1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

Turgon

Had to abandon plans for early morning racktime to help with son. Just back from food shopping now and he is asleep so back on with the rack for an hour or two (hopefully).

Turgon

Several problems with BGP peering encountered and resolved with update-source ethernet0. Redistribute connected problems in BGP resolved with correct wildcard mask in standard access-list.

Turgon

6:47 AM. Back on the home rack to finish the BGP section of Duggan no. 3. A busy day at work yesterday to meet a deadline so no rack hours done on Monday.

Turgon

Cisco Press CCIE Routing and Switching Practice labs. Lab no.3 - DONE

An exhausting trek to complete this on the homerack but its finally done now. I picked up a tremendous amount of useful learning along the way. Nobody uses this book these days but it's explanations and methodology go way beyond the vendor offerings even if some content is now 'off lab'. I would advise anyone to look at this material. Buy this book.

Vendor workbooks are great but I have always been of the school of using a wide range of resources. There is a tendency to get locked into a vendors end to end track. Given the sheer volume of material that comes along with vendor offerings you could easily find your preparations beating to the drum of completing one vendor lab after another. It takes a long time to get through all that material and Im finding that veering away from it from time to time to do exercises from another source, in this case Duggan, is reaping dividends.

I will be back on with IWEB materials next. I intend to pick off some the later topics in covered in the Vol II labs and see if I can configure them on the Duggan topology on the homerack which I assembled for the Cisco Press lab I just completed. This comes later though. For the moment, some rest and reflection on everything I learned with this lab. Converting rip broadcasts to multicasts was fun. The BGP section was educational too. It all was.

JohnDouglas

Which vendor's work books would you recommend?

Turgon

JohnDouglas wrote:

Which vendor's work books would you recommend?

A good question. I have seen a lot of people get hung up about that. The main ones are all more or less fine so far as I can tell. But honestly it's how you use the material that is key.

My advice is pay your money and take your choice really. Variety is good but really try and see a vendor track through end to end. A lot of people invest a great deal of money in multiple vendor products but how you use them is more important than amassing lots of CoDs and different products and chopping and changing. Get a product, have a plan and stick to it for a long time with regular sessions. For me, I stuck at IPExpert virtually from start to finish doing 34 labs. I bought no proctor guide and just tried to make sense of the solutions. That was a very good foundation. After all that graft I have now invested in IWEB for a change of scenery. Surrounding all this effort I have worked many examples from Cisco Press books and CCO on my home rack and also done a great deal of reading.

Whatever you use come up with a realistic plan to get through the material so you don't get discouraged. It takes a long time to get through so much stuff properly so you need to factor in everything going on in your busy life to give you a realistic estimate of elapsed time to cover the lab practice 'footprint' you will need to cover to take out the real thing. Helps keep you sane

Turgon

lunch time. Will try IWEB lab no 18 multicast section onwards.

Turgon

Multicast and IPv6 sections done. Multicasting is coming together. IPv6 NAT part was interesting but ran out of time for verification.

cblm123

Turgon...I may have missed it, but are you going to re-take the written exam?

Also, I laud your yeoman-like effort toward your studies...I am not sure if you can, but can you quantify how much your knowledge and understanding of the protocols/technologies have grown since the start of your journey? Are you able to apply this to your current job? After you obtain your CCIE, will you look for new opportunities or will you stay and grow in your current position?

Anyway, I wish you continued success.

robertguess

GT-rob awesome to see you here. I really like this forum:) Good gawd im tired i forgot gentlemens name and just went through about 10 pages of stuff haha. Good thing scroll works.

To GT and TURGON GOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDDDDD LUCK

I think CCIE is be all end all. Security might prove interesting but its like I'm an CCIE im like ok so your complete lol.

I congratulate you guys is wonderful to see you sharing turgon to other hopefuls and to those this is obviously a beast based on Turgon's ang GT's preperation man i need someone to teach me to spell and speak write proper english again ARGHHH


GOOD JOB GUYS you are gonna do this!!

Turgon

cblm123 wrote:

Turgon...I may have missed it, but are you going to re-take the written exam?

