Last Modified: 12/12/11
Created By: David Cappelli (cappeldj@clarkson.edu)
This study serves to prepare me for my upcoming employment with Cisco Systems as an Associate Systems Engineer. In order to be better prepared for this position I will be studying Cisco technologies, networking concepts, and trying to broaden my knowledge and understanding of all related technology areas.
E-mail: cappeldj@clarkson.edu
Phone: (315) 292-0121
| Date | Study Topic | Description | Relevent Links |
|---|---|---|---|
Week 1 1/9 - 1/15 |
Discussion of class Preliminary Reading and Preperation |
Read articles and overviewed the proper way to interpret technical documents Started brainstorming what objectives I wanted to cover this semester |
TCP Congestion Control with a Misbehaving Receiver Article |
Week 2 1/16 - 1/22 |
Directed Study Setup Cisco Technology Overview |
Basic Project Plan was created to define what goals this directed study would accomplish Created this HTML page to track progress and organize work Started researching/learning about Cisco Technologies |
|
Week 3 1/23 - 1/29 |
Review of Cisco & their technologies Interview with OIT Preperation |
Continued working through the Cisco webpages, mostly concentrating on their various technology areas and the products they sell. I am trying to obtain a broad knowledge of the company's market areas and the devices they sell in those areas. The first area on the Cisco website I concentrated on was Borderless Network Technologies. Notes have been posted to the right. After the meeting this week, it was decided that I should interview OIT's Josh Fiske in order to learn about the networking infastructure here and to learn more about how industrial/campus size networks work. |
|
Week 4 1/30 - 2/5 |
Revision of Interview Questions Finish up Cisco product overview |
The plan for this week is to finalize the interview questions for Josh Fiske at OIT and then set a date to interview him. I will be recording his responses and posting them when it is completed. I have completed reviewing the Data Center and Virtualization product list. This should complete the high level search and understanding of their website. |
Cisco Data Center and Virtualization Product Notes
|
Week 5 2/6 - 2/12 |
Interview with Matt McCarrell Contact Cisco Start CCNA Books |
The first task this week is to continue revising the interview questions for Josh Fiske. These questions were reviewed with Professor Matthews. Next, I set up a pre-interview with Matt McCarrell, an active worker at OIT. After gathering what he knew, I am able to better direct my questions and go a bit more in depth with them when I interview Josh Fiske. Currently, I am trying to find a contact at Cisco who can give me some advice on what to learn this semester in my directed study. Knowing what they want me to learn will help focus in on specific, relevant topics. I have reached out to a current ASE in the field for a solution to this. I hope to use this information in order to form some goals with deadlines for this semester. Professor Matthews has loaned me her Cisco CCNA books at the beginning of this week. I am going to read these and take note of any questions I have. This should be an excellent resource since I am required to get my CCNA certification and possibly higher ones when I start my job. |
Refined Interview Questions for Fiske ***Please Note: links below are only accessible on the Clarkson Campus*** |
Week 6 2/13 - 2/19 |
Setup interview with Josh Fiske Reply from Cisco Continue CCNA reading |
I have e-mailed Josh Fiske in the attempt to get the ball rolling on setting up an interview. I am hoping to meet with him at the end of this week or the beginning of next week in order to get the interview questions answered. I am still waiting on a reply from Cisco. As soon as I get one, I will post it and work on making some concrete goals for this directed study. I am continuing on with the CCNA reading. I will post a list of questions and comments that I have while making my way through the book. |
|
Week 7 2/20 - 2/26 |
Reply from Miguel at Cisco Waiting for response from Fiske Continue CCNA reading |
I have received a response e-mail from Miguel at Cisco saying that he will get back to me as soon as he is back home. He was currently traveling and meeting with customers. On Saturday, I received a response from Miguel detailing what he thought would be the best things to review for the job. I have posted a copy of the e-mail message. Josh Fiske had not replied to my e-mail, so I went to OIT to setup a meeting in person. Once there, they instructed me to e-mail him again and CC the helpdesk. This will get me an appointment with either Josh or the Helpdesk will get me an appointment with another person. On Friday I received a reply message from Josh. I have an interview scheduled with him on Monday morning at 10:30 so I can go over the questions I have prepared. The responses will be posted after the interview. I have continued reading the CCNA book. The notes and questions are posted. One final task that came out of the directed study meeting this week was to develop an outline of goals and some final project ideas. This document will be created and published for next weeks tasks. |
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Week 8 2/27 - 3/5 |
Interview with Josh Fiske Continue CCNA reading Outline of Goals and Final Project Topics Fiber Optic Splicing Article |
