1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

GT-Rob

I saw it a few months ago but it seemed like something that would be too buggy for my tastes.

For example, does the order you do commands matter? What about short forms and the '?' ?

What about show outputs and debugs?

Turgon

It's not that clever. Just scenarios with one liners to add yourself. There are some errors in there.

Completed lab no 18 in IWEB Vol II.

GT-Rob

Thats cool. I have a constant connection to my home rack open pretty much all the time (I check a lot of syntax when I create changes for other people to do), so I usually use that to check things I just read about/see options.


I actually just did lab 18 as well recently. Its nice getting back to '7' difficulty. I don't limp away as much


BTW, I think you are almost at CAMP3 now eh? Have you scheduled a mock lab yet? I assume you are doing an IE one?

Turgon

GT-Rob wrote: »

Thats cool. I have a constant connection to my home rack open pretty much all the time (I check a lot of syntax when I create changes for other people to do), so I usually use that to check things I just read about/see options.


I actually just did lab 18 as well recently. Its nice getting back to '7' difficulty. I don't limp away as much


BTW, I think you are almost at CAMP3 now eh? Have you scheduled a mock lab yet? I assume you are doing an IE one?

Lab 18. The leak map was a good one there. Yes nearly at CAMP 3 now. 6 full labs in Vol II left before I get there though. Im trying to get on racks everyday. Much depends on January. I got a fair amount done in December. I intend to get to CAMP 3 and start the hike to CAMP 4 before the month is out. Come February I will need to get back into work and a new job always saps your study time. I never seem to land jobs that give me any downtime for studies. So it's vital I have a good month now!

To get to CAMP 4 I will need to accomplish a battery of IWEB mock exams and complete selected examples from Solie and the DocCD on the homerack. I will be completing revision of my notes as well. Sometime on the journey to CAMP 4 I will have a crack at the written.

Turgon

IWEB Vol II - Lab 8. Completed the switching section. Time for a break. My wife has gone to town with our son for an hour. I will therefore indulge in a game of Cossacks and forget about BGP and dot1q tunneling for a little while. While lab preparation is allowed (or on particularly busy days) tolerated at times..computer games are totally banned in our house as they are a complete waste of time. Quite apart from time required to study for the CCIE there is a one year old to look after indoors and housework to help out with. Quite right too.

I shall probably run out of gold and the hired guns will shoot my town up.

Turgon

Lab 8 - DONE

After discussion at home last night we have decided to bring the mock exam schedule forward. So Im going to look for a suitable slot next week. Only five full labs in IWEB Vol II remain to be done. I can see me completing these over the course of the next four or five weeks. A baseline of where I am at would be useful now as it gives me something to work with. I don't expect stellar results just now as there are lots of things that I still need to work on. This will only improve with time. Between now and the mock I shall be revisiting my notes and finding things on the DOCCD. In short revision before mock number one. As for marks, well the higher the better although I recall someone getting 50's consistently on these these things before passing the lab a few weeks later.

Turgon

A day out visiting family today so not a whole lot done. Using my notes I printed out the questions for five major topics across all 20 IWEB Vol II labs. Will go over the questions and solutions in the days ahead. Intend to read question, study solution, write solution on the printouts, configure on the router then type solution into my notes. Writing, configuring and typing into my master notes should help reinforce more things.

Turgon

Drove home late last night after a day at relatives. Up late this morning then food shopping. Managed to install the Odom third edition practice tests on the PC with a struggle. Going over the questions with an open book. Finding out there's a lot of minutia there I have forgotton and will need to bone up on for the written test. Great.

Turgon

Yesterday went over the Odom questions for switching. Then set about going over all the IPv6 sections across the 20 labs in IWEB Vol II. Made notes. Will complete today and configure on a router or two after doing the Command Memorizer Ipv6 sections. Multicast is the next subject.

Turgon

Ipv6 sections documented across 20 labs. Hopefully make a start on configuration practice tonight. Failing that in the morning. Think I will do security next. Not my fav topic so as good reason as any to take it on. Access-list permutations.

Turgon

After completing notes on IPv6 from the workbook I attempted the command memorizer sections on IPv6. Commands come much easier to me now for this topic. Now Im going to cobble a topology together on the homerack and configure some of the workbook IPv6 situations. I can then move on from IPv6. About two and a half days elapsed time spent covering it. Security next.

Turgon

Time spent yesterday examining IPv6 configurations and features on the home rack. A very useful session. Will carry on later. A day out with the family now.

Turgon

Wrapping up my configuration practice on IPv6 now. It's been a VERY good few days on IPv6. Im not working at the moment so my study hours have increased to fill the void created by not having work deadlines. It's not all plain sailing though. Being temporarily out of work Im expected to do more around the house. We also have a guest staying with us until the 17th of January so I can't disappear up my ass on lab prep. The economy is tanking so Im starting to spend time on the job search. I will need to take something up in February to keep on top of the bills. Hopefully this does not mean too much time away from home...

