1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

Turgon

IWEB Vol II lab 16. Frame/PPP/BVI/OSPF/BGP complete. Almost midnight here so calling it a night. Lots of shopping to do in the morning then back on the rack in the afternoon for closure on lab 16. A great lab for BGP this one.

Turgon

Out shopping with the family today and some time on the rack in the evening. Tired now and a busy day ahead at the office.

IWEB Vol II lab 16. Multicast and IPv6. Good section on Autorp. Clever use of low IP called in rp-list to prefer physical on R4 over loopback on R5 for RP. Good old tunnels in IPv6 and summary address.

QoS/Security/System Management/IP Services planned Monday night. More FRTS fun ahead.

Turgon

IWEB Vol II Lab no 16 - DONE

Finished this one after work this evening once our boy was tucked up in bed. A busy day at work too. Some useful NAT stuff in this one and a refresher on FRTS and time based ACL. Security was a doddle. SNMP, AAA.

One lab left before I finally, finally get to Camp 3. Roll on tomorrow evenings session. Will need to rearrange cables.

PStefanov

Do you use InternetworkExpert's forum - ieoc.com and also the old forum? As far as I remember, there are a lot of mistakes in the last few labs made by the authors. The forum there is a great help and almost every issue you encounter in labs is explained. I used to go there almost after every lab and check the solutions other members provide as there were times I didn't agree with the SG.

apd123

Yes the IEOC forum esp the archives are the key to the last few labs in the IE workbook. The one lab where the VTP doesn't work as requested even though Cisco's documentation says it should tells you these one probably weren't tested prior to printing. Other than these later inconsistencies I found the answer key to be fairly solid.

Turgon

apd123 wrote: »

Yes the IEOC forum esp the archives are the key to the last few labs in the IE workbook. The one lab where the VTP doesn't work as requested even though Cisco's documentation says it should tells you these one probably weren't tested prior to printing. Other than these later inconsistencies I found the answer key to be fairly solid.

Funny you both mention this forum. I took a look yesterday and I found it to be pretty useful. I can see me posting on there soon enough when I revisit topics in the IE labs over the next couple of months.

Homerack topology assembly time again for lab 17. Not enough switches at home so I will use a couple of ports on a 4000 series router at home and create a bridge group.

Turgon

Cobbled a decent enough topology together. Reconfigured frame switch, cleared all configs and re IP addressed devices. Got through Frame Relay and PPP questions today. All set now for IGP and BGP Friday evening.

Turgon

IWEB Vol II Lab 17 - DONE

That's the last of the twenty Vol II labs configured.

I finally made it to Camp 3.

Ahriakin

Woohoo! Feels good to get those milestones done doesn't it ? :)Almost there sir.

Turgon

Ahriakin wrote: »

Woohoo! Feels good to get those milestones done doesn't it ? :)Almost there sir.

It certainly does. Now I need to work hard on all those topics where the detailed solution still does not spring to mind. There won't be time to look up too many things on lab day. I will be doing some switching practice later. First I have to take my boy to the hospital as his foot is giving him some trouble this morning.

Turgon

Ok well that's my switching practice done for the day. I will carry on with some more of that on Monday evening after work. Man it's good to get to CAMP 3. This was certainly the hardest tramp along the journey but I'm glad I made it through that part. I have taken stock the last few days to assess where to go from this point and what precisely to do. Looking back from when I set about configuring my very first lab on my home rack on the 12th May 2007 so much has happened. While the studies have been pushed along on the general direction, life certainly threw a few curveballs which impacted the study plans along the way. Our first child was born September 2007. The study plans had to become a lot more flexible from then on, but he will be two years old this year and the family/work/study routines are working very well these days with one or two exceptions. Work became 'difficult' in April 2008, in fact so difficult that I decided to throw my lot in with work and put the CCIE lab studies on ice for a month. Looking back, while this cost me some momentum at a time when I felt I was starting to make some solid progress, it was the right thing to do. There were a lot of changes at work back then and I really needed not only to knuckle down at work to deliver the goods, but also to rest up in the evenings so I didn't drive myself crazy. Workflow went well over the duration and the ship was steadied. I was pretty tired at the end of that period and then went abroad on vacation for two weeks, so that's six weeks out of the CCIE study schedule right there. When I returned, one of my colleagues had been laid off.

On my return in June I set about the studies in ernest again. A few months passed by and about a few weeks after we were all thanked for working so hard and improving on targets in the team the credit crunch hit home. A pie chart appeared at headquarters and 6000 people got laid off. Myself included. So at the end of November I found myself available for employment for the first time in 4.5 years! The general employment situation was a circus at the time and I felt a short break was long overdue. I decided to concentrate on Cisco studies for the remainder of the year. This was time well spent. I got moving on the IWEB Vol II labs and also found time to work specific things on the homerack from books by Doyle and Solie, specifically IPv6 and Multicast. I also found time to really read over the IWEB labs and make some decent notes for a change. I still have them and they will be useful for revision in the months ahead. In the new year the phone starts to ring and today Im a couple of weeks into a new contract which so far is going fairly well.

