64:61:6e - My own thread

64:61:6e

aragoen_celtdra wrote: »

Good Morning EIGRP! How is it treating you?

EIGRP treated me fair. I finished up Chapter 7 in Routing TCP/IP Volume 1 this morning. I will probably go through the INE ATC VoD for EIGRP today/tonight like I did with RIP. Looks to be a little under 4.5 hours of material so should be able to get through that. I may also do a few light labs if I have time tonight starting with RIP then EIGRP maybe tomorrow. Once I'm through those I'll begin OSPF. That's going to be a big chuck of my time I think. I'm sure I will remember a good bit from my previous CCNP studies but I know there's still a lot I'm not familiar with or even forgot.

64:61:6e

I finished up a few basic RIP labs yesterday but am going to go through a few in INE WB1 this morning. I'm going to try to get a few EIGRP labs done today too.

blueberries

64:61:6e wrote: »

Absolutely!

On the shitter, and during sex, a true CCIE candidate should always have routers on the brain.

64:61:6e

Moving on to OSPF now. I got through some CCNP-Level RIP/EIGRP labs pretty easily but then moved to INE's WB1 and found that some of the material I had to research a bit. I'm thinking that I might be going too deep for the written so am deciding to move along to the next topic for now. Once I get through OSPF and BGP topics I'll start on sections of the Boson material to see where I'm at. I'll go back and review or dive a little deeper into the various subjects based on those Boson sim results. I started to take hand-written notes which I am then converting to OneNote during a review session. I feel if I write something down I'll remember it more than if I type it. Plus it forces me to organize my notes and in turn I get a review out of the material.

Routing TCP/IP Volume 1 Chapter 8 is next.

silver145

Although you feel you may be going too in depth for the written, every little helps, Written is just a step, that extra knowledge may save you at the lab! with an oddly worded question.

64:61:6e

silver145 wrote: »

Although you feel you may be going too in depth for the written, every little helps, Written is just a step, that extra knowledge may save you at the lab! with an oddly worded question.

Very true. I'm sure I'll hit the topic later on in my studies so why not continue going deep into the different areas. Then when I hit it in the lab studies it would just be something that I would already have some familiarity with.

vinbuck

Agreed...I'm not even specifically preparing for the written. Once I've gotten several months of lab prep under my belt, i'll go knock out the written

aragoen_celtdra

I myself am tempted to scale back a little because I'm afraid I'm getting too deep too early. The problem is by going to deep early on and doing the same thing for every subject, it's taking much too long to circle back around to review the topics you did earlier. What ends up happening is that you've forgotten a lot of the things you learned earlier.. which is almost self-defeating cycle.

I don't know, maybe I'm just over-thinking it. But for now, unless I actually see some sign of diminishing return on my efforts, I'll continue with my wayward ways.

64:61:6e

Ugh. Wanted to go through a few EIGRP labs before I went to bed since I haven't gotten to them yet after finished up the RIP labs and started with INE WB1. First task took me about 30 minutes. My config was in within the first 5 minutes but then the adj between two switches wouldn't come up. Reviewed the config and everything was fine. Reconfigured EIGRP, still wouldn't come up. Saw that the Q count was 1 one on end so figured something was in the middle blocking protocol 88. Nothing in the path. I could ping from each end to the interface IP but not 224.0.0.10. Ran EIGRP packet and ip packet detail debugs and saw Hellos were being sent from either switch but they were not being received on the remote ends. Saved the config and reloaded the switches and the adj came right up....*sigh*
Time for bed. I work better in the mornings anyways.

blueberries

aragoen_celtdra wrote: »

I myself am tempted to scale back a little because I'm afraid I'm getting too deep too early. The problem is by going to deep early on and doing the same thing for every subject, it's taking much too long to circle back around to review the topics you did earlier. What ends up happening is that you've forgotten a lot of the things you learned earlier.. which is almost self-defeating cycle.

