1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

Turgon

With some cribbing from Odom and after a couple of attempts I got 96% on the Boson QoS questions. I will work over the WAN questions now and then call it a day on theory.

Turgon

With a struggle and a couple of passes through the test I hit 92% on the Boson WAN section. The solutions on the ones I putzed out on have finally made sense of BECN/FECN in terms of switch and router behavior after all these years. I think a few Cisco Press and Sybex writers have a lot to answer for

Turgon

Ipexpert Lab no 8 Routing Redistribution complete. This brings closure to the second pass of a selection of technology labs by IPexpert. A labour intensive lab this one with lots of emphasis on redistributing connected interfaces using route maps. Multiprotocol lab 'M' will be next up. I have improved my Boson marks on both the Security topics 93% and IP 100%. The questions and solutions are certainly proving to be very useful. The problems really help you work the large body of work that is the CCIE written blueprint.

Turgon

Boson General Network Theory up to 93% after a couple of punts. Some interesting questions in there that I had to look up. I think my detailed understanding of route selection is pretty good now. Busy cooking a curry at the moment but may have a go at the MPLS stuff later.

Turgon

I did some reading up on MPLS on CCO today and tonight took out the Boson MPLS questions. After a couple of passes I scored 100%. I'm far from an expert on MPLS and have some serious configuration work ahead of me on this protocol for v4 but I may now know enough to be able to field the written questions.

Turgon

108 lab. IPexpert WB 9.0 lab 'M'

Started prestaging the homerack for this one. Cleared all router configs and added correct loopbacks. The BB configs seem very basic for this one. Got BB1 and BB2 done. Calling it a night on labs and will do IP interface config tomorrow evening.

Turgon

108 lab. IPexpert WB 9.0 lab 'M'

Ip addressing and interface light up no issues. Frame completed with a struggle at the physical layer on the home rack. PPP between R7 - R8 done. Time for a break. Nicely set up for the IGPs tomorrow night.

Turgon

108 lab. Completed RIP and OSPF sections. A useful lab this and some reminders of all the small things to look out for.

Turgon

108 lab. EIGRP done. BGP peering done. With a struggle. By the time you get to BGP, if your summarization, authentication is messed up expect problems. You *have* to get BGP peering lit up. Redistribute connected is your friend. Problems resolved. It's Friday night. Time to relax.

Turgon

108 lab IPexpert 'M'. Done.

Recourse to the solutions on numerous occasions. Quite a challenge all in all but useful. A break now to get some household things done before starting the next one.

Turgon

109 Lab. Ipexpert lab 'O'

This lab will be a handful. Many tasks to complete. Im done with IP addressing and Frame Relay and PPP. MFR came up. I haven't seen that for a while. Even with the solutions I couldn't get it lit up but I suppose only having one link on the home rack didn't help much there. Backed out and went for good old HDLC. I will need the layer 2 working for IGPs later. I will revisit MFR after this lab and play with it some.

Turgon

All the IGPs went really well this morning and Im done with the required redistribution. I may need to some more later if my peerings dont come up. Time to cook a meal, then I will set about the BGP section.

Turgon

109 lab. IPexpert lab 'O' - DONE

Some interesting BGP and useful filtering practice. Very fiddly ACL in the security section and some useful QoS. Will clear racks and start lab 'P' on Monday evening after work.

Turgon

110 Lab. IPexpert Lab P.

Time to prestage the homerack now work is done..

Turgon

Ip addressing and frame switch configured. All WAN sections completed. IGPs tomorrow night.

Turgon

110 Lab Ipexpert lab 'P'

The virtual link makes no sense. Unfortunately IPexpert only provide proctor guides at extra cost to explain things so I never bought, and for the later labs like these there is no explanation anyway.
There are always some 'craps' in any workbook. This might be one, but I like to give the experts the benefit of the doubt.

RIP and EIGRP

lots of **** update and timer stuff

Redistribution.

Over egged. 3 x protocols redist into one another on one router. Glad I archived this for a later day.

A few tips.