So over the course of this thing there have been ups and downs. However the upshot of the overall approach to taking on the CCIE has been positive. It's taken a long period of elapsed time to get to this point, but my performance at work and at home has not been impaired as a consequence of the efforts I have made and the care I took to not burnout because of my time constraints, and so far as the CCIE itself is concerned, while I would have liked to have reached this point a little sooner I have no regrets about being where I am now. For lots of reasons doing this inside twelve months just wasn't an option for me amd Im glad I recognised that early on..I'm now almost ready!

I understand a lot of things much better now than when I started out on all this, and I have also learned a lot of new useful things. Without making this trip I don't think I would have been in a position to say that no matter how much valuable experience I was accumulating at work. That's saying quite a lot because I have had my fair share of exposure to challenging things as a consequence of the work I do on a daily basis.

My awareness of potential solutions is much better now. I will need to work hard on tightening things up across the topics over the course of the next two months. To become 'lab ready' so to speak. I expect to be doing more labwork and being much stricter on use of the DocCD in the weeks ahead. I will working on labs to practice the core during the week in the evenings after work, and some specific technology practice at the weekends where I have more time to mull things over. I need to get to a point where I have to lookup fewer things, and the 'guts' of the solution spring more readily to mind. It's all practice and strict form when working labs now.

First mock exam will be at the end of March. That score will be baseline. Once those marks improve sufficiently I will need to crank out that written pass and schedule the lab. Perhaps the summer now. We will see.

Turgon

Monday night. Configured the switching sections in lab 17 this evening.

Switching..there's a lot to do and if it isn't done properly expect strange and most unhelpful problems. I expect to be working switching very hard in the weeks ahead. It all stems from there. 10:15 pm. Time to watch the evening news on TV with my wife before we turn in. Early start tomorrow for work.

IWEB Vol III lab no 4 tomorrow evening.

Turgon

10:30 pm. Calling it a night. Got an hour in on IWEB Vol III lab 4. Switching tasks went well.

Turgon

IWEB Vol III lab no 4. Frame relay, PPPoFR, PPP. All done. Got full marks. Briefly checked DocCD for virtual template. An hour long session tonight from 9pm after things were settled at home. Some rest now. Early start for work and a busy day ahead.

Turgon

With rack sessions scheduled today and tomorrow Im hoping to polish off lab 4. If I can do that and make a start on lab no 5 so much the better. Outside of scheduled sessions I *might* have time to work the homerack. Im particularly interested in building out examples from Solie Volume II Lab 14 BGP routing page 689 onwards. While some of this effort would amount to a review Im concerned about the trap of eating to the beat of vendor labs and not being honest about the specific things I really need to master. I can improve on that by working Cisco Press and CCO materials in specific technologies that I need to get down much better. I have also noticed some useful examples on CCO to configure in the weeks ahead, not only for BGP but other topics that I still need to work on. I will continue to hunt these sorts of things down and plan to build them out on my equipment at home. I may purchase the Vol I workbook at some point to do some focussed studying on my weaker areas, and I certainly plan to skim over the Vol II labs again to bolster my notes.

EdTheLad

When do you expect to make a lab attempt?

Turgon

EdTheLad wrote: »

When do you expect to make a lab attempt?

When Im ready. Once I get decent marks on the mock exams it will be time. I expect that process and the workload to clear the written to take about three more months. Providing I keep the workrate up..back to that rack session now

Turgon

The session ended at 5:30 but I had to abandon it at 4pm as family duties took over. The little one is in bed now so time for the evening session. I have redistribution and BGP up next so I hope it goes well.

First thing tomorrow its out for food shopping and then a rack session starting at 11am. This will be cut short at 3pm as we have an engagement with friends and a meal out. After that it's bathtime for the little one again. I have a busy week ahead at work so it's unlikely I will get any more lab prep done after 8pm Sunday evening. Sunday morning I hope to make a start on lab 5. Let's try and get lab 4 nuked this evening..I will need to look over the Solie chapter to figure out how best to prestage the home rack assuming I get a chance this weekend. Solie has some things in there but the lack of continuity in the configurations makes it difficult to layout the rack without having to change it more than I care to for the exercises. Good book though.

Turgon

IWEB Vol III lab no 4 - DONE

Well worth the effort. A lot of Saturday went into it. Time now to enjoy what's left of the evening.

Turgon

For some reason Im unable to download the Vol III workbook from my members area on IE today. This blows because I have a remote rack session sitting there that I can't use. I have emailed them about this. I hope they get this fixed because I want to work lab 5 in the evenings in the week ahead. Hopefully they will credit my tokens back for todays rack session too.

Fallback position then is to recable the homerack and do some exercises from the Cisco Press book by Karl Solie. Today Im working the scenarios in CCIE Practical Studies Vol II, Chapter 9 Advanced BGP configuration pp758.

For those viewers with a cursory interest in the CCIE journey but who have yet to commit, I recommend that you invest time building scenarios out at home using the following books by Cisco Press so you don't get too locked into Vendor materials and miss out on deeper understanding. Sadly these books are read by fewer candidates worldwide these days and as a consequence IMHO an invaluable learning opportunity is lost in the dash to pass the lab..