Also, I laud your yeoman-like effort toward your studies...I am not sure if you can, but can you quantify how much your knowledge and understanding of the protocols/technologies have grown since the start of your journey? Are you able to apply this to your current job? After you obtain your CCIE, will you look for new opportunities or will you stay and grow in your current position?

Anyway, I wish you continued success.

Lab 18 - Qos covered today. Learned about the flexibility in MQC to resolve all kinds of requirements. Quite simple once you work through the solutions.

CBLM - Yes I will be taking the written again. I think it's too late for me to take advantage of the free exam if you fail isn't it? I don't think I will be taking it soon unless the offer is still on. My written expires on November 5th. Interestingly I don't know if I can book a lab slot before it expires which would then take place in the new year I haven't tried. I would obviously need to pass the written before the lab even if that is possible. But I don't think it is so Im looking at getting the written done before year end and going for a March or April lab slot.

I apply some of the things covered in CCIE prep yes although I have to work across many devices not exclusive to Cisco such as Nokia Checkpoint and Riverstone. Im a contractor so completing the CCIE will certainly be a great round off for my experience the last eleven years. In the present market being excluded for not being CCIE wouldn't be very helpful. I seem to continue to be approached with offers however.

I quite like written preparation to be honest. I think I would do pretty well in the configuration questions but will need to bone up on the non lab things again.

Thanks for the wishes from you and the other poster.

Turgon

Lab 18 - DONE. All the sections after BGP anyway. Useful practice on the security section. The other sections were fairly trivial to be honest. The NAT solution for traceroute and loopbacks came up. The Bolivia of configurations but it does work suprisingly. The challenge now is to remember so many things. I expect some DocCD work is in order.

At the moment Im turning over the Solie and Doyle books to hunt down some suitable IGP exercises.

GT-Rob

Hey buddy, I was wondering how you are using the docCD/whatever the new site is?

I personally don't turn to it often. I usually just turn the solution guide to get me started on something I am missing. I am planning to spend like a week going through my notes and looking up certain things I feel weak on, and really getting a feel for it, but I am not sure how that will play out.


I know I should be using it in my labs more, but I honestly just don't feel the need for it except for the silly ip services/security/management things they throw at us (granted im only 1/4 through the labs).

Turgon

GT-Rob wrote:

Hey buddy, I was wondering how you are using the docCD/whatever the new site is?

I personally don't turn to it often. I usually just turn the solution guide to get me started on something I am missing. I am planning to spend like a week going through my notes and looking up certain things I feel weak on, and really getting a feel for it, but I am not sure how that will play out.


I know I should be using it in my labs more, but I honestly just don't feel the need for it except for the silly ip services/security/management things they throw at us (granted im only 1/4 through the labs).

I don't use the DocCD as much as I should. I tend to rely on the command line, books, my notes. Anything Im really stumped on I glance at the solution.

Don't worry about looking at the solutions too much, they are part of what you pay for with any Cisco Press book or vendor guide. You can't make this stuff up as you go along. You should *try* to come up with something that meets requirements but if you *really* don't know how to do something why spend all afternoon trying to get a bunch of nonsense working? Put it down to experience look at the solution, try and understand it, configure it, verify and move on. Make a note about it for reference. In fact more often Im finding that when Im stumped and look at the solution I can see straight away how it meets requirements. I just forgot the details. This tells me I need to work harder on practicing specifics so I can configure..say a VLAN Map or a Multicast Filter or a BGP Community in a flash. Although I have covered pretty much all the technologies now there are still things that far less readily come to mind.

To that end Im working a plan to go over some of the technologies again to get them down better. I will take some time out to find my way around the documentation a bit more particularly in the technologies Im weakest on. Honestly the documentation is useful for looking up things like dhcp options in the command index etc but it's less good at teaching you things in the actual lab exam. You really don't have time for that in there and a lot of people seem to rely a little too much on the availability of DocCD in the lab. It's useful but will only do so much for you on lab day because of time constraints. To that end when Im configuring things in the solutions that I missed Im looking at all the options available by doing good old '?' when I do them just to get more aware of what that command is capable of.

