CCIE round #2

lrb

Completed 5 hours on the weekend of labbing:

• IS-IS PRC and full SPF runs
• IS-IS SPF log
• IS-IS route leaking
• IS-IS Overload bit
• IS-IS dynamic hostname exchange
• IS-IS Passive interfaces
• IS-IS P2P adjacencies on broadcast networks
• BGP MD5 auth

I'm mostly finished with IS-IS bar a few minor things so I'm starting on BGP this week, reviewing some of my R&S material and running through the scenarios I had on XR before going into some of the newer topics to me like flowspec, RPKI, BGP-LS, etc.

lrb

More BGP review tonight for 2.5 hours:

1. BGP IPv4 and VPNv4 route reflectors
2. BGP peer-groups and update groups
3. BGP peer templates
4. BGP default routes

lrb

Finally looked at some new stuff tonight The lab is definitely paying off in how easy it is to change topologies by simply changing around the port groups.

About 2.5 hours tonight:
1. BGP af-group, session-group, neighbor-groups labs
2. BGP weight lab

lrb

Only about an hour tonight and unfortunately not a new topic but rather a known topic on IOS-XR:

1. BGP outbound route filtering

Also got a 2012 R2 domain controller working in my home now so I can hook ISE up to it and start doing proper authentication when accessing devices in my lab

lrb

Still plugging away, was able to about 7 hours in over the weekend plus 2 hours last night and 2 hours tonight. According to Evernote, I've completed the following labs/theory review:

1. BGP Max AS
2. BGP AS_PATH prepending
3. BGP Local pref
4. BGP Max prefix
5. BGP Default routing
6. BGP private AS's and remove-private-AS
7. BGP allow AS
8. LDP auth
9. LDP interface config and autoconfig with OSPF and IS-IS

I'll spend the rest of this week on LDP review (filtering, session protection, igp-ldp sync, targetted, etc) and move onto L3 VPNs on the weekend

gorebrush

How are you feeling on this? I'm dying to get another one out the way as I've got the time....

SP for me too.

lrb

Hey mate! Yeah still been plugging away at this most nights, I'm working on a big DC deployment at the moment so between that and study my time is pretty sparse. I've booked in the lab now though

gorebrush

Nicely done! I'll need to read through this thread and see what you've done so far.

How much in terms of real content is there compared to R&S - I'd imagine a lot less as being an IE already you'd know a lot of it...

lrb

A bunch more MPLS for starters. The R&S only really scratched the surface of MPLS with L3VPN. SP has inter-AS, CsC, TE, L2VPN, and MVPN for starters. Chuck in some more BGP features, QoS, and more multicast. There is a decent amount of overlap with R&S but not in my opinion the "give-away" cert that some people thing it is after completing R&S.

I've read a few books such as XR Fundamentals again, IP Routing with IOS, IOS-XR, IOS-XE,...., MPLS-enabled applications, and most of the Traffic Engineering with MPLS book. I am going to start reading QoS-enabled networks and finish off the TE book soon.

I can't recommend the MPLS-enabled applications book enough. This book goes into an incredible amount of theory about MPLS which is great.

I'll update more of the topics I've covered off when I get home on Sunday if that helps. The lab date is a fair way off so plenty of time

lrb

Quite a nice last few weeks of study:

• MPLS PHP and reserved labels
• LDP Inbound label filtering
• LDP Outbound label filtering
• LDP Session protection
• BGP IPv4/VPNv4 route reflectors
• MPLS CsC for VPN
• MPLS CsC for Internet
• MPLS inter-AS VPN option A
• Read most of MPLS-enabled applications

I've started on option B and will finish with C and BC by the end of next weekend before moving onto multicast and MVPN next.

gorebrush

Beauty. I think I'm definitely picking this one up next then, with a view to ultimately consider CCDE 😀

Alex90

gorebrush wrote: »

Beauty. I think I'm definitely picking this one up next then, with a view to ultimately consider CCDE 

You guys are machines - I don't know where you find the time!

lrb

Finished inter-AS a little behind schedule, but completed the following:

• inter-AS L3VPN option B
• inter-AS L3VPN option C two-label stack
• inter-AS L3VPN option C three-label stack
• RT rewriting using community lists and route maps

Will move onto multicast and MVPN for the next few weeks now

lrb

Heh, haven't updated this in a few months as I've been super busy on a DC consolidation project. Still managed to get a bunch of Rosen MVPN study done and working through NG-mVPN with mLDP and RSVP-TE at the moment.

I've pushed my lab date out by a few months now so that will give me plenty of time to knock out the rest of MVPN and start on the L2 stuff.

Bardlebee

Hello lrb,

I read your previous CCIE posting almost start to finish. I was just curious of one thing while going down the road of the CCIE R&S myself. I know you have access to Cisco's documentation during the lab. Did you use it very much at all during your lab? The INE instructs to know how to find it on Cisco's site for the test, but I feel like if you don't know most of it already that seems like it would eat up time.

Good luck on your new CCIE endeavor while I start mine!

gorebrush

I can offer my advice here. I needed the documentation only once throughout the lab. The particular section that I needed was NTP and it was broke. I was very fortunate in that it was towards the end of the day and I had plenty of time in my back pocket - so I just used ? a lot and I think I managed fine.

Bardlebee

gorebrush wrote: »

I can offer my advice here. I needed the documentation only once throughout the lab. The particular section that I needed was NTP and it was broke. I was very fortunate in that it was towards the end of the day and I had plenty of time in my back pocket - so I just used ? a lot and I think I managed fine.

