1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

Turgon

IWEB Vol II lab no 7.

Rack recabled for this lab. Physical layer done. All switching task done that can be done with two switches. Some Switching QoS, Private Vlans, IP Telephony. Couldn't do 802.1q tunneling with just two switches. Frame Relay done. FrEEK appeared as a topic (at last). PPP using PAP.

So layer 2 tasks complete. Ready to start IGPs tomorrow and cross the 500 hour barrier.
A good day on the rack.

Turgon

Back on the homerack cranking out the IGP section. Some ear defenders would be good.

Turgon

I have just crossed the 500 hours milestone of configuration time on racks. It's a good place to be.

I have called a halt at the redistribution section of lab no 7 which I will complete tomorrow morning. Lab 7 has been good with lots to think about concerning RIP and OSPF. I had some trouble bringing a tunnel up. The solution misses the addition of the loopback network into area 1. Once I spotted that it came up. The lab is graded 9 out of 10 and moving forward I will be concentrating on the hardest labs in the weeks ahead, finishing off with the less hard labs in between mock exam stints. Im down to 2 switches instead of 4 due to homerack constraints so a mental note has been made to revisit the switching questions across all labs probably in the new year, consuming numerous rack slots on the remote racks where 4 switches are available.

Happy to report my speed and accuracy is improving as more tasks become second nature to me. Im left with a diminishing number of things I need to work harder on. But they do exist and the schedule needs to remain aggresive between now and year end so I have the labs done, the core improved and sufficient time available in the new year to work on those areas and get more docCD awareness down. In the main these are the configs required to manipulate the IPv4/IPv6 routing table the BGP table the mroutes, QoS, Security. Specific things in IPServices and Switching are also in the mix there somewhere..private vlans, VLAN maps, VACLs, STP et al.


As for the core, well that stuff is nearly down now with a few exceptions in the usual areas.

Ahriakin

Sometimes I think it's a good thing when there are errors, keeps us on our toes.....but it's only rosey in hindsight, curse-worthy when you're actually trying to to it .
500 hours, you deserve a medal for that alone.

Turgon

Still a few hours hours to go though. 8am and on with redistribution.

Turgon

Redistribution completed this morning. Some useful behavior noticed with redistributing rip and redistributing connected. The offset list solution for exit preference in the RIP domain was very interesting. Duly noted.

I had hoped to press on tonight with the following sections but with a busy week at work over and some hard lab hours accumulated on top Im feeling fatigued so Im resting up. Tomorrow we have a full day on a family outing in the North Yorkshire Moors to celebrate my wife's birthday. It's unlikely I will return to rack practice before Saturday evening. Most probably it will be Sunday. With BGP, Multicast, IPv6, QoS, Security, System Management and IP Services still to encounter along with all the learning opportunities that go hand in hand with such a lab I can assure you this will keep me fully occupied all day.

Turgon

Sunday morning. Just looking after my boy while we get breakfast together. After breakfast I will make a start on the BGP section and press on until lunch. Then we have to drive for groceries and buy somethings from the shops. On returning it's feeding time and bathtime for our boy followed by some lab work in the evening to hopefully finish this lab. I *might* get an hour when we return from shopping later this afternoon before it's time for his meal, we will see how it goes. Never more than 3 hour lab sessions in this house.

Turgon

Confederation and route reflector complete. Now verifying iBGP and eBGP peerings everywhere. Labs will not tell you to configure either confederations or route-reflectors. You need to know when they are required. These are the sort of tasks you should not be relying on the DocCD to help you with. You need to know when to use them and how to configure them cold. Now verifying all the required BGP peerings are established. You must get them up if you want to pass the lab exam. Naturally these are dependent on the quality of your earlier work as well as your BGP configuration.

A bad loopback Ip address has been changed and the network statement in OSPF amended. This has brought one bad peering up. Another bad peering is due to the misconfiguration of the backbone router. Im fixing that now.

Turgon

Getting the config right on BB1 is taking too long and I need to get that shopping trip done so I will take a break and return later to carry on. It may be a long night on racks!

Turgon

BGP complete. Quite involved. I was expecting a tiring section on Multicast to follow but mercifully it was short so I clattered that out before calling a halt for the night. Glad to see my proposed solution was spot on. For BGP good confederation work and unsuppress map (again). Clearly an important thing master and useful too. Tomorrow I will do IPv6, QoS, Security and the remaining tasks. Once done I will revisit the backbone routers to get the configs working properly so I can fully examine the BGP table on this lab. I will also try and get the multicast verification working properly if I can.

Turgon

IWEB Vol II Lab no.7 - DONE. IPv6, QoS, Security, System Management, IP Services all out of the way. I wondered when an exercise in LAM would turn up. Heard about it back in 2003 but never configured it before. Still a lab topic.

