1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

Webmaster

Sounds like you are making good process. Thanks again for the technical and concise journal.

Turgon wrote:

Spent 500 dollars on Cisco Press books.

Money well spent. So which 10 or so did you get?

Turgon

Webmaster wrote:

Sounds like you are making good process. Thanks again for the technical and concise journal.

Turgon wrote:

Spent 500 dollars on Cisco Press books.

Money well spent. So which 10 or so did you get?

I added the following books to my collection. I reference them when encountering questions in the vendor labs that cause me to run show or debugs, perhaps because something isn't working as I wish and I want to refresh my memory on the mechanisms involved. I find this really helps put the theory into practice.

Doyle Routing TCP/IP Vol 1 second edition (I read the first edition in 2002 - Happy Days)
Halibi - BGP
Odom - Cisco QoS
Duggan - CCIE Routing and Switching Practice Labs
Solie - CCIE Practical Studies Vol 1
Solie - CCIE Practical Studies Vol 2
Kennedy Clark - Cisco LAN Switching

Turgon

Friday IPExpert LAB 5

Another remote session concentrating on IPexpert lab 5. Got the multilink working by using different commands (it varies by IOS version). ppp multilink group x Got the neighbor adjacencies working nicely across the lab. Ran appropriate debugs to help pin down the various problems. Neighbor statements brought up the adjacencies well over the partial mesh Frame Relay. No ip address assigned to the correct switchport on Catalyst no 2 for the link to R7. Simple mistake. So I fixed that. Virtual Links came up well. Ran out of time to do any more. Will attempt again and look more closely on the home rack when I get a chance. Designated router defined by ip ospf priority 100 on hub and 0 on spokes over FR.

A very useful lab covering most elements of OSPF. I shall return to it soon and look at the debugs more closely. People run debugs when things are not working, but it's very useful to observe debugs when things ARE working properly as this gives you a baseline to work towards when you encounter problems with OSPF, be it neighbors, adjacencies, DR elections, router IDs, costs, virtual links, network types.

When things don't work properly and you have to troubleshoot, debug output makes much more sense when you know what you need to see in an operational system. This can only be learned with a degree of patience and experimentation. No vendor lab book will encourage either on the part of the CCIE candidate, that is entirely down to the individual.

debug ip ospf adj
debug ip ospf packet
debug ip ospf events

Over all going well then. Lab 5 basically finished in the IPExpert Version 9.0 R&S Lab Book. That makes 10 labs completed in all since I put the home rack together in April.

You will notice the number of hours I have studied is in my profile. Note that this is just racktime working on the 10 labs on the home rack or on remote racks. You can double that figure if you include the time I have spent carefully reading each lab, considering the configuration options, checking the hints and solutions when needing clues, and the notes I have taken with each practice lab. There has also been some refering to books as well although I usually have those out when Im working on a lab at home or on the remote racks.

So we can see that this is a lot of work, simply to get to this stage.

Having done the OSPF lab, lab no 6 focusses on EIGRP. However I think it best not to do EIGRP just yet. The IGP's have their own subtle mechanisms and differences and I want to give the OSPF experience time to digest before working on another lab that has a heavy focus on a different IGP. This lab has proved to be valuable really sharpening up what I already knew about OSPF. Lab 6 can wait. So I will probably choose one of the later labs. IPv6 perhaps. Lab 10.

Turgon

Saturday IPExpert Lab no 5 OSPF.

I forgot to add in my last post that I also clocked up quite a few hours upgrading my routers before assembling everything in the rack.

Evening session on the homerack working over lab no 5 is over now. Resolved a neighbor problem on lab no 5 by using ip ospf network point-to-multipoint on the subinterfaces. Full adjacency soon followed and the Virtual Link between R2 and R5 came up nicely. I found a bad cable on the rack between R7 and the Catalyst 3550 that had been causing trouble. This has been replaced now. Quite happy about that as for a while I though the 10M interface on the 2501 might somehow be a potential problem although it seemed rather unlikely. Configuration of router and switch checked out so that lead me to the cable which had seemed ok the other day but as it turned out was not. So the equipment itself is fine for this particular lab. Good.

