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Archives for December 2020

Rolling up my sleeves for 2021

December 29, 2020 By Rowell Leave a Comment

Now that the Christmas holiday is behind me, it’s time to create a strategy that will set me on a path to be better than 2020.

I take a big bold approach. If you’ve seen my 2020 Year in Review, there are objectives I have not met. Measuring how I’m doing is important but what I find more critical is the act of doing.

Using Todoist (affiliate link), I can see whether or not I’m being productive. And most of the time I understand I have to be a realist. But there’s no harm in being an opportunist

This is the second year in a row I am using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). My goals are objectives. But to add substance there are key results for each objective that I have decided as a way to measure whether that objective was a success.

The areas in which I have built OKRs around are:

  • Packet6
  • This blog (rowelldionicio.com)
  • Clear To Send
Table Of Contents
  1. Packet6
    • Produce Consistent Content
    • Initiate a Marketing Plan
    • Build Proficiency with Python
  2. Rowell Dionicio Blog
    • Build a Technical Presence
    • Publish Content Consistently
    • Earn Certifications
  3. Clear To Send
    • Build Exposure
    • Increase Social Media Following
    • Create Three Courses
  4. My Thoughts

Packet6

  • Increase Sales by 70%
  • Target $900k revenue
  • Target $450k hardware sales
  • Target $350k professional services
  • Remaining $100k in courses or other projects

It was obvious there was going to be a decrease in sales in 2020. With a vaccine being distributed, my hope was business would begin to pick up again. I still need to take precautions for health but 2021 would be a year for learning how to do sales.

To increase my revenue to $900k means I’ll need to build salesmanship and resell hardware. I’m a partner for Cisco, Meraki, Mist, Juniper, and Ruckus. I need to leverage my partnerships and technical knowledge with some form of selling. My target for hardware sales is $450k.

Professional services is how Packet6 got started in the first place and is really where the revenue comes in. If I could continue to leverage pro services + hardware, that could be a winning combination. My target for pro services is $350k.

The remaining $100k I would like to earn building training with courses or through other projects.

Produce Consistent Content

  • 6 posts per quarter
  • 1 video per quarter
  • 6k page views per month

A sore spot on Packet6’s website is a lack of content. I’ve been producing content elsewhere but really neglected the business website. The highly technical content I used to write on Packet6 is now being done on my personal blog. My mind now needs to shift towards writing content for decision-makers like CIOs, IT Managers, and senior staff members within organizations. Writing to address pain points is very different from writing technical tutorials. But I can do it.

My key results for producing consistent content is publishing 6 blogs per quarter and 1 video per quarter. With consistency, I’d like to increase the Packet6 page views to 6k a month.

The end goal is to receive more visitors that may convert to clients.

Initiate a Marketing Plan

  • 5 social media updates a week
  • Grow email list to 1500
  • Generate 36 MQLs

A little piece of me always thinks about why I started a business. In doing so that means spending less time on my core expertise – the technical aspect. Packet6 is a small company and doesn’t have enough resources to hire other technical people full time. In the meantime, I need to wear many hats.

One of those hats involves creating a marketing plan to help grow the business. I can probably outsource much of this but I am a person who loves to learn. I’ll at least take a stab at this and create a marketing plan. Then in the near future, have someone else take over this section.

To start, I’ll focus on keeping Packet6 social media updated with at least 5 posts a week. In previous years I was able to grow an email list of potential clients. I’m going to kick start that again with a key result of 1500 new email subscribers. With more eyes on Packet6, I can hopefully reach another key result of generating 36 marketing qualified leads.

Build Proficiency with Python

  • Automate C9800 tasks
  • Automate Mist installations
  • Build a reliability script

Distinguishing yourself from the competition means being uncomfortable. Network engineering is shifting towards network automation.

This creates an opportunity for me to learn Python and build a solution for companies that don’t have the expertise in-house.

