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By having CCNA training on video, learning on a fluctuating schedule is much easier. With many things going on outside of training, it may be difficult to spend time in the classroom for training. The videos allow you to learn anywhere, at any time.  With the highest quality training at your fingertips, you will be fully prepared for not only a CCNA certification, but all the challenges of the real world.

Success is waiting

To be successful in an up and down economy, you have to make your resume stand out.  With a CCNA certification, success is waiting. Certification will open doors to many different industries. Your carrier can only benefit from the proper training. When success is knocking at the door, let a CCNA training video help you open it.

CCNA Training: The Key To Success is a post from: Palaestra Training

Fair is fair, and no matter how thinly you slice it, there are always two sides to every situation. 

If you’ve been around the IT game for any length of time, many, if not most, of these will make sense to you.  So let’s take a look at some of the reasons why it sucks to be the "IT Guy".

1. No one understands how long something actually takes. Most end users just come in and sit down at their desk, and everything works.  Great.  What they don’t see (or understand – or care) are the hours of work you put into getting things working correctly, fixed, restored, or whatever the task happened to be.
2. You’re never "off-duty".  Even if you work 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, when you come home or go out someone will still stop or call and ask you a computer question.  They would never dream of asking their friend the dentist to look at their rear molar if they happened to see them out at the mall, but they have no trouble asking you about the annoying message that keeps popping up on their PC or why their sound suddenly stopped working.
3. People think if you’re in IT, you know everything about every type of computer or program.  Most people understand there’s a difference between a regular car and a tractor trailer.  They don’t just assume that because you know how to drive a car, you can drive a Mack truck.  For some reason, however, if you’re the IT guy you must know how to fix a computer (PC and Mac), design a database, write an application, create a website, fix an xbox, hook up a wireless router, and so on.
4. You periodically hear from people you haven’t seen in years.  That would be nice if they called to say hi, wanted to catch up and have some drinks, or actually wanted to offer you something.  In reality, it always go the same way.  They start off with, "Hey how’s it going", "How’s the family", "How are the kids" and then they jump right into it..  "Hey why I have you on the phone, I have a computer question for you…."  Thats when my battery on my cell phone magically goes dead and I can’t receive calls for an hour or two (I hate when that happens)!
5. There’s very little separation between work and home.  Most professions have a separation between on and off hours.  When your an IT person, you usually work on computers all day, and then come home and more than likely work on them all night as well.  In some respects it’s great that you can do what you love, but it doesn’t hurt to get out and get some fresh air sometime!
6. You usually have way too much junk laying around the house.  As a IT guy or girl, you tend to accumulate a lot of spare parts and junk over the years, and you never throw it away because you’re just certain you’ll have a need for that 9-pin serial cable or that 2400 baud modem at some point. 
7. You always have to keep updating your skills.  This can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it.  In IT, things change pretty quickly and if you don’t update your skills you can become dated pretty quickly.  Yes you were an absolute wizard with Windows 3.11 for workgroups, but not much call for those skills anymore skippy.
8. Your family and friends can’t stand to watch a movie or TV show with you if it has anything to do with tech or IT.  You have a comment for every scene, whether it’s Jack Bauer getting Chloe to send detailed streaming satellite imagery to his PDA in real-time, or the movie star saving gigs of data to their thumb drive in seconds using operating systems that don’t exist with lots of scrolling numbers and graphics that don’t mean anything floating in the background just before the villain walks in.  Just remember, it wouldn’t be much fun to watch people struggle with installing drivers when they’re rushing to copy those stolen files, or have their cell phone die in the middle of the satellite update because they hit a dead spot.  Suspend belief for awhile and relax! 
9. You always want the latest gadget.  Yes you just bought a dual-core PC with latest video card and gigs of RAM just six months ago.  But now there is a quad-core system with a faster video card, bigger monitor and faster memory you have your eye on.  Remember, no matter what you buy, it will be obsolete in six months, so draw a line in the sand and enjoy what you have.  Unless of course it’s an iPod, in which case it will be obsolete in three months with a newer version that’s smaller with twice the storage and half the price.  That’s the nature of tech. Live with it.
10. No matter how sharp you are, you’re kids WILL be better than you one day.  Yes you make your living in IT.  Yes you keep up with most of the latest tech and gadgets, but one day your kids WILL beat you at your own game.  Probably sooner than you think.

So there you have our 10 reasons why it sucks to be an IT guy or girl.  Can you relate?  Have reasons of your own?  Post a comment, we’d love to hear them.