Remote racks..

While they are certainly very useful, I'm finding remote rack sessions are expensive and in some senses inconvienient. You need plenty of time to get into vendor lab exercises properly particularly if you have distractions at home and work. A five hour slot is quite a constraint sometimes, particularly after a tiring day at work. Somedays you may want or indeed need a few hours break after work finishes before starting your CCIE prep on a rack, but the rental clock is already running.

So it's good to have the homelab. It won't do everything but it's VERY useful to have it handy to use whenever you want for practice. It's yours all day so you can go back and forth if you are busy and can only do adhoc sessions for a time. You don't need to rush your practice to beat the slot rental clock, and importantly if you have had a busy day at work and really don't feel in top form you don't have to cancel the session and worry about losing your money. Often with remote racks you find yourself forced to do the session because it's too late to cancel without losing your money when what you really need is a goodnight's sleep and a rack session the following evening when you feel less tired. That kind of scheduling flexibility has been a problem for years.

There are more remote vendors to choose from though these days and that is helpful. I recall in 2001 looking at the scheduling for one of the few vendor's around back then and you really were forced to chose some unsocial hours to get on a rack because so many slots had been taken. You could wait a week for a slot.

Shall finish off the remaining Lab no 5 tasks on the homelab tommorow and have a really close look at the routing tables and debug ospf.

Turgon

Sunday evening, Monday AM IPExpert Lab No 5 OSPF.

The lab is complete now and I have finished looking at routing tables and debugs etc. Quite a lot covered and understood much better now thanks to the hours put in on this OSPF scenario. The summaries and filters (prefix list) work as they should do. Watchout for summaries intra area as opposed to inter area.

Turgon

IPexpert Lab 10.

Covers IPv6. Spent an hour Wednesday night and an hour Thursday night putting it together. Shall look at the Ipv6 neighbors, the tunnel and the routing more closely tomorrow. Pings not working. There may be IOS/hardware problems on the home rack.

Turgon

Saturday IP Expert lab 12 - QoS

Saturday evening. Just done with the shopping and groceries with my wife. Time to look over lab no 12 which covers numerous QoS mechanisms. I can build this out on my home rack. I will return to Ipv6 in due course.

sprkymrk

Just wanted to say "hi" and wish you continued success.

I was also curious if you have found all these labs useful for "real world" stuff? Like the everyday stuff you work with for a living. Also curious if the labs build on each other, and whether the information sticks in your mind. For instance, you're on lab 12, but if you went back to labs 1-3 would they be easier the second time around or about the same?

Thanks!

Turgon

Had to abandon QoS plans last night, Im working on this now Sunday morning.

sprkymrk

Hi, yes the labs do build on one another to some extent. I can't say doing these labs has helped me particularly at work yet. Lab scenarios tend to be rather convoluted as compared to real world networks. The exercises have given me an opportunity to put the theory into context though.

I am on lab 12 at the moment but that is through choice. I have completed the first 5 labs. I have decided to do 6 -9 later as they look at IGP's other than OSPF and I don't wish to rush through the labs covering the different IGPs. I have not so far experienced any problems by doing this. Lab 12 covers all the QoS mechanisms in isolation. At the moment I am picking off labs I can do at home on my rack which cover certain topics I wish to focus on individually.

These are the technology labs. In some cases these serve as refresher for me, in others I get to configure a few things for the first time. Once these are done I will be ready for the multiprotcol practice labs. The technology labs in IPexpert are very good.

I have identified practical examples to lab up at home in the Cisco Press books by Solie and Duggan once I have finished the IPExpert technology labs.

