New Year offer: practice 1 week for your CCNA for $9

Would you like to practice for your CCNA on the same simulator used by training centers like Kaplan / Selftest?

http://www.selftestsoftware.com/gen.aspx?pn=p00555&pf=page

We have a limited New Year promotion: rent your own MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud CCNA practice lab for less than half the regular price: $9 for one week. Valid until Monday January 9, 2012 only on our Facebook wall

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/CCNA-Lab-Simulation/155028001250199

Have a prosperous 2012!

Gambit Communications Receives International Green Apple Award - Winner - Fourth Year in a Row

MIMIC Simulator Simulates 50,000 Devices in One Machine, Saving Electricity Requirements By 90 Percent

Nashua, NH - November 29, 2011 -- Gambit Communications, a leading provider of network simulation tools, has been announced as a winner of the prestigious International Green Apple Environment Award in The Green Organisation's international campaign to find the world's greenest companies. The Award was in recognition of Gambit's environmentally friendly product - MIMIC Simulator, that creates a greener environment by simulating 50,000 networking and storage devices in one machine.

The trophy was presented by The Green Organisation at 18th annual international awards ceremony at the House of Commons, London on Monday, November 14th. This is the forth time in a row that Gambit was honored with the award. Gambit competed against more than 500 other nominations.

The Green Apple Awards are presented annually in recognition of companies, councils and communities carrying out projects that are environmentally friendly; there were 500 nominations this year. Other winners include Coca-Cola, BP, Ford and McDonalds. 


More details at http://www.gambitcomm.com/site/pr/mimic_Green_Apple_award_PR_11.htm

Are you ready for the CCNA exam?

Determine in a couple of minutes whether there is a missing skill that could prevent
you from passing the CCNA certification exam. Your only investment is a couple of clicks.
No extraneous software to install or configure, connect to the lab in under one minute.
.
MIMIC Virtual Lab CCNA at http://www.gambitcomm.com/live has a list
of challenges to test your skills. For example:

Enable IPv6 connectivity between router1 and router2 over the serial interface connecting
them, so that you can ping each other's IPv6 address.

Use IPv6 subnet 2001:A10:1:10::/64 for this exercise. What are the IOS commands necessary
to accomplish this? Obviously, your last command would be a successful ping command.

Anatomy of a virtual network management training appliance

Overview

Traditionally, providing a training lab for network management software meant setting up a physical environment featuring the desired variety of networking equipment to cover the training curriculum. Furthermore, certain training scenarios required complicated setup, and required travel to a training site, or time-sharing of central facilities. These limitations made such training cost prohibitive, both for the provider and student, resulting in less than adequate training.

With the advent of ubiquitous virtual machines (VMs) and network simulation, training labs can be provisioned cost-effectively by implementing virtual training appliances on either public or private clouds. Bundling the management app and MIMIC Simulator on a VM image, allows the training provider to instantiate as many training labs as needed at any point in time, and for the student to access the training environment over the Internet whenever and as long as needed.

Benefits of cloud based training

Besides the obvious benefits of reduced customer support, higher customer satisfaction and more customer loyalty (thus, repeat business), here are some additional advantages of appliance-based training:

• On-demand pre-sales training can be used for application evaluation. With a larger variety of scenarios, training can be tailored to the customers needs.

• Partner training reduces the sales cycle and improves closing rate by better demonstrating features that specifically solve customer requirements

Implementation

MIMIC Simulator is a software suite including SNMP simulation designed to accurately create virtual environments to interoperate with network management applications. This simulator is already used in a multi-tenant cloud offering called MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud, with on-demand training pods for Cisco CCNA training from training houses like Kaplan IT/Transcender. This offering leverages the Cisco IOS simulation features of MIMIC toward low-cost CCNA training. OEMs layer their own training curriculum on top of the virtual lab.

The virtual training appliance can easily be implemented as an on-demand, single-tenant offering. Similarly to traditional software installations, the network management application is installed in a VM along with MIMIC Simulator. The simulator transparently provides a scalable, dynamic network environment to be managed by the application. The student does not even need to know what is running behind the scenes.

Setting up a training environment and all feature-specific scenarios can be a significant task. It can be alleviated by leveraging the work of the engineering folks. R&D and Quality Assurance departments already test network management applications against MIMIC Simulator. They setup the simulator to provide predictable, repeatable, regressionable scenarios that run the management software through its paces. Those scenarios can be adapted for training.

An extra customization adds a simple training scaffold to provide the student a user-friendly choice of scenarios to train on. Each scenario configures the simulator to create a particular network configuration and traffic patterns to impact the management application. For example, a faulty configuration can be simulated to train troubleshooting procedures.

