Knowledge

To CCIE or not to CCIE?

Author: Marjan Bradeško

A puzzled question? Grammatically wrong. What I mean is: "To pursue a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert [CCIE] certification or not?" Or let`s rephrase and generalize the question: "To become a certified individual or not?" We face such questions quite often. I have been asking this question myself - and been asked by my students, colleagues - multiple times.

OPTICAL SOLUTIONS FOR ENTERPRISES & SERVICE PROVIDERS

Optical network become more important in later years as bandwidth has rapidly increased and fibers cannot be added with the same pace. Optical solutions based on Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) have been in use for enterprises and service providers (SP) to conduct different technologies with different speeds and variety of distances.

How can my network benefit from SDN?

With the flood of solutions and products that are promoted under the name Software Defined Networks one will inevitably ask the question “What’s in it for me? How can my network benefit from SDN?” And the answer, as is mostly the case, is: “It depends.” SDN is different things to different people and different organizations.

DPI Solutions for Service Providers

Deep packet inspection (DPI) solutions are designed for carrier-grade stateful application inspection and session based classification of per subscriber IP traffic. The DPI functionality allows service providers to develop new differentiated services and increase their subscriber base by providing a portfolio of customer-tailored services.

Breaking Myths: SDN and NFV

Author: New Item

IT administrators are setting their hearts on maximizing programmability and automating routine tasks. This also applies to the network, but in reality it’s difficult to achieve. What we do know is that different organizations need different network functionalities.

UMTS & LTE Packet Core in SP Mobility

LTE, as a successor to UMTS, increases the capacity and speed together with many packet core network improvements. The challenge of interworking and seamless migration between the two technologies in the packet core area is a challenge that awaits many mobile service providers (SP's).

Even more engaging conference for visitors and partners

Using NIL’s solution Storesense Expo, Microsoft will be able to further optimize the arrangement of exhibitor stands and conference events and as a result provide sponsors, visitors, and partners with firm arguments for being part of the conference.

Service Provider Network Management

Service provider network today tries to adapt to latest business and residential services. As result networks expand with number of devices as well as in number of features to support demanding services. Managing such networks requires highly educated personnel and right tools to manage running services.

IP Next-Generation Network (NGN)

The idea behind the IP Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) is to provide IP transport for all services and applications, regardless of user access type, thus enabling the addition of new services and applications without any changes in the transport network.

IPV6 for Service Providers

Due to IPv4 address scarcity and increasing growth in the segment of connected devices the need for new address allocation has increased the requirement for service providers (SP) to offer IPv6 connectivity to subscribers. As the content available over IPv6 is increasingly growing a SP needs to upgrade its existing infrastructure to support the protocol.

The case for broadband Wi-Fi

This year we are celebrating 15 years of Wi-Fi technologies. In terms of technology, Wi-Fi is still pretty young and will probably see a lot more innovation in the coming years although it has experienced significant growth since the inception of IEEE 802.11n in 2007.

Overlay Virtual Networking

Author: Ivan Pepelnjak

Ivan explained the benefits and drawbacks of overlay virtual networks as compared to traditional VLAN-based solutions. The second half of the session focused on architectural and scalability aspects of individual solutions from major virtualization vendors and emerging startups.

Smooth connectivity for journalists and staff

NIL was responsible for design, deployment of wired and wireless networks, and we also monitored and managed the whole network infrastructure. Result? No network downtime through the entire tournament and at all the venues.

Better and safer patient care

There is a correlation between waiting in emergency departments and complications in later hospital care, therefore MEU management decided to implement an electronic whiteboard (EW) to speed up and improve patient care.

Thanks to NIL team for the unique network design solution!

We deployed a rare VRRP configuration and a unique network design on two Cisco 2921 routers.

Commitment and Efficiency Deliver Great Results

The project consisted of migration from Cisco 7600 Series routers to new Cisco ASR 9000 Series routers to prepare the Orange’s network for new technologies and an increasing number of users, with a second goal of improving network reliability.

OpenFlow and SDN: Hype, Useful Tools or Panacea?

Author: Ivan Pepelnjak

Ivan described the basics of OpenFlow, its advantages and pitfalls, and the potential real-life use cases including a brief overview of some existing deployments.

Data Center Fabrics: beyond the hype and marketecture

Author: Ivan Pepelnjak

Every networking vendor is talking about Data Center fabric these days, usually offering a proprietary architecture that works well only with the devices from the same vendor.

Cloud computing networking: under the hood

Author: Ivan Pepelnjak

This lecture describes the networking requirements of various cloud services and designs you can use to build a data center networks that support them.

First step in enterprise's IPv6

NIL provided the necessary expertise to bring Amway's technical teams up to speed on the current challenges and best practices surrounding IPv6, assisting them in laying out a roadmap for implementation and IPv4 to IPv6 transition.

Ultimate choice for an external evaluation of network design

As the company was making changes in their network, they asked NIL’s Ivan Pepelnjak to work with them as an external consultant. The collaboration is described by MWEB’s Network Architect, Ian Castleman.

Increased competitive advantage of the hosted environment

Virtual hosting enables Vodacom to provide secure and reliable data, information and application storage on Virtual Machines (VMs). To increase its product’s competitive advantage, Vodacom decided to add features and new functionality, enriching monitoring capabilities and giving customers detailed insight into their virtual environment status.

Smooth work processes in the shops means greater customer satisfaction

Product quality and diverse offerings are important contributors to customer satisfaction, but reliable and smooth work processes in the shops also have an enormous impact. Spar relies on NIL Monitor to maintain the stability of their IT infrastructure.

Internet bandwidth: Do you get what you pay for?

Author: New Item

Suppose that workers at your remote offices are experiencing slow and unresponsive network applications. When narrowing the scope of possible causes, you really have only a few options. You can run ping tests all day long to find the cause of the high latency. But how can you test bandwidth availability?

Use Your Routers as Traffic Generators

Author: New Item

I came across a very interesting but undocumented command that turns a router into a traffic generator. But please keep in mind that such activity heavily utilizes even a modern router’s CPUs, and its use should be avoided in production networks unless you’re performing stress tests.

Improved investment planning and IT changes

Constant monitoring of more than 100 location links significantly simplifies the IT administration and helps prevent errors. Additionally, monthly reports have helped Mladinska knjiga in choosing the best service providers, as well as with investment planning.