The interview took place on Monday morning. Post interview notes and the responses will be posted. I have continued reading the CCNA book. The notes and questions are posted. The paper we discussed in last weeks meeting regarding outlining the goals and final project ideas has been created and posted. To create this, the e-mail from Miguel the Cisco employee was used. I also found an article on Fiber Optic Splicing which I read. This was motivated from reading "Cyber War" and getting curious as to how easy it was to splice into a fiber optic network. |
|
Week 9 3/6 - 3/12 |
Post-Interview Write-up Continue CCNA reading Further contact with Cisco Cisco Data Center Article IPv6 Brain Drain Article |
I started this week by writeing up and posting the interview responses from Josh Fiske. These are posted in the next column. Some of the questions were answered here but I still have several more which I would like to ask. After Spring Break I will try to get another interview scheduled with Josh. I have continued reading the CCNA book from Cisco. Notes are questions are still being recorded. Another updated paper will be uploaded soon. I am still working on getting more information from Cisco employees. I am trying to see if I can get copies of the latest textbooks for the CCNA sent to me early. Also, I am trying to get information about the test and what I should concentrate on learning. Miguel from Cisco recommended going onto networkworld.com in order to learn more about the most recent trends in networking. After hearing this, I have visited the site and found an interesting article which I read and posted here. It is about the new Cisco data center technology called the Nexus 3000 which is designed for super high speed financial networks. Another interesting article which I read on the same site was about the lack of engineers with skills in IPv6. There is a very high demand for networking professionals and engineers who have IPv6 skills since we are currently in the process of making the switch to it. The article recommends that undergrads and experienced professionals should all focus on learning IPv6 and put whatever IPv6 certifications they have on their resumes. |
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Week 10 3/13 - 3/19 |
Spring Break | ||
Week 11 3/20 - 3/26 |
OIT & SLIC Interview Setup SLIC Interview Questions Locate New CCNA Books Cisco Mobile Security Article |
In order to work towards making a final presentation on the local network in Potsdam and on campus, I am trying to setup another interview with Josh Fiske at OIT and with a representative from SLIC. Currently I am having a very difficult time getting a hold of Josh Fiske. I am hoping to hear back from him to get the name of a contact at SLIC which I can work with. Since I have not heard back from him after 3 messages, I have directly contacted help@slic.com. I am hoping to hear back from this soon. In preperation for meeting with SLIC, I have written a number of interview questions I would like to ask them. These questions need to be reviewed and polished a bit prior to the interview but they are a start. They are published to the right. I have got in contact with my Uncle who works for Cisco. He is still working on finding the latest CCNA material to send me. I may have to change my approach and go to another contact at Cisco in order to get this material. For now, I am hoping to find a hands-on experience in the older version of the lab manual in order to gain some experience with the routers and switches contained in the lab. --- UPDATE --- After speaking with my Uncle, I have determined that the new CCNA preperation is done via an online class with supplemental study guides. They no longer use a comprehensive textbook set to prepare people for the exam. Knowing this, I am going to look into when the next class starts and how to join it. Also, my Uncle recommended that I read a book titled "Network Warrior: Everything you need to know that wasn't on the CCNA exam" by Gary Donahue. Apparently this is a book that my people in the field say is extremely helpful. I have preordered the latest addition of the book through Amazon. I have continued to take Miguel's advice to read the latest articles on networkworld.com. They recently had an article posted about Cisco's latest mobile security hardware and software suite which was just released. I have read this article and posted it. |
Cisco Mobile Security Article PDF |
Week 12 3/27 - 4/2 |
Research Hands-on Exercises Contact With SLIC Cisco 1600 Router Experience |
Since there are many networking tools available here at Clarkson, I would like to take this opportunity to gain some hands-on experience. The CCNA Lab book was a good place to start for some basic step-by-step expercises to gain experience in these areas. I have gone through much of the book and picked out some preliminary procedures to follow in order to learn more about routers. After the meeting last week, we decided that we need to find out if the final presentation on the network is possible. I have called SLIC and spoke with several people there. They instructed me to speak with the IT specialist, but unfortunatly he had last Friday off. I left him a voicemail and expect to hear back from him on Monday. From what I gathered from the others I spoke with, they would be happy to help out with my research. After the directed study meeting this week, I was able to obtain a Cisco 1600 Series Router to experiment with. I have since hooked it up and started learning with it. To configure it, HyperTerminal was needed as the communication software. This program had a 30 day free trial which I decided to use since it would get me to the end of the semester. The link to this download it given to the right. The findings or procedures which I perform with this router will also be written up and posted to the right. |