Interesting, I think this may also have some level on how prepared you are as well and how often you've used commands. A friend of mine did the CCIE after 6 months and he said he used the docs a LOT during the lab. So perhaps he wasn't prepared syntax wise and couldn't piece it all together. My fear of course is that this eats up a lot of time.

I restructured my studying a little bit to where I basically start at the documentation page of Cisco and find each technology I study through there, read it and then do my lab, so I am hoping this should be sufficient to keep in my memory bank and learn the Cisco doc structure.

gorebrush

I spent 18 months preparing and the last 3 months drilling all sorts of commands so I was fairly familiar with 99% with what they were asking

lrb

Sorry haven't updated this in a while, but my lab date is in the middle of March next year. I have been waiting for some workbooks from INE and IPX but there hasn't been much until now. IPX is releasing their tech-focus workbook in early December and mock labs in January. I bought a bunch of 4-hour rack rental vouchers (400 hours worth) and their workbooks in the Oktoberfest special they have running. There are a lot of limitations when using XRv as your primary XR study platform. For example: can't apply service policies, no LSM or rosen MVPN forwarding, no VPLS, no P2MP RSVP-TE, etc. I'll wait to test out a bunch of XR stuff on the racks when they are made available by IPX.

lrb

Bardlebee wrote: »

Hello lrb,

I read your previous CCIE posting almost start to finish. I was just curious of one thing while going down the road of the CCIE R&S myself. I know you have access to Cisco's documentation during the lab. Did you use it very much at all during your lab? The INE instructs to know how to find it on Cisco's site for the test, but I feel like if you don't know most of it already that seems like it would eat up time.

Good luck on your new CCIE endeavor while I start mine!

Hey mate, I used the documentation only once and it was just to confirm something. I would say you should know about 80% of the material like the back of your hand. Some of the extra stuff like DHCP or PPP options for example you can get away with just being familiar with but knowing the location in the documentation. If you have to look up the documentation heaps, you are going to eat up a lot of your time which you will need at the end to do verification.

Best of luck with the study!

lrb

Been a while since I've posted here, but I'm still chipping away at studying for the lab coming up in about 11 weeks. I've gone through the BGP, OSPF, multicast, and QoS sections from the RSv5 INE workbook again, watched the INE SPv4 ATC videos (what there has been of them so far), and done a ton of stuff in my home lab. I'm hanging out for the SP workbooks to come out from IPExpert (they were supposed to come out at the start of last month) and also for the rack rentals to be made available (hopefully at the end of this month). I think a lot of the workbook will be a repeat of the INE RSv5 workbook but I will go through everything anyway.

gorebrush

Wow 11 weeks and another lab? I've seriously slacked at the end of 2015, but I've got good reason

lrb

Yep, another 8 hours of pain! I'm really hanging out for these IPX workbooks to come out with the rack rentals so I can power through them on my home stretch to March.

lrb

About 9 weeks to go now... feeling pretty good about it I just need to work on speed through some of the more involved configs like inter-AS, CsC, and MVPN where there are a lot of moving parts. There is not a huge amount of study material on next-gen MVPNs so I have started posting some a series on MPLS MVPNs on my blog.

https://packetdrop85.wordpress.com/

Hopefully it helps someone out there! Happy for feedback etc too

There are some formatting issues with my <code> blocks and WP doesn't let me associate my .net.au domain with the account so I'm going to try and port it after my lab exam to apache running on my lab at home.

lostindaylight

9 Weeks, oh yeah you're feeling the sense of urgency now.

I'm about 15 weeks out from my R&S attempt. Looks like your blog might have some things that could be helpful for me. Thanks for sharing!

Best of luck with your final preparations.

-lid

lrb

Thanks mate hope it helped! All the best for your R&S lab in 5 weeks

lrb

Finished my last post in the 5 part series on NG-MVPN today with Data MDTs and how switchovers work with BGP signaling. Not sure what I will post next, I have some half finished blog drafts on VPLS BGP signaling and Root Node Redundancy for mLDP MP2MP LSPs.

lrb

Few good nights of labbing more inter-AS MVPN setups with BGP signaling and also how to protect the root node on LSPs. Wrote a blog post on mLDP root node redundancy too:

https://packetdrop85.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/mldp-root-node-redundancy-2/

I will finish up on MVPN study this weekend and start re-running labs with VPLS, VPLS over TE tunnels, H-VPLS, etc.

lrb

Made another few posts on MVPN this weekend. The first on inter-as option C:

https://packetdrop85.wordpress.com/2016/01/23/inter-as-mpls-mvpn-part-1-option-c-with-two-labels/

And the second on inter-as option C with recursive FEC:

https://packetdrop85.wordpress.com/2016/01/23/inter-as-mpls-mvpn-part-2-option-c-with-three-labels-and-recursive-fec/

I'm feeling good on the first three sections of the SPv4 lab blueprint (core routing, SP services, access/aggregation) but I really need to concentrate on labbing more and more for section 4 (HA and fast convergence) and section 5 (SP security, operations and management) before the lab date. Unfortunately for these sections I am running into some limitations on XRv so I'm hoping IPX finally release their workbooks and rack rentals this week.

lrb

Yesterday I took and passed the CCIE-SPv4 lab I know theres not a lot of info about the lab and how people prepared for it so I did my best to cover my story here:

https://packetdrop85.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/passed-ccie-spv4-lab/