Cisco Technology Developer Partner - Arbor Networks, a provider of flow-based and deep packet inspection (DPI) technologies to ISPs, released a survey of 66 ISPs last week that says from relatively humble megabit beginnings in 2000, the largest DDoS attacks have now grown a hundredfold to break the 40 gigabit barrier this year. The growth in attack size according to Arbor, continues to significantly outpace the corresponding increase in underlying transmission speed and ISP infrastructure investment.
Also according to the Arbor survey, trends suggest that DDoS attack sizes may be on pace to approach 100 gigabits by this time next year, or perhaps more sophisticated attack vectors will be employed and bits per second won’t be as significant.
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Earlier this week Brocade pre-announced standout fiscal 4th quarter results (view video), in which revenues will be anywhere between $15-$21 million more than what was previously projected in the August 2008 Brocade fiscal third quarter conference call.
Additionally in a research note to yours truly, RBC Capital Markets analyst Thomas Curlin stated, "We believe Brocade's 8Gbps Fibre Channel product cycle acted as the key catalyst for the performance."
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 In his research note to yours truly this morning, RBC Capital Markets Mananging Director - Mark Sue appears to have forebodingly written the last rites for Nortel by lowering his price target for Nortel stock from $1.50 per share to $0 (i.e. zero, nil, zilch), warning that common equity holders are last in line during a bankruptcy which he considers a distinct possibility for Nortel. Read more Nortel's future has been called into question a lot this week, but why go so far as to issue a price forecast of $0 for Nortel common stock? |
At approximately the 3:04 time mark into the Internetwork Expert (IE) Cisco 360 Program live webcast last month, IE's Brian Dennis CCIE #2210, made the following statement:
"As a CLP (i.e. Cisco Learning Partner) we could not sell or market outside of North America."
In regard to the above statement made by Brian Dennis of IE, the General Manager of Learning@Cisco - Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn, provided the following official Cisco response:
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Today in his final blog post, Nortel chief technology officer John Roese blogged:
| "Well, it's been an interesting 28 months here at Nortel for me. The company has announced today that it is moving to a business unit structure in which all functions and resources (other than a few corporate activities) will be decentralized and integrated into full business units. Read more "With that change, the central CTO and R&D functions will be divided and moved into each BU and, as such, my role is no longer needed." |
It's illuminating to examine various Cisco product group sales over the past 9 years and chart their evolution as a percentage of Cisco yearly net sales. Advanced Technologies stands out as one group that has increased its contribution to Cisco sales since the company began recording sales from the group in 2003. It "vanquished" Routers in 2007 by grabbing a higher percentage of Cisco's net sales (23.1% for Advanced Technologies vs. 19.8% for Routers).
Perhaps at the current rate Switching could be "trumped" by Advanced Technologies as early as next year?
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In his research note to yours truly today, RBC Capital Markets Managing Director - Mark Sue trimmed over $3 billion in sales from his CY09 Cisco revenue forecast.
 According to Sue, "Cisco saw order growth decrease from +7% in August to -9% in October and is endorsing revenues to contract -5% to -10% for the January quarter. Read more "Book to Bill was less than 1.0 and with limited visibility. We've already cut numbers but it seems we didn't cut them enough and for CY09, we're now estimating a YoY decline of -8% to $36.5B down from +5%." |
It now appears that Cisco CEO John Chambers has missed the opportunity to become Treasury Secretary in a John McCain administration, nevertheless, Chambers can take solace in his current "gig" as Treasury Czar to Cisco networking partners and customers the world over.
Welcome to the - Bank of Cisco
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Yours truly is puzzled by the appointment of former Cisco executive and current JDS Uniphase CEO - Kevin Kennedy, as the new CEO of Avaya.
It's puzzling when you take into consideration that during Kennedy's 5 years at the helm of JDS Uniphase its annual operating losses were never less than $119M per year (which averages out to $326K in operating losses for every single day of the year).
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Cisco loves to pontificate about collaboration, however, could it all just be bunk?
Last week Network World readers learned that a former Cisco reseller was awarded more than $6 million in damages in a cross-lawsuit trial against Cisco. Perhaps most telling of Cisco's collaboration prowess, Judge Gregory H. Lewis of the California Superior Court ruled that certain provisions of the Cisco reseller agreement were "unconscionable."
Also last week, we learned that Cisco's launch of its 360 training program for CCIEs divided the market into Cisco-authorized training and independents (i.e. grey market/unauthorized training providers).
