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For Immediate Release

Meet Cisco Systems at the 2008 Government Technologies Conference and Expo.

2008 – Toronto, Canada – Cisco Systems Incorporated is the latest addition to the great lineup of speakers at the 2008 Government Technologies Conference and Expo, being hosted April 15 -16, 2008 at the Design Exchange in the Heart of Downtown Toronto. Presenting on Cisco’s behalf will be Geoff Cargill, Business Development Manager, Public Sector – Government and Education for Cisco Systems.

In his role as business development manager, he is responsible for leading Cisco’s efforts in these vertical markets. Geoff has extensive background at Cisco in the US and Canada managing the engineering and sales teams focused on the Cable Industry including Cox Communications and Comcast and Cisco’s service provider channel supporting ATT, Bell, ATT Canada and Sprint Canada. Geoff also led Bell Canada’s Ontario public sector, healthcare, and education and utilities team.

To register for Early-Bird Passes please visit http://gov.wowgao.com/registration OR call (416) 292-0038 Ext. 812.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Today, networks are an essential part of business, education, government and home communications, and Cisco’s Internet Protocol-based (IP) networking solutions are the foundation of these networks.

Cisco enables people to make powerful connections—whether in business, education, philanthropy, or creativity. Cisco hardware, software, and service offerings are used to create the Internet solutions that make networks possible—providing easy access to information anywhere, at any time.

About the 2008 Government and Health Technologies Conference & Expo:

The 2008 Government and Health Technologies Conference and Expo will focus on the latest IT products and solutions being developed and sought after in the healthcare and public service sector, including Web 2.0, Patient Monitoring Systems, Document Management, Business Intelligence, Mobile Data Systems, RFID Solutions, Biometrics and much more.

As one of Canada’s leading annual IT conference and exposition, the event features ground breaking IT applications that aim to educate key IT professionals, Government officials, developers, architects, engineers and medical professionals with the necessary tools and techniques for the reliable, effective management of all public information services across Canada. For more information about the event, please visit http://gov.wowgao.com

About WowGao Inc.

WowGao Inc. is an award winning leading event management company that produces, since 2003, internationally renowned conferences and expositions that address the latest innovations and developments in the information technology industry. Our featured events include:

Government & Health Technologies Conference and Expo, April 15 & 16, 2008

Wireless & Mobile Expo and Conference, July 15 & 16, 2008

RFID Forum, July 15 & 16, 2008

Financial Services Technology Forum, October 2008

For more information about the events, please visit http://www.wowgao.com/

For conference inquiries:

Conference Producer

(416) 292 – 0038 ext. 840 | conference@wowgao.com

WowGao Inc. | www.wowgao.com

GAO Group is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. GAO Group has marketing, sales, customer support, manufacturing and R & D facilities in various countries, with most of its staff located in Canada, USA, Europe and China.

The first Member Company, GAO Research Inc., was founded on June 2, 1992 and it quickly established its reputation as an R & D power house in the embedded industry. GAO Group has continually grown and has become a conglomerate of fast growing companies with an enormous international customer base and an extensive network of VARs, distributors, resellers, and strategic partners in diversified industries worldwide.

With the aim of providing unparalleled services to its enormous customer base spread out over the world, GAO Group has developed and deployed state of the art technologies among all its facilities to support such functions as e-commerce, inventory management, CRM, project management, and supply chain management.

The Cisco CCNP lab is one of the most difficult labs to build because it touches on so many different pieces of equipment. When you are building your Cisco CCNA lab, it is pretty easy as three Cisco router and three Cisco switches will put you in a pretty good position at a pretty reasonable price. Definitely a lot less then the price of attending a Cisco CCNA training class and you get to keep the equipment to practice on for as long as you like. When building a Cisco CCIE lab, you concentrate on one particular discipline such as CCIE Security, Voice, Service Provider, Storage or Routing and Switching so you only have to purchase Cisco equipment for that area of expertise.

Now with building your Cisco CCNP lab, you have to cover four different modules which encompass many different networking technologies. The modules are BSCI(Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks) which is basically advanced routing concepts extending everything you learned in your Cisco CCNA training to the next level. So this module requires a plethora of Cisco routers to complete most of these CCNP labs. BCMSN(Building a Cisco Multilayer Switched Network) which also extends on what you learned in your CCNA training from a Cisco Switching perspective adding in new concepts such as Layer 3 switching and QoS to a greater degree. This module really gets into the nitty gritty of Cisco Switching and thus requires some of the higher end, more expensive switches that are capable of Layer 3 switching.