Rowell Dionicio Blog

Build a Technical Presence

  • 100 active members on the Discord server
  • 5,000 Twitter followers
  • 200 email subscribers
  • 3,000 YouTube subscribers

My personal brand works alongside my side business, Packet6. The latter is B2B. My personal brand communicates with other technical people.

And lately, I’ve been sharing my business experiences such as this post.

Publish Content Consistently

  • 6 published blogs per quarter
  • 6 videos per quarter

Consistency is key. What helps keep chaos at bay is a system for productivity, healthy choices, and my eagerness to learn.

That’s why I’ve decided to aim for publishing 6 blog posts per quarter along with 6 videos on my personal YouTube channel.

Earn Certifications

  • CTT+
  • Mist AI
  • JNCIA DEVOPS
  • CCNP
  • CCNP Wireless

I’d like to call myself crazy for adding 5 certifications to my long list of objectives. But it is part of my learning progress in which I share with others. It helps fill a need on the vendor partner side and provides content for the blog.

Clear To Send

The podcast has been my favorite project and what I’m most proud of. There’s been a new episode every week (nearly) since August 2015.

For a few years we haven’t had any serious goals other than publishing better episodes.

As the podcast has developed, we have wanted to make it even better.

Build Exposure

  • 1,500 email subscribers
  • 25,000 monthly downloads
  • 550 Slack members

Most of our listeners find us through social media. We don’t do any form of advertising.

We communicate with our listeners mostly through our website and our email list. More recently it has been our Slack workspace.

Increase Social Media Following

  • 5,000 Twitter followers
  • 3,000 LinkedIn followers

We will continue to use our Twitter account and would like to expand on LinkedIn. This involves giving value to those who follow and to prospective followers.

Create Three Courses

  • CWNA
  • CWDP
  • CWAP

As a way to sustain our podcasting efforts, we’ve decided to build courses. We were not keen to traditional sponsored episodes and wanted to keep the content highly valuable and easy to consume.

Naturally, the content we record lends itself to certification studies. This is why we will be working on more courses.

My Thoughts

In previous years I had not planned to this much detail. Goals were not written down. And on my second year of doing OKRs, I’m really shooting for the stars. When I look at the list, it looks daunting and unattainable. But I’d be really happy to achieve some of these goals.

Who really knows what 2021 will look like. I at least have a plan of attack and if things do not pan out during my quarterly check-ins with myself, then I can pivot.

2020 Year in Review

December 21, 2020 By Rowell Leave a Comment

We’ve been through the wringer this year. January started off strong. And then everyone’s lives were thrown off track with the pandemic. We ventured into unknown territory with people losing their jobs and businesses unsure of what to do. In many cases, they still don’t.  

The business can keep moving but without the same track record as the previous year. 

This year I implemented Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). I first learned about it from reading Measure What Matters by John Doerr (affiliate link) – which was on my reading list. It’s the first time I’m doing OKRs with lots of room to improve. 

There were three areas where I applied OKRs. First being my side-hustle, Packet6. The second is this site where you’re reading this now, rowelldionicio.com. And the third is Clear To Send, a Wi-Fi podcast I co-host with François Vergès.


My Top 3 Beginner Business Tips

Are you thinking about starting your own IT consulting business? I’m sharing my top 3 beginner business tips to help you get started for success.

Read More

Packet6 OKRs

I ended 2019 with the best year ever. I wanted to build upon that success, but the world changed around March of 2020. I had to pivot. 

Aruba access point

Objective: Build a national business

Packet6 started locally in the San Francisco Bay Area. As soon as I started working with companies maintaining a presence across the United States, I began getting clients in other cities. 

Key Results

Increase my revenue to $900k. The pandemic definitely limited my reach outside of the Bay Area. Most of my local clients maintain carpeted office space. With a shift to working from home, there were no office Wi-Fi needs. Travel was limited significantly and on a case by case basis. So, therefore, I shifted my efforts to warehouse and laboratory Wi-Fi. For comparison, Packet6 generated $727k in revenue for 2019. This year-to-date, it is $240k, a 67% decrease. 

