1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

Turgon

Very useful session on the home rack covering OSPF Address Summarisation and Route Filtering from Doyle Volume 1. - DONE

Now prestaging the home rack for Lab 24 OSPF Multiple Area Routing, Authentication, Path Manipulation, Default Routing - Part I from Solie Volume I.

Turgon

Solie Vol 1 Lab 24 OSPF Multiple Area Routing, Authentication, Path Manipulation, Default Routing - DONE

That lab session was excellent covering amongst other things the nuances of effective default network advertisement in ospf, nssa and conditional default route. Time very well spent.

That's 250 lab hours racked and they were all good. Now for the evening with the family. 10pm here.

Turgon

Lab 25: Solie Volume I - OSPF Multiple Area Routing, Route Redistribution and Summarization.

8:30am

Now setting this up on the home rack.

Turgon

Solie Volume I Lab 25 - OSPF Multiple Area Routing, Route Redistribution and Summarization- DONE

That really was a fabulous exercise really bringing home a lot of what I have learned. Im much more comfortable configuring things these days. The basics are all there and my understanding of how this stuff actually works at low level is so much better thanks to the regular practice.

Fantastic. This brings closure on the Solie labs for OSPF for my lab prep. It's a marvellous book. Thank you Karl Solie.

I have a couple of overdue Switching exercises next up in Solie. Then Im going to work hard on route filtering exercises from the IPexpert technology labs. Being able to configure the basics of everything is critical but from there being able to filter things in many different ways is an art and without that you simply fail the lab. Post switching exercises I will be drilling many different ways to filter routes across the IGPs and BGP.

Turgon

Solie Volume 2 - Lab 1 Configuraing EtherChannel. Layer 3 Switching, Routed Ports and SVIs - DONE.

Another useful primerworking with HSRP, ip default-gateway and spanning tree parameters.

Saturday morning. Another busy week in the IT Biz over. Now prestaging the the home rack for Lab 2 in Solie Volume 2- Configuring 802.1w RSTP and 802.1s MST, Layer 3 Switching and VLAN Maps.

Once this is done I will be returning to some hands on route filtering practice from earlier labs followed by a quick brush up on multicasting and QoS basics. This important activity will take a few days leading up to my first in a sequence of Mock exams.

March will be the beginning of a sequence of mock exams taking me up to the 1st lab attempt in the beginning of July.

Balance between work, family life and CCIE prep remains good and I feel I have come a long way since April 2007 when I began hands-on. I have much better 'feel' for lab requirements and solutions and automatically do more of the right things in terms of configuration and verification.

So it's all good. If anyone is doing labs this weekend by all means PM me.

Turgon

Saturday

Lab 2 in Solie Volume 2- Configuring 802.1w RSTP and 802.1s MST, Layer 3 Switching and VLAN Maps - DONE

Another useful switching lab completed today. Weekends are not always a green light for extensive study as they are often used to catch up with household chores and spending more time with the family as I have done today. Even so I have managed to pull this lab together over a couple of sessions today and it was time well spent.

I shall look over some route filtering examples tomorrow.

Turgon

Sunday. Configuring the route filtering sections from IPexpert labs.

LAB A - DONE
LAB B - DONE
LAB C - DONE
LAB D - DONE

On the homerack reviewing and configuring route filtering scenario for IGPs to be found in the IPExpert labs. Something of a refresher.

Turgon

7:15 pm. The little one bathed and in bed so back on with some racktime. I made some notes covering the route filtering sections of the first eleven IPexpert multiprotocol labs. Im going to configure those now. Once complete I will pick out a few multicasting sections from labs to go over, followed by QoS sections, IPv6 sections and some BGP sections. Then I need to schedule a mock exam. The earliest I could do that would be the 9th but I may have to push it back to the 16th March. So long as I get moving on my first mock in March, Im happy. Im shooting for a lab date in July. With fulltime work and busy at home that *should* be enough time to cover the necessary bases and do really well in Brussels.

That's for later though. Time now to turn on that rack again.

Turgon

Following IGP filtering sections covered from the Ipexpert labs this evening.

Lab E
Lab F
Lab G
Lab H
Lab I
Lab J
Lab K

Next session I will configure some multicasting sections from a handful of IPexpert labs.

Turgon

Work is over so time to batter out some multicasting configurations from the practice labs.

Turgon

A good session looking over multicasting sections in the following labs:

LAB M
LAB N
LAB Q
LAB R
LAB S
LAB T

I got a hell of a lot of recall with this stuff due to earlier lab work and multicast reading. I made good notes. The session went well and I configured things on my routers. Multicasting is a subject full of trepidation for many CCIE candidates but I really don't think it's too bad. Not too many commands, I can see how it hangs together and not many points on the lab. Im satisfied with my progress on this subject thus far.

