It's my time: Mrock's CCIE thread

nerdydad

Mrock4 wrote: »

Just booked my lab..will be sitting the lab in aug!

August 6th at RTP for first attempt, October for the second.

Mrock4

I guess I'll see you on your first attempt..beers on me afterwards!

Almost forgot..I'm seriously thinking early October for a retake if I do fail the first. I go to hawaii shortly after and pass or fail I want to enjoy my trip.

nerdydad

Mrock4 wrote: »

I guess I'll see you on your first attempt..beers on me afterwards!

Do we really have the same date? I guess there could be more pressure.

My plan is to leave time for a third attempt in 2013, based on the much rumored exam change, so August, October and December. My two biggest fears are a change before August, or for a change to be announced for January and all of the December slots being filled up by people making desperation shots and me needing a third shot.

We are pretty slow at work at the moment, if it stays that way, I fell pretty good about my time frame. If we pick up it is going to be a struggle, we have a baby girl due in June, so my late night studies may take a hit.

Still slogging through Volume II at the moment, will be switching to more troubleshooting here soon.

jamesp1983

Good luck to both of you.

down77

Since you already scheduled your exam, you will get the current version during your attempt. If an announcement is made for a new version, you *could* get the next version, if released, on your 2nd/3rd/Nth attempt.

This actually happened to a coworker of mine for the CCIE Security track. He got v3 for his first attempt and then received v4 for his December 2012 attempt (failed both).

Mrock4

I'm hoping for a pass before any changes are actually implemented..but I also realize if I fail my first attempt I might not have time to reschedule a second (due to everyone rushing to get their attempt in)..we'll see..in a way it'd make sense to move mine up to June (early, before Cisco live), but eh..it's all good. Change or no change, I'm going to have to learn a lot of stuff along the way, so it's all good.

nerdydad- no added pressure..although a coworker of mine might take his the same day if seats are available. The CCIE is a lonely endeavor, but it might make each other accountable if you know you're going to test on the same day..so when I'm slacking off I can remember "nerdydad will be there, I better bring my A game"

nerdydad

Mrock4 wrote: »

"nerdydad will be there, I better bring my A game"

"Mrock will be there, don't make a fool of myself and forget how to spell CCIE"

Mrock4

haha. No worries..hopefully we have a good run at it! I haven't begun Vol II yet- gotta knock the CCNA DC out (next week it looks like), then it'll be a hard run till August.

Mrock4

Doing a large-scale BGP/MPLS implementation at the moment, so I'm getting about 6 hours a day of hands-on with BGP/MPLS, so although I haven't labbed much lately, I feel like I have since I'm working with this stuff day in and day out.

That being said, making an effort to step up my labbing since my date is creeping up. Gotta take both CCNA DC exams for work in a couple of weeks (got postponed due to work), so after those I'm going to be in full-scale lab mode.

Mrock4

Labbed some MPLS VPN's tonight in GNS3- went really really well. Going to spend the rest of the evening re-doing my CCIE Lab progress spreadsheet with updated status and a plan for the next few months. Back to work early in the morning (and subsequently BGP + MPLS)

Mrock4

Been crazy busy at work. Configuring lots of BGP, OSPF (NSSA's/Stubs, mutual redistribution), etc..really great stuff to be working with daily considering those topics are on the lab.

Mrock4

Spent a couple of hours today doing nothing but troubleshooting default route installation in the routing table of OSPF NSSA routers. Think the issue was the ADV router wasn't reachable initially, but a few tests (static routes and such) proved that wasn't the case. I ended up creating a new OSPF process with a static route to 0.0.0.0, redistributed that into the original OSPF process and it then showed up in the NSSA area...not pretty, but I'll get back to it tomorrow.

So, not technically labbing, but great practice!

SteveO86

Nothing like some real world troubleshooting to keep mind going!

You can't substitute real issues with labs

Mrock4

Absolutely! Right now it's looking like a possible bug, going to verify tomorrow. Labbed it up in GNS3, and it worked without any issues, but for some reason on the actual gear it's not installing the proper routes.

That being said, I was reading the OSPF RFC, and found some interesting stuff as it relates to the forwarding address. I was previously under the impression that the forwarding address for external destinations (Type 7/5 LSA's) must be reachable via ANY route, but the RFC states it must be reachable via an OSPF inter/intra-area route. Thinking that might be the issue..we'll see in the morning.

reaper81

Take a look at my blog for more info on the FA: OSPF – Use of forwarding address | Daniels networking blog

As you said it should be intra or inter-area:

"
If the forwarding address is non-zero, look up the forwarding address in the routing table.[24] The matching routing table entry must specify an intra-area or inter-area path; if no such path exists, do nothing with the LSA and consider the next in the list."

Mrock4

Thanks reaper- late response, but it's helpful for my own knowledge.

Labbing BGP tonight. Really surprised how many things come back since I've been working with BGP a lot lately. Once this is done I'll need to hit OSPF really good, then I think the only thing left will be to cover MPLS. From that point I think I'll be pretty good with my core technologies, but I'll need to really hit the other weak areas..multicast, ipv6..etc..

Mrock4

Last nights labs went really well. It was kind of a "free lab" time where I just tried to give myself random requirements that required me to use pretty much all of the major BGP tools- as-path filtering, attribute maps, aggregation, suppress/unsuppress maps, etc. Tonight I'm going to do the same but go through some scenarios involving route reflectors and confederations where things can get a bit more tricky. That being said, I think last night was genuinely one of my better lab sessions I've had..I was "in the zone" so to speak, and learned a few things and verified others.