To reach $900k in revenue, I aimed to increase sales growth by 10% quarter-over-quarter. The first two quarters weren’t profitable. But in Q3 and Q4, I was able to make over 10% sales growth. But not enough to reach my previous years’ revenue target.

If I were to increase sales growth, I decided to decrease expenses by 25%. A pandemic can really make you second guess those expenditures. I was able to go beyond this goal and reduce costs by 73%.

Objective: Increase marketing qualified leads

Marketing is a weak area of mine, but I enjoy learning how marketing works, testing various methods, and seeing what does and doesn’t work. My focus on this objective was to bring in leads through content marketing. 

Key Results

Obtain 20 leads through email marketing. A tough one to get through because it involves getting people to open your emails.

Increasing web visits by 5% each month was a critical result that required me to publish content regularly. As a result, I was unable to meet this year.

Additionally, I had a far-reaching goal of creating a few mini-courses to bring in leads. I did not complete this at all.

At the beginning of the pandemic

Objective: Write more

Blogging has been a core part of what I do in IT. And I’ve blogged in different domains, but I wanted to write more business-focused content for managers and C-level executives rather than focusing on technical blog posts. 

Key Results

Writing 6 blog posts per quarter is no easy task when you’re doing everything yourself. This key result was never met. There’s a reason why creating a content calendar is key to making this a success.

Growing an email list to 1500 subscribers. A task I did not complete. I had taken down some content downloads because I felt they needed to be updated. But I had not published a new one to be downloaded. Therefore I didn’t make my goal.

Increasing page views on the website to 200k and repurposing blog posts were not met either. This required more published content and reshaping on different platforms such as email and social media. I don’t even know why I had decided on 200k for pageviews. My current website stats weren’t anywhere near 50,000 pageviews. I’ll have to adjust that for 2021.

Objective: Develop an innovative practice

Professional services and reselling vendor hardware didn’t set the business apart from some of the competitors. Many others did the same thing. With Cisco DevNet in my sights, I was feeling confident. I wondered how I could incorporate DevNet into my business.

Key Result

Python and network automation was the obvious pick to add to my list of services. But getting to that point meant focusing much more time on Python and network automation. But sadly, I did not spend too much time on it. 

Rowell Dionicio Website OKRs

2020 was when I decided to move many of my technical and entrepreneur-related content under my own name. Previously, Packet6.com was where I published them but with my shift of keeping Packet6’s website focused on IT managers and decision-makers.

Meraki access point

Objective: Build a technical presence

Building a new website means starting from scratch and leveraging Twitter and LinkedIn platforms to draw eyes to it. 

Key Results

Publishing 6 blogs per quarter was a goal to help bring users back to the website. A goal I was able to achieve due to the various topics I started documenting. DevNet Associate, to CCNA, and multiple Wi-Fi-related contents, it was simple to schedule each quarter’s content.

Publishing 2 videos a month on the YouTube channel in my name. Video is more critical today than the written word. But the written word is where SEO is powerful. YouTube is where I want to build more content. Back in high school, I had been part of a video creation class. It reminded me of all the processes I had to go through. I’m still getting used to planning out topics and talking about them in front of a camera. 

Building an email list to 500 subscribers. An email list is how I prefer to communicate with people. It’s the one thing I can control. It’s a way I can directly reach out to people. The growth was very, very slow. I’m currently at 67 subscribers with nothing of value to give yet. I haven’t done much planning towards growing the list, which I’ll plan to do in 2021. 

Objective: Create products

Being sustainable and creating an income for myself, outside of Packet6, was a tremendous challenge to take on. The direction I wanted to take was to start with courses on the topics I have experience with.

Key Results

CCNA Course, DevNet Associate Course, and NETCONF Course. All three were never done. Building a course is no easy task. I thought about what kind of courses I would want to take. But I just never made the time for them. 

Making it to Cisco DevNet 500

Clear To Send Podcast OKRs

One of my most critical projects is working on Clear To Send. It’s a podcast I started in August 2015. Today, I co-host it with my good friend, François Vergès. 

