Route vs switch

CCNAwannabe

I passed ROUTE last week and now I've already read the entire SWITCH Cert Guide, which I know is missing a lot of information.. SWITCH is sooo boring, any agree? And what did you SWITCH passed guys use to remember all of the different attributes of all the different redundant gateway protocols? I am trying to find a spreadsheet that lists it instead of trudging through the book again...

SWITCH Sucks!!

DevilWAH

i love switching. I actly find route boring. you learn one protocol, then its just repeating. minor differences but i find route pretty much common sence once you get the one fundementl. switch on the other hand is mutiply ideas that all work togather to form the whole.

CCNAwannabe

DevilWAH wrote: »

i love switching. I actly find route boring. you learn one protocol, then its just repeating. minor differences but i find route pretty much common sence once you get the one fundementl. switch on the other hand is mutiply ideas that all work togather to form the whole.

I had a feeling you would say that. I was reading the HSRP post and soaking in all of your ideas.

Here at my work we have a total of 3 2950s and 2 2810 and 1 asa. It never breaks so I dont' have much real world experience with switching from an implementation to completion stand point or knowing why one protocol is better than another.

Creating a vlan and extending it to the ASA is the most i've done in 2 years.. Which is CCNA stuff.

This is going to be a difficult one for me.

chmorin

CCNAwannabe wrote: »

I had a feeling you would say that. I was reading the HSRP post and soaking in all of your ideas.

Here at my work we have a total of 3 2950s and 2 2810 and 1 asa. It never breaks so I dont' have much real world experience with switching from an implementation to completion stand point or knowing why one protocol is better than another.

Creating a vlan and extending it to the ASA is the most i've done in 2 years.. Which is CCNA stuff.

This is going to be a difficult one for me.

Switching scared me too after I got my CCNA. But after pursuing the BSCI and ROUTE exams and reading the SWITCH book, I'll pick switching over routing any day. I enjoy managing it much more than implementing routing topologies.

stuh84

DevilWAH wrote: »

i love switching. I actly find route boring. you learn one protocol, then its just repeating. minor differences but i find route pretty much common sence once you get the one fundementl. switch on the other hand is mutiply ideas that all work togather to form the whole.

Maybe because of whats been removed to make ROUTE from BSCI, but I just cant agree with this. The only thing similar between BGP and OSPF is they both put routes in a routing table. Besides that, they are entirely different beasts.

Throw in multicast routing and other things like MPLS (layer 2.5 if you go for the marketing speak), VRFs and the like, and I just tire of layer 2. Its important no doubt, but layer 3 is where the fun is imho

wolverene13

CCNAwannabe wrote: »

I passed ROUTE last week and now I've already read the entire SWITCH Cert Guide, which I know is missing a lot of information.. SWITCH is sooo boring, any agree? And what did you SWITCH passed guys use to remember all of the different attributes of all the different redundant gateway protocols? I am trying to find a spreadsheet that lists it instead of trudging through the book again...

SWITCH Sucks!!

I love both, but routing has always interested me more. I work for a WAN provider, so I think since I deal with switching more than I do with routing every day, the BCMSN wasn't so boring for me. I took it right before Cisco came out with SWITCH, but I assume it's similar.

As far as gateway redundancy protocols, you only need to remember a few things.

HSRP VRRP GLBP
Proprietary: Yes No No
Virt. IP can be on phys. interface: No Yes No
Hosts send to multiple devices simult: No No Yes
More than one standby router: No Yes Yes
Preempt command: Yes No No

Names of primary/secondary routers:

Primary: Active router Virtual router master Active virtual gateway
Secondary: Standby router Virtual router backup Active virtual forwarders

Edit: Sorry, I tried to make a table out of all that, but can't make it work. Basically, the "HSRP VRRP GLBP" part was supposed to be the titles for each column, so left to right in the "No/Yes" part and the "Name of" part are in that order.

Also keep in mind that GLBP uses a sort of "round-robin" approach where a host will ARP on the virtual gateway and the active router responds with it's ARP information. The next time a host requests ARP info, one of the active virtual forwarders responds with it's ARP information. The next time, a different active virtual forwarder responds with its ARP information. This way hosts are not killing one router with traffic and it is equally distributed.

Forsaken_GA

stuh84 wrote: »

Maybe because of whats been removed to make ROUTE from BSCI, but I just cant agree with this. The only thing similar between BGP and OSPF is they both put routes in a routing table. Besides that, they are entirely different beasts.

Throw in multicast routing and other things like MPLS (layer 2.5 if you go for the marketing speak), VRFs and the like, and I just tire of layer 2. Its important no doubt, but layer 3 is where the fun is imho

Yup, I'm with you. I freaking hate dealing with layer 2 and whatever version of STP is running on the network. I hate dealing with services that require layer 2 adjacency. I like playing with IGP's in general, and BGP in particular. Everything else is pretty cool when you're learning it but really boring when you actually implement it. Especially if you do it right and you can just leave it alone.

networker050184

stuh84 wrote: »

Maybe because of whats been removed to make ROUTE from BSCI, but I just cant agree with this. The only thing similar between BGP and OSPF is they both put routes in a routing table. Besides that, they are entirely different beasts.

Throw in multicast routing and other things like MPLS (layer 2.5 if you go for the marketing speak), VRFs and the like, and I just tire of layer 2. Its important no doubt, but layer 3 is where the fun is imho

Agreed. That LAN stuff is for the birds. Large routing scenarios are where the fun is!

DevilWAH

wolverene13 wrote: »

Also keep in mind that GLBP uses a sort of "round-robin" approach where a host will ARP on the virtual gateway and the active router responds with it's ARP information. The next time a host requests ARP info, one of the active virtual forwarders responds with it's ARP information. The next time, a different active virtual forwarder responds with its ARP information. This way hosts are not killing one router with traffic and it is equally distributed.

You can force a single host to use the same AV every time, and you can weight the round robin so have uneaqual load balanceing on connections.