Once a snapshot of this VM is saved, any number of independent instances can be provisioned for the required training periods. The cloud framework isolates each of the VMs from each other, preventing them from impacting each other.

Summary

A combination of MIMIC Simulator and network management application bundled on a virtual machine provides cost-effective, on-demand training tailored to customer needs. Deploying this appliance on the public cloud scales the training resources at incremental and predictable cost.

Contact Gambit’s support to help you setup a virtual appliance for your training.

MIMIC SNMP Simulator 11.30 interoperability testing

Screenshots below show SNMP simulation activity on virtual machines running
the MEPIS 11.0 and openSuSE 11.4 LXDE flavors of Linux.

MIMIC SNMP Simulator 11.30 performance for 50,000 agents

We have run our standard performance tests on our V40z quad dual-core
server with 32GB RAM running Fedora 13, and there is no performance
degradation for 50,000 active agents.

MIMIC Simulator rent-to-own program

You asked for it and we listened.

In order to alleviate the up-front cost of using MIMIC SNMP Simulator
software in these tough economic times, we are announcing a rental program
with option to acquire the software: rent MIMIC on a monthly basis for 10%
of the cost of the software, and have the option to acquire the software
at the end of 10 months.


MIMIC allows you to test the scalability of your application against 50,000
devices and all possible pathological network scenarios.

This program gives you the most advantages: like a lay-away program it
allows you to spread payments over time, except you get the benefits of
the product before completing the payment plan. This offer is available
for a limited time only.

For details, please visit http://www.gambitcomm.com .

Practice for your CCNA and win cash

Get ready for your CCNA: A new contest with $70 grand prize

We are announcing a new contest, free to all.

All correct answers will be entered in a drawing for a grand prize valued
at $70 ($50 cash transfer + 1 week rental CCNA pod), and four other prizes
for free rental of our Cisco CCNA lab. No need to fill out any forms.

To enter, connect to your free demo pod at

http://www.gambitcommunications.com/contest/ 

and win the contest by answering this question:

Log on to router1, and verify that you can ping 10.201.1.10 on switch1.

Using the "Connection" menu, disconnect the Ethernet link between router1
and switch1 (simulating a link failure).

Notice the console message. Send us a copy of the log message

that is generated.

Verify that you cannot ping 10.201.1.10 any more.

What commands do you need to execute to re-route traffic to reach
10.201.1.10? Your final command should be a successful ping.

Hint: you only need to execute commands on router1.

-------------------------------

Rules:

The contest is open until Friday September 30, 2011 at 12pm EDT.
Email your answer to us at contest-20110907@gambitcomm.com .
At that time we will conduct a random drawing of the correct entries.
The grand prize is USD $50 cash transfer via Paypal or USD $50 gift card
to Amazon (your choice) plus one free week of MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud ($20
value), and 4 second prize winners will win a free week of MIMIC Virtual
Lab Cloud (USD $20 value) to practice their skills. We will announce
the winners on this forum. Previous winners of our contests are excluded.

Good luck!

Double the CCNA practice time on MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud

For a short time, we have increased demo pod time from 30 minutes to 1 hour.
Practice for your CCNA for free!

 http://www.gambitcomm.com/live/

 

Scale with MIMIC Simulator and get 30,000 additional devices

Gambit Communications has a special for this month.

Buy a MIMIC SNMP Simulator 20,000 agent license and you will get
a *FREE upgrade to 50,000 agent* license instead.

You will get a scalable lab the way you always wanted, filled with
thousands of devices without spending your entire capital budget.
You will be able to test the scalability of your management applications
with 30,000 more devices.

Please use the promo code: *August11 *
This promotion is valid until August 31st, 2011.

Best Regards,

Tested MIMIC 11.20 on VectorLinux 7.0 RC1

FYI, we ran MIMIC SNMP Simulator 11.20 with no problems on VectorLinux 7.0RC1.
Below is a screenshot of an agent with a SNMP simulation being accessed.

MIMIC SNMP Simulator 11.20 runs on Fedora 15 LXDE spin

FYI, MIMIC SNMP Simulator 11.20 runs out of the box on the recently released Fedora 15 LXDE spin.
Previous reports have demonstrated MIMIC operating on a variety of Linuxes.
This demonstrates that MIMIC can run well on the most recent Linux distributions.
The screenshot below shows a SNMP simulation being queried remotely.