Back to planning..I intend to start IWEB mock exams at the end of the month so I have three weeks to prepare for those. Some DocCD practice will be a good start. I already have my list of subjects to work on so will set about locating them in the documentation. I have gone through Solie Vol I and Vol II and have identified a battery of technology labs I particularly like to undertake. There are also the Solie mock exams but it's unlikely I will get that far before the end of the month. I may throw in some more IWEB Vol II labs concentrating on the Multicast/QoS/IPv6/Security/System Management/IP Services tasks along the way and some dedicated switching practice. My basic configuration of most things is fairly good now. Some things are still less good but improving gradually i.e QoS, IPv6, Security..My ability to configure all the filtering mechanisms, STP, VLANs, IGP routes, Costs, BGP attributes, Communities, Multicast Filtering, Security, has to get much better. The Solie labs I have selected will help with some of that, as well as battering out solutions I made notes of from the workbook labs.

That's a LOT of stuff. We will just see how much I can get done between now and October 31st. It's imperative I get cracking on mocks through November and December and get my scores up by working much harder on my weaker technologies.

Turgon

Im now going to add to the Duggan topology on the homerack and add more configuration to practice BGP scenarios in the Solie and Workbook labs. An extra cable giving two exit paths between BGP Autonomous Systems for MED and AS-PATH prepending practice.

Turgon

Sunday 11AM

Practiced using MED, Local Preference, Weight, AS Path Prepending for BGP Best Path scenarios. Also practiced advertise-map. I had to change the topology of the Duggan lab on the home rack to do these examples and add more eBGP peers. But trying to make scenarios work in a different topology is very good practice!

Turgon

Solie Vol II pp 789 BGP Communities.

Worked the examples in the Solie book for BGP communities by working with the home rack topology to make it fit what was illustrated without changing IP addresses. Very useful practice. Im tired of eating to the beat of Vendor workbook labs now so have decided to embark on more practice using examples from Cisco Press and DocCD for specific technologies. Trying to make an example in a book with topology X work on topology Y is challenging but definately worthwhile. I expect to be using vendors now primarily for mock exams and the labbook material as tutorials on requirements definition and illustration of alternative means of achieving things. Primarily though it will be worked examples on the home rack using books, DocCD and parts of technologies from the labbooks which I have noted as requiring more practice. Over the last four days I have worked over BGP best path selection and communities on the homerack. There will be more sessions on BGP forthcoming. For the moment however I plan to return to a different subject. I had considered moving onto IGPs but as that will be timeconsuming and I dont want to move too far away from layer 2 practice I think I will do some switching practice next. I will pick out some of the labbook switching sections, particularly the spanning-tree and vlans over trunk work and put some time in there. Then it's on to IGPs again.

Solie is packed full of good things. Buy these books.

apd123

I too have thrown in the towel on the workbook rat race. I am about halfway through the V2 and V3 IEWB workbooks and have done a few DOIT labs. It just hit me in the middle of a rack rental in which I had struggled with a DOIT lab really trying to figure out the solution to a routing task. Solution turned out the be a undocumented corner case, there are a lot more of these types in DOIT than in IEWB. Right there I realized that constantly grinding on corner cases until my head hurt was doing me more harm than good, I just walked away from the last 6 hours of the session. I have spent the past three weeks going through technology by technology reading then labbing off of the DOC CD or V1 IEWB labs. I now feel much stronger in a lot of areas. I will of course go and repeat some workbook labs and try to finish out the IEWB before my lab date, but I will be spending a lot more time reflecting than I have in the past.

Turgon

I know what you mean.

A spot of time spent tonight on the homerack looking at spanning-tree and trunks. Will continue tommorow with trunking, portchannel and spanning-tree practice.

apd123

It just dawned on me that I have stared at your signature forever, but don't know whether you actually made a lab attempt to go with your 2001 Written. Would it have been a two day lab at the time?

Turgon

apd123 wrote:

It just dawned on me that I have stared at your signature forever, but don't know whether you actually made a lab attempt to go with your 2001 Written. Would it have been a two day lab at the time?

I have never taken the lab exam. Back in October 2001 I passed the written exam and set about preparing for the lab exam in the summer of 2002 by doing small labs by Hutnik and Saterlee. I was on groupstudy back then and numbers were in the 7000 range. With my work and commuting I soon found myself unable to put in the necessary lab practice on racks so had to let it slide. I spent a few months reading practice labs and books on commutes but without regular hands on lab practice you can't hope to prepare. Throughout that period and right through to today I have always worked jobs that kept me very busy. Only during the last 18 months have I had the necessary window to prepare for the lab properly now things are settled on the job and homefront. I do far less commuting which really helps.