10 Reasons Why it Sucks to be the IT Guy (or Girl) is a post from: Palaestra Training

Years ago, being “into” computers meant long, lonely walks home from school, eating lunch at tables far, far away from the “cool kids” and lengthy discussions about the relative impact of photon torpedoes and how Dr. Spock actually could be transported down to the surface of that mysterious planet.

These days, thankfully, Geek is the new Chic and being in the Information Technology (IT) industry offers a lot of opportunities and many benefits that we’ll list below.  When you finish reading our top 25, leave a comment and let us know your top few favorite reasons for being a IT pro.

If you’re in the IT industry, many of these will be common knowledge to you.  If you’re not in the industry yet, or thinking about making a change, you really need to consider these 25 Reasons why it’s Great to be an IT Guy (or Girl).

1. You can work in virtually any industry. Whether your fancy is banking, pharmaceuticals, e-commerce websites, or even the adult industry.  Yes, some IT folks actually work in the adult industry.  All those websites don’t just design themselves.  They all need IT folks to make the wheels turn.
2. You get to play with the latest technology. Depending on where you work, this can be more true for some. For the most part though, you usually get to work on (or at least experiment with) the latest tech.
3. You get to work with other smart people. Many industries are wrought with lazy people and hangers-on.  People who work just hard enough to not get fired, and who get paid just enough to not quit.  Typically, IT attracts smart people which allows you to increase your skills in the process.
4. New challenges every day. Even if you job consists of something fairly mundane (i.e. data backups) there is always the challenge to do things better, faster, cheaper and this presents a never ending set of challenges.
5. You get to be the hero. Many times you’re called upon to save someone’s rear end when they lost the document, spreadsheet or file they’ve been working on for weeks and need for a meeting in 10 minutes.  Sometimes it’s an easy fix, sometimes it’s not.  Either way, you get to save the day.
6. Business casual. Not always, but more often than not IT folks get to dress business casual.  Even in industries that are usually shirt and tie (i.e. banking), the IT department usually dresses down. If not, see #1.  You can work in virtually any industry – so if business casual is important to you, you can always jump to another company.
7. Training. The amount of training will vary from place to place, but as new technologies are released it only makes sense from a business perspective to keep you trained.  Some companies send their staff to classroom training, other offer IT Certification Training videos, while others offer books or self-study courses.
8. You touch all areas of a company. As an IT person, you’re not just relegated to one area of a company’s function.  You typically get a chance to interact with various departments (if not all departments) within an organization.  This presents opportunities to network and open doors for yourself if you know how to develop those relationships.
9. You have the opportunity to innovate. As an IT person, you’re often looked at to offer suggestions on new technologies, ways to improve current processes and introduce innovation.  Understand the importance of this role and take the initiative to suggest and offer new ideas. Even if they are shot-down on occasion, keep making your ideas known.
10. Career development. In the IT industry, perhaps more than in any other, you have the opportunity to take charge of your own career and develop it how you see fit.  You can jump from area to area within an company, jump from company to company, or even change industries completely.  The fact is that the underlying IT infrastructure is pretty consistent across industries.  As you make your moves, you should be increasing your experience, marketability and salary.  It might require making some physical moves or relocations; but you have to decide how important that is to you and what it’s ultimately worth.
11. Stay technical or go into management. This relates to career development, but as an IT professional you have the choice to really stay technical as an engineer or architect, or get into management. Management typically means higher salaries, but it also introduces more stress, more vulnerability (at least at lower level management) and ultimately more risk. Management definitely has its benefits and you can always jump back into being hands-on technical when the need arises.
12. You can keep up with your kids. In previous generations, there usually ended up being a pretty big generational gap between parents and children.  IT professionals typically keep up with cutting edge technology, gaming consoles, gadgets and anything techie.  All of these things appeal to a large section of today’s youth; which allows you to narrow the “generational gap” and keep in touch with your kids.
13. You don’t have to pay someone to setup and maintain your home network(s). Most people who aren’t either a techie or in the IT industry have no clue how to setup, configure and maintain their home systems.  They’re at the mercy of the bench techs are their local technology superstore or their computer manufacturer’s IT help desk (where ever call begins with “reboot” and ends with “reinstall”).
14. You know other IT professionals. Some might say that’s not necessarily a good or bad thing, but think about it.  When you’re looking for advice on a new system, help with a project, a website or a piece of software, you usually know someone who can do it or get it for you.
15. Work from anywhere. Many companies offer the ability to work from home occasionally, if not exclusively.  The nature of IT, remote desktop capabilities, VPN connectivity, etc., allows an IT person to work from home or remotely as easily as sitting at their desk.  Many companies have “virtual teams” with IT people working remotely from anywhere in the world.
16. Get paid a great salary. In general, Information Technology salaries are very good.  IT professionals get paid very well, especially as time and experience increases.  While a first or second year help desk person may not be making a six-figure salary, as you grow into your career, specialize in a certain area and gain a deep understanding of your niche; a six-figure salary is certainly within reach.
17. Lots of opportunity to network. The IT industry has a ton of conferences throughout the year in virtually every area within IT.  Whether your a systems engineer, application developer, database administrator or SAN storage engineer, there are many opportunities to network and learn throughout the year.  The challenge is to find the best ones to attend and getting your employer to send you.
18. Lots of freedom. Most IT departments provide a decent amount of freedom to their employees such as flexible schedules, breaks whenever necessary, etc.  Many other types of jobs require you to punch a clock, take breaks at certain times and be micromanaged throughout the day.  An IT professional can usually take breaks whenever they need and come and go as they please; as long as they get their work done each day.
19. The ability to do things your way. Since there is usually a thousand different ways to do anything in IT, you have the ability to do a task in a way that makes the most sense to you.  Of course there are company policies and procedures and a general framework you have to work within, but typically as long as you get it done, it works, and doesn’t break something else; you can do it.
20. Almost nothing that can’t be accomplished. Within an IT department, often times the business will come to IT and say we need “x, y and z” done.  At first pass it might seem impossible, but the majority of the time after brainstorming, trial and error, and more brainstorming you find a way to make it happen.  That brings about a certain sense of satisfaction.
21. You usually don’t have to deal with customers. Depending on what area of IT you work in, you normally don’t have to deal with customers.  Most of the real IT work (infrastructure, networking, database administration, line of business application support, etc) is done behind the scenes with little customer contact.
22. You can trade services. When you’re in IT, you have skills and resources most non-IT people don’t have.  You can trade those skills quite often for other’s expertise and services.  Whether that means handy work around the house, lawn care, auto-repair, etc., if you are ambitious and like to network you trade services for a great number of things.
23. You’re a great problem solver. Since the majority of IT work involves solving problems you become good at being methodical.  We all know some IT people that are great problem creators, but for the most part IT people are good at solving things.  Learning to be a great problem solver carries over into all aspects of your life and helps in many areas (outside of IT).
24. You’re a great researcher. The basis for solving problems is knowing how to research and find solutions.  Learning how to research again carries over into many other things in life whether it’s helping your children with homework, your spouse with a project or yourself when contemplating starting a new job, making a purchase or learning a new skill.
25. You like to constantly learn new things. IT changes more rapidly than most industries, with new technologies being created every day.  Computers constantly get faster, new methods of accomplishing tasks are always being developed and software evolves sometimes daily.  While it’s true some companies are still running Windows 95 with dot matrix printers; however most IT professionals have the opportunity to constantly learn new skills and pick up new technologies.

