Starting CCIE Written. Just had "the talk" with Mrs. Zartan.

Zartanasaurus

Day 78 - 8 hours
Total - 413.5 hours

Bridging & Switching: Q&A Rep 2.
Security: Q&A Rep 2.
IP Services: Q&A Rep 2.
BGP: Q&A Rep 1. 7.1 - 7.12 refresher. 7.13-7.34 Rep 1. I want to get through at least 7.49 tomorrow before moving on to reading Multicast and going through most of the WB labs. I actually feel pretty confident on the multicast stuff, but I want to get through to the MSDP task to at least have done it at the CLI.

Zartanasaurus

Day 79-80 - 14 hours
Total - 427.5 hours

Saturday was my 3-month anniversary from when I officially started. Averaging ~5 hours of study per day.
80% complete ECG.

L2 WAN: ECG Chapter 15.
EIGRP: Q&A Rep 2.
OSPF: Q&A Rep 2. 6.15 - 6.31 Rep 2. Written Bootcamp video 9.
BGP: 7.35 - 7.49 Rep 1. Written Bootcamp video 10.
Multicast: New notes and Q&A. ECG Chapters 16-17.
QoS: Q&A Rep 3.

I'm going to clear as much as WBI as possible for multicast tomorrow. Already been through the first 10 several times, and the remaining ones look pretty simple at a glance.

Zartanasaurus

These Written bootcamp videos are pretty boring if you've already done a lot of studying and labs.

Zartanasaurus

Day 81 - 6 hours
Total - 433.5 hours

Multicast: New Q&A Rep 1. 8.1 - 8.10 refresher. 8.11 - 8.34. Rep 1. Took me a long time to get through the entire WB.

Roguetadhg

I like seeing the progress. Keep it going!

Zartanasaurus

Roguetadhg wrote: »

I like seeing the progress.

Me too!

Zartanasaurus

Day 82 - 2.5 hours
Total - 436 hours

Multicast: Written bootcamp video 13.
Security: ECG Chapter 18.

Short day by my standards. I was scheduled to do Rep 2 for BGP labs, but I ended up taking an unexpected nap. Also have BGP lab reps tomorrow, so I'll just roll them all into one sitting. 86% done the ECG. MPLS and IPv6 left.

drkat

I have a question - are you working while you're doing this??

Zartanasaurus

drkat wrote: »

I have a question - are you working while you're doing this??

I try to get 2-3 hours of reading/labbing at work around lunch time. Since people take lunch at different times, there's a 3 hour window when you have a lot less people bugging you. Sometimes I get no studying done, sometimes I get a lot. Lately it's been a lot.

Zartanasaurus

Day 83-84 - 8 hours
Total - 444 hours

Bridging & Switching: New Q&A Rep 3.
BGP: New Q&A and 7.1-7.29 Rep 3.
IPv6: Note consolidation and new Q&A created. ECG Chapter 20.
Security: New Q&A Rep 3.
IP Services: New Q&A Rep 3.
MPLS: Note consolidation and new Q&A created. ECG Chapter 19.

Major goals for the weekend:
1) QoS note consolidation and quick skim through 3 chapters in ECG.
2) Read SWITCH OCG for MSTP with notes, Q&A and finish labs 1.33 - 1.36.
3) Pick through Security labs focusing on AAA and ZFW.
4) Pick through IP Services labs focusing on DHCP and NAT.
5) Brush up on some minor stuff like login banners, PPP/PPPoE, RSPAN.

I'm not sure if I want to watch anymore CCIE Written bootcamp videos. After having watched all of the ATC videos, I feel like it's not giving me anything I haven't already quizzed myself on or labbed. Security, Services and QoS adds up to an hour, so I guess I can watch those really quick also. Not going back on the other stuff I missed.

Zartanasaurus

Day 85 - 5.5 hours
Total - 449.5 hours

EIGRP: New Q&A Rep 3.
OSPF: New Q&A Rep 3.
Multicast: New Q&A Rep 2.
IPv6: New Q&A Rep 1.
QoS: ECG Chapters 12-14. Note consolidation.
MPLS: New Q&A Rep 1.

