GETVPN Training

This week from monday through wednesday, I took part in a GETVPN course at a training center in Munich. From what I know, this is not a standard Cisco course but at the request of the customer we’re working for, Global Knowledge (a Cisco training partner) organized everything. Even though there were not many new things for me in those three days, the course was welcomed because the project I am working at right now is exactly about this: traffic encryption in a large-scale MPLS network with GETVPN. The course was a good opportunity for me to practice again my knowledge about GETVPN. The troubleshooting sessions helped too, we’ve tested all kind of scenarios, simulating as much as possible the live MPLS network we work with at the office.

In case what I said above sounds worse than ancient chinese to some of my readers, GETVPN (which stands for Group Encrypted Transport Virtual Private Networks) is a technology used to encrypt customer traffic through the private network of a Internet Service Provider (usually). GETVPN allows secure communication between all customer branches without being affected by the scalability issues of the classical methods of encryption (like IPsec tunnels) when the number of locations increases.

The training room had good equipment, PCs for each student, WLAN with access to the lab network as well as to the Internet for our laptops, even silly little things like Mr. Watch:

Yeah, I named a toy … Anyway, the training center facilities were excellent, surprisingly good food at the canteen and all kinds of relaxation methods:

Some of my colleagues playing a quick round of table soccer. The game can become quite violent, as I had the opportunity to witness. But kinda cool.

All in all it was a productive way of spending three days away from work. But tomorrow I am going back to my office, what a mess. Oh well ;-)

Kinda busy

This week things were very busy at work, there are all kind of problems in the current GETVPN deployment. But I can’t complain, to be honest. I like this better than looking out of the window without anything to do. Besides, I think this is the best way to learn. I am directly involved in the implementation, testing and troubleshooting which mean I got deep into all kind of concepts which I would not have touched otherwise. That will do me good since GETVPN is part of the study material for my SNRS exam, which I have to pass before end of March.

It’s interesting to see how such a huge project takes place when you are on both sides of the fence, Cisco and the customer. We are working as Cisco engineers on customer’s premises so we have an unique view of the whole project (the technical part anyway). On the other side, I can’t help noticing major differences in the way an american corporation (Cisco) and a german one (the customer) work internally. At Cisco, working remotely (via VPN) is a non-issue. Each laptop has the VPN client installed by default. There is a big part of the employees who are mobile workers so remote access into the Cisco network is perfectly natural. That’s a big difference compared to the customer (and many other german companies) where it’s incredibly hard to get permission for something like this. I have never seen more paranoic people than the germans when it comes to security. But anyway, we do what we can.

In other news, it seems the car will be ready around thursday next week, at least that’s what the guy at the VW dealership told me this morning. I planned initially to drive to Utrecht for my training  but in the end I decided to go by train. The time is the same or even less if I think I could get into some big traffic jams on the autobahn. And I will have time to read something, watch a movie, etc. I think last time I was in an ICE train was many years ago, it should be interesting.

Enough for now, it’s late so I guess I just go to bed.