QoS Study Plan

Turgon

down77 wrote: »

Taking a study break was just what the doctor ordered! Earlier this year I regained my CCNP and added the CCDP credential to my profile. After this was done I took a few weeks off of studying to let my brain rest, and to spend some time enjoying other things. Now that I've had some time to rest and recuperate, I'll be heading down the CCIP path and starting with the QoS Exam... and for those who have hinted at it in other posts yes this is part of my prerequisite review path in pursuit of my own Cisco Number/Plaque; CCIE R&S.

Why QoS first? Because I've had more and more requests for services that could benefit from this wonderful feature! Service Providers, Storage Engineers, and Voice specialists understand the importance of low latency/jitter-less infrastructures as well as traffic shaping to assist in a long term capacity management strategy. Not to mention I have a massive Data Center refresh coming up where a significant amount of QoS will be required

The materials I plan to use are from the following:

Books:
Amazon.com: Cisco QOS Exam Certification Guide (IP Telephony Self-Study) (2nd Edition) (9781587201240): Wendell Odom, Michael J. Cavanaugh: Books --> Primary Text
Amazon.com: End-to-End QoS Network Design: Quality of Service in LANs, WANs, and VPNs (0619472051764): Tim Szigeti, Christina Hattingh: Books

CBTs:
CCIP Certification Courses

Labs:
GNS3 while on the road and a mixture of 1800/2800 routers and 3550/3750 switches when at the house.

I will attempt to use eBooks (Kindle) to study this time but may end up breaking down and getting physical books to take with me during my travel. I'll also be supplementing with various Cisco docs and blogs.

More to come as I start reviewing

QoS will rot you brain. Having taken notes on all CCIE topics QoS is the biggest file in terms of bytes.

Know IP Precidence, know DCSP.
Know policing
Know shaping
Know congestion management
Know MQC

You are set then.

As for the field, different switches have different offerings like WRR and SRR. Run away.

Chris_

Good luck for next Tuesday -sound like you've put the work in!

At this rate you'll be finishing BGP before me; my study plans haven't worked out as well as I'd hoped. Family life gets in the way, but I'm always happy to let it!

down77

Turgon wrote: »

QoS will rot you brain. Having taken notes on all CCIE topics QoS is the biggest file in terms of bytes.

Know IP Precidence, know DCSP.
Know policing
Know shaping
Know congestion management
Know MQC

You are set then.

As for the field, different switches have different offerings like WRR and SRR. Run away.

Is it bytes or bits? Sorry a little bad QoS humor there... I can see how this is the biggest file since QoS has a lot to it!

I'll make sure to go over the topics again, especially with some more labs. You are 100% correct though that different devices have different offerings, and different IOS verions have different QoS features as well. I've been comparing the QoS features on an older Catalyst 3548XL, to a 2950-SI, 3550-EMI, and 3750. Each one offers different things, and thats not evening getting into Routers/IOS differences!

One of the nice things about doing QoS labs is that you can use various routers as HTTP, FTP, Telnet, etc. traffic and play around with a number of scenarios. Last night was two color policing with http traffic and remarking excess bits (BE).

down77

Chris_ wrote: »

Good luck for next Tuesday -sound like you've put the work in!

At this rate you'll be finishing BGP before me; my study plans haven't worked out as well as I'd hoped. Family life gets in the way, but I'm always happy to let it!

As Turgon often says, it's a marathon and not a race. We each go at different paces and I have every confidence you will complete BGP. I understand how family and life events take priority over studies. My saving grace is that due to work, I have plenty of travel time to put on the noise canceling earphones and go over material.

If all goes well, I'll be starting on BGP around October 1st and test on it by the end of the year.

ITdude

Knock that QoS dead!:)

down77

Thanks guys! I'm just hoping for a positive outcome on tuesday.

So I got done with my onsite engagement early today and will have about 5 hours worth of lab/study time in the hotel room before I crash for the evening. I'll have a bit more study time on the flights back home tomorrow as well which will provide additional opportunities for me to reinforce some of the information.

Tonight's plan is to go through a few of the following labs:

-FIFO vs WFQ queuing (Congestion Management)
-DSCP Based WRED
-WRR
-Class-Based Policing/Shaping (Playing with Header Compression)
-LFI (PPP Multilink)
-CoS to DSCP mapping

Maybe a few more scenarios as well. I'll have to throw on some music in the background to keep the energy going.

lrb

down77 wrote: »

Thanks guys! I'm just hoping for a positive outcome on tuesday.