Well there you have it.  Our Top 25 reasons it’s great to be an Information Technology professional.  Some of these are sure to be more true than others, depending on where you work and what part of the world you’re in.

Leave a comment, and let us know you favorite reasons for being in IT!

25 Reasons Why it’s Great to be an IT Guy (or Girl). is a post from: Palaestra Training

Before you pick a tool, you need to understand what you’re measuring and what ‘normal’ is in your environment so you can identify problems as they happen. Here’s a few network monitoring tools to consider when selecting the one that’s right for you.

1. HP OpenView

HP OpenView is customizable to meet any service level. It improves service levels by allowing you to monitor all incidents and changes. HP allows you to implement a comprehensive management solution that will prevent downtime, allow you to resolve problems faster, and keep your systems running.

2. Tivoli

Tivoli manages your IT infrastructure, including operating systems, databases and servers with a single work portal.

Tivoli allows you to retrieve data quickly, and detects potential issues and automatically recovers from situations to keep your key applications running with minimal risk of loss due to unforeseen circumstances.

3. OpenNMS

Open NMS is an open source network monitoring platform. OpenNMS provides commercial-level support and services and because its open source, it’s fully customizable.

4. WhatsUp

WhatsUp monitors the availability of your network devices, such as the router, network switch, at a glance using a graphical display.

It provides a variety of views of your network status in real-time and alerts you when a device goes down.

5. CA Unicenter

CA Unicenter NSM supports your critical business processes, identifies and predicts problems, and prioritizes issues based on how they impact your business.

With advanced capabilities in visualization, you’re alerted as issues arise, streamlining your IT management functions.

6. Big Brother

Big Brother, a web-based network monitoring solution, is customizable and easy to maintain system. It monitors the availability of your network devices and servers. Administrators can monitor hundreds of servers and network devices simultaneously.

It notifies you of immediate problems via email, text message, or pager.