Turgon

More IE rack scheduling blues. Yesterday the racks were fully booked so I took a slot today and for Friday. Unfortunately I come into work today to find a bunch of new urgent work hurled my way. So I have been unable to use today's slot at lunchtime effectively. I don't know if I will get much done on Friday's slot either being so busy at work. To compensate I have taken the Friday evening slot running after the 11 - 5 slot. It's a drag finding yourself consuming three slots like this just to have the opportunity of doing *some* practice but this happens sometimes when work can get busy all of a sudden.

GT-Rob

I know what you mean. I sometimes try to do a vol 3 lab during work when its slow, and I'll get halfway through and the whole world blows up. It seems to get slow again right about the time my rack time is up lol


Also what sucks is I have 8 days off next week, and the entire week is booked (I assume for a class). I had planned to do 2 full labs but now I have to move them to the weekends (which cost 3 times as much). Ugh.

Turgon

GT-Rob wrote:

I know what you mean. I sometimes try to do a vol 3 lab during work when its slow, and I'll get halfway through and the whole world blows up. It seems to get slow again right about the time my rack time is up lol


Also what sucks is I have 8 days off next week, and the entire week is booked (I assume for a class). I had planned to do 2 full labs but now I have to move them to the weekends (which cost 3 times as much). Ugh.

I think I will just be scheduling evening sessions now. After discussion with my wife Im going to be putting more nights in.

Turgon

Thursday evening. Covered the switching sections in the first three IWEB Vol II labs. Good practice on trunking, etherchannel, spanning-tree.

GT-Rob

Hey Turgon, have you looked at IE's schedule lately? There is no much green left for this month

I am to the point where I am actually calling in sick for work tomorrow, as it was the only day in the next 2 weeks I could fit in. Priorities I guess lol


Hopefully next month isn't bad, and so far doesn't seem so. I think its just these classes they run the throw everything off.


Have you any experience with any other online vendors that match IE's WB?

JohnDouglas

GT-Rob wrote:

Hey Turgon, have you looked at IE's schedule lately? There is no much green left for this month

I am to the point where I am actually calling in sick for work tomorrow, as it was the only day in the next 2 weeks I could fit in. Priorities I guess lol


Hopefully next month isn't bad, and so far doesn't seem so. I think its just these classes they run the throw everything off.


Have you any experience with any other online vendors that match IE's WB?

do you work for a cisco partner? if you do then you can access their labs once you've passed the written. i think they have (they certainly used to) proper labs to telnet into, not virtual ones that are a pathetic approximation.

cisco's website is a mess though. i must have about four different logins now for the different sections.

GT-Rob

You know I have found some e-partner learning thing while going through CCNP, that lets you on to real equipment. I didn't like it too much though as it was all java based, and forced you to use command prompt to telnet into them.


I have a decent home lab, as well as a rat's nest lab at work if I want to get through specific technologies. Its just the full labs is nice to book up, auto-load the default configs, and go. No cabling, addressing, etc.

apd123

Everyone is hitting the racks before the boot camp in london. Also the first week I am sure is booked for that purpose the 13-18 or whatever is all red.

Turgon

GT-Rob wrote:

Hey Turgon, have you looked at IE's schedule lately? There is no much green left for this month

I am to the point where I am actually calling in sick for work tomorrow, as it was the only day in the next 2 weeks I could fit in. Priorities I guess lol


Hopefully next month isn't bad, and so far doesn't seem so. I think its just these classes they run the throw everything off.


Have you any experience with any other online vendors that match IE's WB?

I did 34 IPexpert labs earlier this year before I touched IWEB. The remote rack vendor they use Proctor Labs works pretty well and they are very responsive to problems. Better than IWEB in my opinion. I also rate the IPexpert material pretty highly. IWEB is popular but more spoonfeeding in approach.

If I cant use the IWEB remote racks I can always practice sections from their workbook on my homerack.