David's CCIE: R+S Thread

silver145

last day for the lab has been announced as june4th, you going to change or go for the new one gore?

gorebrush

You are one jammy man getting a 2nd June slot!

I've just managed to get myself in on a May 28th slot. I'm going all guns blazing for v4.

silver145

Yeh i laughed when i saw the announcement, BUT a few places left for 1/2 of june in london!

What you revising currently?

gorebrush

How did you figure early June?

There aren't any dates until end of June.

Currently I need to regroup and rethink my strategy now my date is finalised

silver145

It was a guess, im taking mine in london so there is still a few spots for the mobile lab, but people will be jumping for spots now i bet.


Same here, BGP is a pain in the bottom haha, having fun using the IOU though, so much better than GNS!!!

gorebrush

Yeah, but the lab in London - July = v5.

Hope you realise you'll be taking v5 there too...........

silver145

Oh my days i got the june/july bit mixed up haha!

gorebrush

Spent the weekend going over Switching and Frame Relay, getting the basics down solid.

Good progress. Need more. Quiet month at work and many shifts = plenty of hours on the books and the labs.

Want to get through everything that is "solid foundation" for all the material by beginning of january then it's onto full blown mock labs. May 28th is ticking down, day by day.

gorebrush

I'm still plugging away. I've been thinking on and off about what lab to take - I think with May 28th I can go for v4, but as I've got until Feb 27th to pay for it - then I'm going to aim for v4 and see how I feel about it around then. If I'm not happy to take v4 then I'll drop my lab slot and go for v5.

gorebrush

Dropped my May lab slot. I won't be ready for v4. I want to *own* v5.

gorebrush

Checked earlier and my old lab slot - gone. That went quickly

Looking through the syllabus again and taking in the various videos posted online about the opinion toward v5, and it is massively positive. I even think the Diagnostic section will be pretty cool. I'd certainly be happier about that than the OEQ that used to be present in the lab.

I'm going to adjust my timeline somewhat, I certainly don't want to be one of the first to take v5 - I'm going to leave that to some other brave souls so I can find out the opinion of the new lab. I'm thinking now about late Q3/Q4 timeframe to go nail this thing properly. With my previous date in May, I was rather concerned I was just going to completely burn out by March and I would have already paid up my lab fee by then.

gorebrush

Mobile lab in October in London? Yes please.

gorebrush

Slowly getting back the momentum I've lost over Christmas and other events that are going on.

Nobody can study for me. v5 in October is where I am headed.

Covered off Multicast theory again today, QoS tomorrow, then Security is it... Then I'll be onto labbing again and getting my groove on with advanced stuff and getting my concepts down. The labbing, starts here.

gorebrush

Dusted off my lab yesterday and went through RIP and EIGRP. I can see why labbing is now so important as there are one or two things I need to go over. Filtering mainly.

The basics of the protocols and theory I've got down, metrics, timers, adjacencies, most tuning I'm very comfortable with. Filtering with prefix lists and route maps and leak maps, and so on - this confuses me. However, as I can now use the labbing experience to work out where I am weak - I'll continue through all my labbing and do an assessment at the end.

Fairly pleased so far though.

Talking to my sister yesterday she has very kindly offered to let me stay with her in London in October So that's free board. Winning. All I need to do now is work out how I'll get to London. It's only 2.5 hours in the car - 240 miles round trip, so about £30 in diesel in the car, I think the train fare will be similar. So that keeps costs down nicely.

silver145

Sounds good! have you managed to get into a "real" routine yet?

wintermute000

gorebrush wrote: »

Dusted off my lab yesterday and went through RIP and EIGRP. I can see why labbing is now so important as there are one or two things I need to go over. Filtering mainly.

The basics of the protocols and theory I've got down, metrics, timers, adjacencies, most tuning I'm very comfortable with. Filtering with prefix lists and route maps and leak maps, and so on - this confuses me. However, as I can now use the labbing experience to work out where I am weak - I'll continue through all my labbing and do an assessment at the end.

I'm finding the issue is more remembering the exact syntax / fine print of various features. I got all of it roughly/conceptually in my head and IRL I would be dandy after a 10 minute google to clarify syntax. The problem I'm having is remembering the exact syntax/way that feature is applied, e.g. which direction is the deny/allow in a bgp suppress map vs a eigrp leak map, how extended ACLs work in BGP vs everywhere else, ppp auth configs, the exact EIGRP metric calculation, that kind of thing.

gorebrush

silver145 wrote: »

Sounds good! have you managed to get into a "real" routine yet?

Well I've read enough now - I'm just going through the labbing of various things to get my speed up and get used to the commands. I've got a long way to go yet so while I'm not pounding out serious amounts of hours (yet) (procrastination is a terrible thing), I am feeling like I am making *some* progress.

I have many other things outside of CCIE to juggle as well, and at times it is hard to think about it when other life pressures are on top. But the CCIE will not accept excuses so I need to knuckle down.

gorebrush

My big struggle on EIGRP was filtering. I hadn't really paid much attention to all the different methods

So I sat down with GNS, created two routers and set about creating loads of loopbacks and messing around with the various methods to see what did what. There really isn't any better method of learning than actually *doing it*

Having now spent some time looking at the slides from the CCIE session too - I feel much better about the prospect of the v5 lab. I was scared that the configuration section would suddenly become so big then it would be too much for 5 hr 30 - but then Cisco can't do that. Nobody would pass it. I like the diagnostic section too. That's basically been my day job since the end of 2012 so should not be too much of a problem.

gorebrush

Labbed around 3 hours of the miscellaneous stuff today. I find it easier to go back and forth between these and the more difficult concepts when I am finding I am not in the mood for the deep stuff. Very helpful to get those down because I find them quite trivial. I found a lot of things I've never even done before easily enough to find with the ?.

