1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

Turgon

Cable arrival. This evening try and get router issues fixed so I have some backbone routers..

Turgon

Turgon wrote: »

Cable arrival. This evening try and get router issues fixed so I have some backbone routers..

I have what I need now. For those that remember, being a Tolkien fan my routers are named after female characters. Password recovery of Idril and Elwing was successful so they are no longer stuck at boot. Eowyn will power up but does not get to prompt. She will take a Ctrl-Break but then throws an exception. Nimloth will not power up. Both of these will be retired now.

On to backbone config on Idril and Elwing now..

veritas_libertas

LOL, and we are all looking forward to:

Turgon

Yes it's out soon isn't it?

Idril is now BB1. Old hardware so I removed IPv6 config. Also will not be a frame switch like the INE topology so that config went. Also the BVI and virtual template config. BGP config adjusted as no BB2 for eBGP peering and no address families needed. I will need to assess the physical topology on INE vs what I have to play with at home carefully.

Elwing less good, she's stuck in snmp cold start. Will wait a while but Im not up for upgrading the IOS tonight.

I may have only two BBs to play with so elected for BB1 and BB3 both in AS 54 giving me BGP path options to a single AS. BB2 offers AS254 but I dont have three BBs at my disposal.

Turgon

Another problem. Varda an old 2520 with a token ring interface and perfect for a frame switch is somewhat stuck. Strange as she came up ok earlier. Women

Alternatives are a reset or pull the 4000 series out of storage. Noisy but with 4 serial interfaces on a card it makes a great frame switch. Gotta love it.

Turgon

Reset Varda and shes fine. A little tempremental to boot, but a reboot and she comes up. We have a frame switch.

Just a BB3 to put together now..if I can fix Elwing she will suffice.

Turgon

I will try and reset Elwing again. If that doesn't help I swap flash/ram from the spares. Failing that IOS squeeze and copy using rommon tomorrow.

Turgon

Tried the reset of Elwing. From console fine but when telneting in from the terminal server stuck on cold start snmp again. Damn it.
Will try swapping parts tomorrow, then an IOS upgrade if that doesn't work. Failing all its the 4000 series for a backbone router.

Turgon

Elwing fixed. Actually fine all the time. After troubleshooting some more I put the fault I was seeing on screen down to a bad home made console cable. We have two working backbone routers for the homelab now which is good.

Turgon

Things are working out. I configured the frame switch. I studied the INE topology and I will have to make some compromises as my routers dont have more than a single ethernet interface. But that's ok, all part of the fun. The home rack is really to clatter out core topics and practice some form. All the non core will be on remote racks. Lets get on with the cabling now..

Turgon

Cabling done..ip addressing and datalink pinging progressing..

Galadriel (R1) playing up..

Parity (control reg=0x61 Error, address: 0x1687C at 0x102CD10 (PC)

Women..

Turgon

Ok. I will sort that router out sometime tomorrow. I will try swapping the RAM. The environment is there at home now, a convienient servant for practice. For the moment though I must fully concentrate on my work and routines at home. Some exercise is in order as a lot of time outside of work has been spent putting the homelab together. Sitting in the attic where it belongs, it is accessible anywhere in the house but Im tired of going up and down those stairs like whores drawers getting it fully functional. A break from all the CCIE stuff is in order and a concentration on real life.

down77

Turgon wrote: »

Things are working out. I configured the frame switch. I studied the INE topology and I will have to make some compromises as my routers dont have more than a single ethernet interface. But that's ok, all part of the fun. The home rack is really to clatter out core topics and practice some form. All the non core will be on remote racks. Lets get on with the cabling now..

Sounds familiar! I've spent about half my lab time trying to make compromises to work on the core topics. It's a great exercise but the time adds up!

Which remote racks are you looking at? I've seen a number of them fill up fast recently and with the travel schedule I have I'm trying to do as much as possible in Dynamips/GNS3 (especially with horrid hotel connections).

Turgon

down77 wrote: »

Sounds familiar! I've spent about half my lab time trying to make compromises to work on the core topics. It's a great exercise but the time adds up!

Which remote racks are you looking at? I've seen a number of them fill up fast recently and with the travel schedule I have I'm trying to do as much as possible in Dynamips/GNS3 (especially with horrid hotel connections).

Remote rack sessions go like hot cakes. Buy tokens by all means but they get blocked up for bootcamps. The vendors prioritise the bootcamp students not the online folks when it comes to rack access. That's the free market and theres nothing you can do about it. Book in advance, but then you dont know if when the slot comes around you will either be free to use it or have the energy or inclination to use it. I have blown countless lab sessions because my workday overrun or I was needed at home or just too damn tired to make use of it. I use gradedlabs when I do use remote racks but I expect I wont need them until I do mock exams in March. Meantime I have my physical homelab..it ain't perfect but its free and I can use it any time I want. No GNS or dynamips bug hassles either. Im rather glad I used Anthony Panda all those years ago for flash and dram upgrades

Turgon

Getting bugs out of my home rack out using INE Vol III lab 1 as an exercise. Discovered my console cables were mixed up between SW3 and SW4. So effectively configured the right config on the wrong switch. Rather than recable the whole thing I erased the configs and swapped them on the switches. All good now. Hub and Spoke Frame Relay exercise was failing. Noticed a bad DCE/DTE between R4 and Frame Switch so fixed that. Further issues resolved by enabling IP routing on R4 and route-cache on the serial interface. Pings working now. Good.