Major goal 1 accomplished. The other 4 goals shouldn't take as long...

Zartanasaurus

Day 86 - 6.5 hours
Total - 456 hours

Bridging & Switching: CCNP Switch OCG Chapter 10. WB I 1.33 - 1.36. Not a whole lot to configure for MSTP in the workbooks...
IP Routing: Watched the first vSeminar on OER.

Took 2 Boson practice exams. Got an 82% and a 79%. Felt I did much better on the 2nd one than I actually did, although I haven't gone through to look at the ones I got wrong test #2. Went over test #1, and followed the links to Cisco docs for some reading and note taking.

Zartanasaurus

Going over the explanations in Boson and came across a really good pdf on the differences between OSPFv2 and OSPFv3.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/iosswrel/ps6537/ps6553/prod_presentation0900aecd80311e31.pdf

Zartanasaurus

Passed the Written today.

Zartanasaurus

The Boson practice exams are probably the closest thing you can get to the actual test without being a ****. It's uncanny.

Forsaken_GA

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

The Boson practice exams are probably the closest thing you can get to the actual test without being a ****. It's uncanny.

Yup, same experience I had. The Boson ExamSim is *very* representative of the Written, which is why I tell anyone, if you're comfortable with the questions on it, you're ready for the Written

MrBrian

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

Passed the Written today.

Congrats! You're that much closer

Zartanasaurus

FYI, I haven't cut and run after passing the Written. I have a couple of projects at work in the pipeline I need to take care of, plus I had planned on a short 1-week vacation after getting my Written done to recharge. Been reading up on FC/FCoE and getting acquainted with Cisco UCS. Should be back in the CCIE saddle in a few days.

QHalo

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

Passed the Written today.

Oh snap! Nice! Get a beer

jamesp1983

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

Passed the Written today.

Congrats! You're moving right along.

Zartanasaurus

Aaaaaand, we're back.

Day 87-88 - 9.5 hours
Total - 465.5 hours

IP Services: IP Services Deep Dive Videos 1-7, 11, 16-17. My weakness on the Written was PfR/RMON/EEM type stuff, so I want to shore that up before I get into Vol 2 labs after peeking at some of the tasks in Lab 1.

Not sure what category to throw this under, but I read the first 3 chapters of Cisco Express Forwarding. I'd definitely recommend this book to someone to prepare for the Written. Safari Books finally has an Android app. It's pretty buggy right now, but the offline backpack feature is nice.

@5200 pages read. I have the following books on my "definitely probably reading these" list which comes to another 3700 pages
EIGRP for IP
OSPF: Anatomy of a Routing Protocol
Internet Routing Architectures
Deploying IPv6 Networks
End to End QoS Network Design
Troubleshooting IP Routing Protocols

Zartanasaurus

Switched GNS3 routers from 3725 to 7206 to get rid of some of the multicast problems with Gt96k emulation. I was considering paying for real routers or rack rentals, but if everything goes smoothly from here on out, I'll stick with my virtual lab.

Another upside is it supports the IOS version in the INE topology, whereas the 3725 was a few behind and didn't support some of the commands.

Zartanasaurus

INE is 2/2 on rack rental problems so far.

Zartanasaurus

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

INE is 2/2 on rack rental problems so far.

Everything went smoothly once the config got loaded.

Zartanasaurus

So my experience with INE rack rentals has not been positive thus far. Maybe I'm doing something wrong and don't realize it.

Night 1: Scheduled 3 hours to do TS lab #1. I'm locked out for the first 20 mins after my start time with an invalid password message. I try to submit a 911 ticket and when I submit it, it returns an error that I didn't fill out a description. Tried padding it with junk at the bottom in case there was some kind of minimum character limit, to no avail. Tried from Chrome and IE. Finally am able to log in and the configs are loaded. Eventually I find out BB2 isn't configured. At least I assume it's not supposed to have a blank config and SW2 has config to eBGP peer with it. Oh well. It's only a 5 difficulty but I didn't pass. Wasn't too worried about it since I was a little nervous doing a WB2 lab for the first time and this was just a warmup to get used to the process. Made a couple simple mistakes that I wouldn't have if I had thought about the question a little better.