The main thing with CCIE study is little and often as opposed to pigging out on big sessions for spells. I find that is counterproductive and unsustainable if you have anything approaching a demanding job (as I do) and a family to look after in the evenings. So it's a long term thing. Depending on your background, aptitude and approach I think the lab is doable in 12 months for some people if they have the grit to stick at a program like this.

But yeah, you do find yourself doing labs when many others are simply watching TV and eating more food.

But that's just the way it is!

sprkymrk

Thanks for sharing that. I believe discipline is the key factor in one's success or lack thereof in most everything, whether it is certification, work, school, sports, etc. I admire the way you seem to be plugging away at the labs almost mechanically, but yet with balance as well.

lol - I just began studies for another certification and my first attempt to sit down and study went like this:

1. Check bookshelves in house for resourses previously purchased, found 2 CBT's and 2 big books.
2. Spend 10 minutes deciding which CBT to start with because I am not in the mood to crack open a book.
3. Place first CD into CD drive, click on the intro video.
4. Watch intro video that explains why this instructor is qualified to teach this course (has MCSE, CISSP, and several Cisco Certs in addition to CCIE#), then the what and why of this product (ISA 2004), and how the CBT is organized - total time about 20 minutes.
5. Click on lab layout video, watch for 15 minutes and see that it is over an hour long. Stop video.
6. Click on video that is #1 lesson in the actual CBT series. See that it is on personal firewalls on clients like the XP firewall and zone alarm. Arrogance kicks in after 30 seconds and I decide I don't want to watch this one right now, because I want to know about ISA 2004.
7. Get brave and crack open book, skim through the table of contents and objectives section.
8. Decide there are too many distractions at home, and the library a block away is open for another hour so I'll walk there and study.
9. A few steps from my front door a mother and 7 year old son are standing next to there disabled vehicle, have been trying to get ahold of her husband for 20 minutes but he is apparently in a dead cell zone. Seems the battery died. I offer to jump her battery, go back home, get car and cables, hook it all up (by the way, it is 98 degrees in Charleston with high humidity). Her truck starts, and we leave it charging for a few minutes because we also think the alternator isn't working. We unhook everything and as soon as she puts it in drive it dies again. She still can't reach her husband.
10. Since my wife is home I invite her and her son to wait in our home with the AC until she can reach her husband, and she accepts. We all chat over some diet coke for about 30 minutes, and since she still can't reach her husband we push her car into my yard (so she doesn't get a ticket) and my wife gives them a ride home (they only lived about 4 miles away). Later that evening the husband comes by with a new battery and thanks us.

Study done for the day! :P

Turgon

Yeah you have to juggle things a bit. For example this morning I spent an hour looking over the lab 12 requirements and made some notes. Now I have to take a break from my studies while I assemble a new cabinet and help with the cleaning. Our first child is expected in just a few weeks. I will return to my lab studies a bit later today!

sprkymrk

Turgon wrote:

Our first child is expected in just a few weeks.

Congrats!

And good luck studying for the first few months after that!

dtlokee

Turgon wrote:

Sunday evening, Monday AM IPExpert Lab No 5 OSPF.

The lab is complete now and I have finished looking at routing tables and debugs etc. Quite a lot covered and understood much better now thanks to the hours put in on this OSPF scenario. The summaries and filters (prefix list) work as they should do. Watchout for summaries intra area as opposed to inter area.

This may be a dumb question, but what's an intra area summary? Summaries are created at the borders of an area into other areas, I've never before heard of an intra area summary.

Turgon

That's a mental note to myself to watch out for that behavior when checking the RIB on internal routers after summarizing on ABRs.

Turgon

A few hours spent looking over Lab 12 covering QoS before labbing it up. A good lab covering a range of QoS mechanisms. Remember to define class-map before policy-map.

Turgon

Busy. Full time work, preparing for our first baby due anytime now, also went away last weekend.