Turgon

Good lab practice. SW2 and SW4 dont have the code I need. It's IOS upgrade time..

ipSpace

Wow Turgon, you did some tshooting with your home lab. Do you have the lab date scheduled yet ?
I saw you have a Mock lab scheduled in May.

Turgon

ipSpace.eu wrote: »

Wow Turgon, you did some tshooting with your home lab. Do you have the lab date scheduled yet ?
I saw you have a Mock lab scheduled in May.

Home labs are great for hands on. Im going up to the attic now to upgrade those 3550's. Mock exams later in the year..lab exam latest in the year. Really depends if I can keep these study hours up

Still we have to keep at it as we are the Europeans on TE

Turgon

Got a little lost in the IOS file system but the job is done now. All switches upgraded. Switch to switch tftp upgrade

Turgon

More labbing throughout the afternoon to complete INE Vol III lab no 1. R5 (Melian) keeps dropping to Rommon. I will reseat the flash and see if that helps..lotsa chores around the house to do today.

Turgon

Ok. On R5 I have erased the flash, combined into 1 x 16M partition and uploaded an older IOS from Rommon. Router seems more stable now. Carry on with the exercises now.

Turgon

Lab goes well. A useful process to fine tune and get the bugs out with my hardware. Once we get to BGP I will have fun with my backbone routers..at the moment R1 (Luthien) is reporting a parity error. This is old hardware and I suspect that it's at the edge running 12.3 with frankly too little DRAM. I recall when I invested in my upgrades I drew a line and spending more on that..we will see while I try and get it fixed now.

Turgon

Flash erase and tftp IOS time I think. Take the laptop upstairs to attic and get a couple of IOS versions down off the good routers.

Turgon

R1 doing better now. Fixed from Rommon, erase flash, create 16M partition, tftp 12.3. Having been in cold storage for over a year my routers need some care. Back to the lab work now.

Turgon

Ok well I did the BGP peering stuff. Time to call it a night. I will check those peerings in the AM, then its the best path questions. A good day but hard one as this INE Vol III lab 1 exercise was really an acid test to help me get the bugs out with my home lab, which I managed to do.

For the trainees, when asked to do peering that works when a link like frame is down, its obvious that its using loopbacks and update source. Just make sure that the destination loopback is in your routing table. This is why the integrity of your switching, your IGP work and your redistribution work is all important. I will check my peerings in the morning always remembering that my lab has a few things missing because of my available hardware! Lab is working slicker now. Given what I learned doing all the upgrades I may try and get Eowyn fixed to provide BB2 afterall but we will see about that. Its a quick DRAM swap to see if she will work anyway.

Turgon

Ok well I finished the exercise and removed more bugs on the homelab. Some of the arrangements on my backbone routers needed changing. Its been a good weekend. Finished INE Vol III lab no 1 and my homelab has been fixed pretty good I think. I will clear the configs down a little later and have a go at lab no 2 probably on Monday evening. For the moment though lots of stuff to catch up on indoors. Finally clocked 950 lab hours which is very pleasing as I think I was stuck on about 925 for over a year, but now I can start to do some daily hands on things are finally moving along. The Vol III labs are good for me, to work the core and get some form going. I expect these to consume February. In March I will use some remote rack time to batter out the non core topics I have in my notes, and then a mock exam. Reading wise I will take a look at the troubleshooting sections in Vol II. Might as well make a start on that stuff.

Turgon

Strangely my ring binder contaiing all the Vol III labs has no 2 missing so skipping ahead to lab no 3. Studying the lab topology its clear I will need to rearrange my rack a little to do this lab.

Turgon

Prestaging for lab no 3 underway. All the physical rearrangements have been completed. Frame switch configured to account for the different DLCIs in this lab. Clearing configs and re ipaddressing now.

ipSpace

How much time does it take to prepare for a lab normally(VOL III) ?
I am planning to use my homelab(4 switches and a server) for this and i was curious.

Turgon

ipSpace.eu wrote: »

How much time does it take to prepare for a lab normally(VOL III) ?
I am planning to use my homelab(4 switches and a server) for this and i was curious.

Ages in the beginning, so expect lots of pain. Take the pain, then it becomes easier. I recabled and cleared my configs down and re-ip'd tonight for my next lab. I need some time to check datalink between devices, I may need to watch my DCE/DTE..I may need to push my cables in properly, I may have a bad cable..I grabed one from my supplies tonight.

It's all part of the process.

The best weekend I have had studying for over 2 years, but then I am home alone right now which makes a hell of a difference. I intend to exploit that. For those following my thread, study as much as you can during the week, but the CCIE is won at the weekends. Talk it over at home and do it. I realise the superbowl is on this weekend, but otherwise candidates should be at the command line for hours at the weekend..or it will take you 5 years to amass the lab practice hours..just like me

Cheers