It's Tuesday tomorrow so best of luck with the exam!

down77

lrb wrote: »

It's Tuesday tomorrow so best of luck with the exam!

Thank you. I'm hoping to do a little lite review after my meeting with a local company (Pre-Sales design).

SteveO86

Good luck, I'm sure you will ace the exam!

Let us know how good you do!

down77

SteveO86 wrote: »

Good luck, I'm sure you will ace the exam!

Let us know how good you do!

Thank you!

Cooking breakfast now and then to hop in the shower and head down to the test center. Rather than review this morning, I spent a good quality hour playing with my son and watching Curious George next to him on the couch.

down77

Post Exam thoughts:

Result: Pass

So this one was pretty straight forward. I would suggest anyone attempting this exam to understand not just how to implement QoS technologies, but to also make sure you have a sound understanding of the design aspects for each topic listed. One of the critical take-a-ways for this is to know when to use which QoS technology and what are the best practices according to Cisco. Spend a little extra time reviewing the theory before sitting this one.

There was one question that I scratched my head on a bit since it really didn't make sense. I made sure to comment on the question and suggested they clarify their request since it was highly subject to interpretation. I can't comment too much on this since saying too much would violate the NDA. I will say to review selected sections of Appendix B if you use the QoS exam guide (mine did not come with the CD Rom).

Overall I finished with about 15 minutes left and felt pretty confident with my studies. I wish I had taken more notes in evernote as I was studying since I have a feeling I will be spending a bit more time on these topics sometime next year. I'm going to take a day or so off and then start reading IRA, selected selections of Routing TCP/IP, and lots of Cisco documentation. Next stop... composite?

ITdude

Congrats! Good exam feedback too. My opinion, would be to go for the composite but that is why there is chocolate and vanilla.

SteveO86

Congrats!!

Thanks for the tips, I will be reviewing your thread again when I tackle QoS!

Chris_

Congratulations and Good advice. Good luck for bgp/MPLS, I imagine it will be a walk in the park compared to qos!

lrb

Great work mate! You'll have a blast with the BGP+MPLS studies.

We had a public holiday here on Monday so I've had all weekend to get some labbing done for this, so I booked myself in for the exam tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to read the QoS Quick Reference guide throughout today and go over some more Policing/Shaping theory. Will re-read my QoS best practice notes again tomorrow morning and that should hopefully be all she wrote!.

down77

Thanks lrb, and good luck on your exam as well! Let us know how you did.

lrb

Well that was officially the lowest score I've ever gotten for a Cisco exam but thank god it was still a pass! My thoughts on the exam are pretty much the same as down77's - there really isnt that many topics for this exam but the theory for each topic is quite in depth, especailly WFQ, policing, some of the congestion avoidance stuff. Don't take the best practices chapter lightly - the first chapter of End-to-End QoS helped clear a few things up that I found weren't in the official cert guide.

I pretty much used only GNS3, a 2811 and a 2950, and a few laptops to generate traffic and test policies. For books, I used the official cert guide and some of the end-to-end QoS design book.

Best of luck for anyone else taking this exam!

down77

Congrats on the pass and for finishing the CCIP! I smell a CCIE Written attempt in your future

lrb

Thank man! Now that I think back to this exam, it was probably the hardest one I've had to study for. Not so much the practical side of it, doing up labs and testing out policies wasn't too bad, but getting the theory to stick killed me. Ah well, I'll get to revisit this stuff again when I start studying for the CCIE next year.. for now, it's onto the JNCIA

cisco_trooper

Giving an update to the group. I am now done reading the QoS Certification Guide. It is a better book than the End to End Design book. I am amazed at how good this book is. I am also amazed at how much of this I already knew. I think I'm going to skip any specific labbing due to my production deployments of QoS. I'm going to hit the review questions, clarify any I miss, and then knock this exam out of the park. I'm pretty excited to take a test. It's been nearly 3 years.

SteveO86

Which QoS book do you recommend starting with?

Forsaken_GA

Yeah, the Odom QoS book isn't really a certification guide. It's a very, very good manual on how to do QoS the Cisco way. It's one of those books that every neteng should have on their shelf as reference material even if they never plan to take the exam.

cisco_trooper

SteveO86 wrote: »

Which QoS book do you recommend starting with?

Start with the certification guide and beat it up. Once you're done with that maybe give the End to End guide a once over to see if it sparks any questions for you.

down77

Agreed, start with the QoS certification guide and from there you can determine if you need End to End QoS. I would also refer to the Cisco online documentation for QoS.