About to start the time clock

So I finished my NP a few weeks ago, and immediately started planning for the IE, I gotta keep this train in motion, cause it takes a lot to get it moving. So at the end of next month I will be attending a written bootcamp, through Lammle, but taught by Narbik. I already knew I wanted to attend one of his bootcamps for the lab, but work is paying for the written so I will definatly take advantage of that. I have the majority of my lab equipment, just need to pick up a few bits, I had been planning this from the start, so as long as the blueprint doesn't change in the next 19.5 months I should be set.

Currently reading the CCIE R&S Exam Guide and supplementing with Cisco docs and a subscription to Safari Books. I try to lab up the things I don't understand, but also trying to limit my lab time until written is complete, because I tend to "explore" a bit too much in the lab and not just focus on what I started on.

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Comments

MickQ

Very nice. I wish you the very best on your journey and hope that you're able to stick to the plan.

jamesp1983

Good luck and I look forward to reading about your journey.

NetworkVeteran

Good luck! FYI, the folks at INE believe the CCIE R&S lab blueprint will change in 2-3 months. Cisco generally gives 6 months lead time before obsoleting anything, so if they're right, you either have a 6-9 month sprint ahead of you, or will have to deal with at least some updates.

Zartanasaurus

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Any guesses as to what will be added/removed?

NetworkVeteran

Your guess is as good as mine.

Probably nix the EOS hardware, upgrade the IOS, and cover its new featurettes?

nerdydad

NetworkVeteran wrote: »

FYI, the folks at INE believe the CCIE R&S lab blueprint will change in 2-3 months. Cisco generally gives 6 months lead time before obsoleting anything, so if they're right, you either have a 6-9 month sprint ahead of you, or will have to deal with at least some updates.

Yeah, I read that too, I am hoping to get away with the current lab and just use rack rentals for the new stuff, I suppose time will tell.

Forsaken_GA

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

Any guesses as to what will be added/removed?

if there's a god, Frame Relay will be consigned to the pits of hell.

nerdydad

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NNNNOOOOOOOOO, I've got frame-relay, they will only replace it with a technology I'm not as comfortable with.

Forsaken_GA

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The chances of you ever actually working on a frame relay link if you don't already do so are miniscule. No SP I'm aware of is still leasing new FR links. Pretty much the only reason new folks learn Frame Relay is for Cisco exams.

You would be better served learning technology that is actually relevant. You are pursuing the CCIE to become a better network engineer and not just pass the exam because you think it'll make you alot of money, correct?

nerdydad

When I worked in the NOC of a local SP, I had to deal with it a few times. Last I heard they were looking to upgrade their frame equipment because a few companies wouldn't let it go, and it is a cash cow because now they charge a premium for it.

SteveO86

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

if there's a god, Frame Relay will be consigned to the pits of hell.

LOL, seriously I laughed at that one! I need to get out more

I could only imagine what they would replace frame-relay with.

Forsaken_GA

nerdydad wrote: »

When I worked in the NOC of a local SP, I had to deal with it a few times. Last I heard they were looking to upgrade their frame equipment because a few companies wouldn't let it go, and it is a cash cow because now they charge a premium for it.

Most companies still have frame relay circuits simply because circuits tend to have long term contracts attached to them. 10 and 20 year terms are pretty standard, at least here in the US. Level3 has stated flat out they will not renew contracts on frame relay circuits, you want to continue getting service from them, you migrate to an MPLS circuit.

LOL, seriously I laughed at that one! I need to get out more

I could only imagine what they would replace frame-relay with.

That's pretty easy, little heavier emphasis on MPLS and Metro-E. The simple truth of the matter is that the majority of WAN interconnects now present themselves as regular ethernet ports. By and large, Frame Relay and ATM and the like are relics of the past that you're only going to see in legacy or very rural deployments. Anything new being turned up is going to be a PRI/BRI, SONET/SDH, or a straight up 10/100 GigE port being mux'd over CWDM/DWDM gear, or it's going to be dropped to you as an ethernet port and MPLS'd across a providers backbone at layer 2 or layer 3 to look like it's a straight end-to-end circuit.