I have located another level '9' lab. Lab no 11. So I will attempt that son of a **** tomorrow. I will need to fix the backbone router configs and prestage the rack before commencing the initial lab tasks.

lildeezul

Man this is awesome, i love reading this. !!!

GT-Rob

Hey Turgon, looks like things are going well for ya.

I started doing the last 3 or 4 sections from labs lately, and I find it is really easy to get them in. Most of the tasks only require 1 or 2 routers, and its good practice with the docCD (or whatever it is called these days)

Turgon

GT-Rob wrote:

Hey Turgon, looks like things are going well for ya.

I started doing the last 3 or 4 sections from labs lately, and I find it is really easy to get them in. Most of the tasks only require 1 or 2 routers, and its good practice with the docCD (or whatever it is called these days)

Your talking about a splintered approach to doing labs. That's a term I have coined. Yes it's useful. Take a few labs and concentrate on the same tasks within them. I did this for QoS as well as multicast a couple of weeks ago and it does help get a lot of practice in on a few topics. Some weeks ago I simply loaded the remote rack configs up at the point multicast was to be done and did all the tasks until the end of the lab, then repeated the exercise for some more labs. Seems to work.

Turgon

Next year I would like to take some time out and finish a project I have been working on to produce some small scale Cisco labs for sale. It will be a mixture of primer stuff to get people moving with cisco as well as illustrative of technologies. It will be hands on and of interest to those with a home lab who work with Cisco or aspire to work with it. I will be pulling on things I have learned over the years in the field as well as things covered in the various certification tracks. So there will also be a few legacy things in there not covered by exams these days but still lurking in datacentres. I see it as being a useful training aid not solely constrained by the tramp to get certified.

Hey I plugged a book! It's not even in print yet. Back to labs...

GT-Rob

splintered approach, I like that I think it helps when you do like 5 rmon tasks in a row, as it just pounds it in my brain. Sometimes I find I will do a task/config that will make sense to me, but not quite "stick" as I am doing it once, then moving on.

I think I will do something similar with QoS and Multicast like you mention. Spend a week of labs here and there doing the tasks from random labs.

Its also a nice break from switching -> fr -> igp -> bgp -> everything else

Turgon

True..true

Prestaging lab no 11 is moving along. Managed to get the bugs out of one of the backbone routers so the BGP routes are advertised. Need to look at the other two backbone routers when I get some time. Way too busy at work.

Turgon

Today has been rubbish at work with no lunchtime rack opportunity. Hope to finish prestaging the rack tonight.

Turgon

Ok great I have put in a bit of time with the rack now and the backbone router configurations are a little better although not fully complete as I suspect an old IOS version is the cause of a few of those errors when I attempt to paste in the backbone configuration I want. I will just have to tread carefully with my following labs and see if I am injecting everything that is required with the configurations I have on the backbone routers.

Im now going to study the topology of the next lab and see if any cabling needs rearranging. I will also need to clear down my switch and router configurations before commencing the lab.

cblm123

Great avatar!!

Are you still looking at spring '09 for the lab?

gorebrush

Turgon, are you a female?

Turgon

cblm123 wrote:

Great avatar!!

Are you still looking at spring '09 for the lab?

Yes should be spring for the big day!

Turgon

gorebrush wrote:

Turgon, are you a female?

Not the last time I looked. Routergirl is though. Iconic look from the dotcom years when the Catalyst 5000 ruled.

Turgon

IWEB Vol II Lab 11. I think the physical layer is looking good now on the home rack for this lab. Had to move a few cables to change topology from lab no 7. Time to configure the 2 x frame switches I need and clear down the switch and router configurations. Hopefully the backbone router configurations I have put together will suffice for this lab. I think it's not possible to load the full backbone router configs due to IOS version constraints so a few things are not configured there.

gorebrush

Turgon wrote:

gorebrush wrote:

Turgon, are you a female?

Not the last time I looked. Routergirl is though. Iconic look from the dotcom years when the Catalyst 5000 ruled.

It looks like she is hugging it close.

It's awesome

Turgon

2 x Frame Switches configured. 2 x 3550 switches cleared and configured for VTP. VLANs assigned. Ports assigned to VLANs. Routers cleared and re ip addressed. Prestaging the rack is complete.

Tomorrow I can commence lab no 11.

Luckycharms

have been working on to produce some small scale Cisco labs for sale.

You know I have been think about doing the same thing... ( Probably won't but I have thought about doing that and making a lab book that goes along with it... Kinda like a all in one bundle..) Most of my stuff is geared toward voice so it gets $$$ really fast...

Turgon

IWEB lab no 11. Switching done. STP priority per VLAN, VLANs over trunks using port-priority and cost. Some useful VACL work, snmp trap mac-notofication and voice vlans and CoS.

Turgon

Frame relay completed easily enough. PPP/IGP and BGP planned Saturday.

JohnDouglas

is that a girl from worldcom?