For fiscal 2008, Cisco averaged $458K in net income per CCIE.
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Have you ever enjoyed a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup?
One year warranty on refurbished:
One year warranty Cisco Repair
One year warranty Refurbished Cisco
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Cisco vs. Competitor Lab Tests |
Internetwork Expert co-founders Brian Dennis and Brian McGahan are preparing to make a "major corporate announcement" in a live Webcast scheduled for tomorrow at 11 a.m. (PDT).
I know I'm putting myself out on a limb here, but I believe the announcement is going to be that Cisco is buying IE and here's why:
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For the second time this year, CCIE training provider Internetwork Expert is offering both U.S. and International CCIE scholarships.
The entry details below are taken from Internetwork Expert's Web site:
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| Each scholarship recipient will receive CCIE Lab training from start to finish including: |
| 1. | Internetwork Expert End-to-End Program. |
| 2. | Complete CCIE Rack Rental package. |
| 3. | Onsite Bootcamp of the recipients choice (including airfare, hotel, provisions, and ground transportation). |
As the U.S. Treasury Secretary copiously spends billions of taxpayer money on the financial crisis, Network Instruments (NI) has been keen to point out to yours truly that the effectiveness of a financial trade is measured in nanoseconds, not milliseconds, necessitating drill down capabilities to a finite moment of time in order to monitor microbursts (microbursts are sub-second periods of time when major bursts of network usage occur).
Microburst Analysis
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Jayshree Ullal the former star Cisco Senior Vice President responsible for Cisco's $10 billion in revenue Datacenter Nexus 7000, Catalyst 4500 and 6500 switch product group and services line, has embraced cloud networking as her next gig by joining high-performance switch vendor Arista Networks as its President and Chief Executive Officer.
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 More than fireworks were exploding last July 4th, as that was the day CCIE trainer - Internetwork Expert announced they were the leaders in the CCIE training industry.
According to Internetwork Expert, a review of information publicly available on competing CCIE training vendor websites proved that Internetwork Expert certifies more CCIEs than the competition. |
Competitor IPexpert acknowledged and commended Internetwork Expert for providing great CCIE R&S training materials.
However simultaneously, IPexpert commissioned The Tolly Group to perform a comparative analysis between IPexpert and Internetwork Expert that evaluated which CCIE R&S training provider delivered the best overall value.
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The Cisco Partner Talent Network has a new Cisco-authorized recruiting vendor - Decision Toolbox (DT), whose website claims that its average fee is 7% of a new hire's first year salary - that's around a 61% reduction from the current Cisco specially negotiated channel partner rate of 18%.
DT, which is looking to service Cisco's 10,000 channel partners worldwide, notes that there are 2 components to its Cisco Partner Talent search fee:
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Over the past seven years each CCIE has annually been averaging $2M in net sales and $397K in net income for Cisco. Perhaps this might explain the motivation behind Cisco's new authorized CCIE training program.
Listen to Ken Presti's podcast:
The Cisco Learning Network has partnered with CareerBuilder.com to provide access to one of the largest job databases on the Internet.
Post your Cisco Resume Here.
Search below for recently posted Cisco jobs.
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 According to dual CCIE George Morton - President of Madison Solutions, a provider of strategic network solutions, "Cisco is the Tiger Woods of American Business. They hit the center of the green every time and this is in no small part to the management skills of John Chambers and his executive team.
"Understanding this will help you understand what is going to be important to your IT shop in the coming years. Cisco's a winner in an industry that doesn’t know words like: steady, consistency, predictable." |
Morton continued, "Whether you love, hate, or just don’t care, you have to admire Cisco and John Chambers' ability to build a winning game plan year after year. With all of the press wondering if Cisco will succeed with this new endeavor, or that new endeavor, I wouldn’t worry. The numbers tell the tale."
Cisco employee count over the past 14 years:
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Source: Cisco Form 10-K Filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
 Morton added, "When you take the raw numbers, Cisco has consistently hit the ratio of employees to sales and income. Net Sales Revenue per employee has run around $571,000 for 14 years. When you consider who were the major players in 1995 in networking, companies such as Alcatel, AT&T/Lucent, Cabletron, DEC, HP, IBM and Nortel, the consistent ability of Cisco to stay focused on the end game is incredible."
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Cisco net sales and net income per employee over the past 14 years:
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