Just need some more practice at those to get the speed up on them later. I'll hopefully get back to the more substantial things tomorrow, but I've planned and loaded my routers ready for some more services/misc stuff for tomorrow.

gorebrush

Chalking up another 6 hours on the lab clock today. IP Services and started to make way through OSPF. Continuation of OSPF tomorrow. Maybe tackle Security or something a bit different tomorrow.

Deliberately leaving MPLS/Multicast last. MPLS because it makes sense to do it last because it culminates everything else. Multicast because, well, I'm not sure about it. I don't like it. But that is only really because it is a technology I have had so little exposure too. Maybe I'll try that tomorrow after OSPF. I need to tackle it head on as being wary of it will just make it an enemy come lab day.

In fact, only really the rest of OSPF, BGP, IPv6, Multicast, QoS, Security and MPLS to go.

IP Services and Systems Management are fairly trivial in comparison. Bridging and Switching I'm fairly pro at configuring already.

I'm tackling each as a seperate topic domain for the time being, and then once I'm fairly confident of all the technologies on an individual basis I shall start looking at multiprotocol type stuff.

gorebrush

So I finished off OSPF today.

My big weakness remains - filtering and all the kinds of it. I did look at Security, but as this is all about access-lists, I'm done for

I understand the logic - but it's all the little nuances that get me beat. Lab turned off for the day now, I'm going to hit some books and then maybe lab up some smaller stuff later.

I've got some fairly big stuff left, but without really nailing all the filtering, BGP will be a waste of time for me until I'm expert. Without BGP completed, little point to do MPLS. IPv6 I'll do last too as it doesn't *seem* much more than knowing how all the underlying protocols work. Some of the crap like RIPng I don't even have to worry about too much so whilst the IPv6 topic domains themselves have shrunk - I am going to assume that one just needs to be as adept with the ipv6 command as they are with ip when it comes to configuration.

Still, feeling quietly confident that I understand the bulk of things so far!

I've a long way to before I consider myself expert and ready to pass a lab, but one day at a time. Back at work tomorrow, but a few weeks and we are into the weekend shifts. I love those, it means more study hours

FloOz

I know you have probably answered this in a previous post, but what workbooks are you going through? And how do you like it compared to other vendors?

gorebrush

4 busy shifts at work wiped out all chance of study. Even the two night shifts were silly busy. Oh well. Back on it tomorrow. Tomorrows agenda is going over filtering for RIP EIGRP and OSPF before spending probably the next fortnight really sorting BGP out. I get BGP. I just haven't got much experience configuring. Route-maps will be my friend but also I know that BGP forms a lot of the other topics too - MPLS and MPBGP for example. Knowing BGP well will stand me in good stead come lab day. Now, just need Cisco to confirm the mobile lab for October and I'm set.

gorebrush

Good lord, I haven't posted in this thread since the 9th. Slipping. I've had busy shifts all last week and this week has been wiped out.

Bad progress . Never mind, no use lamenting about it - I'll get back on it tomorrow as it is Saturday, and I'm at work for 12 hours. Then two night shifts, so hopefully I can get some more done. Coming to the end of some BGP at the moment when I last did anything, and then I'll get on with labbing it. Once I'm through BGP properly I can get with MPLS.

Probably do that after BGP. IPv6 and Multicast can wait.

gorebrush

October 8th 2014 - mobile lab in London, here I come!

They've just posted these dates.

gorebrush

OK labbing has increased and I am going back and forth between books and whatnot.

Things are slowly starting to come together in a big way now, especially BGP. That's been doing me in of late, but I think a few light bulbs have turned on and I'm starting to see how all the bits fit.

I do believe I'm probably not massively far away from attempting a multiprotocol lab and seeing where I'm going to get killed.

I'm still months away from being "ready" - but I think I'm making good progress.

Spent this afternoon learning DMVPN and EIGRP Named mode the other day so that's a chunk of the new V5 content covered.

I've done IPSec enough - DMVPN is basically GRE+IPSec together with a few minor variations on both. Very easy if you are proficient with IPSec. I found the free INE videos on this more than enough to cover everything I needed to get the gist.

gorebrush

So I've just been labbing up DMVPN. It's beautifully simple to configure, but there are indeed a lot of moving parts that one needs to understand before seeing DMVPN as a topic. I.e. If you've never seen IPSec configuration or even GRE configuration then don't just go and see some videos on DMVPN and expect to learn something, you'll probably feel like it'll go right over your head.

However, if you are familiar then it's really easy to pick up. Config is nice and simple too.

silver145

For the DMVPN bit id recommend CCNA SEC (if you have never looked at IPSEC or vpn tunnels before)
Not all of the CCNA sec, just the appropriate chapters.

If you feel confident with DMVPN, throw in a CA server and get all the tunnels up and running using certificates instead of passwords, that's a little more fun

gorebrush

Yeah I am very familiar with IPSec, so it was just the adding of the actual DMVPN was all I needed to worry about.

Ha! I'll have to try the CA Server, that would make for some fun labs.

gorebrush

TIL - You *can* combine VMWare and GNS to test QoS, but it isn't "nice"

I mean, even with FastEthernet interfaces, you generally actually only get like, 20Mbit of real throughput.

TO THE LAB.

ESX Server with it's trunked vnic's into my lab will help here.