7. Look@LAN

Look@LAN network monitor allows you to monitor networks of any size and configuration. It autos-detect network configuration, monitoring, reporting, network log…etc.

This application tells you which PC’s are online/offline, which services are running on the network, ping times for each workstation and much more.

8. Peribit Networks

Peribit streamlines network processes by resolving the technical limitations of WANs. It accelerates application performance, simplifies application rollouts, improves disaster recovery, and backup. With Peribit, you have sharper visibility of the WAN performance resulting in more efficient use of WAN resources and higher productivity levels.

9. GFILanguard

GFI Languard solution helps you to address issues quickly and effectively. It allows you to scan, detect, assess and repair security issues on your network. Administrators often use more than one tool to deal with and solve network problems, but with GFI, all areas of vulnerability are addressed in one package.

10. CHEOPS

Cheops is a network management tool that allows you to map and monitor your network. It has host/network discovery functionality as well as OS detection of hosts. It has the ability to probe hosts to see what services are running.

So whether you are running a small or large business you first need to identify what environment you are working with and what problems may arise before deciding on the right Network Monitoring Tool for you.

Top Ten Network Monitoring Tools is a post from: Palaestra Training

Information Security is a concern for every company, no matter how big or how small. 

Knowing what information typically is traversing your company’s network is critical to knowing when something out of the ordinary occurs. 

Monitoring your network enables you to be aware of many things including degradation or fluctuations in performance, overall network health and stability, and security.

When it comes to network monitoring tools, there are many choices ranging from free to commercial, open-source to proprietary. The range of functionality they provide also varies from packet capturing tools to full-blown network monitoring applications that can show the health of all devices on your network in real-time.

We’ve listed some of our favorites (not in any particular order of preference), and we’d like to hear your favorites as well.

1. Netmon – This Microsoft tool has been a packet-capturing mainstay of network monitoring and security professionals for many years.  This free utility has recently been overhauled and is currently at version 3.1.
2. Ethereal /  Wireshark - This full-featured protocol analyzer can dissect over 750 different protocols and can be used to analyze traffic in real-time over the network or analyze traffic dumps from a variety of sources.  Ethereal has "forked" with most of the core development team now working on the rebranded product called Wireshark.  Wireshark encompasses all the features of the famous Ethereal and will continue to be developed and added to going forward.  Although Ethereal is still available for download, development has for the most part stopped.
3. What’s up Gold – More of a networking monitoring tool than a packet sniffer/protocol analyzer, it never the less provides crucial monitoring of the essential components of your IP based network.  Knowing the status of all your network devices is a key element to secure and stable environment.
4. TCPDump/WinDump – This no-frills packet sniffing/analyzing tool has been around for quite some time, and is a old favorite of many networking professionals.  While still actively maintained, it doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as some of the new applications (i.e. Wireshark).
5. Ettercap – Terminal-based network sniffer/interceptor/logger for ethernet LANs. It supports active and passive dissection of many protocols (even ciphered ones, like ssh and https).  Plugins are supported and it also has the ability to check whether you are in a switched LAN.  It can also use OS fingerprints (active or passive) to let you know the geometry of the LAN.
6. NetStumbler – Netstumbler is a not so much a traffic monitoring tool as it is a wireless identifying tool.  It allows you to discover wireless networks, and while this obviously has implications in the hacking community for
7. Kismet/KisMAC - Kismet is an 802.11 layer2 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system. Kismet will work with any wireless card which supports raw monitoring (rfmon) mode, and can sniff 802.11b, 802.11a, and 802.11g traffic.
8. Nmap - The de facto network discover/monitoring tool that has been ported to run on most major operating systems, it may be used to discover computers and services on a computer network.  Nmap may be able to determine various details about the remote computers. These include operating system, device type, uptime, software product used to run a service, exact version number of that product, presence of some firewall techniques and, on a local area network, even vendor of the remote network card.
9. Nessus - One of the most widely used networking scanning and vulnerability tools, this suite of applications can monitor the network detect vulnerabilities such as mis-configured applications, weak passwords, open ports, and more. 
10. IRIS - The Iris Network Traffic Analyzer vulnerability forensics software provides network traffic analysis and integrated forensics reporting. Iris enables security best practices through unique protocol analysis and proven packet sniffer technology providing for a complete network forensics solution.

Some of these tools have more commercial application than others, but if you are tasked with your company’s network security, it is advisable to be aware of the legitimate commercial tools, as well as the applications and tools preferred by the hacking community.

By keeping up to date on network vulnerabilities and potential security threats, along with understanding what normal network traffic and conditions are you’re more able to quickly detect network bottlenecks and attempts to breach security.

Top 10 Networking Monitoring Tools is a post from: Palaestra Training