Next up will be IPv6 revision because I don't like it so shouldn't put it off. This will be followed by BGP filtering and attribute manipulation and finally the QoS sections. I will pick out sections for all these from the IPexpert labs and get configuring and make decent notes again.

That little lot should carry me through most of the weekend. If there is time I will then fix up the cabling on the homerack for the Cisco Press Duggan/Gorito CCIE practice labs and attempt lab no 2 sometime next week as it will be a final chance to pull things together before my first vendor mock exam next weekend 16th March.

Between now and then I will be reflecting on what I have covered across the piece and work on consolidating my configuration notes across technologies.

Cool.

Turgon

Thursday evening. Three of the IPexpert multiprotocol labs have IPv6 sections so I will pick them off now on the home rack.

Turgon

IPv6 - DONE

Lab - H DONE
Lab - J DONE
Lab - M DONE

Reviewing and completing these exercises on IPv6 and making notes provided me with a similar experience to multicast leaving me with nothing much to fear from IPv6. So long as I can remember enough about this topic I should do fine. IPv6 over frame relay, EUI-64 addressing site local address, IPv6 rip, IPv6 OSPF and redistribution covered.

BGP attribute manipulation and filtering next up. Stay tuned.

Turgon

Friday evening. I have just selected a clutch of IPexpert labs that have BGP filtering tasks. I will look these over now before practicing the configurations on Saturday. Sunday I will look over examples of QoS and configure at home.

Turgon

Saturday morning. BGP filtering note taking and configuration practice with a coffee.

sprkymrk

Turgon wrote:

and configuration practice with a coffee.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I configure my coffee with cream and sugar. I know it's not considered a "Best practice", but the benefits outweigh the disadvantages in my environment. How do you like to configure your coffee?

Turgon

sprkymrk wrote:

Turgon wrote:

and configuration practice with a coffee.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I configure my coffee with cream and sugar. I know it's not considered a "Best practice", but the benefits outweigh the disadvantages in my environment. How do you like to configure your coffee?

The same as you when I get chance to drink it that is. Should be back on the rack soon to practice some BGP filtering methods. I made some good notes across 8 labs this morning.

Turgon

Completed a battery of BGP filtering configurations today. Route-maps called by neighbor statements featured heavily. Manipulation of as-path, MED, Local Preference. Injection of routes with origin code ?, communities, prefix lists and local-as. A good session.

BGP filtering sections from Labs B, C, D, E, F, I, J, K - DONE

Turgon

Sunday morning - QoS practice. Back on task and now about to look over and practice configuring various flavours of QoS.

Turgon

6AM - Tuesday. Working on more QoS examples.

Turgon

7AM- Wednesday. Now working on Duggan practice lab no 2. I have booked an IE mock exam for 22nd March.

Turgon

6:50AM - Thursday. A couple of hours on the rack before work. Rack recabled and now doing Duggan and Gorito lab no.2

Turgon

Still on with Duggan/Gorito lab no 2. Frame, Switching, EIGRP and OSPF done. A marvellous lab and a real learning experience. Getting a lot out of it. BGP and other sections tommorow.

Turgon

7:50AM - Friday. Looking over the BGP sections now in Duggan lab no.2

Turgon

Duggan Lab No.2 - BGP section complete and that in itself was a useful learning experience picking up nuances of BGP route manipulation that vendor labs gloss over or miss out i.e local-as, next-hop-unchanged, remove-private-AS. A fantastic book forgotten by today's CCIE candidates. Written by Gorito it illustrates lots of lab technique. Will finish off the remaining sections now and quite content to be the only person in the world working on this goldmine practice lab tonight.

Turgon

Saturday. Just got the car back from a service. The usual chores to attend to at home and then hopefully some racktime to finish Duggan Lab no.2.

Turgon

Gorito- Duggan Lab no.2 - DONE

A really good lab this one. It's tempting to embark on the 3rd lab in this book of 6 but they are so useful I don't wish to rush them along. Variety works for me. I shall instead return to IPExpert multiprotocol lab 'A' which I haven't looked over since last August. I have an IE mock exam looming next Saturday. I have a very busy week ahead of me at work with a couple of network designs to produce for my client and increasingly Im busy at home after work on the family front, so we will just have to see how it goes next week.

Turgon

Sunday morning - 8:40 AM. Now recabling the home rack and reconfiguring frame switch for IPExpert lab 'A'.

Turgon

Ok the rack is now totally recabled, the frame switch reconfigured and the router configs wiped. A few things to do at home and then I will get started on this lab.

Turgon

The afternoon got spent shopping in town with the family so I will just look over the lab questions this evening. I shall probably hit the rack for a couple of hours in the morning.