1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

Turgon

Lab 11 IPv6 Advanced Routing. Ok I finished as much as the IOS at home allowed me to on this lab. Some interesting things covered like address family for BGP. I was unable to run OSPFv3 at home so tried a remote rack for that section but didn't have enough time in the couple of hours I left myself to get it all working properly. I tried to cut and paste the solutions without the OSPF configurations but that didn't work at all well. I will need to build the whole lab out again on a remote rack session. This was a good lab and I come away with a better appreciation of how IpV6 hangs together in terms of routing the protocol. I have seen it working over frame relay, as well as used in BGP and OSPF including redistribution. There are examples of filtering using prefix-lists and even Ipv6 NAT. I want to build this out again so I can see the OSPF routes in the RIB on the routers.

Turgon

Sunday 11am.

Ok I have booked a rack session for this afternoon. Awesome. Just gives me chance to pop out for a workout.

Turgon

Lab 11 - Ipv6 Advanced Routing - DONE.

Ok I cut and pasted the solutions into the remote rack routers and switches and had a good look around at the OSPFv3 routes and the redistribution. I learned some very useful IpV6 show commands along the way too. I leave this lab much more comfortable with Ipv6 configuration and verification. Due to my inexperience with IPv6 I have been forced to follow the solutions, nevertheless this lab has certainly taught me a lot hands-on with IPv6. The ipv6 nat translation did not appear to work as the pings failed. Possible routing issue that remained unresolved before the racktime ended. It may be a problem with the given solutions in the IPExpert lab book.

Next up will be lab 9 - ACL's and filtering. Once we reach camp 1, I may take a departure from IPexpert's material having completed all their technology labs and try out NMC's offerings for a change of scenery.

Turgon

England 8:10 am. Lab 9 Access Lists and Filters for IP.

Im now reading through this lab. I will configure on the home rack later today. Im unable to configure a good deal of this off the top of my head so it will serve as a tutorial.

JohnDouglas

What do you think you'll do once you get your CCIE? Carry on contracting? Will life change much?

Good to see someone plugging away it at slowly (well, not that slowly of course, but you know what i mean) but surely.

Turgon

JohnDouglas wrote:

What do you think you'll do once you get your CCIE? Carry on contracting? Will life change much?

Good to see someone plugging away it at slowly (well, not that slowly of course, but you know what i mean) but surely.

Pretty much carry on contracting and devote more time to building up my business. CCIE studies are a real drain on free time!

JohnDouglas

Sounds good, I expect with CCIE on your CV you'll get even more interest in your business.

Good luck.

Turgon

It won't hurt John.

Thanks

Turgon

A particularly busy week on the work front has put the rack time plans back a little. I hope to build out the pre lab configs switching/frame/igp later today before doing lab 9.

To compensate I embarked on a little light reading of Network Type Mismatches in Chapter 8 Troubleshooting OSPF in an old book called Cisco Router Troubleshooting Handbook. It refers to the BGP table having over 69000 routes back then. It was written by Peter Rybaczyk a CCNP back in the day before tk and people having more certs than sense. A fine book. Look out for it used on amazon.

Turgon

Sunday morning. Just done with the groceries and now finally making a start on the home rack with this lab. I need to batter out the prestaging on the switches and routers so I can practice the ACL problems.

Turgon

Monday morning. The switching and IGPs done on the rack Im now looking at the ACL and filtering questions in lab 9.

Turgon

Lab 9 ACLs and IP Filtering - DONE

In the end this became something of a tutorial with recourse to the solutions. Most of the ACL variants were covered. I'm ok with access-lists but without regular practice on them I am hardly a whizz on the all the types covered here. I would say that if you can do lab 9 cold without any recourse to the solutions and you get all 10 questions right then book your lab now. The secret if there is one is to try and keep things simple. Often the solution was just a few or even a couple of lines although sometime the solution was much more involved. I think I got a better handle on breaking down requirements into the necessary ACL lines towards the end of the exercise. It was a useful refresher and a tutorial for me. ACLs, dynamic, et al I will need to practice much more prior to the lab attempt.

