Captains Log - Destination: CCIE 2012

In the year 2012... on a planet far far away... where the trees were made of UTP cables and had lush seas of binary... there existed a treasure that glistened as bright as looking straight into SFP. This treasure shrouded in mystery, only gave a clue by it's 4 letters... CCIE.

Anyway.. I'm making this as a lab diary type thing.. I wasn't going to bother, but I'm tired of having post it notes cover my monitor and keyboards.

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Got through INE Vol 1 - Section 9 - IPV6 this afternoon.. been hitting it hard the past 3 days. I'm going on vacation Thursday for a week, and rather than start a new topic now and only get part way through it, I'm going to hold off and relax a bit.. take a short break. When I get back on Dec 31, I'll hit my studies hard again and will hopefully be able to wrap up VOL 1 by February.

> IPv6 wasn't as bad this time around as when I first learned it.. some minor things
> BIGGEST ISSUE BY FAR -> IPv6 Multicast .. mostly related to the fact i really need to work on multicast as a whole.

Well.. it's good to be back in the saddle. I got back from my vacation last Saturday, but then got stricken with a severe sinus infection and cold like illness. The illness + playing 'catch up' at work for the past week has kept me from getting back into my studies at all this week.. until today that is.

I managed to wake up early around 7:30am.. have some coffee and a bit of breakfast, and then hit INE Vol 1 , Section 10 QOS hard. It's now about 12:00pm and I think that's enough for today.. if I have time later I'll pick up a bit more. I got up to Section 10.20 .. so I'm pretty happy with that.

> I need a huge review on all the formulas , terms, and underlying mecahnisms for traffic shaping
> I need a huge review on all the formulates, terms, and underlying mechanisms for traffic policing/rate-limiting

Some of the legacy stuff isn't that bad.. and oddly enough I had to do CQ about 2 months ago for a customer.. because for some reason we have an ancient 1721 as their CPE device (Leftover from a company we acquired in 200

.

Will do the same thing tomorrow.. maybe I can get another 20% of QoS done.

Did another 3-4 hours this morning.. got up to INE vol 1 , section 10.41 .. about 50% of the way done with QoS.

> The legacy QoS stuff is a bit murky and annoying, but I'm glad I've gone over it.. it makes the MQC way of things a lot clearer
> I'm feeling better.. yay!

Awesome! Looks like you're really making your way through a large chunk of material. How are you feeling about your planned May 2012 lab attempt?

vinbuck wrote: »

Awesome! Looks like you're really making your way through a large chunk of material. How are you feeling about your planned May 2012 lab attempt?

We'll see where I'm at when I finish Vol 1 for the first time.. if not May then perhaps only a month or 2 past.

Spent about an hour or so late this evening doing a bot of studying. Got up to INE Vol 1 - Section 10.51 in QoS

> The 2 and 3 color makers make sense now..
> I need to do a big review over the token buckets
> Also need to review token buckets policing vs token buckets shaping .. and then legacy token bucket stuff
> I ate too much tonight .. at least it was eggplant and not junk

Getting back into my normal routine of things now that i'm feeling better.

Got up to INE Vol 1 - Section 10.57 this evening. That's about all I can do tonight.. going to do a few things, workout, then call it a night. I've got a busy week/weekend ahead so I"ll have to get as much in as I can

> I totally spaced on Virtual-Templates and Virtual-Access and how they actually relate.. gotta look that one up
> Voice adaptive QoS is pretty awesome
> Looking ahead, I'm going to have to limp along with what I have for the catalyst 3560 QoS section, but I'll have to really drill it later when I review... hopefully work can loan me some switches.

Plazma wrote: »

Got up to INE Vol 1 - Section 10.57 this evening. That's about all I can do tonight.. going to do a few things, workout, then call it a night. I've got a busy week/weekend ahead so I"ll have to get as much in as I can

> I totally spaced on Virtual-Templates and Virtual-Access and how they actually relate.. gotta look that one up
> Voice adaptive QoS is pretty awesome
> Looking ahead, I'm going to have to limp along with what I have for the catalyst 3560 QoS section, but I'll have to really drill it later when I review... hopefully work can loan me some switches.

Thanks for reminding me. Im picking up 4 x loaner 3550 switches from the office today.

Yeah virtual templates..useful for PPPoFR and other things.

Did up to 10.72 this evening .. borrowed a friend's rack with 2 x 3550's and 2 x 3560's. Got a really busy day tomorrow and Sunday, but am hoping to finish up this weekend with QoS .. if not then next week!

