The FINANCIAL — Cisco NetRiders Asia Pacific 2010, the annual computer networking skills competition organized by Cisco, showcased the brightest talent in the region, with the team from Australia taking the top prize.
The competing teams comprise current students enrolled in the Cisco Networking Academy program in partner schools around the region. Networking Academy is a partnership between Cisco, education, business, government and community organizations around the world, aimed at nurturing the development of IT professionals.
"Networking Academy employs an e-learning model, using a combination of Web-based and instructor-led training along with a hands-on lab environment to teach students how to design, build and maintain computer networks. Cisco NetRiders provides an opportunity for the students to transform their classroom knowledge into practical skills. At the same time, it creates a platform for their knowledge and proficiency to be recognized in the information and communications technology (ICT) industry," Cisco informs.
In a keenly contested showdown over Cisco TelePresenceTM and Cisco WebEx, featuring the country NetRiders champions from around Asia Pacific, team Australia displayed outstanding computer networking skills and cool heads to win the competition.
Highlights:
The winning team from University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) – Stefanus Irawan, Joshua Stennett and Thomas Ujszaszi – won an all-expenses-paid study trip to the United States.
This year's competition featured 16 countries, with each country sending the winners of its national NetRiders competition. More than 4,000 students from the 16 countries competed for their respective national titles.
The competition involves two levels of testing. The first level is a multiple-choice online examination as well as an online test using Packet Tracer 5.0 (network configuration through computer simulation). The next level requires hands-on troubleshooting with preconfigured networks.
The competition is open to students of the more than 1,200 Networking Academy institutions across the region.
In second and third place, respectively, were the teams from Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, New Zealand (Hao Jiang, Nicholas Johns and Mark Sinclair) and Zhongshan University in Guangdong, China (Chen Siquan, He Wencong and Zhao Baoming).
Supporting quotes:
Sandy Walsh, regional manager for Cisco Networking Academy, Asia Pacific:
"The Asia Pacific NetRiders competition is a tremendous showcase of the region's young talent. The students not only had to apply their technical knowledge but also had to practice other key skills such as teamwork and collaboration, problem solving and critical thinking, all under intense pressure. All the teams performed incredibly well, and the results were very close. Seeing the incredible passion and dedication from all the participants this year, I am sure we are going to continue to see the program grow in the years to come."
Winning Team: Team Australia
"The challenge was very difficult, and we had no idea we were going to win. There were a couple of questions where we thought, 'We have no chance at this' and it really came down to the last couple of minutes. But we gave it our best and here we are, and we couldn't be more excited to go to San Jose for the study trip in January."
Max Hendrix, instructor, UTS
"It's been a real pleasure working with these students. Anything I threw at them they came back to me and said, 'It's not hard enough – give us something harder', and when I gave them something harder they said to me, 'Is that the best you can do?' That is what they are like: a fantastic team!"
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