I now have lab 13 Cisco router security to do. This is the last of the IPexpert technology labs before me so quite a milestone once this is complete. I have certainly learned a great deal these last 9 months and have now covered most topics. I can now take that heightened awareness into the remaining phases of my lab prep working on my weaker areas and the newer subjects. After lab 13 I have a couple of Solie Switching labs planned. This will take me to the end of this first phase of lab preparation or Camp 1 using the everest metaphor. It's been a hell of a long hard climb to get to this point but it leaves me nicely placed to take the rest on.

I attempted a few multiprotocol labs in IPexpert along the way to get a taste of how everything hangs together but there are still many such labs in the workbook still to be attempted. I think the next phase will involve a departure from the IPexpert material for a little while. I will return to the remaining IPexpert multiprotocol labs once I have had a taste of another training style for a couple of months. At the moment Im leaning towards NMC or Internetworkexpert. During this period I will be aggressively working on weaker topics and technologies and testing myself with mock labs. I shall also take a little time out to read over the IPexpert technology labs I have completed and finish up my notes of the lessons learned there to get closure on them. I will probably do that before I embark on any new material.

Turgon

Lab 13 Cisco Router Security.

Im now starting to look over this lab in preparation for tomorrow's session. Some good things in it; tcp intercept, nat, reflect and evaluate commands, crypto, aaa, radius-server ip inspect, NBAR, RPF checking and more.

Turgon

Lab 13 Router Security - DONE

Another educational lab albeit with a few errors in the solutions in my opinion. Again the limitations of my home rack IOS prevented configuration of everything although I understand the given solution. Security does get rather involved and there will much for me to revisit in this particular topic. I will need to work hard on this subject in the weeks ahead to fill in gaps with newer commands. This is certainly a very challenging lab and feature rich.

So we reach an important milestone in the lab prep.



The IPexpert technology labs have all been completed now. It's been educational and I come away from the experience with a really good awareness of the technologies and what they are capable of thanks to all the patient hours spent labbing at home and pouring over the problems and solutions.

We have finally reached Camp 1 in the study climb!

The next stage will take me to Camp 2 at which point I will worked very hard on the weaker areas hands on, reinforced DocCD awareness and made progress on Mock Exams.

Turgon

Friday Night.

Ok time now to make a start on consolidating the things learned from the technology labs in my notebooks. I expect this activity to take a few days followed by some DocCD referencing as I go along.

Turgon

Sunday morning - Time out to continue the configuration of my first dynamips server at home, followed by some more review of the IPExpert configurations on the rack.

Turgon

Ok well we at least now finally have a windows 2003 server after all the hassles burning the evaluation CD. More installation work on dynamips later.

Turgon

After a little time revisiting R&S theory it's back on the rack. Revisiting IPExpert technology labs again one last time to use the solutions for speed drills. I have a mixture of Solie and Doyle labs in mind followed by Mocks in March.

Turgon

Put inserts into the Doyle Volumes to pick out the labs I have planned ahead. At the moment Im cranking out the IPexpert solutions again for practice. Once these are done I will rewire the rack and do the Duggan mock exams. Once those are done it's Doyle and Solie exercises followed by more mocks. My personal command reference folder is growing as I complete more exercises and make more notes and I expect to be spending a fair amount of time looking up the commands on the DocCD when I have an hour or two free. I let a lightstream 1010 chassis pass me by the other week on ebay but I think I may get one soon enough for SP studies later in the year. I do have a couple of 4000 with ATM so I can do PVC's back to back.

Turgon

Quite a lot of configuration practice on the home rack. Working on BGP configurations today.

Turgon

Saturday - Duggan and Gorito labs on the Home Rack.

Today Im recabling the rack at home to work the 6 labs in the Cisco Press book. Some old technologies are covered but Im ok with that as I have the equipment.

