ProCurve Networking workshop

Yesterday Bujal, Sapuan and I attended a ProCurve networking workshop for half a day. For the uninitiated, ProCurve, a division of HP is one of the top 3 networking hardware manufacturer in the world apart from Cisco and Nortel. The workshop was conducted by Convergence Networks Sdn Bhd at their HQ in PJ. The aim of this workshop was basically to teach us the basics of ProCurve networking.

Now networking is big business in the IT world because almost every organization from small to huge multinational companies must have computer networking in one form or another. And these heavy duty switches which control endless incoming and outgoing traffic on daily basis don't come cheap either. Each one of them costs from as much as RM10000 onwards. There's big money to make in computer networking and IT professional who are expert in Cisco or similar networking systems are highly sought after in the job market. If you're a fresh graduate and you happen to be really good in networking, you don't have to look for a job, they will come looking for you!
Anyway back to the workshop. We arrived in PJ at exactly 10:30 AM but the guy in charge said they we're expecting us since 9:30 AM. I guess there must have been a little mis-communication between Jeb (our IT consultant) and us. There were supposed to be 8 of us that day but two people from another company didn't show up (and didn't have the courtesy to inform us). We wasted about 20 minutes waiting for those two.
ProCurve networking is quite difficult to grasp especially for people who have no prior experience in high level networking (like me) so I had to say I was rather lost for most parts of the workshop. You definately can't learn how to configure a switch in half a day. I bet even the all powerful Safuan took weeks to learn every nook and cranny of switch configuring right?So the lunch time came as a relief for me and Bujal. Lunch today was provided by the organizer and I must say the chicken curry was simply delicious. Later on they even handed out goody bags some more for all of us. I like!
Uh don't get me wrong, I gave my full attention to the workshop, well at least before lunch. However towards the end of the session I found the free WiFi access to be a little be err distracting.

Overall I say this brief workshop succeeded in giving me a basic insight into ProCurve networking although I have to admit I have much to learn abou them. While this basic workshop is free, the real training for ProCurve networking with certification would cost around RM5000 per person so I think this will be the last networking training we'll be attending for a while. Safuan said he thinks the Cisco system is much more powerful and easier to configure than ProCurve. To be honest, I have to disagree with you on that one dude. To me 3COM switches IS the easiest to configure by far, period.




p.s: Trevis is the straight guy who handles the workshop.