CCIE Practical Studies Vol I Karl Solie
CCIE Practical Studies Vol II Karl Solie
CCIE Routing and Switching Practice Labs Duggan and Gorito
Routing TCP/IP Vol I Doyle
Routing TCP/IP Vol II Doyle

Bridges, Routers and Switches by Caslow and Pavlichenko is an old book now but still worth looking over.

There are also many examples on CCO you can build at home. I have a few specific things I have found there that I will be building out at home in the months ahead to help with reinforcement of technology function.

Turgon

Good session put in on the homerack with a configuration from Solie Vol II p754 onwards covering best path selection by modifying origin attribute and AS-PATH prepending. Filtering BGP routes using AS-PATH attribute by way of route-map or filter-list covered. Every hour with Cisco Press examples built on the homerack is priceless now. Things are really getting reinforced after all the vendor lab practice the last year.

Turgon

IWEB Vol III lab no 5.

Got done with the switching tasks before the rack session ended this evening. Lots of dot1q subinterfaces and the dot1q-tunnel thing. WAN section looks like it will be challenging tomorrow night after work.

Turgon

A testy evening with WAN PPPoFR and PPP fun generally. Ran out of time on the rack session due to looking things up on DocCD. Have some ideas to try tomorrow evening.

Turgon

WAN section complete. Dialer interface beat me. Had ideas but no cigar. A difficult night on the IE racks as I could neither load up last nights config from the control panel nor save what I did tonight. I sure hope they get that fixed by tomorrow evenings session or I will have to start from scratch and save locally to be on the safe side. The time difference makes things difficult too, by the time I get home and we get our son to bed I only have 1.5 hours remaining to do any lab prep. Time pressure makes for an intense experience. At this point Im not tempted to go for later sessions in the evening. Im very busy at work and need energy and focus there because I want that contract renewal and I think within 6 weeks that decision is pretty much made based on your performance. Im certainly fuly engaged in my new job. Friday night we will go again on this lab 8 - 9:30 pm. Saturday morning is fully booked with house chores. 4pm Saturday is my first weekend session. At 6pm this will be broken with the boys meal, bath and bedtime routine then it's back in the rack at 8pm until 9:30. If I get any slack Saturday afternoon before 4pm then I may sneak an hour in on the homerack carrying on with the BGP exercises in Solie. Sunday I have the 11am - 4:30 pm session clear. So Im getting in 1.5 hours racktime each weekday after work and about 8 hours in across the weekend. I expect this will ramp up a little before long. Once things are more settled at work I will chance a couple of later ones, perhaps 11pm Wednesday and 11pm Friday. We will have to see how things go on the work front which has been pretty busy so far.

Im going to get IWEB Vol III lab 5 finished this weekend on general principle but as of next week I will be doing core labs during the week after work and only using the weekend to work hard on specific technologies. The weekend is the only opportunity I have to really soak up on topic practice without being rushed. I think the war will be won on those technology sessions really. Core practice is slow, but steady and Im improving in many vital areas. My use of the DocCD is coming along as well. The main thing is Im staying very regular with the hands on.

I also managed to go over a chapter in Wendall Odoms book at lunchtime. It will all help for the written.

Overall, a cloudy forecast then with bright spells.

EdTheLad

Turgon wrote: »

WAN section complete. Dialer interface beat me.

ISDN is not on ccie anymore,what were you doing with a dialer interface?

Turgon

EdTheLad wrote: »

ISDN is not on ccie anymore,what were you doing with a dialer interface?

ISDN isn't but a dialer interface can bring a PPP serial link up. I was on the right lines looking at dialer-list and interesting traffic, but the solution was dialer-pool, dialer in-band and dialer persistent and dialer timeout 0.

Beware of the use of commands you would normally associate with a topic that is no longer tested. The command may still be applied elsewhere. A lot of bridging has gone these days but bridging still crops up. Time for Friday evening racks now..

Turgon

IWEB Vol III lab no 5 - DONE. Overall I would have to say that my IGP/Redistribution and BGP work was pretty good across this lab. Watch out for bgp redistribute-internal.

Next up this evening is IWEB Vol III lab no 6. I will clear down the devices on the remote session I have running, have a break for dinner and then crack on with the next lab.

Turgon

IWEB Vol III Lab no 6.

Got the switching section done with. Only issue was a load balancing situation. Configs saved. Will press on with the WAN section tomorrow evening when I get home from work.

Turgon

11:40 pm. WAN section complete. A busy day at work so I wasn't really up for all this tonight but I'm glad I stuck at it. The frame relay section was truly awful but at least I learned something there in terms of multilink with recourse to the solutions guide. I had some ideas it was multilink but the virtual-template usage with multilink I didn't spot. Authentication is getting better. It's the IGPs tomorrow evening after work.

Turgon

11 pm. Made an impression on the IGP section but calling it a night. Tired. Will look over the forthcoming questions over lunch at work if I get a chance tomorrow and then get at it again in the evening. Seems a useful IGP section.