Cisco Network^WLive! 2011 Las Vegas Conference report, part 1

I, once again, had the privilege to participate in Cisco Live! 2010 (formerly known as Cisco Networkers, what's up with the name change btw?) which was held in the Mandalay Bay Conference Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. For people without google maps, that's in the USA. Travel there involved sitting long distances in several flying aluminium tubes, getting searched by both private security companies and the TSA, passport control, tolerating long queues, etc. What can I say? IT IS WORTH IT.

Being a fairly early bird when registering I was among one of the first being able to select which techtorials, labs, panels, etc. to participate in. This year, I decided to mix some SP and DC stuff instead of doing only one track. The day before the conference really starts there are usually either half or full day techtorials/labtorials which either means "passively listen to the presenter(s)" or "lab like hell" - previously I've enjoyed myself immensely by "passing" the CCIE R&S prep (~ 7 hrs actual lab) and CCIE SP prep (~7 hrs actual lab) to see what the skill level and makeup of the real test would be like. 2010 I decided to skip that stuff and instead go and and get a L2VPN refresher in TECMPL-3001 (Title Layer 2 Virtual Private Networks - Converged IP/MPLS Network) as I don't tend to do much of L2VPN nowadays.

The techtorial was divided in three parts each having its own lecturer. Part 1 consisted of your basic L2VPN setup, how it works, etc. Part 2 was VPLS for dummies and Part 3 with future enhancements such as PBB/802.1ah, H-VPLS with PBB, etc. Future products such as ME3600X/ME3800X were briefly mentioned and presented as well. All three speakers were pretty experienced and I think all from a BU.

All in all a good day.