1. Redistribute all connected interfaces into each protocol with a route map
2. Set a default metric for RIP and EIGRP
3. Think about your tags in advance. You will need 6 route maps for redistribution. First line is a deny on a tag, second line sets the tag. For your OSPF and EIGRP route maps, match on route-type internal to set your tags. For RIP tag everything.

Lit up BGP on all the relevent routers. But after a successful 6:30 AM network migration (which I designed) taking place this morning, which had it failed would have cost a great deal of money to reschedule, well quite frankly I think I will leave the peering fun and the hassles of all that for tomorrow evening. Time to relax.

Turgon

Another day at work over. Time for the evening rack session. Try and get 110 lab finished now to stay on track. On the drive to work this morning I thought over what to do the next week or two study wise. More thoughts later on that.

Turgon

110 lab. Ipexpert Lab 'P' - DONE

Needed recourse to the solutions for this one. Messed up my BGP peerings by going for the loopbacks. Seemed to be elegant but a mistake. Peerings did not come up. Checked solutions and cleared out bad peer and put in good ones.

If you go for loopbacks you may need ebgp-multihop. You will have to study the diagram to assess that. Time.

Even with that, if you do it, without a route to the eBGP neighbor in the RIB you are screwed. More time to get that fixed.

Even if you get it fixed you may have over egged your config and be marked down.

Historically I have only gone for loops to BGP peer (iBGP or eBGP) if asked for. Solutions here use loops in *some* cases without explicitly asking to 'not use directly connected interfaces for peering. So a bit of this and a bit of that without specifying a requirement for either or an explanation.

What did come up was redistribute connected again across the piece.

Moral?

If you cannot get BGP peerings to light up you will probably fail the lab.

No multicast. QoS was really over egged and the solution wrong. DHCP and NTP again. Fairly easy marks really there.

Turgon

111 Lab. IPexpert Lab 'Q'. My final lab to do in this workbook.

WAN section configured on the home rack and OSPF complete.

Turgon

With some help from the solutions the BGP peering are straightened out. I will have to revisit on Sunday. Certainly some issues there with peering.

A difficult lab. The best hours of my Saturday spent on it.

You know I heard on the press today that the last WWI trench Tommy passed away at 111. A different generation altogether. 60 years ago, 19 year olds were fighting for their lives over the skies of London saving the world in Spitfire - Me109 dogfights. Today we have 30+ overweight somethings playing computer games whenever they get a minute.


Kind of puts things into perspective. In the two years I have been on this forum only 4 regulars have made CCIE. Lots of folks talks a good game but to get there requires tremendous sacrifice and discipline. My advice to candidates is to get whatever support you can do for preparation on works time 9 - 5. Even so you will need evenings and weekends.

I shall finish lab 'Q' tomorrow and clean the house and all the other chores in time for Monday!

Turgon

Back on with the lab. Will try and get those peerings up.

Turgon

Should get this finished in a couple of hours. Then a rackslot booked for IWEB Vol III lab. I wonder if those configs can be saved. Will find out.

Turgon

111 Lab. IPexpert Lab 'Q' - DONE

Small things got the peering working. Typos in network statement. Redistribution of connected routes. Adding connected route to routing protocols. The filtering section was a good exercise. The IP Services was very good. I learned some useful things doing those. Multicast was mrm.

That's it. I have now completed all the labs in the IPexpert Vol 9.0 Workbook. It's been a lot of work but very worthwhile I think. I have learned a great deal. That's also the end for my home rack which has been a stalwart servant the last two years. It's unlikely I shall use it again as I will be using remote racks now for mock exams and IWEB Vol II and Vol III refresher exercises. I know I can pass this exam now. I have improved in key areas, have loads more awareness about how to do things and I know for sure which areas I need to work on and they will improve with practice. With all the labbing the last two weeks my theory prep has gone off the boil. I will have to get back to it if I want to take the written test a week Tuesday.

Thanks IPexpert workbook authors!

CCIEWANNABE

Turgon wrote: »

With some help from the solutions the BGP peering are straightened out. I will have to revisit on Sunday. Certainly some issues there with peering.