Haven't had a chance to update .. but I've been really busy with some personal stuff this past weekend, but I did manage to get a few hours of study time in. I managed to finish up INE Sec 10 - QoS this evening , but later on after dinner I think I'm going to do some reading and really drill a few things into my head. If I'm still a bit unsure, ill just spend tomorrow evening drilling a bit and reading.. then pick up on Security shortly!

> Shaping formulas (How to figure burst sizes..etc)
> Policing Formulas ( Same as above)
> 3560 Queueing (It's starting to make a bit of sense

My fridge decided to stop working this evening so I spent a good part of my post-work activities moving food to my neighbors house. Fortunately my landlord is cool and getting me a new fridge tomorrow.

Despite that, i managed to sneak in an hour of study time and hit one of my favorite topics , Security (INE vol1 , Sec 11). Got up to Sec 11.5 this evening, will hope to put a really good dent in it or finish it up this weekend (since for once I'm not going anywhere)

> Need to brush up on 'odd' wildcard mask requests (even numbered 3rd octet... etc)

Good work sneaking in the study time!

Past few days been working on security (Section 11) and managed to finish it up this morning.. fun stuff!

Probably start hitting System Management (Sec 12) tomorrow or the next day and maybe finish it up by next Sunday.

Been hitting System Management the past 2 days.. managed to get up to INE Vol 12, Section 21 in the past 2 days. I was going to not study as much, but around 2:30pm today I just hit a brick wall and got so tired.. I couldn't go work out tonight. Good news is I'm close to half way through the System Management section now and my better half is cooking something delicious in the next room

Finished up INE Vol 1 - Sec 12 today.. and really enjoyed the last part dealing with EEM. At the same time its' also a tad annoying for me. I tend to code some at work and the way EEM does it seems to be a bit of overkill.. BUT it does make a lot of sense.

> EEM Review
> SNMP Review
> Others as well

Now time to mow my lawn.. in January

Plazma wrote: »

Finished up INE Vol 1 - Sec 12 today.. and really enjoyed the last part dealing with EEM. At the same time its' also a tad annoying for me. I tend to code some at work and the way EEM does it seems to be a bit of overkill.. BUT it does make a lot of sense.

> EEM Review
> SNMP Review
> Others as well

Now time to mow my lawn.. in January

Good stuff. I have used EEM at work for a DC design. Useful.

Had a rough day at work.. and have to be up at 5:00am tomorrow to do some customer stuff.. boss wouldn't let me work from home because he's a douche (and some supervisor is on PTO). Got home and managed to get up to INE Vol 1 , Sec 13.42 .. chugged through wccp..

> WCCP.. what's it do again? (and why should I care )
> Ip accounting .. I've used it a bit at work but never fully understood what I was looking at.. makes a bit more sense
> Distributed broadcast .. interesting stuff.. straightforward enough.

Didn't have much left, but finally finished up INE Vol 1 this evening. With that I'm going to probably take a bit of a break this weekend since I've got a lot to do (plus the superbowl).. but will also be looking more at Volume 2 and 3.

Plazma wrote: »

Didn't have much left, but finally finished up INE Vol 1 this evening. With that I'm going to probably take a bit of a break this weekend since I've got a lot to do (plus the superbowl).. but will also be looking more at Volume 2 and 3.

Progress is good. We had our first CCIE lab pass this year on TE..hono. Keep studying.

It's a busy week this and next week for me between work and other things keeping me away, but I have been keeping on course with my studies. I didn't do anything Monday on the count of just being exhausted, but managed to get in 2 hours yesterday and about 2 hours this evening. Between then I got through INE Vol3 , lab 1 as well as reviewed and took notes of my mistakes.

> I would say 90% of my mistakes were tiny things.. such as missing the 'broadcast' keyword on frame-relay maps
> A lot of the more complex redistribution ones I had the right idea, but the execution was incorrect or I overcomplicated it

I'm hoping to tackle Vol2 , lab 1 this weekend, but I've got a lot going on.. Saturday I'm helping the other half's family move to a new house, and then Sunday during the day I have a charity walk to participate in, probably followed up with more moving.

Well I've had quite the busy weekend.. yesterday I helped my better half's dad move to a new house and then today I had a 5K charity walk for Parkinson's disease. Despite all that, I managed to finish up Vol3 Lab 1 and 2 this week and run through INE Vol2 , Lab 1 yesterday, and then I just got done grading myself.