Looked over and labbed out on my home rack IPExpert lab 18 covering GRE tunnelling uses with IGPS. Seemed to be used to bring area 0's together as well as to get to area 0. distance command seemed to be used to prefer a RIP learned route over an OSPF one to get to the tunnel destination. I expect to be revisiting this scenario on the remote racks at a later date as I was unable to get everything working at home this time. Definitely should go over this one again. The recursive routing problem with tunnels is covered in the guts of this lab someplace.

I shall now depart from the technology labs for a short while and hit a few full practice labs to get a benchmark of where I'm at. Then I will return to the remaining technology labs (there are 10 more to do).

So it's practice lab A, B and C ahead of me. I aim to clear one practice lab a week for starters, I will look over the scenario, propose some solutions then check the books and the final solution if really stuck, make good notes covering how the solution meets the requirements and then lab the scenario out running shows and debugs.

I have covered 13 labs in total now and have improved a good deal in technique and configuration awareness. I'm also pleased with the notes I have made for each lab I have attempted and seem to have learned something pretty useful with each attempt.

Turgon

Since my last post I have looked over the first multiprotocol lab in the workbook. Time well spent and educational. I have decided to lab this one in a few days. I am not yet at the point where I can deduce the commands necessary to answer most of the questions but my gut instinct concerning the issue and the type of command needed is not far away. Looking at the solutions bears this out. But I'm going to need to get some racktime in practicing configuring the technologies ad nauseam for a little while so the details really spring to mind.

To that end..

Multiprotocol lab A doesn't cover BGP but I feel it's time to play with it again. I got a couple of BGP labs done in May before I started IPExpert workbook 9.0

I think what I will do now is in fact return to a technology lab, lab 7 to be precise. This one covers BGP, I have looked it over and it's fairly wide. We have the inevitable route-reflector, confederations, ebgp multihop, next-hop-self, issues with ospf redistribution into bgp (internal/external) and a range of approaches to filter bgp routes received or sent to neighbors..route maps with permits and ACL deny for the filter followed by permit any or route map with a deny matching on an ACL followed by a route-map permit.

AS Path prepending is looked at using ip as path access-list 1 permit ^$ as is Local Preference tuning using route maps. No MED or Weight manipulation.

Good stuff. I will lab this one out next and check out the BGP table and routing table changes carefully.

I think when I return to the multiprotocol lab I will pick away at it section by section and run shows and debugs so I can really see what is happening and make notes for each question as I normally do eachtime I do a lab in a workbook. I have quite a collection now filed away covering my efforts and discoveries for each lab I have attempted. There will also be time spent raiding my Cisco Press books for stand alone examples of technologies I can lab up at home to get specific practice in on certain topics. Doyle has many examples I can lab at home to provide supplementary understanding.

Mishra

Turgon wrote:

Since my last post I have looked over the first multiprotocol lab in the workbook. Time well spent and educational. I have decided to lab this one in a few days. I am not yet at the point where I can deduce the commands necessary to answer most of the questions but my gut instinct concerning the issue and the type of command needed is not far away. Looking at the solutions bears this out. But I'm going to need to get some racktime in practicing configuring the technologies ad nauseam for a little while so the details really spring to mind.

To that end..

Multiprotocol lab A doesn't cover BGP but I feel it's time to play with it again. I got a couple of BGP labs done in May before I started IPExpert workbook 9.0

I think what I will do now is in fact return to a technology lab, lab 7 to be precise. This one covers BGP, I have looked it over and it's fairly wide. We have the inevitable route-reflector, confederations, ebgp multihop, next-hop-self, issues with ospf redistribution into bgp (internal/external) and a range of approaches to filter bgp routes received or sent to neighbors..route maps with permits and ACL deny for the filter followed by permit any or route map with a deny matching on an ACL followed by a route-map permit.

AS Path prepending is looked at using ip as path access-list 1 permit ^$ as is Local Preference tuning using route maps. No MED or Weight manipulation.

Good stuff. I will lab this one out next and check out the BGP table and routing table changes carefully.