A difficult lab. The best hours of my Saturday spent on it.

You know I heard on the press today that the last WWI trench Tommy passed away at 111. A different generation altogether. 60 years ago, 19 year olds were fighting for their lives over the skies of London saving the world in Spitfire - Me109 dogfights. Today we have 30+ overweight somethings playing computer games whenever they get a minute.


Kind of puts things into perspective. In the two years I have been on this forum only 4 regulars have made CCIE. Lots of folks talks a good game but to get there requires tremendous sacrifice and discipline. My advice to candidates is to get whatever support you can do for preparation on works time 9 - 5. Even so you will need evenings and weekends.

I shall finish lab 'Q' tomorrow and clean the house and all the other chores in time for Monday!

very true, we have become a people that are very lazy that rely on our ipods, doritos, pepsi, video games, 50" tv's and huge SUV's. I don't know how the education levels are in your country, but in the US our education standards are falling off. I hope to help change this figure. Maybe someday create my own training company to help train people with low incomes. Maybe a non profit organization. I have some ideas, but until I get my CCIE, I still have lots to learn! Keep it up man, your journal is inspirational!

Turgon

CCIEWANNABE wrote: »

very true, we have become a people that are very lazy that rely on our ipods, doritos, pepsi, video games, 50" tv's and huge SUV's. I don't know how the education levels are in your country, but in the US our education standards are falling off. I hope to help change this figure. Maybe someday create my own training company to help train people with low incomes. Maybe a non profit organization. I have some ideas, but until I get my CCIE, I still have lots to learn! Keep it up man, your journal is inspirational!

Thanks man. Good luck in your journey.

Turgon

Just been on the IWEB remote rack time booking system and they are almost anhillated through August. Kind of screws with my rack plans. Need to find another remote rack company!

Turgon

Reflections tonight. My switching practice is off so some IWEB V3 lab work would be good. I think the mocks can be pushed back to August when Im out of my latest contract and have more time. IWEB Vol2 labs 7-12 would be good across August. If I can't find a reliable remote rack the next week I think I will do command memoriser stuff, turn over my IWEB Vol II notes and practice a few topics on the home rack and concentrate on written prep.

tdempsey

Turgon wrote: »

With some help from the solutions the BGP peering are straightened out. I will have to revisit on Sunday. Certainly some issues there with peering.

A difficult lab. The best hours of my Saturday spent on it.

You know I heard on the press today that the last WWI trench Tommy passed away at 111. A different generation altogether. 60 years ago, 19 year olds were fighting for their lives over the skies of London saving the world in Spitfire - Me109 dogfights. Today we have 30+ overweight somethings playing computer games whenever they get a minute.


Kind of puts things into perspective. In the two years I have been on this forum only 4 regulars have made CCIE. Lots of folks talks a good game but to get there requires tremendous sacrifice and discipline. My advice to candidates is to get whatever support you can do for preparation on works time 9 - 5. Even so you will need evenings and weekends.

I shall finish lab 'Q' tomorrow and clean the house and all the other chores in time for Monday!

I find myself pondering the same thing all the time. It's no wonder that so many people are out their gobbling up antidepressants and living out their lives in the OCD universe of internet, video games, and instant gratification. To get anything done in the modern world, you must first filter out all of the distractions of which there are literally millions with each vying for your attention, carefully crafted to titillate your mind and draw you away from anything of substance. <sigh>

CCIEWANNABE

tdempsey wrote: »

I find myself pondering the same thing all the time. It's no wonder that so many people are out their gobbling up antidepressants and living out their lives in the OCD universe of internet, video games, and instant gratification. To get anything done in the modern world, you must first filter out all of the distractions of which there are literally millions with each vying for your attention, carefully crafted to titillate your mind and draw you away from anything of substance. <sigh>

this is so true. you are spot on my friend. awesome post.

CCIEWANNABE

Turgon, might I ask how much study time on average you put in a week? I am just curious. Right now I am averaging around 25-30 hours a week.