draft release will be hosted on Sourceforge under the Apache 2.0 license. This decision is apparently the result of a concession to the European Commission for approval of acquisition of Tandberg.

Cisco completes acquisition of Tandberg

Cisco completed the acquisition of Norwegian company Tandberg, specializing in solutions for video conferencing and telepresence. Tandberg products are now integrated in the Cisco Telepresence product series. The solutions are based primarily on the TIP protocol (Telepresence Interoperability Protocol).

Cisco WebEx Meeting Center available on iPad

After the iPhone version, Cisco announced the availability of WebEx Meeting Center on the iPad. WebEx Meeting Center is a collaborative tool ”that combines professional interaction, voice and instant messaging”. This tool lets “to organize meetings for dispersed staff and using tools and heterogeneous systems”

I have found the following article at pcworld.com and thought about sharing with you. Its a good overall comparison between Cisco and Juniper, the two biggest players in the networking arena.

It’s been an ongoing debate for much of the last 14 years – Cisco or Juniper? Increasingly, that argument will hinge on which router manufacturer has the more compelling unified data center fabric architecture: Cisco’s Unified Computing System or Juniper’s single-layer Stratus.

The Battle Between JUNOS and IOS

The argument began in 1996 with Juniper’s founding; until then, Cisco had ruled the router roost in both the enterprise and service provider markets since its founding in 1984.

But with the growing importance of the Internet, venture capitalists and unhappy Cisco customers sunk money into the idea of forming a start-up to build a better mousetrap, specifically for service providers. Juniper’s first year was nurtured with early investments from the Anschutz family (Qwest’s majority stakeholder), AT&T, Ericsson, Lucent, Nortel, Siemens/Newbridge Networks, 3Com and UUNET. IBM agreed to develop custom ASICs for Juniper’s Internet routers, the first of which was the M40.

With all the heavyweight backing, Juniper became and is still Cisco’s most formidable challenger in service provider routing. The company gradually attained a roughly 30% share of the $8 billion market, virtually all at Cisco’s expense, and has been the technological darling of some bitheads over the past decade for the purity – or purpose-built specialty – of its silicon and software.

This remains Juniper’s chief differentiator from Cisco. Cisco was viewed as a packager of enterprise-class products that were being deployed in more demanding service provider requirements. Cisco’s dominance and ubiquity in routing made many of its customers hungry for an alternative.

Cisco isn’t standing still. It’s been re-energized by the emergence of Juniper and the recent gains of Alcatel-Lucent in service provider edge routing. In 2009, Alcatel-Lucent leapfrogged Juniper’s nine-year hold on the No. 2 market share position in the service provider edge, according to Dell’Oro Group.

And Cisco still holds the lion’s share of the enterprise and service provider router market, with a customer base that’s mostly loyal to its incumbency. But it is Cisco and Juniper that try to leapfrog each other technologically in the service provider core and edge. Right now, the multi-chassis core race pits Cisco’s Carrier Routing System against Juniper’s T Series for tens – even hundreds — of terabits supremacy.

Juniper is taking the battle to enterprise data centers and cloud computing environments. Emboldened by its success in carrier routing, Juniper unveiled enterprise Ethernet switches two years ago in an attempt to become a credible alternative to Cisco’s dominance in that market, too. The company believes it can carve a niche in the elite networking arenas of financial trading, high-performance computing and other demanding enterprise environments just like it did in service provider routing.

In the data center, both companies are surrounding themselves with high-profile partners to help push their competing visions: Cisco with EMC and VMware, and Juniper with IBM. At stake, just as in service provider routing, is a multibillion dollar opportunity – $85 billion in private clouds by 2015, according to Cisco – to become the primary supplier of next-generation data centers, further entrench new and existing customers, and lock its rival out of lucrative, big ticket accounts.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/198147/cisco_vs_juniper.html

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.