1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

Turgon

Looked over Lab C. Quite an emphasis on BGP this one, particularly peer resilience in the event of physical layer problems and removing AS prepending. Some alternative ways of putting interfaces into areas and changing ospf timers.

Turgon

Made good notes on Lab C covering all sections offering points. Still have NTP, traffic shaping and QoS to do but that shouldn't take too long.

Took a study diversion by looking specifically at the Catalyst 3550 switching sections of all 6 labs in Duggan and Gorito's Cisco Press CCIE Routing and Switching Practice Labs. Made copious notes in a section entitled switching in my note book. Time well spent. Although a little dated and covering technologies now off the lab such as ISDN, ATM and DLSW+, what remains is still good material.

Turgon

Midnight Friday.

Finished notes on Lab C and filed in my IPExpert folder. Then looked over the Cisco Press Duggan practice labs again, all six of them to focus specifically on sections covering Frame Relay questions and solutions. I made notes about the frame relay solutions in the new exercise book I have set aside for layer 2 and layer 3 technologies. This compliments the notes I made on the switching sections in the 6 Duggan Practice Labs the other day.

Although a little dated I can highly recommend this Cisco Press book. The explanations are very good.

Looked over IPExpert Lab 'D'. I identified the sections I can score on and looked up the configuration solution in areas I'm stumped. I can understand the given solutions much faster now when I look at the configs. I feel much more familiar now with lab type questions and interpretation and various ways to configure things as well as the essential knowing what to eliminate. It seems I am unearthing fewer new things other than features. Most of the fundamentals I covered at some time or other. Working with the different labs since May and studying the router and switch configuration solutions in depth while making copious notes (as well as doing some Cisco Press exercises), has really been beneficial.

I will be labbing this one at home soon and start to build up the intensity of my lab sessions being much stricter on form in the weeks ahead.

Turgon

I spent some time Sunday recabling my home lab to undertake some examples in Solie CCIE Practical Studies Volume II.

Im doing chapter 3, the multicasting labs. I have decided to look at some technologies in isolation for a short while before doing another multiprotocol lab.

Solie's book is a couple of years old now and some of the technologies it covers are now off the lab. But it is still a magnificent book and largely ignored now by candidates who seem determined to spend inordinate hours on mock exams provided by workbooks. Many of these candidates repeatedly fail the lab. I feel it's important to work protocols in isolation but with the vendor products many customers are tempted to dive into advanced labs. It's tempting to just plough on with these labs but you must work those protocol exercises!

I shall return to complex labs once I have covered some of the isolation exercises in Solie.

Turgon

Covered two multicasting labs on my home rack from Solie Volume II, Chapter 3. Sparse-Mode (Lab 5) and Multicast over Frame Relay (Lab 6) covering PIM Auto-RP, Multicast boundary and ip pim nbma-mode.

Multicast is one of those subjects glossed over by a lot of CCIE candidates and a cause of major worries and problems in CCIE preparation and the CCIE lab itself. I don't think it's too bad and there are many examples to work with in books and on cisco.com.

I was probably the only person in the world working these examples from Solie at home the last 48 hours. I shall build the rest of the multicasting labs in Chapter 3 on my home rack this week.

larkspur

Turgon - With the late nights and early mornings, work stress, studying, balancing the family and career what are you doing to keep yourself sharp and relaxed?

Turgon

larkspur wrote:

Turgon - With the late nights and early mornings, work stress, studying, balancing the family and career what are you doing to keep yourself sharp and relaxed?

Thanks for the concern. It isn't easy. The priorities are family, work and studies in that order. I keep my study schedule totally flexible and study when it is appropriate in bite sized chunks, like when my son is asleep. I don't study late into the evenings much as I need plenty of rest becuase of my commitments.

The main thing is I accepted a long time ago that to get through the CCIE would take ages and require a very regular study routine. Given that it will take such a long time, I find it pays to look after yourself. There are no shortcuts and burnout with CCIE studies is a very real problem for candidates so there's just no point cramming. Expect to see me adding notes almost daily right through to Easter next year.

Turgon

Just completed another multicasting lab. It's 10.20 pm here and time for bed. This was lab 7 in Solie Vol II Chapter 3 covering Multicast Joining. Looked at mroute to influence path selection for multicast traffic and static igmp group on interface as opposed to igmp joins to optimise the router. Sparse-dense-mode was used in the scenario. Certainly educational. Im not sure I got this working just so. I need to practice with appropriate shows and debugs a little more to check how to verify things but it's coming. I understand the range of show and debug commands show ip pim neighbor, show ip pim rp, show ip mroute, debug ip igmp, mtrace, minfo and mstat etc, but I need more time to learn how to interpret the output into something useful so I expect to be reading the chapter again and working more scenarios this week.