Gambit Facebook followers weekly drawing for 1-week CCNA pod ($20 value)

Like the "Gambit Communications" Facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nashua-NH/Gambit-Communications-Inc/105269342840455

and be automatically entered in a weekly drawing for a 1-week CCNA
practice pod ($20 value). This promotion runs until September 1, 2011.
We'll announce the weekly winner on our wall.

Get ready for your CCNA: A new contest with $70 grand prize

We are announcing a new contest, free to all.

All correct answers will be entered in a drawing for a grand prize valued
at $70 ($50 cash transfer + 1 week rental CCNA pod), and four other prizes
for free rental of our Cisco CCNA lab. No need to fill out any forms.

To enter, connect to your free demo pod at

http://www.gambitcommunications.com/contest/

and win the contest by answering this question:

- enable IPv6 connectivity between router1 and router2 over the serial
interface connecting them, so that you can ping each other's IPv6
address.

Use IPv6 subnet 2001:A10:1:10::/64 for this exercise. What are the IOS
commands necessary to accomplish this? Obviously, your last command
would be a successful ping command.

-------------------------------

Rules:

The contest is open until Tuesday July 20, 2011 at 12pm EDT.
Email your answer to us at contest-20110706@gambitcomm.com .
At that time we will conduct a random drawing of the correct entries.

The grand prize is USD $50 cash transfer via Paypal or USD $50 gift card
to Amazon (your choice) plus one free week of MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud ($20
value), and 4 second prize winners will win a free week of MIMIC Virtual
Lab Cloud (USD $20 value) to practice their skills. We will announce
the winners on this forum. Previous winners of our contests are excluded.

To see winners of our previous contests, just search for "contest" in this
forum.

Regards, and good luck!

Changing statistics values in MIMIC SNMP Simulator

FYI, we have published a new instructional video

"Changing statistics values in MIMIC SNMP Simulator"

which shows how to easily change specific statistics counters and
visualize them in a management application.

The video is at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0HU8P0MVz8


Follow us on Facebook to be the first to hear about our latest news and promotions.

Study for the Cisco CCNA certification and win cash

We are announcing a new contest, free to all.

All correct answers will be entered in a drawing for a grand prize valued
at $70 ($50 cash transfer + 1 week rental CCNA pod), and four other prizes
for free rental of our Cisco CCNA lab. No need to fill out any forms.

To enter connect to your free demo pod at


http://www.gambitcommunications.com/contest/

and win the contest by answering this question:

1) log onto the console of "Switch 2" and reset the running config using
these commands:

erase nvram:
reload

2) once the device reboots, implement the configuration to connect it
to both uplink switches and "Router 2".

NOTE: Saving the running config before the reload and restoring it
afterwards is NOT what we are looking for!

3) verify connectivity with 3 ping commands.

What are the commands necessary for steps 2 and 3?


Hint: you only need to execute commands on switch2.

-------------------------------

Rules:

The contest is open until Tuesday June 7, 2011 at 12pm EDT.
Email your answer to us at contest-20110524@gambitcomm.com .
At that time we will conduct a random drawing of the correct entries.

The grand prize is USD $50 cash transfer via Paypal or USD $50 gift card
to Amazon (your choice) plus one free week of MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud ($20
value), and 4 second prize winners will win a free week of MIMIC Virtual
Lab Cloud (USD $20 value) to practice their skills. We will announce
the winners on this forum. Previous winners of our contests are excluded.

To see winners of our previous contests, just search for "contest" in this
forum.

Regards, and good luck!

Gambit Communications
Developers of MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud and MIMIC SNMP Simulator

MIMIC SNMP Simulator at Tokyo Interop

If you are planning to visit Interop in Tokyo -

http://www.interop.jp/2011/english/index.html

please stop by at our Booth # 4M14.

You will see how the latest version MIMIC Simulator is working with
management applications. You will also get to see MIMIC Netflow
Simulator in action.

Hope to see you there.

MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud integrates Twitter-based real-time chat

Gambit Communications' online CCNA lab product now integrates a
real-time chat feature based on Twitter that allows its users to exchange
messages in real-time in order to swap tips, ask questions, give advice.

The new real-time chat feature is provided by Nurph, a Twitter application.
It transparently opens another window in the user's browser, allowing
them to use their Twitter account to chat with other online users that are
practicing for the CCNA. This introduces a new collaborative atmosphere
to studying for the Cisco CCNA exam.

MIMIC Simulator helps Fed Tech to provide Network Management Solutions to Federal Customers

"MIMIC Simulator provides the network environment that is utilized by FTS to engineer holistic solutions that exceed customer standards and expectations while remaining under budget and on time ", Jason Pulfer, VP Service Delivery, FedTech Services, Inc.