A new job saps your time and energy. You need focus. So I can see my study program being curtailed somewhat in February. To that end it's imperative I get as much sorted out as I can with what remains of January to compensate. Ideally I see February and March being mock exams when possible, a few more labs and DoCCD reading and referencing work. Brushing up on topics to make them stronger and getting better at locating essential things quickly on the DocCD. All that and a new job will probably stretch me as far as I can go. There is a problem. I need to pass the written to schedule a lab slot. So Im trying to cover Odom chapters as I go (I already started this in January) and get those Odom practice question marks up.

I will have had two months out by the time I start work again and I can tell you that having dedicated time on lab prep away from work is a blessing. I was always juggling work deadlines and family during the course of my lab prep and it was not easy. It was difficult to do more than a couple of hours most days and on some particularly demanding days impossible. Without regular daily three or four hour slots to concentrate some labs took a whole week of elapsed time to complete properly and the breaks inbetween sessions made it difficult to get continuity. If you have one of those jobs that has slack periods, use them. If you have a job where you can convince your employer to give you downtime to do lab prep, talk to them. Work hours are the best hours of the day to do this sort of thing when you are refreshed. You will have to do evenings and weekends anyway but after a tough day at work this just isn't the optimum time to be learning a lot of complicated things because you are usually worn out if your working day is intense enough.

Nevertheless, although it took a long time particularly after our first was born, eventually, finally much has been achieved. At times though it has felt like trying to empty a dumptruck full of sand with a spoon. I came into December free from employment obligations and on the back of a very long period of study undertaken as and when over the course of the year. With more freetime I worked harder on my studies throughout December. Now in January things are coming together. This month the objective is to continue to improve on the technologies and complete a mock exam before the month is out. Two mock exams would be marvellous.

With IPv6 covered well Im going to look at Multicast next. I have decided to prioritise topics like IPv6 that have lots of mechanism dependencies..in otherwords things that you have to get 'working' in the labs as opposed to mainly just configure. Security topics need work but they are mainly isolated to a single device. With multicast you need to get things operational across multiple devices. The same for BGP. QoS I see like security, usually just a device or two. There is still time this month to make headway on technology studies but the time consuming topics need to be tackled first. So it's multicast next, then BGP followed by QoS and Security. After that, Switching (lots), Frame and PPP (some), IGP and Redistribution (refresher), System Management (some), IP Services (some). I will never cover all this as adequately as I would wish before the end of the month if I am to do a mock exam, but if I can at least get through the time consumers..Multicast, BGP, QoS, Security,..then I will have improved dramatically. This leaves core switching, frame, ppp, igp, redistribution. These topics are already fairly good and I can cover these in February and work on cherry picking Sys Mgt and IP Service topics when I get bored of the core stuff.

Turgon

Documented solutions to multicast sections in labs 1 - 10, 18 -20. It mostly makes a lot of sense these days. Will configure a few things on the rack tommorow.

Turgon

Ok went over the command memorizer sections on Multicast. I will look over the multicast sections across labs 11 - 17 today and document the solutions. Solutions to labs 1 - 10 and 18 - 20 were written up last night. Updated my list of IOS commands for Multicast.

Will probably work on the homerack today building out the Multicast examples in Doyle Volume II from page 532 Chapter 6 Configuring and Troubleshooting Multicast Routing. I started working the Doyle examples on 30th October 2008 but never got through them all. It will be good to revisit them now.

Turgon

Rack time postponed due to trip out for food shopping and to the garage to have the car worked on briefly. Looking over the Odom questions on multicast now. PIM-DM and SM traffic flow across network diagrams. Nice. Probably some time on the rack tonight getting the topology right for the Doyle exercises. Bathtime and bedtime for our son first.

Turgon

Covered some old boson questions for Multicast. Went over the Odom diagrams in the Cisco Press R&S Routing and Switching questions covering PIM-DM and PIM-SM to refresh my memory on the messages and mechanism. This morning built out the required topology for the Multicast exercises in Doyle on the homerack. Getting increasingly busy on the job search front what with calls from agents. That added to all the hours consumed lately on CCIE prep and our family life is starting to take a hit. I will relax the study for a few days and just go over my notes. Racktime is too big a time sink for us right now as we have a visitor.

Turgon

Started reading over Doyle Vol II chapter 6. Time to lab up on the homerack.

Turgon

Covered PIM-DM nicely thanks to Jeff Doyle. Getting nagged now as I promised not to engage in studies for a couple of days. Might squeak some PIM-SM exercises in before Mrs Turgon moans too much. Another hour perhaps

We all stand on the shoulders of giants to do this stuff. I would like to thank Jeff Doyle for a fine chapter on Multicast. I'm sure Jeff stood on a few giants himself at one time. You can't make this stuff up.