Podcast recording

Objective: Grow exposure

Discussing Wi-Fi is really niche. We knew people were using Wi-Fi, but many didn’t really understand how it worked. So we wanted to get more exposure to the podcast and get more listeners.

Key Results

15k monthly downloads. By increasing our downloads, we would also increase our listeners. This involved discussing topics people really wanted to hear. I’m happy to mention that we were able to accomplish this in July 2020. And we need to ensure we don’t get lazy by continuing to do episodes such as technical deep dives.

400 Slack members. In addition to publishing a weekly episode, we built a community within Slack, where people can discuss Wi-Fi, ask questions, and build friendships. Today, we have achieved this goal.

1500 downloads per newly published episode. We have a trend where people tend to download previous episodes. This number is tied to obtaining new subscribers as well. If we increase our weekly downloads per episode, then we can grow our subscribers. We’re not quite there yet, but we are very close! We’re hovering around 1000-1100 downloads per episode within 7 days.

Rodcaster Pro

Objective: Increase social media presence

We rely solely on social media for sharing our episodes and gaining new listeners. We wanted to increase our efforts using social media, be more engaging, and grow the podcast.

Key Results

3,500 Twitter followers. Twitter is our central social media platform, which has a decent Wi-Fi community. We were very close to making this goal. As of today, we’re at 3,200 Twitter followers. 

1,000 LinkedIn followers. If there’s any work to be done, LinkedIn will bring in all the professionals. This year we engaged ourselves more within LinkedIn. In November, we were able to get over 1,000 followers. We continue to see more engagement from different people, which is what we like to see!

50 Patreon supporters. We thought about getting on Patreon, but we just never made the commitment to it. The goal remains untouched, and maybe we’ll look at it again in the future. What we’ve done instead is use Ko-Fi. 

What went right?

I never lost hope. With revenue taking a hit at Packet6, I focused on my personal brand and the Clear To Send podcast. The time I spent at home was now on learning and writing. I began creating videos and doing live streams.  

One surprise for me was being nominated for Content Contributor of the Year at WiFiAwards.com. Please head there and vote for me!

On the Packet6 side, I also revamped the way my finances were done. By the end of this year, I’ll have saved up $30k. 

More than ever, I’ve realized how much small businesses and families need to support each other. I’ve donated to my kids’ schools to help other families.

I’ve supported other small businesses in the Bay Area, especially restaurants, by doing take out. I’ve seen individuals create their own businesses during the pandemic, and I’ve supported their efforts. I appreciate the risks people are taking and watching them pivot. I can see many will flourish next year.

There isn’t a large fortune I’ve been able to amass from 2020. But from what I’ve been able to acquire, I’ve also shared. Whether that has been monetary or other forms of support. We’re all struggling in our own ways, but we have each other.

What can change?

I’ll take what I can get from 2020. There were many key results I wasn’t able to meet, but I’ll adjust for 2021. Planning, quality, and consistency are going to be critical for me. 

Much of the results weren’t met simply because I still have a full-time job as a higher education network engineer. I also have a family and need to be present. The choices I make have an impact, whether positive or negative. 

The only reason I went down this path, creating a side-hustle and building a personal brand, was so I can eventually work solely for myself. 

So when I look back at what can change, I see that health needs to be at the top of that list. I can’t be this busy while living an unhealthy lifestyle. My mind and body need to be in better shape. 

MAC Address Table on Cisco Switches

December 12, 2020 By Rowell Leave a Comment

Network switching fundamentals are required for CCNP Enterprise Core studies. We’ll review the MAC address table on a Cisco switch to learn how a device to port mapping is created and why it is needed.

We don’t think much about connecting our hosts to a Cisco switch. Whether 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps Ethernet ports, MAC address learning is performed the same way. 

Each host connecting to a switch port will have its MAC address entered into the switch’s MAC address table. 

The MAC address table is a way to map each port to a MAC address. This makes it efficient to forward traffic directly to a host. Without the MAC address table, traffic would be forwarded out each port, like a hub (hopefully you haven’t used one of those in a long time.)