And I like it like that. From an enterprise perspective, if I need to connect two remote sites, I want the provider to give me a circuit that, as far as I can tell, is a direct layer 2 connection to my router at the other site, and I can treat it just like a normal ethernet port as far as turn up goes. No frotzing around with DLCI's and clock rates and other crap like that (though you can still get into the fun of QoS speed mismatches if the physical rate of the interface is faster than what you've contracted the circuit for...)

shodown

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Most companies still have frame relay circuits simply because circuits tend to have long term contracts attached to them. 10 and 20 year terms are pretty standard, at least here in the US. Level3 has stated flat out they will not renew contracts on frame relay circuits, you want to continue getting service from them, you migrate to an MPLS circuit.

That's pretty easy, little heavier emphasis on MPLS and Metro-E. The simple truth of the matter is that the majority of WAN interconnects now present themselves as regular ethernet ports. By and large, Frame Relay and ATM and the like are relics of the past that you're only going to see in legacy or very rural deployments. Anything new being turned up is going to be a PRI/BRI, SONET/SDH, or a straight up 10/100 GigE port being mux'd over CWDM/DWDM gear, or it's going to be dropped to you as an ethernet port and MPLS'd across a providers backbone at layer 2 or layer 3 to look like it's a straight end-to-end circuit.

And I like it like that. From an enterprise perspective, if I need to connect two remote sites, I want the provider to give me a circuit that, as far as I can tell, is a direct layer 2 connection to my router at the other site, and I can treat it just like a normal ethernet port as far as turn up goes. No frotzing around with DLCI's and clock rates and other crap like that (though you can still get into the fun of QoS speed mismatches if the physical rate of the interface is faster than what you've contracted the circuit for...)

Why should they do a heavier emphasis on MPLS when most enterprise engineers will never have to do it, and the only time they really touch BGP's is when the provider gives them a config with BGP in it. Now I'm not saying this is true for all Enterprises, but a lot I have worked with in the past are using 3rd party companies for NOC services and WAN management. I can understand what you are saying from a Metro and DMVPN point of view as the enterprise will surely have to configure those, but I'm seeing a lot of enterprises routing skills diminish with more skils and time being devoted to services like wireless, security voip and so on.

Forsaken_GA

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Realistically, they only have 2 choices, as they're not going to remove WAN from the R&S track. No WAN = No BGP, and that's a rather important part of R&S. So they can either leave outdated legacy connections on the R&S, or they can move into something more modern. This wouldn't exactly be unprecedented. They introduced basic MPLS with v4.0, ISDN was removed, and so on.

What would make the most sense is to expand the topology, which is pretty easy if they virtualize the entire lab in IOU, and put configuration of a small MPLS core as a primary task in order to provide WAN services to the various AS's. Toss in basic L2VPN and AToM, and you've effectively replaced Frame Relay.

nerdydad

Just wanted to give a quick update.
I've been reading, reading, and reading, watching some video's, and getting the final pieces of the lab put together.

Thought I would share some of my headaches from this past weekend, so others don't make my rookie mistakes. I'm using a 2522 for BB1 and frame-relay switch, per the INE topology. My IOS didn't support ipv6, and my Cisco contract id doesn't allow for downloads of ios's for a 2522, time to call in a favor. Next up, nothing was connected, so I thought, what the heck, I'm in no hurry, I'll just xmodem an ios onto it. Did you know 2500's don't support modem through the console, well I didn't. So I hook up another router, fire up the tftp server and load up the new ios. Now one would think that a guy studying for his IE would have thought to check to see if he had enough memory for this new ios wouldn't you, you would be wrong. So, a quick trip to ebay and more dram is on the way.

So that was my weekend, how is everyone else's studies going?

Mrock4

check this link out...read Brian M's response regarding the BB2/IPv6 stuff:

BB2 config - IEOC - INE's Online Community

nerdydad

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Hmmmm.... Thanks for that, I'm actually using a 1721 for BB2, I'll have to go play around in the feature navigator and see what I can find.

I had upgraded pretty much everything, but I had bought the 2522 before I knew it could double for BB1 also, so I had never even pondered it's ios and ram, because I thought I would only be using it to simulate the frame switch.

NOC-Ninja

Goodluck! Welcome to the craziness. lol

nerdydad

I attended the written bootcamp last week, it was actually taught by Dan Aguilera[FONT=Helvetica, Arial]. I feel pretty good after I attended the class, as I was much more prepared for the written than I had thought, I guess all those hours of reading have payed off. I passed the written, and now the real work begins, I had actually already been doing some labbing to reinforce new technologies as I read about them.

So the time clock has officially started...

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