For details on how MIMIC SNMP Simulator is used to support FedTech Services see

http://www.gambitcomm.com/site/news/news_files/MIMIC_FedTech_Case_Study.pdf

MIMIC SNMP Simulator now supports SNMPv4...

... in order to take advantage of the new IPv8 256-bit addresses
and AES512 encryption.

MIMIC SNMP Simulator 11.00 now supported on Oracle Solaris 11

FYI, we have verified that MIMIC SNMP Simulator runs on Oracle Solaris 11.

Cheating on certification exams is nothing new

The recent Network World article on cheating should remind us that certifications
and diplomas are really just claims of knowledge. This topic was covered more
than 2 years ago in this Network World article, so is nothing new, except to point
out that the problem has not gotten better.

What is the prospective employer to do? Take the certification and diplomas with
a grain of salt, and do your due diligence. Interviews should uncover whether the
candidate actually possesses the knowledge the diploma purports. If they claim
knowledge of Cisco IOS, ask the right questions, then sit them in front of a IOS
simulator such as MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud and have them solve a simple problem,
such as the one in this contest.

MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud is a SaaS-based CCNA practice lab powered by MIMIC
SNMP Simulator. Students can access their own Cisco IOS practice lab anytime
from anywhere, even from their Apple iPhone.

Internet runs out of addresses

The Number Resource Organization (NRO) just announced the depletion of IPv4 addresses.

If you think of IPv4 addresses as a land-grab, then the days of cheap real-estate are done, and
IPv4 addresses just became more valuable. Organizations will have to either pay more
for addresses, or find some new land in IPv6, as explained in this article. The transition to IPv6
will take a while, and will be fraught with pain.

Gambit's products will help organizations in this transition, by simulating IPv6 environments.
MIMIC SNMP Simulator can create large IPv6 networks to develop and test network management
applications and customizations. MIMIC IOS Simulator and Virtual Lab allow training on IPv6
IOS commands and policies.

Cash for academic achievement: contest on MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud

There is a recent trend towards rewarding academic achievement with cash.
We are joining the bandwagon by applying the same principle for CCNA
certification:

We are announcing a new contest, free to all on our MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud:

All correct answers will be entered in a drawing for a grand prize valued
at $70 ($50 cash transfer + 1 week rental CCNA practice pod), and four other
prizes for free rental of our Cisco CCNA lab. No need to fill out any forms.

To enter:

- connect to your free demo pod at

http://www.gambitcommunications.com/contest/

and win the contest by answering this question:

Log on to router1, and verify that you can ping 10.201.1.10 on switch1.

Using the "Connection" menu, disconnect the Ethernet link between router1
and switch1 (simulating a link failure).

Notice the console message.

Verify that you cannot ping 10.201.1.10 any more.

What commands do you need to execute to re-route traffic to reach
10.201.1.10? Your final command should be a successful ping.

Hint: you only need to execute commands on router1.

-------------------------------

Rules:

The contest is open until Friday February 18, 2011 at 12pm EDT.
Email your answer to us at contest-20110204@gambitcomm.com .
At that time we will conduct a random drawing of the correct entries.
The grand prize is USD $50 cash transfer via Paypal or USD $50 gift card
to Amazon (your choice) plus one free week of MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud ($20
value), and 4 second prize winners will win a free week of MIMIC Virtual
Lab Cloud (USD $20 value) to practice their skills. We will announce
the winners as follow-up to this posting. Previous winners of our contests are
excluded.

MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud now supports SSH access

You were already able to login to simulated Cisco devices on the console
and via Telnet to practice IOS commands for your CCNA certification. This
Youtube clip demonstrates SSH access to devices in a CCNA pod on
MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5u5_EnhO2Y

or search for "ccna pod ssh access" (without double-quotes).

MIMIC 11.00 released - new NetFlow Simulator, 50,000 agents

There is a new release of MIMIC Simulation Suite, version 11.00. New features
include:

• MIMIC NetFlow Simulator
• 50,000 agents simulated on one box (instead of previous limit of 20,000)
• UDP support in MIMIC Server Simulator

The NetFlow Simulator in combination with SNMP Simulator allows simulating large
flow-based monitoring environments. MIMIC Simulator is the engine behind Gambit's 
24/7 SaaS offering for Cisco CCNA practice labs, MIMIC Virtual Lab Cloud. With MIMIC 
scaling to 50,000 devices, it enables Cisco training organizations to provide thousands of 
CCNA lab pods running simultaneously. UDP support in the Server Simulator allows
proxying of scores of DNS servers, for example.

The complete press release with more details is at

http://www.gambitcomm.com/site/news/press_release.shtml