IT Certification and Training Blog

By Michael Aldridge

This is my third of three blog posts in my "What to Expect" series. This blog post will focus on what happens after you've taken a certification exam.

By Michael Aldridge

This is my second of three blog posts in my "What to Expect" series. This blog post will focus on what happens the day of your certification exam.

By Michael Aldridge

When my wife became pregnant with our first child, we had no idea what to expect. So we prepared by reading pregnancy books, searching online, taking childbirth classes, and talking to friends who had already gone through the experience. Sure, there were a few things that we weren't prepared for, but we were ready for most of the situations we encountered along the way.

By Michael Aldridge

I've got three favorite quotes on preparation:

"Every battle is won before it is ever fought."
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."
- Benjamin Franklin

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."
- Abraham Lincoln

By Andrew Messier

Hey Everyone,

NetSim 9.9 was released yesterday, 4/22/14. This is a content and application update. It resolves all outstanding ERRATA labs, contains several bug fixes, optimizes every loading configuration in our Standard and Courseware labs, and adds a user engagement feature. Users are now prompted with a new Guided Tips service that briefly outlines the basic features in NetSim.

Boson Training, LLC, was presented with the Quality Distinction Award at the 2014 Cisco Global Learning Partner Awards, which were held on March 23rd in Las Vegas, Nev. This award is presented annually to Learning Partners in each region who deliver quality training with high customer satisfaction scores. Boson Training is proud to accept this award signifying our commitment to excellence in presenting the highest quality training to our customers. "I am thrilled to work with such a talented team of instructors, at a company that so highly values customer satisfaction," said Andrea Horne, Sales and Operations Manager.

By Kailin Acheson

The previous two parts of this blog, Part I and Part II, covered the seven layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. This installment will cover the four layers of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) model and contrast the TCP/IP model with the OSI model.

By Kailin Acheson

In Part I of The Seven Layers of Networking blog, John began a discussion about the layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. The first four layers, which you can read about in that blog, are the Physical layer, the Data Link layer, the Network layer, and the Transport layer. In network discussions, you'll most often encounter the first four layers. The final three layers, the Session layer, the Presentation layer, and the Application layer, are not as commonly discussed but are still essential to a network. This blog will cover those three layers and the encapsulation process that occurs when one host communicates with another. Then you'll have to stay tuned for Part III, which will cover a related-yet-different layered model, the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) model.

By James Hanback

Very few Sierra On-line adventure games from the 1980s and early 1990s contained the kind of first-person shooter action that would later come to dominate the PC gaming landscape. Mostly, the Sierra adventure gamer had to rely on his or her wits, knowledge, and perhaps the printed manual to piece together the clues that would eventually lead to the game’s solution. Some games, like Police Quest, required some real-life knowledge of police procedure to even get past the parking lot of the fictional Lytton, Calif., police station. Others, like Conquests of Camelot, required some research into arcane flower symbolism (which was helpfully documented in the game’s printed manual, the Liber Ex Doctrina). Similarly, you might find that you need to rely a little more on your own knowledge of your computer hardware to complete this phase of our adventure as we restore our game from the previous three posts and continue our quest to use Boson software in a non-Windows environment.