|
Week 13 4/3 - 4/9 |
Contact With SLIC Cisco 1600 Router Experience |
To start off the week, I received a reply e-mail from SLIC's IT specialist. He said that he would be happy to schedule a meeting with me sometime this week between Tuesday and Thursday. I responded back and let him know the times I am available in order to make an appointment. I have already prepared a question set for him so I will be prepared when he is ready. Now that I have a router which I can take back to my apartment, I am working on finding some good tutorials and trying to get the router hooked up and talking with my PC. This has turned into a much greater challenge then I ever would have expected. First I created a rollover ethernet cable in order to get the router connected to my PC. Then I followed a procedure in order to setup HyperTerminal to get the devices talking. Sadly, after hours of trail and error I was still not able to get the device hooked up. Following the failure to hook up the router, I sent another e-mail to Miguel at Cisco in order to get some advice from him. He recommeded switching over to using Putty and purchasing a serial to USB converter. I have tried Putty but still no luck, and the serial to USB converter will not work either for this specific application. The adapter won't work because we do not ahve the serial console cable that comes with the Cisco router. The majority of this week was spent trying to connect the router to my PC as well as the PC in the ITL. In the effort of trying to get a router talking to a PC, we spent a lot of time working in the ITL and trying the machines in there using HyperTerminal and Putty in Windows and Minicom in Linux. We also tried connecting to the large routers and the 1604 router. Various cables, connections, and configurations were tried but none of them worked. The next resort is ordering a Cisco console cable kit and seeing if we can make the connection with that. Also, links for DANC and some of their content have been posted to the right. There are some good maps and information regarding how the internet reaches the North Country. |
Cisco 1600 Router Experiments Log |
Week 14 4/10 - 4/16 |
No response from SLIC Cisco 1600 Router Experience Cisco Re-Direction Article |
After waiting over a week for a response from SLIC, I still have not recieved anything. I will address the issue in this weeks meeting to see if there are other alternatives to a project. This week's goal is to continue working with the Cisco 1604 router in order to get a console connection. The console cable kit arrived this week. I was able to download the included driver, then make a connection with the Cisco 1604 router on my PC using HyperTerminal. Once I made the connection, I continued to try to perform some of the labs in the CCNA lab book. These provided an overview on how to use the command prompt and what commands were available. To start the week, I found an article on Network World which discusses the Cisco CEO's news address of how the company is going to re-direct the business in order to get back on track and re-aligned with the companies main goals. The article was an interesting read and I am curious how this new re-direction might influence my career there. |
|
Week 15 4/17 - 4/23 |
Final Report Final Presentation Cisco Router Work Cisco Security Product Article |
This week I began considering the topics for my final report. The due date for it will be Thursday 4/28. I have finally established an interview with Jonathan Towne, the IT Specialist at SLIC. I will be meeting with him Monday morning at 10am in order to ask him questions about the North Country's network. On Wednesday, 4/20 at 7pm in the ITL - Presentation on this semester's work Now that the console cables are in and I can connect to the Cisco routers, I am working on trying to get them setup and tested. The first test involved turning on all 5 routers available and making sure I could gain administrative access to them. Every router worked. Next, I plan on connecting them and setting up the 5 Router Configuration lab. Also this week I found an article on Cisco's new products coming out to help a company manage all of the different devices on their network. This product provides greater security while simplifying the job of the IT professionals. |
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Week 16 4/24 - 4/30 |
Interview with Slic Final Report Cisco Router Work |
On Monday I met with Mr. Jonathan Towne. He is the IT specialist at Slic Network Solutions in Potsdam. This company is the ISP for Clarkson. I was able to ask him a lot of questions on how the ISP industry work as well as his opinion of Cisco (quite different from that of Josh Fiske from Clarkson). It provided an excellent new point of view that was very beneficial. I have completed my final report for the directed study. My report concentrates on the interviews I conducted with Slic and Clarkson.(No longer posted publicly.) On Friday, I was able to work on the Cisco routers for a few hours. Luckily, everything worked very well today and I was able to connect four routers to create two seperate LANs. I have created a document on the work done today and posted it to the right. |
Slic Interview Responses (no longer posted) Directed Study Final Report (no longer posted) |
Last Modified: 12/12/11
Created By: David Cappelli (cappeldj@clarkson.edu)