Ahriakin

Ya know reading these I'm still amazed at your patience. You laid out a long term strategy and stuck to it, balancing work/family/study without ever losing track of the goal. Kudos, if there is a right way to do this you're writing the manual.

networker050184

Ahriakin wrote: »

Ya know reading these I'm still amazed at your patience. You laid out a long term strategy and stuck to it, balancing work/family/study without ever losing track of the goal. Kudos, if there is a right way to do this you're writing the manual.

+1

I really admire your ability to give it the slow and steady approach also. I know most people want to rush it, but its always better to take your time and LEARN the material. Good luck when you finally take the lab

Turgon

networker050184 wrote: »

+1

I really admire your ability to give it the slow and steady approach also. I know most people want to rush it, but its always better to take your time and LEARN the material. Good luck when you finally take the lab

Thanks man and to Akihiran for the sentiments. Yeah it's just the way it works out best for us here. Not that it doesn't have a downside. My wife thinks this is going to take forever. The options had limited appeal though. If I had worked much harder it would only have created problems for me at work and at home with a newborn to help raise last year. One of those 'hmm its quiet at work right now should I play games or study?' jobs would have helped me out but as a contractor it was all constant design deadlines at work each day. Sometimes I got an hour or two in at work if I juggled my time but this meant even those less busy weeks were busy enough. Difficult to do labs in chunks as well across a week.

Abandoned rack work at noon to get our boy off to sleep. Then all afternoon at the hospital for his checkup. No problems reported there. Will get nothing done this evening as its his bathtime and the last night for our relative who is staying with us. Saturday its a very long day with a round trip to the airport so no study there either. Will get back shattered. Next on racks Sunday, more Doyle and Multicast. Next week back on the remaining IWEB labs followed by a mock exam the following week.

That's the plan anyway

Turgon

Done with the Doyle Vol II Chapter 6 Multicast labs. Covered PIM-DM, PIM-SM, Auto-RP and Bootstrap protocol and tunnels. Lots of valuable insight on the homerack configuring the examples today and using debug. Now rearranging the homerack topology prior to undertaking the troubleshooting examples in the book. I'm probably the only person in the world today working the examples in Chapter 6 on the homerack. Sadly in the dash to use vendor products excellent materials such as Doyle's books continue to be disregarded by many candidates. A shame as folks were passing the lab exam with such books as the bedrock of their studies for years before the vendor offerings mushroomed. Use both. I find that works very well indeed.

Turgon

8am. Time to investigate the troubleshooting features of IOS on the homerack using the topology in Chapter 6 Configuring and Troubleshooting IP Multicast Routing in Doyle Volume II.

Turgon

Thanks to configuring the homerack properly last night this was a painless session and useful.

debug ip mpacket, mrinfo, mtrace and mstat are your friends. Just looking at the IWEB rack schedule and there are scarce slots this week so I will have to make do with my resources at home. I will now finish up my notes on the multicast sections in IWEB Vol II across labs 11 - 17. This then brings closure on my multicast preparations.

Next subject will be switching, looking closely at all questions across 20 labs in IWEB Vol II before making useful notes. My personal spreadsheet containing commands, scenarios and configurations is up to version 1.18 now since I started it on 4th December.

Feel much better on multicasting now.

Turgon

This morning completed the notes on multicast taken from the IWEB Vol II labs. Spreadsheet is up to version 1.19 now. Switching will be the next topic. For the moment though it's time for more hands on. With the IWEB racks booked up this week Im about to use a proctorlab session and fallback on one of the few remaining IPexpert labs I have at home. A change of landscape from IWEB and almost like a mock exam. Lab 'L' in IPexpert version 9.0

Turgon

IPExpert WB 9.0 Lab 30, lab 'L' - DONE.

You have to go right back to August 2008 to find the last full Ipexpert lab I attempted. Its been all IWEB and Cisco Press since then. Lab went well overall. Got a lot done in a single rack session. Some of the usual things still to work on but it was like a mock exam in itself having not used IPexpert for a while so overall I have to be fairly pleased with how it went.

Turgon

My wife needs to rest today so Im looking after our boy. No labs today. With IWEB racks booked this week Im going to prestage the home rack for lab no 10. I have no switches so will just have to make the best of things with a bastardized lab. Main thing is to press on with configuration practice and get these remaining IWEB Vol II labs complete so I can crack on with mocks. Hopefully I will be back on the racks tomorrow.

Turgon

As you can probably tell by my name Turgon, Im a huge Tolkien fan. The routers on my homerack are all named after female characters in the books. Yavanna one of my frame switches had an exception error. After inspection it was either bad flash or corrupt IOS image. This morning I have replaced flash, dram and loaded an image from the other frame switch Varda. Seems to have resolved matters. Good. I can now put together my two frame switch lab for IWEB lab 10 now.

Turgon

Lab 10 completed up to the Multicast section. Some useful BGP. IGP fairly straight forward. Good illustration of redistribution and tags.