Overall time well spent on multicasting.

Turgon

Completed Solie Lab 8 Advanced Multicast Delivery. Transport of multicast traffic over disconnected multicast networks using a GRE tunnel. Override the typical RPF check by using mroute to ensure the path to the RP is via the tunnel. Use of storm controll on the switches for multicast rate limiting on a VLAN.

Turgon

Completed Lab 9 on the home rack. This looked at PIM. It is the final lab in chapter 3 Multicasting CCIE Practical Studies Volume II.

A good lab looking at requirements for PM version 1 and PIM version 2. BSR candidates and election and RP responding to different address ranges in the multicast group IP range. Auto RP and Mapping agent and no ip pim nbma required on the Frame Relay cloud.

These five labs covered over the last 4 evenings on the home rack was time well spent. This is a Cisco Press book that is sadly largely forgotten by CCIE candidates these days what with the dash to glossy mock exams provided by commercial CCIE training vendors.

On that note having done the necessary practical preparation I will finish my stint on multicasting (for now) by attempting the technology specific lab on Multicasting in the IPExpert v9.0 workbook in my next session. Lab no 15 in the workbook. I hope you join me later.

Turgon

Labbed up IPexpert lab 15 on remote racks. A good lab dedicated to Multicasting. Noted the use of ip pim sparse-dense-mode on most interfaces.

Started to look at Multiprotocol lab 'E'. I shall probably attempt the switching and IGP parts one
evening session and do the IP features parts on another evening.


Remote rack slots are 8 hours long but only at weekends will I have that kind of time on my hands (if I'm lucky). The best slot for me runs from 9PM until 4:45 am UK time. I can use that once my working day is done and I have caught up with things at home with the family. I plan to use the 9PM slot until midnight then get some sleep.

So that's 2 -3 hour sessions most evenings after work. A shame not to use all the time you are paying for but you have to factor in work, family life and sleep somewhere. Over the course of a weekend I hope to get a solid 8 hours in, perhaps spread over Saturday and Monday.

Turgon

It's 1 am in the morning UK time and time for bed. Just finished a three hour session on remote racks. Tonight I looked specifically at the OSPF section in IPExpert lab 23 or lab 'E', paying close attention to area 0 over frame relay, adjoining OSPF areas, redistribution from RIP and interpreting the output of debug ip routing and debug ip ospf database. A good session reinforcing OSPF mechanics and instilling what you should see at a low level if things are working properly. Its important to know your baseline so you can verify your work!

I anticipate doing parts of labs in the evening sessions. I have 2-3 hours available some evenings during the working week for hands on practice. The workbook provides 4 - 8 hour labs so I will have to pick sections I can do in the available timeframe.

Far better to maximum the learning session by looking at specific technologies carefully at this stage I feel.

I'm on target for the 1st lab attempt next March.

Turgon

Now looking at lab 'R' or number 36 in the IPexpert workbook. This is one of the hardest labs. I have configured my homelab to suit and I'm working through the switching sections. Stumped on a few things but the final configs do make sense. This 8 hour lab will be worked over in 2-3 hour sessions throughout this week.

Turgon

Lab 'R' Section 36

Configured the switching parts. Good to find applications for bpduguard and portfast in the practice lab. Useful things on spanning-tree covered as well as SNMP notification of MAC changes. Note to myself to refresh memory on vlan access-map and vlan filter commands. Bridge-group did not run on my IOS version.

Looked at the Frame Relay and WAN sections and will build these out on the home rack on Thursday, followed by the IGP/BGP sections across the weekend.

An educational lab full of details and features.

Turgon

Configured the frame relay section on the home rack for lab 'R'.

Very busy at work and at home of late so had very little time to do anymore hands on practice. Have started to look at each protocol and it's associated questions in each lab and make a list. I shall document the solutions to each question as I go along. This should give me good protocol specific notes for each IGP and BGP. When time is limited for hands on sessions I find I can at least look over the questions in a practice lab.

Intend to hammer away at labs 'R', 'N' and 'E' on the home rack and remote racks over the next couple of weeks with a view to attempting a mock exam before year end.

Ferret999

Nice work Turgon you are showing some tremendous dedication especially with working till 4 in the morning. I never could do this I need my beauty sleep. Sometimes I wish I had done all my studying before I got the wife and the kid but then before then life was a jol and I had no worries think it was having the kid that caused me to get motivated again. Anyhow if you do not mind answering which part of the UK do you live in?