Turgon

Ok the lab is physically rebuilt now at home. I have swapped out a PRI card on a 4000 with a 4 port Serial card. Frame switch is configured ok. I need to preconfigure the routers. I'm also building a management station with some useful utilities..mrtg, pumpkin TFTP, Kiwi Syslog, teraterm. I will probably store some IOS images on it. Having had a full afternoon with the routers and switches I think I will work on this server installation next. The wireless KVM works a treat.

Turgon

Cranking out lab 1 in the Duggan and Gorito Cisco Press Routing and Switching Practice Labs. This is a marvellous book. Really getting a lot out of the practice lab thanks to the hours of practice I put in earlier. I would advise anyone contemplating using this book to maximise the learning experience by first undertaking many technology labs from CCO, Doyle, Solie or a vendor workbook.

Turgon

Had to rearrange the topology due to failure of 4 port serial card on 4000 series router. Swapped the ATM connection with a serial connection. The ISDN simulator is playing up so far as I can see, no clues on debug isdn q921 or q931.

Had to lose R7 in the topology as no router with serial and dual ethernet ports. Even so finding the first lab in this book very rewarding. Have the QoS and Multicast sections next up tonight.

Turgon

Duggan and Gorito Cisco Press Mock Exam No. 1 - DONE

A good experience and I was able to suggest a good deal of appropriate approaches to the problems. The lab was a good exercise in pushing you to understand some of the issues inherent in a exam but not spelled out to you such as neighbor problems, NAT breaking protocol connections and required policy routing and split horizon amongst many other things. BGP route manipulation using origin.

Next up is to make a list of the available labs in Solie volume 1 and volume 2. The intention is to do the labs still relevent to todays CCIE exam. Once I have done a battery of these practicals I will return to Duggan for the second mock exam. Typically one would do the Solie practicals in sequence say doing all the ospf ones and moving on to another subject, but I may very well mix them up so that too much time does not elapse between stints on any given technology. I find if a few weeks pass before I revisit a technology again then some ring rust appears so lets avoid that situation!

Turgon

A tiring week at work over. Today I will be setting about scenarios from Solie. I will be prioritising a list of exercises.

Turgon

Yesterday's Solie plans abandoned due to pressing needs at home. Today looking at Doyle Volume 1 practical examples covering OSPF.

teamnogood

Turgon,

I appreciate your posts. I'm going to model my lab time after yours when it comes. I'm studying for the written right now and have put some extra emphasis on the things I'll need to know in "building" the lab (frame-relay and bgp).

I've got 8 years experience so I'm not too far behind you. I was also NA'd in 2001 and have had the NP for 4 years. One thing that will be a little different for me is that my lab will be partially distributed. Half in my home and half in a friends home, about 30 minutes away. I'm not quite sure where we'll make adjustments to the topology but we'll definitely have either GRE or an ipsec tunnel between us. I'm hoping it will force us to adapt in ways beneficial to our understanding of certain technologies.

Keep it up!

Turgon

Thanks and good luck with your studies.

Turgon

Monday evening/Tuesday early morning.

Configured the Doyle scenario p435 OSPF Address Summarization on the home rack. DONE

Now looking at the Filtering Between Areas and Authentication case studies which Im now configuring at home.

Doyle is feature rich and more 'gems' are unearthed with each reading and elapsed time after significant configuration practice. I advise candidates to return to Doyle periodically and lab up the situations discussed in the book. The important points of each chapter are better understood in a lab environment and significantly Doyle does not provide complete configurations for all routers in the case studies. This forces one to put the learning into practice to complete the configurations in an attempt to produce the illustrated routing table output in the book. What is coming out of this work for me at least is clarity of details so important to get routing behavior down. In just a few hours reading and labbing I have better understanding of the impact of different configurations. I put this down to Doyle but also importantly the hours already put on on the home rack practicing the last months. It's a great book but beginners will not appreciate or understand everything it has to offer. That comes with practice and reflection.