Additionally in a perfect scenario, you will need multiple of these Cisco switches to complete your labs and really get the full experience of the topics. Next we have ISCW(Implementing Secure Converged Wide Area Networks) which covers how to expand your current enterprise network to remote sites and teleworkers with a focus on configuring VPN client access and securing the remote access methods. Many of these concepts can be accomplished on the Cisco routers you purchased for your BSCI module, but the possibility of adding in a VPN concentrator or PIX firewall is nice, but not an absolute requirement if you are on a tight budget. Finally the last CCNP module is ONT(Optimizing Converged Cisco Networks) which focuses on how to get the most out of your existing network by prioritizing your traffic utilizing QoS.

Much of this is applied to voice packets which is time sensitive packets that require QoS attention. In this module you will also be reviewing basic wireless security setups. So much of the QoS items will be exercised on the Cisco routers you purchased for the BSCI track and the Cisco switches you already purchased for the BCMSN track. So now you see that to a large degree, you will be able to use the equipment in the first two modules to support the concepts in the last two modules. We try to strike a balance between the amount of equipment, price of the equipment and labs that can be performed as most people do not have the budget to go out and spend $30,000 to cover every single concept that is presented in the Cisco CCNP curriculum. So that is what makes it so difficult to build a Cisco CCNP lab at a reasonable price.

CCNP Lab Approach

Now that you have an idea of what you are looking to accomplish in your Cisco CCNP lab from an equipment perspective, let’s see how we might approach this. If you are not real strong on the features, pros and cons of the various routers, you may want to review our Cisco CCNA lab suggestions. Not only are there suggestions on building a Cisco CCNA lab, but we also cover many of the features and pros and cons of the various Cisco routers and Cisco switches.

Now if you are only just beginning your Cisco certification studies looking to obtain your CCNA, but are looking ahead to your CCNP, I applaud you! Network engineers must be able to sharpen their skill set of planning ahead of capacity. In this case, you are planning ahead for your Cisco certification career. So if you are at the Cisco CCNA level and are ready to purchase a CCNA lab but you want to make sure it scales well to your future Cisco CCNP studies, well then look at our Cisco Advanced CCNA/Starter CCNP kits. These were developed to give you the best experience possible from a Cisco CCNA perspective with the understanding that this kit will be used as a seed for you CCNP kit. All of the items in this kit will be able to be utilized in your Cisco CCNP lab so you will not be wasting any money.

As with most things in the world, the more you pay for the kit, the more features you will get to play with in your Cisco lab. These Advanced CCNA/Starter CCNP kits are great if you do not have all the money for a full blown CCNP kit now or if you are 100% sure you will want to continue on to the Cisco CCNP certification. But then again, who doesn’t want to progress in their career?

Common Cisco CCNP Lab Questions

12.4 IOS

12.4 IOS is a requirement for the routers. Says who? Why can’t I use 12.3? Well, I guess you can, but when it states on the CCNP exam page that you should be using 12.4, I tend to listen to Cisco since it is their test and they get to modify it at their discretion! So what does that mean to you? 2500 routers and the normal 2600 routers cannot support 12.4. So if you have the budget, jump right to the 3640 or 2600XM series routers for your CCNP lab. They are the two most economical routers that will support 12.4. The 3640 is a modular router that comes with no built-in Ethernet or serial ports, but has 4 network module slots you can put various Ethernet, Serial and Voice cards into. The 2600XM series has one open network module slot and two WIC slots. The nice thing about the 2600XM series is that it has a built-in 100mb Ethernet port!

What Can I Do With My Old 2500 or non-XM 2600 routers?

Even though Cisco states that the new CCNP exams are based on 12.4, that does not mean that you have to throw out all of your 2500 and/or non-XM 2600 routers and start from scratch. We can incorporate them into your new CCNP lab environment. However you must realize that you may not be able to see every feature work on each router since some of you routers may be running 12.3 and other 12.4. The old saying that you get what you pay for is applicable in this situation. The larger your budget is, the more features you will get. It is just like buying a car. The more money you have, the more bells and whistles you get.

Why Do Your Kits Mostly Have 3640s and 2600XM Routers?

We have included the 3640 routers are they are the most economical way to build out your 12.4 lab supporting IPv6 and SDM. To support IPv6 and SDM you must have 128/32 on each of these routers. Since these are the two waves of the future and they are on the tests, you should be able to perform labs incorporating each.

How Many Routers Do I Need?

Another great question! The more the better! Actually, we need to make it complex enough that we can see routes propagate, DHCP relay agents working, load balancing, route summarization, different OSPF stub types, Frame-Relay, IS-IS Intra-Area vs Inter-Area addressing, multi-casting, BGP groups and IPv6 on a dual-stack router. Wow, that was a mouthful! So more than two or three routers is a safe assumption to build your CCNP lab. We like to see about 8 routers in your lab. You can see the available CCNP labs we offer to review the specific Cisco models. Our Premium kit will match our lab courseware very well. The Standard and Economy kits will match closely and you will be able to comprehend most of the concepts by running the commands on the equipment you have even though it may not exactly match up to the labs you will be performing.