Turgon

Ferret999 wrote:

Nice work Turgon you are showing some tremendous dedication especially with working till 4 in the morning. I never could do this I need my beauty sleep. Sometimes I wish I had done all my studying before I got the wife and the kid but then before then life was a jol and I had no worries think it was having the kid that caused me to get motivated again. Anyhow if you do not mind answering which part of the UK do you live in?

I worked until 1am UK time that day. I wouldn't work until 4am unless I had the next day off from work as it would only affect my ability to do my job properly which would be unprofessional. Juggling a demanding job, family and studying for something like this after work is an exercise in determination and patience. That's one of the reasons so few people make it to CCIE because it requires a lot of work that you have to put in on a regular basis, over a very long period of time. Not everyone can hack it.

Saturday today so Im looking over the OSPF sections in the multiprotocol labs of IPExpert and taking notes.

I'm in the North btw and thanks for the compliments!

Turgon

Time spent at the weekend looking over the RIP and OSPF sections throughout the 20 IPexpert multiprotocol labs. Typed all the questions down into a section for each protocol and offered solutions before checking final configs. Monday evening turned the notes over and added commands to my A-Z book under R for RIP and O for OSPF..obviously

Awareness of configuration options to meet many different RIP and OSPF requirements has been sharpened tremendously. A note to myself to practice all kinds of route-map, prefix-list, distribute-list and redistribution situations.

On to extensive EIGRP and then BGP note taking before returning to hands on with lab 'R' again.

The endeavour the next few weeks is to consolidate L2/FRAME and IGP/BGP learning. I would like to accomplish at least 6 IPExpert full labs and a couple of mock exams before the end of the year. With a lab scheduled for April that would allow 12 weeks to brush up on QoS/Multicast and IOS features. Core before year end please.

Turgon

Cranked out some more study time with OSPF configurations and updated my notes.

Turgon

Sunday afternoon hands on practice at home.

Spent a couple of hours this morning returning to my home rack and continuing the configuration of IPExpert lab "R" aka No 36. Last night I spent some time working on the BGP troubleshooting exercises in Doyle Volume II Chapter 3 and reading the solutions. Im pleased to have done some hands on today after a short break where I was confined to simply studying configurations due to lack of time. The plan now is for the home rack to provide the environment to build out lab "R" as and when. It is a very long exercise. I shall choose a different IPExpert multiprotocol lab that I can pick off using my rack rental vouchers across a couple of evenings. The later labs in the workbook are exhaustive and exhausting taking a long time to complete at present, so I will confine those to my home rack while picking off more 'doable' earlier labs on the rack rental. These will be labs I should be able to cover in two or three online sessions in a week.

In between, it's studying scenarios and configurations in Doyle, Solie and Duggan, and taking many notes.

Turgon

Spent Monday evening looking over IPexpert lab "F" and proposing solutions for Frame/PPP/Switching/IGP and BGP sections. Still need to look up the IOS features on DocCD and propose solutions for those sections. Then I will briefly check config and do a rack session another evening after work.

I seem to be increasingly interpreting practice lab requirements much better so the hours put in evenings and weekends since April are now starting to pay off. I estimate I have done probably 300+ hours this year if you include the reading time spent on scenarios, solutions and books and CCO research as well as the hands on hours doing labs in IPexpert, Solie and such.

There are a cluster of practice labs I want done before Christmas and a couple of mocks before year end. The list of things to work on is more granular now so I have some serious reading up to do on an increasingly clearly defined list of topics. On target for April lab date. Just got home (midnight) after driving 200 miles back from a day configuring Catalysts in London. Did 200 miles driving down to London last night after work. Rather tired

Turgon

8PM. A hellish week in the world of network design over. SSL termination, proxies, end to end network design. Monday promises to be busy with a new Checkpoint cluster design.

Time for a relaxing evening doing Lab "F" on remote racks now. Laters..

Turgon

I am rather busy of late.

I did not get as much done Friday evening as I would like. Fatigue. It's been a very busy week at work. But I got a little done on Lab "F". Saturday I revisited Lab "R" on my home rack and configured the EIGRP section and made some notes. Some cute wording in the question alludes to an eigrp stub solution. Only a few hours put in this weekend.

Already tired from this weeks work including the Tuesday evening drive to London after working all day finally checking into hotel at midnight. The next day busy all day on site followed by an evening drive home returning at 11pm. This was followed by a busy two days trying to design an end to end solution to someone else's delivery that is under pressure and nobody has the network details to hand. Found myself wading through infrastructure designs at 7pm Friday to work it all out. Saturday was a drive to the city for food shopping and baby clothes after three lots of viewers came one after the other to look at our house in the afternoon as it it up for sale.

Back to Heathrow airport tomorrow to pick up a relative, another close to 400 mile round London trip on a Sunday!