MAC address table on a switch for CCNP ENCOR
MAC Address Table

Host A has a fictitious MAC address of AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA and it wants to send traffic to Host B with a fictitious MAC address of BB:BB:BB:BB:BB:BB. When the network switch receives the traffic destined for Host B, it knows to forward that traffic destined to interface g1/0/27 because the MAC address table lists Host B’s MAC address for interface g1/0/27. Assume they are also on the same VLAN.

What happens if a destination MAC address is not in the MAC address table? The switch must flood the traffic out of all ports in what’s called unknown unicast flooding. The switch wants the host with the destination MAC address to respond. 

What happens if the host is no longer connected? The host’s MAC address remains in the table until it ages out. There is a default aging timer. 

What happens if the host changes to a different port? The MAC address table is updated accordingly. 

How to view the Cisco MAC address table

First, let’s see what’s connected to my Cisco switch.

sw1#show interface status | include connected
Gi1/0/1                      connected    129        a-full  a-100 10/100/1000BaseTX
Gi1/0/3                      connected    trunk      a-full a-1000 10/100/1000BaseTX
Gi1/0/9   3504               connected    trunk      a-full a-1000 10/100/1000BaseTX
Gi1/0/14                     connected    trunk      a-full a-1000 10/100/1000BaseTX

Next, we use a show command to view the MAC address table of all dynamically learned addresses:

show mac address-table dynamic

The dynamic MAC addresses on my switch:

sw1#show mac address-table dynamic
          Mac Address Table
-------------------------------------------

Vlan    Mac Address       Type        Ports
----    – ------- –       – ------    – ---
 129    0017.88a9.b5dc    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/1
 129    7483.c279.3a4c    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 129    c869.cd81.2307    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 103    000c.2979.60af    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 103    38f9.d329.a785    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 103    3c52.82af.08b6    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 103    5032.37d2.9089    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 103    6cae.f6b0.3fd2    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 103    701f.53b7.da81    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/9
 103    7483.c279.3a4c    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 103    8e0a.c4f3.5e49    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 103    9c20.7bb9.6f35    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 103    b02a.4357.9868    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 120    18e8.29b0.84b8    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 140    000c.2979.60a5    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 140    000c.2979.60b9    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 140    0011.329f.c5a1    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
   1    18e8.29b0.84b8    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
   1    18e8.29b0.84b9    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
   1    7483.c273.d835    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
   3    5c5b.3550.0776    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/3
   3    7483.c279.3a4c    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
Total Mac Addresses for this criterion: 22

Viewing the MAC address seen on a specific interface

What if we want to verify what MAC address is seen off an individual port. This is useful for troubleshooting and verifying where a host might be located. The command syntax is:

show mac address-table <interface-name>

Here’s the output on my switch for interface g1/0/9:

sw1#show mac address-table interface g1/0/9
           Mac Address Table
 Vlan    Mac Address       Type        Ports
 –  –    – ------- –       – ---- –    – ---
  103    701f.53b7.da81    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/9

View MAC addresses for a specific VLAN

It’s possible to view all learned MAC addresses for a specific VLAN. I use this command to ensure I’ve trunked a VLAN across all necessary uplinks. The command syntax is:

show mac address-table vlan <vlan-id>

The output on my switch for vlan 103:

sw1#show mac address-table dynamic vlan 103
           Mac Address Table
 Vlan    Mac Address       Type        Ports
 –  –    – ------- –       – ---- –    – ---
  103    000c.2979.60af    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
  103    38f9.d329.a785    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
  103    5032.37d2.9089    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
  103    6cae.f6b0.3fd2    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
  103    701f.53b7.da81    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/9
  103    7483.c279.3a4c    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
  103    8e0a.c4f3.5e49    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
  103    b02a.4357.9868    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
  103    f65a.0212.e051    DYNAMIC     Gi1/0/14
 Total Mac Addresses for this criterion: 9

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