So if you can only afford one of those kits, don’t worry, you will still get tons of great experience from those kits! *Note, some people ask to be able to perform every concept that is covered in the book. That is not realistic for most customers who are self studying as this will cost well in excess of $20,000 per person.

How Many Switches Do I Need?

We think four switches is a pretty good number for your CCNP lab. That gives you the ability to configure various scenarios which require multiple switches such as trunking in multilayer switched networks, multi-casting, QoS, VTP concepts such as pruning, creating loops and suppressing them with STP, controlling root bridge elections, multiple spanning tree environments, UplinkFast and BackboneFast, EtherChannel and Layer 3 through 7 switching. Two Layer 3 switches plus 2950 switches seem to work pretty well which being cost conscientious.

What Is A Layer 3 Switch?

Wait until you get to BCMSN exam as this is a cool concept. This is a switch that can also do routing! So no need to bounce the traffic out of the switch, to a router only to have it sent right back to the same switch because the destination is on a different subnet. These switches will route that traffic within the switch and save precious bandwidth and time! We find that in a perfect world, you will have two of these switches, but you can get by with one. This way you can see how they communicate, trunk together and such.

Can You Give Me A General Idea Of The Lab Environment?

That will slightly change as per the kit you purchase. However in following the labs you will for the most part have a frame relay switch interconnecting four different areas in which summarizations can happen.

What Is A Terminal Server Router And Why Do I Want One?

A very nice to have is a 2509 or 2511 access/terminal server router. This way you do not have to keep moving the console cable from router to router as you are configuring them. You can access all your routers and switches via the terminal server and connected octal cable. This is not going to function in your lab, but it is nice to have to make your lab much easier to use.

If you already have your Cisco CCNA certification, the above should have made a lot of sense to you. Also congratulations on your CCNA! You should have a very good grasp on the different features of the various Cisco routers and Cisco switches. Now you will just need to know what Cisco routers and Cisco switches you need to purchase to build your Cisco CCNP lab.

CCNP Lab Kit Options

Well, we have four main Cisco CCNP labs available for you all at different price points. As mentioned before, the more you spend, the more bells and whistles you will be able to experience in your Cisco CCNP lab studies. We tend to prefer the Cisco Press books to accompany our Cisco CCNP labs. Who better to get this information from than straight from Cisco? The Cisco Press books come with full blown labs for the BSCI and BCMSN modules. We follow pretty closely the lab topologies presented in the BSCI and BCMSN books. This is because you will then be able to follow the accompanying labs. Now you must understand that to follow their labs exactly, you would have to spend easily twice as much as we are charging for any of these kits.

So from our experience we have modified the kits with some less expensive Cisco routers and Cisco switches that will cover a majority of the concepts in the labs. Again, the more you pay for the kit, you will be able to experience more of the concepts. Also from our experience we determined a way to reduce the price of the kit was to remove some routers that were there primarily just to make the lab environment more complex by adding extra routers which thus introduced additional routes. Well when we are trying to keep things on a tight budget, we don’t see the need to have three extra routers, all the Cisco modules and cables just so we can see a few extra routes in our tables.

It would be one thing if these routers were $50 each, but when you take into consideration the router, the module, the cables and such you can easily be adding $1,000 or more to the price of your kit. When in essence much of that information is going to wind up in a route summarization anyway! So again, we have to look for the most bang for the buck in building these kits. As mentioned before, the Cisco CCNP lab is probably the most difficult to build because of all the different technologies it touches.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel! You will be able to use all these pieces of equipment in your Cisco CCIE lab so they will not go to waste! Especially with the CiscoKits Trade-Up program which enables you to upgrade your Cisco routers and Cisco switches you purchased from CiscoKits. Please see the Trade-Up Program for details. But since you have most of the CCIE equipment already, you are well on your way to acing your Cisco CCNP exam and then conquering your Cisco CCIE certification.

The Nortel Energy Efficiency Calculator proves that Nortel switches are an excellent platform for gaming networks. Or maybe it doesn’t. We’ll never know.

Vcare Call Centers India – a 100% subsidiary of Call Centers India (CCI) has contact Center operations in Chennai and New Delhi, providing both voice and non-voice services to global clients. The company has deployed Cisco’s technology. Before Cisco’s solution, the company was operating out on a leased facility, using Avaya-based solutions. Vcare wanted a robust, secure and scalable infrastructure for supporting their inbound and outbound calling process.