I think when I return to the multiprotocol lab I will pick away at it section by section and run shows and debugs so I can really see what is happening and make notes for each question as I normally do eachtime I do a lab in a workbook. I have quite a collection now filed away covering my efforts and discoveries for each lab I have attempted. There will also be time spent raiding my Cisco Press books for stand alone examples of technologies I can lab up at home to get specific practice in on certain topics. Doyle has many examples I can lab at home to provide supplementary understanding.

Do you get to learn a lot of the CCIE stuff at work?

Turgon

No Im afraid Im far too busy when Im working for my client to study for the CCIE. It's mostly evenings and weekends for me for this stuff.

A lot of the syllabus for the CCIE I do get exposure to during my actual work though, and sometimes it's even more involved on the production networks I work on. But scenarios like the messed up networks for CCIE workbooks are different from the actual live networks I work with for obvious reasons! Apples and Oranges really.

Turgon

IPExpert Lab no 7 BGP.

It's Friday night here 22:26 pm. Im halting now after completing the first couple of questions getting a route reflector and confederation working over frame relay. Things are going nicely to examine things in more detail and complete the rest tommorow. Rather tired after work today.

Done..

Frame Switch reconfiguration
Catalyst VLAN assignments
Router configs cleared
Frame interfaces and subinterfaces and frame maps ok.
Loopback interfaces
Route reflector
IBGP peerings
Confederation

Some TV now.

Turgon

BGP lab mostly completed followed by some reading of Doyle Volume II last night. I shall complete the remaining tasks today.

Turgon

9pm Thursday evening. A busy day at work organising changes on multiple firewalls for some new connections and updating designs. Just finished some evening food shopping.

Back on the homerack to complete IPExpert Lab no 7 now. Remaining tasks include local preference to prefer a certain route within an AS, and a peering with a constraint that BGP is already running, a different AS is to be used for the peering but BGP confederation can not be used (constraint). Other tasks include loopbacks advertised as aggregate route without atomic aggregate advertisement and an advertisement conditional on a loopback interface not being available in the BGP table.

Time to get on with it and observe the BGP table changes.

Turgon

Worked on lab until 1:30 am in the morning. One problem passing BGP table to downstream router still to debug. Other than that all is working according to final solutions. A good lab demonstrating BGP behavior, aggregates and route manipulation. My BGP debugging capabilities and troubleshooting were tested well.

That's 116 hours rack time clocked up since I started practice labs. Cool.

sprkymrk

Where's that baby that's due? Hope mama is doing well too. Your nice quiet study nights are almost over for a while....

Turgon

sprkymrk wrote:

Where's that baby that's due? Hope mama is doing well too. Your nice quiet study nights are almost over for a while....

Hey thanks. Due any day now soon! I have some small scale examples from Doyle in mind for a few weeks which is just as well

boyles23

Watch your lab equipment, my little girl loves to mess with routers and switches and turn my lab pc on and off! Come to think of it, she gets more lab time than I do lately!

Congrats on the impending baby!

Turgon

I certainly will thanks.

Completed configuration exercises in Doyle Routing TCP/IP Volume 1 covering Route Redistribution, Route Filtering and Route Maps. Wrote up the solutions in a journal I bought for book studies. I will do the IGP configuration exercises next in Doyle Routing TCP/IP Volume 1.

Turgon

Well my son was born on Sunday morning so we will have to see now how things go on the study front :0 He's very beautiful and all is well

In the days leading up to the big day I was off labs and doing the end of chapter configuration exercises in Doyle Routing TCP/IP Volume 1. I covered OSPF v2, OSPF v3, EIGRP, Redistribution, Route Filtering and Route Map chapters. When I have *some* time it will be books and studying multiprotocol labs for a little while, there will be no hands on labs for a bit

Turgon

Went over the questions and final configs for multiprotocol lab A in Ipexpert. Made notes covering the configuration solution for each section in the lab. This lab hangs together as I would expect. Notes are being filed!

Turgon

Went over multiprotocol lab 'B' questions and solutions. Consolidated my notes further.