Important CCIE Update

Cisco CCIE Training Update

This is a special notification for NC-Expert’s CCIE Candidates.

We have learned from Cisco that it expects to refresh its entire portfolio in February 2020.

We strongly urge all CCIE Candidates to prepare to complete their studies and sit their respective lab exams by the end of 2019, latest.

We understand that there will be limited opportunity for Candidates to sit lab exams in the early weeks of 2020, however these seats will be severely limited.

For candidates anticipating completing their studies, please contact us at your earliest convenience so we can conclude our part in your training.

NC-Expert cannot be held liable if Candidates choose to delay completion of their training because, at this time, Cisco has provided no information about its continued instructor-led offerings.

As a result, NC-Expert cannot confirm that it will be able to continue to offer Cisco’s own instructor-led CCIE training after February 2020.

The post Important CCIE Update appeared first on NC Expert.

NC-Expert Blog

Wi-Fi Myth Series - Myth #10: The AP Is Up, So the Wi-Fi Must Be Fine

By Rie Morgan • August 13, 2026
There is something wonderfully reassuring about seeing a row of green APs on a wireless dashboard: APs connected; radios operational; no obvious alarms; everything green. Excellent! The Wi-Fi must be fine... Except, of course, the users are complaining that Teams calls are breaking up, handheld scanners keep disconnecting, authentication takes forever, and someone in Accounting has discovered that turning Wi-Fi off and back on again temporarily fixes everything. Welcome to one of the more persistent myths in enterprise wireless: if the AP is up, the Wi-Fi must be working. An operational AP tells us something useful... but it tells us surprisingly little about the experience of the clients actually using the network. “Up” is an Infrastructure State When a monitoring platform reports that an AP is up, it usually means the infrastructure can communicate with it. It tells us: - the AP has power - its Ethernet connection is functioning - it may have established its management or CAPWAP connection - its radios are probably operational - it hasn't disappeared into the networking equivalent of a “black hole” ...all good things. But none of those things proves that a client can successfully use an application. Consider what still has to happen after the AP proudly announces its existence. A client must: discover the WLAN associate authenticate obtain the appropriate network configuration reach its default gateway resolve DNS access the required network resources, and maintain sufficient RF performance to exchange data reliably. Depending on the environment, that journey may involve: 802.1X RADIUS DHCP DNS VLANs ACLs firewalls roaming mechanisms upstream switching WAN connectivity cloud services ...and several other systems waiting for their opportunity to make your afternoon more “interesting”. ;-) The AP actually being operational is merely one part of that chain!

Wi-Fi Myth Series – Myth #9: More Bandwidth Always Means Better Performance

By Rie Morgan • August 6, 2026
If there's one thing network users love, it's bandwidth. Need faster Wi-Fi? More bandwidth. Application running slowly? More bandwidth. Video buffering? More bandwidth. Someone sneezed near the wireless network? Probably needs more bandwidth. :) As Wi-Fi engineers, we've all heard it. Somewhere along the way, bandwidth became synonymous with performance. But while bandwidth certainly matters, it's only one ingredient in a much larger recipe. In many deployments, increasing available bandwidth produces little improvement and, in some cases, it can actually make things worse! Like many Wi-Fi myths, this one contains just enough truth to be convincing. Let's bust it...

Wi-Fi Myth Series - Myth #8: Wi-Fi 7 Will Fix My Wireless Problems

By Rie Morgan • July 30, 2026
Every new Wi-Fi generation arrives with a wave of excitement: faster speeds; lower latency; more efficient use of the spectrum; and better handling of dense environments. Wi-Fi 7 is no exception. It brings some genuinely impressive technological advances but, unfortunately, it also brings a familiar myth: "If we upgrade to Wi-Fi 7, all of our wireless problems will disappear." If only wireless engineering were that simple. Wi-Fi 7 is an outstanding technology, but it isn't a magic wand. Poor design, interference, bad client behavior, and unrealistic expectations don't suddenly vanish because the APs have a shiny new logo on the box. Let's bust another myth...