The company has implemented Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC) solution and is currently using Cisco Call Manager and the Electronic Private Branch Exchange (EPBX), Cisco Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and Cisco Unity Voicemail.

Sandeep Mehra, CEO of Vcare Call Center India, said, "We found Cisco’s IP-based offering superior than the traditional Time Division Multiplexing (TDM based offering). We started using Cisco’s Voice over IP Solution for about 2 years. We moved from a leased facility to our own facility and found that the voice quality of the Cisco’s IPCC was far superior to any of its competitors." Mehra adds, "This solution helps large enterprises that need to centralize their contact center operations to gain more control over their resources."

Vcare faced several challenges before deploying the solution. "We had to have a cost effective solution, which would meet the ever-changing process requirements and co-ordination that is faced by SMB segment-based clients," said Mehra.

According to the company, exploring Cisco system’s full functionality has been a big challenge. Though the system is very powerful, the domain expertise of this system is still very limited. IT plays an important role in addressing these challenges. One of the major challenges – cost effectiveness – is strictly based on the total cost incurred on IT equipment and maintenance. Total cost of ownership, in the long run, is a lot lower in Cisco.

The company claims that the main business benefits of the solution are that it is very simple to use, stable, and reliable. Additionally, through the usage of IP-based systems, the survivability of calls is the highest. Even if one of the lines were to go down, the calls would roll over to another circuit within a few milliseconds, without disconnecting the calls.

Effective correspondence and communication is the most common HR issue, as disclosed by Vcare. "Reporting being one of the important functions in a call center, our HR manager is able to substantiate any action we take using the vast reports we get from IT. Through Cisco’s technology everything is logged in the system," said Mehra.

The infrastructure deployed at Vcare’s data center include Cisco Predictive, Preview, Outbound, 24/7 Dialer, Cisco Call Manager called PBX, Cisco Unity Voice Mail, and Cisco IP 7940 series phones. The Cisco solution was deployed in a span of about 3 months, start to finish. The company’s estimated IT budget for this year is about US $250 thousand. It is looking to deploy these solutions in multiple cities in India.

Contact Us : Call Centers India

Email : sales@callcentersindia.com

Phone : 206.384.4669

Cisco was introduced in 1984. The Cisco router played an important role in growth of internet. In 1993, Cisco got involved in training. The aim was to provide world class training programs to network associates. And since then Cisco courses have become popular among professional in IT industry. The industry also welcomes Cisco certified professionals with open hand. In short, various training programs offered by Cisco have become a passport for a high-flying career in the IT industry.

In recent years many other companies has also started certification program. But the Cisco remains on top in providing high skilled training to professionals. Cisco sponsors 9 certificates of which CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associates) is the most common certification. Cisco training classes covers all courses such as Cisco Network Training, Cisco Security Training etc. Cisco Training Classes fulfills the needs of the fresher in their brightening their future. Cisco Certification training has many program such as:-

* Cisco Certified Internet Expert (CCIE)- It is an expert-level certification exam. Cisco started its CCIE program in 1993. The CCIE has both written exam and a “lab” exam. A candidate has to clear the written exam to appear in the lab exam.

* Cisco Network Training- This training implement Cisco work LMSV 3, Advanced Services Cisco Unified Operators, Manager and Service Monitor, Advanced Services Cisco Ana Training.

* Cisco Security Training- This includes Cisco IOS Network Security, implementing Cisco Intrusion Prevention system, Security Network with PIX and ASA.

* Cisco BGP Training- This training provide student the knowledge of BGP which cover theory of BGP, Trouble Shooting Knowledge, Configuration of BGP on Cisco IOS routers and practical training which expertise students in configuring BGP Networks in customer environment.

* Cisco Data Centre Training- It is highly expansive training program, which includes assessment planning and design, designing datacenter application services, ACE intelligence course etc.

Cisco training class also has some other training programs such as Cisco Ironport training, NetApp training, Cisco Unified wireless training etc., to name a few. So, if you want to join the IT industry then it’s highly advisable that you join one of the Cisco training programs and get certified. Cisco training courses are offered both offline as well as online. So, if you are already employed but still want to get a Cisco certification then you can enroll yourself in an online program.

Cisco’s SVP of Business Development, Ned Hooper, discusses Cisco’s announcement to aquire Navini Networks. For more info see blogs.cisco.com/news

Ian Pennell, senior vice president, Cisco Small Business Technology Group offers advice to small businesses about investing in technology during a downturn, and pitfalls to avoid when doing so.

Get an overview of IPv6 where we discuss the background, the format, addressing type, protocols, and some of the main control messages. Get more training in regards to design, concepts, and configuration at: http://www.sixnetcg.com/index-tr-at-ipv6.html