Mrock4

Labbed BGP Inject Maps last night as well as confederations. My biggest issue with confederations was when trying to filter out AS's that were part of the confederation (ie: 65001 and 65002 are confederation peers, and I want to filter out 65001 routes for some odd reason), I kept getting stuck. Quickly realized my regex were not correct- I was used to using something like "ip as-path access-list 1 deny _65001_" whereas I needed to use something more like "ip as-path access-list 1 deny (65001)" (or "65001)", "(65001"....etc). Once I corrected those I was good to go.Really enjoyed labbing the inject maps, found them very cool, but the configuration can easily get you mixed up when you're configuring multiple prefix-lists/route-maps. Either way, solid session!

Mrock4

Just booked my INE 10-day bootcamp for June. It's a little sooner than I wanted to book it, but I have a project going on all the way up till my lab so I'm not going to be able to take too much time off there. Oh well, something is better than nothing!

Mrock4

Started on Lab 1 of Vol II today. Started off REALLY slow because I wasn't used to the format. At this rate I'd say it's going to take me about 12 hours to finish the lab. I haven't really had a problem coming up with solutions (so far- I haven't gotten to the multicast section), I just don't have the speed (which will come as my comfort level goes up).

all in all, not bad..got about 4 1/2 hours of labs in tonight. Going to finish up Lab 1 on next monday (going to enjoy my weekend with the family..been traveling a lot for work).

Hoping next week I can finish Lab 1 and 2, and review any issues I run into along the way.

down77

You will get faster as you go through the labs. By the 2nd time through Vol 2 I was making great time!

Hope you enjoy the INE Boot Camp, but shame you may not be @ Live.

Mrock4

Thanks man! I'm hoping I have time to make it through Vol II twice. I'm sure I will, but I'm thinking I'll be able to pull off 2-3 labs per week- which puts me at being about 75% through Vol II by the time I sit the bootcamp. That works out well though, since after I sit the bootcamp I'll have about 7 weeks until my lab...so I can run through those last Vol II labs after the bootcamp..and hopefully see a difference.

I'm feeling pretty good overall, but my slow pace through that first Vol I lab was humbling. I'm thankful, though, because now I know I really need to improve my technologies (which I think will increase the speed).

down77- real quick question, when you ran through Vol 2 the second time, what kind of time were you making on average?

down77

When I started Vol 2 I worked the labs over a few days, so I would say I averaged around 8-12hrs (2-3 days since I did 3-4hr sessions). As I got into it a bit deeper and started dedicating full days to studying I saw my time drop drastically down. I also spent some time in vol 3 which helped me become faster at working the core tasks. To be honest, there were many times I would go through the Vol 2 labs and then go back to Vol 1 to refresh on how to approach some of the topics.

Take your time and dont worry how long they take for now. You will get faster and faster through the labs! The most important thing is to stay consistent with the studies

Mrock4

Thanks! I started Lab 1 over yesterday since I last looked at it a week ago and didn't get that far anyways..this time I got through pretty much all L2/L3 config pretty easily..have a rack scheduled for Wednesday to finish up the lab..which gives me time to review my weak areas: IPv6, MPLS, and Multicast. I think with regards to multicast I only need a good review, MPLS is pretty much the same- and IPv6 I need to go over the Vol I labs on.

My plan right now is to eventually plan on 2x labs a week, with the days in between spent reviewing material I had issues with before moving onto the next lab.

Mrock4

Watched some INE MPLS videos tonight in preparation for finishing my lab tomorrow. Need to review IPv6/Multicast as well.

Mrock4

Decided to take a step back and go over a couple of Vol I labs which I've already found some weaknesses in, as mentioned before- IPV6, MPLS, and more than likely some multicast. Truth be told, I'm not terrible with multicast or MPLS, so I think I'll just need a refresher there. It sucks postponing the full labs for another week, especially with an impending date, but I need to understand this stuff or else I'm screwed on the full labs (and the actual lab) anyways..so it's a must.All in all I think in a week I should be in a lot better shape with some of my weaker areas, and in 2-3 weeks I should be proficient enough to accomplish the core functionality of those areas.The good news is I've faired pretty well so far in the L2/IGP/BGP areas.

Mrock4

Went through RIPng, EIGRPv6, and OSPFv3 for the most part this evening. Feeling a LOT more comfortable now. Going to work on some other stuff now. Realized yesterday that it's crunch time and I have to get serious..

Mrock4

Knocked out some MPLS Vol I labs. After Lab 1 (INE) I felt I needed some work with MPLS. Hoping to wrap up all of the MPLS labs in the next couple of days. After that I'm going to tackle Multicast again. After that I feel I'll be in decent shape to start tackling the full labs again.

Mrock4

Pushed my date to the 26th of August. Given my compressed timeline, I felt the extra ~3 wks would be really beneficial. I also paid for the lab exam, so this is definitely happening!

Anyway, starting to lab now, hoping to finish MPLS Vol I labs.

Mrock4

Finished up the MPLS labs today. Taking off studying for the weekend since I'm going to be out of town for a couple of weeks for a project. I did setup Dynamic DNS so I now have remote access to my home rack in addition to my INE rentals.

Going to work on multicast next Monday/Tuesday (Vol I labs again). Once I'm done, I'm going to take a few days next week to focus on some smaller topics which I need review on (GLBP, Zone-Based Firewall, etc). The following week I'll be back to my full lab schedule.

Overall I am nowhere near being ready for my impending lab date, but I do feel a lot better after going through some of these Vol I labs again. I've also incorporated some unstructured lab time where I just try new things and learn various features..and mostly "play around" - it helps a lot and I like the feeling of just doing whatever I want, and not following a guide all of the time.

I am sincerely hoping that in the next 3 weeks I can get in better shape on the full labs since my INE bootcamp is coming up really soon..I originally wanted to get through 10 Vol II labs before sitting the bootcamp, but at this rate it's looking like I'll get through 4-6 Vol II labs before then. Oh well..