Nortel certifications - A sim of some sort?

Author

A sim of some sort?

meijin

2003-03-26, 11:17 pm

Hey all...I was thinking about getting the entry level Nortel certification since so many telecom companies use the hardware and was wondering if there is a router sim of some sort out there like there is for Cisco?

I had a look on eBay for some used equipment, but came out a bit short. Are there any known places that sell used equipment or the like?

Thanks for the info!

pseudocyber

2003-07-22, 10:06 am

Well ... if you're looking for the stuff the telco's use, it is "carrier class" equipment. And for you Cisco people in the world, Nortel leads Cisco in this class.

You'd be looking for passport Switches. Note, they are VERY expensive. I doubt you'll find anything you can really afford on ebay. I have seen a passport 8600 on ebay before - it's an enterprise switch - for around $15K.

There are some workgroup stackable switches to get into on ebay - 450's. They're pretty basic - just configure MLT (trunks), VLANs, that's about it. The BPS2000 is the next level up and it's about the same with QoS thrown in.

I will admit Nortel's routers are a pain in the @$$ ... I prefer Cisco's IOS. Nortel's used to be Wellfleet I believe. They're mostly AN's and ASN's. Every now and then you might run into a BCN (Big @$$ router). Their software for running them is called Site Manager (Site Mangler). It's an SNMP based GUI of the Windows 3.1 style ...

I don't know of any simulators. You can try Bosun for some tests, they might have a simulator.

HTH

meijin

2003-07-22, 10:54 am

Are there any Nortel test prep products that you would recommend?

pseudocyber

2003-07-22, 10:59 am

I took the Bosun for NNCSS for the old test on 450's and such. It was OK ... I was getting 100's on the Bosun test and the real test was A LOT harder.

About the only other test prep are just the couple of books that have been mentioned and the documentation off of Nortel's site.

Unfortunately, it's one area that Cisco has Nortel beat hands down on - marketing, books, tests, etc. No wonder there are so many CCIE's these days.

meijin

2003-07-22, 11:05 am

I've seen some of the new Sybex books on Nortel, so that may be a possibility.

AS to the Nortel website, do you have any links you can share? I've not had alot of luck finding much there.

Thanks for the help!

ps - I assume that you are in a position of using Nortel equipment on a regular basis? Or did?

pseudocyber

2003-07-22, 11:21 am

quote:
Originally posted by meijin
I've seen some of the new Sybex books on Nortel, so that may be a possibility.

Really!?!? I'll have to check that out!

quote:
AS to the Nortel website, do you have any links you can share? I've not had alot of luck finding much there.
Not sure what you're looking for. Here's a page that goes to Baystack documentation. http://www130.nortelnetworks.com/cg...887&catState=GA

If this doesn't work, go to http://www.nortelnetworks.com. Click on technical documentation under support. By Product Family, click on Baystack.

quote:

ps - I assume that you are in a position of using Nortel equipment on a regular basis? Or did?

Regular basis. We have passport 8600's in the core with IST and MLT in a mesh config. We have 8100's on the edge linked back to the core with SMLT and VRRP. We have a few 450's still hanging on to life. We have passport 6400's doing ATM switching on the WAN, ASN's doing frame relay backup WAN, and Contivity providing VPN.

meijin

2003-07-22, 1:12 pm

My mistake...the Sybex books were on Juniper and not Nortel. Sorry about that!

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