Which Cisco Information Sources do you really use? (research result)

7 min readAug 5, 2018

I am reposting a article of mine from 2016 that has had a few thousand views (already expected LoL) and whose content is still of extreme value. All sources reported here are still active.

Nowadays any professional can ask about specific topics to professional colleagues and quickly receive dozens of links to websites, blogs, forums, digital magazines among other sources to the point of getting lost. The area of Networking is no different, and maybe one of the worst. Any one of us in this business can click on Favorites and get lost in 5 levels of hierarchy folders with hundreds of links that we have accumulated over the years, many on the same subjects, few of which we really visit, some outdated or even broken.

In order to improve knowledge exchange among Networking professionals, Control Plane conducted a quick research in large discussion groups and forums focused on Cisco Networking questioning participants about the information sources they really use. We asked in general terms about blogs, groups, forums, journals, magazines, and any other relevant source. As expected, dozens of professionals have recommended nearly a hundred different information sources, many of them we knew, many unknown and some we thought they did not exist anymore for different reasons.

In this post we share the results of this research with you, remembering that it contained only statements of the participants. The following lists have been grouped by category and they are in descending order of indications. The results were a little bit different than expected because we anticipated that some sources would receive much more indications than others. On the contrary, the indications were more balanced and some well-known sources were not even cited.

We hope it helps in professional’s daily routine that are looking for content materials increasingly better. Feel free to indicate links, suggest recommendations and constructive criticism. For those who are more interested, you can contact me through LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/giulianobarros/

We looked for different groups and profiles. Participants’ profiles varied from CCNAs, CCNPs and CCIEs certificated from different areas and at least 70% of the participants are CCNA and/or CCNP certified.

Forums and Discussion Groups:

Cisco Learning Network (35%) — Cisco Learning online community. It was expected among the most indicated.
Telecomeng (group) (14%) — Group created by Marcello Ishida with presence of several Telecom professionals from different areas and countries. Access is only through nomination by sending CV. (Brazilian Portuguese)
IEOC (14%) — Online community of INE, company focused primarily on Cisco courses, it has experts like Brian Dennis and Brian McGahan.
Cisco Support Forums (7%) — Community about Cisco support and solutions. With dozens of segments, it offers several resources for discussion of dealings and provided solutions. We were expecting it would receive more indications.
CCNA BR (7%) — CCNA BR blog forum, by Marco Filippetti, focused on courses for CCNA certification. (Brazilian Portuguese)
Juniper Forums (4%) — Official Juniper forum counts now with almost 88 thousand registered members.
Cisco-VOIP (puck.nether.net) (4%) — the puck.nether.net mailing list about VoIP using Cisco.
Cisco-NSP (puck.nether.net) (3%) — the puck.nether.net mailing list about Service Provider using Cisco.
Eng.registro.br (3%) — eng.registro.br mailing list. (Brazilian Portuguese)
Cisco in Persian (3%) — Cisco Forum in Persian.
Estude CCNA(3%) — Study group of the Estude CCNA blog focused on certification. (Brazilian Portuguese)
Network Lessons (3%) — Lessons Network Forum is a company specialized in Cisco RS courses by expert Rene Molenaar (also founder of GNS3vault)

Blogs:

Packet Pushers (14%) — Packet Pushers exceptional community, created by experts Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks, it began on Networking and now deals from different areas of IT.
IPspace (14%) — Famous vendor-independent blog focused on networking solutions created by expert Ivan Pepelnjak.
Network Guru (7%) — It deals about techniques and tools to survive on network engineering daily routine. Russ White is an authority on the branch of Cisco, CCIE, CCDE, CCAr and especially the author of several books (which you probably have read or should read).
Lost In Transit (7%) — Posts about Networking by Daniel Dib.
CCNA BR (7%) — CCNA BR blog by Marco Filippetti focused on courses for CCNA certification. (Brazilian Portuguese)
INE (4%) — INE blog, a company focused mainly on Cisco courses, it has very good articles from experts like Brian Dennis, Brian McGahan, Mark Snow and Petr Lapukhov.
Karneliuk.com (4%) — Texts about IT, networking and management by Anton Karneliuk.
Ciscozine (4%) — Great blog about Cisco technologies by Fabio Semperboni.
Networkers Online (4%) — Created by a group of network engineers, is specialized in texts about networking.
Packe Llife (4%) — Fantastic Jeremy Stretch blog that also offers repository for various resources for study and daily routine of industry professionals.
CCIE OR DIE (4%) — Information, technical texts and Arteq author exercises for those who seek CCIE certification.
TechRepublic (4%) — Excellent site and known about IT business with target audience being decision makers (CXO).
Profissionais TI (4%) — Collaborative Portal on IT information in general. (Brazilian Portuguese)
CCIE Voice Brasil (4%) — Excellent blog about CCIE Voice and collaboration technologies created by Bruno Nonogaki. (Brazilian Portuguese)
AVVID (4%) — Large community of Cisco Unified Communications in Brazil. (Brazilian Portuguese)
Rota Default(4%) — It features several articles in various areas of networking. (Brazilian Portuguese)
Netfinders Brasil(4%) — Blog focused on general articles about networking and CCNA. (Brazilian Portuguese)
Brainwork(4%) — General articles on networking. (Brazilian Portuguese)
Ethereal Mind(4%) — Very good personal blog created by expert Greg Ferro about daily routine of network engineers. Another example of source that we expected more indications.

Groups on Linkedin:

Cisco (23%) — Cisco official group (over 200 thousand members).
Cisco Consultants and Architects (8%) — For Cisco project managers, architects and consultants.
CCIE / CCNP / CCDP — Professionals (8%) — Knowledge exchange, best practices, training and job offers for Cisco professionals.
IP / MPLS Traffic Engineering and Capacity Planning (8%) — Knowledge exchange in the branches of capacity planning and traffic engineering.
The Original Juniper Networks User Group (8%) — Largest group of Juniper professionals on LinkedIn.
CCNA (8%) — Specialized on the CCNA certification (40 thousand members).
Telecoms Professionals (8%) — Giant group (over 500 thousand members) covering all areas of Telecom.
Cloud Computing, SaaS & Virtualization (8%) — Largest group specializing in Cloud Computing and Virtualization (over 300 thousand members).
Network Engineer Professionals (7%) — One of the largest groups for the network engineers in general (86 thousand members).
Cisco Professionals (7%) — Information exchange on Cisco technologies in general.
The Original Cisco CCIE Group (7%) — Largest CCIEs group on LinkedIn (12 thousand members).

Magazines and Journals:

CIO — One of the most popular journals worldwide branch for the CIO/CTO and decision makers in the IT industry.
Internet Protocol Journal — Internet Protocol Journal (IPJ) is a fantastic quarterly publication since 1998 containing articles on implementation, operation, studies and tutorials on all aspects of Internet technologies. Many people thought it would be discontinued when Cisco discontinued publication in 2013, but returned in late 2014. Follow the link to the complete repository.
RTI — Brazilian Technique Magazine aimed at IT professionals, mainly networking and telecommunications. (Brazilian Portuguese)

Other relevant sources:

Routergods — Meetup — Largest community of remote study groups to practice of labs hands-on on Meetup. RouterGods main goal is to help people to practice labs to gain experience to pass the Cisco certification exams.
Cisco Collaboration Systems Documentation- Documentation Matrix about Cisco Collaboration Systems.
Groupstudy.com — Just for historical question, Groupstudy was once the largest mailing list for CCIE studies relying on almost all most known experts from industry and peaks of hundreds of emails a day during the most heated discussions. After that each manufacturer and education company have created their platform the group has become obsolete.

Did you already know all the sources?

What source is missing?

Tell us in the comments.

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About the author:

Giuliano Barros is Founder and Network Consultant of Control Plane — Network Services.

Graduated in Computer Science, CCIE RS certified by Cisco Systems and has worked for 15 years in projects for medium-sized and large companies. linkedin.com/in/giulianobarros