I am actually a bit disappointed and upset with my results, ..about 4-5 hours into Lab 1, I started to get really tired and discouraged.. and the only section I had left was QoS. This is the first time I've ever done an actual lab before, and I try to be as fair, and harsh as I could.

All in all, I ended up getting 67/100 points, which.. isn't BAD i guess considering, but it's definitely discouraging.

Layer 2: -3pts (Private vlans)
OSPF: -1pts ( OSPF Network non-broadcast on ethernet link)
EIGRP: -2pts
BGP: -1pts (Forgot next-hop-self on a neighbor)
IPv6: -2pts (IPv6 Multicast only)
MPLS: -2 (Couldn't figure out how to only do mpls for loopbacks, and forgot to build an AF for vpnv4 in MPBGP)
Security: -8pts (Totally spaced on CoPP and DoS prevention)
System Mgmt: -8pts (blanked on an EEm script, messed up an RMON alarm, minor mistake with HSRP)
QoS: -9pts (At this point I was pretty upset with myself and tired.. perhaps I gave up and didn't realize it) Mostly FRTS and Catalyst QoS got me

Plazma wrote: »

Well I've had quite the busy weekend.. yesterday I helped my better half's dad move to a new house and then today I had a 5K charity walk for Parkinson's disease. Despite all that, I managed to finish up Vol3 Lab 1 and 2 this week and run through INE Vol2 , Lab 1 yesterday, and then I just got done grading myself.

I am actually a bit disappointed and upset with my results, ..about 4-5 hours into Lab 1, I started to get really tired and discouraged.. and the only section I had left was QoS. This is the first time I've ever done an actual lab before, and I try to be as fair, and harsh as I could.

All in all, I ended up getting 67/100 points, which.. isn't BAD i guess considering, but it's definitely discouraging.

Layer 2: -3pts (Private vlans)
OSPF: -1pts ( OSPF Network non-broadcast on ethernet link)
EIGRP: -2pts
BGP: -1pts (Forgot next-hop-self on a neighbor)
IPv6: -2pts (IPv6 Multicast only)
MPLS: -2 (Couldn't figure out how to only do mpls for loopbacks, and forgot to build an AF for vpnv4 in MPBGP)
Security: -8pts (Totally spaced on CoPP and DoS prevention)
System Mgmt: -8pts (blanked on an EEm script, messed up an RMON alarm, minor mistake with HSRP)
QoS: -9pts (At this point I was pretty upset with myself and tired.. perhaps I gave up and didn't realize it) Mostly FRTS and Catalyst QoS got me

I think your doing pretty well actually. Vol II labs are a real grind to get through. That workbook is gruelling but keep doing them so that your form improves and you pick up all these little things.

Man.. busy week and a rough one on labs.. just finished up INE Vol 2, lab 2 and it kicked the crap out of me.. it's really starting to kinda depress me and discourage me. Aside from that, during the week I did INE vol 3 lab's 4 and 5 and acutally did fairly well on them (82-85%).

Positives
> This time around with vol2 , I was MUCH better with the DOCCD, but i still found myself habitually going to my notes and other sources for how to do things
> More typical tiny mistakes I made, but a few things I got right this time that I didn't in previous labs

Negatives
> This one seemed a tad easier than volume 1, but unfortunately the results don't' seem to add up (I got a tad lower score on this one than I did on lab 1).
> FRTS is still the bane of my existence.. not sure why but it's just painful.. granted it looked a bit 'easier' this time
> Multicast is also the bane of my existence..

Guess i'll just have to keep trekking on next week with more vol 3 labs and then vol2, lab3 .. looked ahead a bit and it's a level 8 difficulty.. wonderful.

Plazma wrote: »

Man.. busy week and a rough one on labs.. just finished up INE Vol 2, lab 2 and it kicked the crap out of me.. it's really starting to kinda depress me and discourage me. Aside from that, during the week I did INE vol 3 lab's 4 and 5 and acutally did fairly well on them (82-85%).

Positives
> This time around with vol2 , I was MUCH better with the DOCCD, but i still found myself habitually going to my notes and other sources for how to do things
> More typical tiny mistakes I made, but a few things I got right this time that I didn't in previous labs

Negatives
> This one seemed a tad easier than volume 1, but unfortunately the results don't' seem to add up (I got a tad lower score on this one than I did on lab 1).
> FRTS is still the bane of my existence.. not sure why but it's just painful.. granted it looked a bit 'easier' this time
> Multicast is also the bane of my existence..