Monday promises to be hellish as the delivery I am assisting on needs urgent solutions and I also have to document the rebuild of a checkpoint cluster for a completely different project by close of play Monday.

Gotta love it. All of these things at home and at work require personal petrol, that's why sometimes your study plans simply have to be flexible! Im suprised I got any studying done given the time pressure and fatigue. But I did. A few hours. It all helps.

8pm. Off to have dinner with my wife and watch TV. Lab notes and findings filed away.

Turgon

Lab "R" IPexpert 34

A couple more hours plodding away on the home rack after work on this scenario tonight. Covered the Advanced EIGRP section. Metric weights for reliability configured in an AS and bandwidth constraint for EIGRP traffic configured. The requirements for summary addresses will have to wait once OSPF is configured across the frame relay as the answer involves redistribution which is kind of difficult as the OSPF section comes after EIGRP!

A gentle reminder to be aware that a lab requirement might sometimes only be fulfilled once you have completed later steps in the lab. Made a note to myself to return to these requirements in the EIGRP section once I have configured OSPF.

Requirements are - non EIGRP routers will reach networks advertised by BB3 in single route entry.

(Requires redistribution of EIGRP into OSPF and summary address on R6)

R9 will see single classless entry for networks advertised by BB1

(Requires redistribution of RIP into OSPF on R2 and summary address and redistribution of OSPF into EIGRP on R6)

A positive that while such a difficult lab forced me to peek at the solutions, I instinctively looked at the right router configuration and the right part of the configuration for clues. Further, my solution ideas are getting closer to the actual published solution. I intially thought BGP might be involved but overcooked things.

Turgon

Today I will carry on with lab "R" and configure the OSPF section of this exercise.

Im trying very hard now to ramp up the study time and particularly the hours I put in of configuring labs. I have a lab slot early April 2008 scheduled and I believe that the remaining 6 weeks of this year will be critical. I want to be coming into the new year with practice of the core technologies under my belt and better understanding of the technologies. This is happening exponentially now with each lab that I undertake as my understanding deepens about the behavior of protocols in a practical setting. This will leave me 12 weeks to concentrate on specifics like multicast/QoS and IOS features and work through a number of mock exams and practice retention, interpretation, repetition, DocCD lookups and configuration speed.

To accomplish this undertaking Im trying to use the home rack each day even if it is for a couple of hours early in the morning before my work starts or after work in the evening.

As an aside I may very well attempt the Solie Volume II labs before the end of the year on my homerack.

Turgon

A couple of hours building out the OSPF over frame relay getting over adjacency problems in lab "R". Unable to run OSPF on one of my switches so will need to upgrade to EMI on that one as a matter of urgency. Good to run debugs again and see the whole OSPF negotiation process act out. ip ospf network point-to-multipoint non broadcast is your friend.

Turgon

I will upgrade my second 3550 to EMI tonight so I can continue with lab "R". On that note, this a complex lab so I intend to leave it running on my home rack to practice redistribution.

I will do other labs on remote racks. Im looking at doing F,G,H,I,J,K on remote racks before January 1st plus a couple of CheckIT mocks.

On the home rack I will practice redistribution and route filtering for the different IGPS and BGP. I shall also practice the BGP attribute manipulation tasks. I expect a lot of fun with route-maps and access lists and endless hours checking the results in routing tables and the BGP table on the home lab.

Certainly need to get all the filtering options down before new year!

Turgon

The final tranceivers I required for my home lab have arrived.

On the study front Im documenting the filtering questions and solutions I have encountered in lab "R" in an exercise book I have dedicated specifically for all sorts of filtering topics and scenarios I encounter in labs as well as the notes I make when I do the configuration and troubleshooting exercises from Doyle Volume I and Volume II. You will find these at the end of each chapter in these essential books. Do not underestimate the benefit of reading and doing exercises from books.

Turgon

A couple of hours put in looking over distribute list solutions for filtering and note taking and an attempt to upgrade the IOS on a 3550 that has stalled. More tomorrow.

Turgon

Various attempts over the weekend to upgrade a 3550 switch to EMI have been so far thwarted. I have EMI on one switch but copy tftp flash has failed to move it to another that requires it. Switch to switch tftp has failed. I have also tried uploading the image from a switch to a PC running TFTP but that has also failed.

An all together dismal experience. The instructions on CCO "Upgrading Software Images on Catalyst Series Switches Using the Command Line Interface" were followed closely to no avail. Network connectivity is in place. Application problems. The nearest I get when I try to tftp the image to a tftp server is a failure message saying 'no space left on device' yet there is plenty of space on the server and in flash. I shall try again another time.