Night 2: Schedule another 3 hours to do TS lab #2. Hard to schedule an 8-hr block during work nights, so I figure I'll do 2-hour TS labs during the week and 6-hr config labs during the weekend. Choose my config about 30 minutes ahead of time. When I sign in, nothing is configured. Go back to the console and choose the config and lose the first 15 minutes, but everything loaded okay the 2nd time. Difficulty 6 and I passed with flying colors. Anyone who has read the IEOC forums knows about the mistaken solution on ticket #6. There's a couple different ways you can fix it, but the listed solution does not.

Night 3: 6 hours scheduled to do config lab #1. Same problem as night #2. No configs loaded at startup even though I chose one. Lose the first 15 minutes again. And with 6 hours really being 5.5 hours, I end up with 5 hours to try to do the entire lab. I'm just started on section 7 and I'll have to see if I can do both 7 and 8 within the 1-hour time frame. It's doable and I only see 1 task that I'm not familiar with but I'll complete the entire thing even if it takes me the entire 2.5 hours. Out of a possible 46 points of sections I've gone through, I feel confident on 40 of the points. I can't believe Network Services is 26% of the grade! That's fine, because I feel Services is one of my weaknesses, so I'm glad they're gonna kick my butt with it early.

I have 35 tokens left, which gives me 3 sessions left I can book at these temporary prices. In case you didn't know, it will be 10 tokens per 3 hour session for the month of August, which is perfect timing for me. I've given thought to scheduling config labs during the week and splitting it over two days, but you are only getting 5 hours of time vs 5.5 hours of time if you schedule back to back, which sucks.

1.5 chapters left of the CEF book. It's a nice little resource, and the chapter on CEF forthe 6500 is useful to me in my day job even if it has no relevance for the CCIE exam.

Has anyone read Frame Relay Solutions Guide? I don't consider FR a weakness, but I wouldn't say it's a strength either. The chapters on FRTS and PPPoFR are the most interesting to me.

Zartanasaurus

Bought the CCIE Flashcards from CCIE Initial Draft blog for $4 in the Google Play store. Only went through the Services set, but they seem to focus on knowing commands. Could come in handy for the lab.

Zartanasaurus

Finally finished Lab 1 in its entirety. No config loaded at start again. Also was an error saving my config, so I dunno if I'll even be able to verify what I did completely. Haven't gone over the entire thing yet, but it seems like me and several other people interpreted 2.1's requirement to prevent intercepting the OSPF communication as md5 authentication and not switching from broadcast to non-broadcast. Odd choice of wording.

Forsaken_GA

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

Finally finished Lab 1 in its entirety. No config loaded at start again. Also was an error saving my config, so I dunno if I'll even be able to verify what I did completely. Haven't gone over the entire thing yet, but it seems like me and several other people interpreted 2.1's requirement to prevent intercepting the OSPF communication as md5 authentication and not switching from broadcast to non-broadcast. Odd choice of wording.

They caught me with that too. Theoretically, even though it's hashed, it's still being intercepted, though it's not being interpreted, though I suppose it could be if they brute forced it and you used a simple password. Non_Broadcast requires neighbor statements, which means the traffic goes unicast, which means no interception at all.

As you get into the Vol2 labs, you'll figure out pretty quick that you need to look very carefully at the wording, and challenge your pre-conceptions

Just wait until you get to Lab11 though.... that one seriously screwed with my head.

Sett

Actually it still can be interpreted. The packets are not encrypted, there is just a calculated hash of the packet + the key appended to them to verify that they have been sent from a legitimate source, but there is no encryption what so ever. So you can capture them and read it easily, just not spoof them.

Forsaken_GA

Sett wrote: »

Actually it still can be interpreted. The packets are not encrypted, there is just a calculated hash of the packet + the key appended to them to verify that they have been sent from a legitimate source, but there is no encryption what so ever. So you can capture them and read it easily, just not spoof them.

Ah crap, you're right, routing protocol auth isn't encrypted, my mistake.

Which does in fact make changing the network type to NON_BROADCAST on an ethernet segment the only way to make sure the packets aren't intercepted