Guess i'll just have to keep trekking on next week with more vol 3 labs and then vol2, lab3 .. looked ahead a bit and it's a level 8 difficulty.. wonderful.

Your doing well. Continue to have the **** kicked out of you for the next 12 months. But keep going. Then you will pass. It will all make sense by then

This week managed to get through INE vol 3 lab 5 and half of 6.. about halfway through lab 6 I was so tired from the week I just hit a wall.. so I didn't finish it.. I plan on re-doing it this week. I also did INE vol 2 lab 3 and.. being a level 8 lab.. just kicked the crap out of me.. by far my worst score yet at 41/79 points.

I did a lot better on the QoS section this time.. and nailed the FRTS portion (I did a big review of it at work in some down time I had.. found a really good presentation on the INE blog). The multicast section was smaller and I did fairly well on it.. found the answer using the DOCCD. I hit a huge wall on some of the super intense redistribution questions, IGP, and BGP.

I ended up spending close to 12 hours on this thing today.. I was doing it form 8 - 12, had lunch and ran a quick errand..then got back around 1ish.. worked on it again until 4. I was hitting constant walls just keeping me from able to go much further.. was a bit frustrating but.. I got a bit of my bearings back this evening. I went out to a movie and spent some time with my girlfriend , came back and worked another 2-3 hours and finished it to the best of my abilities.

> Did a lot better on multicast, FRTS, and some other things than I thought I did
> Did a lot worse on some of the IGP/redist and BGP than I thought I did
> Did well on the MPLS side, only forgot some minor things (transport-address, send-community)
> Did a lot worse on some real basic privilege stuff than I expected .. I was doing aaa and really it only called for just privilege and enable commands.

My head hurts... and I've got at least 1 dentist appointment this week .. hopefully only 1 to get it all fixed

Got through INE vol 3 labs 6 and 7 this past week and kinda did a split for my vol 2 lab.. vol2 lab 4. I tried out a rack rental at ****.com - CCIE rack rental and Online remote lab access for Cisco certification and training due to the price and was very happy with the service. For only $12 / 4 hours.. that's about as cheap as I've ever seen a rack rental short of owning your own stuff. I'm still getting my ass kicked all over the place by INE vol 2 labs, when averaging the percents around 65% correct.. but it's starting to not bother me as much as it was.. it sucks.. and I feel like i'm improving.. but I just wish the numbers would reflect it.

This coming week is going to be a bit off.. Tuesday I'm off work for my birthday and plan on doing nothing all day.. and Saturday we're going to a Renaissance festival as a late birthday celebration. Also, there's this company wide trip to Hawaii that half the company appears to be going on, so for my department I'll be extra busy.. as well as the other 2 departments I work in. I'm not anticipating being able to get any rack time this weekend, but we'll see.

It takes time before you start feeling more comfortable with Vol2 labs, just be patient. Most of the INE labs are actually more difficult than the real lab but the real lab is still more difficult to pass due to stress, psychology etc.

Been a busy week being my birthday and celebrations.. but I managed to get quite a bit of labbing done regardless. I got through lab 9 of INE vol 3.. and just got done with INE Vol 2, lab 5 .. another extremely painful and taxing level 8 lab. I didn't do as good on this one as I expected and it really blows... I know i'm not supposed to do all that great.. but.. ugh. I do them and I do feel smarter and that I know and understand a little bit more each time.. but the results sure as hell don't seem to reflect that..

Now I've got enough data to formulate a really good review plan, which I will implement when I finish off lab 10 this week.. and continue with doing 1 vol2 lab on the weekends when I can.

Quick update before I head to work out.. I managed to finish the last Vol3 lab today, completing that workbook. I'll probably start doing more vol 2 labs during the week and weekends for a bit. Once I get more under my belt, Im' going to shoot do an INE mock lab to see where I stand and what I need work on. Hopefully then I'll have a really good idea for a review plan

Woa.. been a while since i've updated.

Gotten through Vol 2, lab 9 today.. and learning and absorbing as much as I can. I'm hoping to have lab 10 & 11 done by this week if at all possible.. and the next weekend try my first INE mock lab to get a good baseline of where I need the most work. After that, I'll begin doing a very comprehensive review as well as continuing through the INE vol 2 labs.

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