I don't know, maybe I'm just over-thinking it. But for now, unless I actually see some sign of diminishing return on my efforts, I'll continue with my wayward ways.

I know its boring, but its scientifically proven that if you repeat something enough times it won't be forgotten. So for example, maybe repeat the same lab 4, or 5 times before moving on and it becomes second nature.

64:61:6e

Turned my lab back up and saw that the adjacency between SW2 and SW4 was up but the adjacency between R5 and SW2 was not this time. Found that the Q count was at 1 on R5. Reloaded everything again after a little digging and all adjacencies came up without an issue. Reloaded everything 2 more times just to see and couldn't replicate the issue. Strange issues with my SW2 3550. I'll have to keep an eye on that. Unfortunate issue is that nothing shows up in any debug messages as the cause of the problem.

64:61:6e

Back to studies after taking the day off yesterday with it being July 4th.
I also picked up the Cisco Press R/S Quick Reference eBook taking advantage of the 40% off deal they have until the 7th. Figured it couldn't hurt to have something else for quick review sessions. I found it's a few $ cheaper for the Kindle but I prefer the scroll feature in iBooks.

OK...back to OSPF now.

64:61:6e

It's a good feeling when you can spot typos in material as you are going through it. Found a discrepancy in the Quick Reference I picked up yesterday. In the OSPF section it lists that type 4 LSA's exist in a Stub area. Since a Type 4 LSA is an ASBR summary LSA there's no need to have them appear in a stub area, these would not be forwarded by the ABR and would not appear in a Stub area.

64:61:6e

Finished up the OSPF chapter of Routing TCP/IP Volume 1 and the Quick Reference book. Also did a few OSPF labs but will probably do a few more over the weekend. Moving on to BGP. I'm going to start with Internet Routing Architectures by Halabi. I read a few chapters before and found it to be enjoyable.

NetworkVeteran

blueberries wrote: »

I know its boring, but its scientifically proven that if you repeat something enough times it won't be forgotten.

True, but it takes hundreds thousands or tens of thousands of repetitions to reach that point. I've honed some skills to that point, for example in competitive sports, but learning all the CCIE content to that level is impractical. Just yesterday I retired a flashcard that I forgot--after 29 repetitions! The trick is to do as few repetitions as possible such that you remember "enough" of the content "long enough" to pass the CCIE lab exam.

he problem is by going to deep early on and doing the same thing for every subject, it's taking much too long to circle back around to review the topics you did earlier. What ends up happening is that you've forgotten a lot of the things you learned earlier.. which is almost self-defeating cycle.

There are a few ways to address this--

1. Go Deep, but allocate 20% of your study time to review.
2. Go Shallow, and each circle, hit just a few new topics per area.
3. Go Integrative, and ensure your study of new topics builds upon the old ones.

I personally use an Anki 2250-card deck to remember, so it doesn't matter which way I go, as long as my feet point forward.

NetworkVeteran

64:61:6e wrote: »

In the OSPF section it lists that type 4 LSA's exist in a Stub area. Since a Type 4 LSA is an ASBR summary LSA there's no need to have them appear in a stub area, these would not be forwarded by the ABR and would not appear in a Stub area.

Agreed. Type 4 and Type 5 LSAs are never sent into a Stubby, Totally Stubby, or NSSA area. The closest a 'stubby'-ish area comes to a Type 4 LSA, is that an NSSA ABR upon receiving a Type 7 LSA, would flood Type 4 and Type 5 LSAs into the backbone area.

64:61:6e

Hammering my way through the Internet Routing Architectures book. I'd like to have this book done within the next week or two. It may take me longer but that's my goal. I need to have a goal or it won't get done. Tonight I will be creating flashcards from my previous notes on RIP, EIGRP and OSPF making separate decks for each and start a spaced repetition study plan for those.

64:61:6e

I created a good amount of flash cards last night and this morning. Still lots more to create. I spent a good amount of time actually figuring out how/where I wanted to create them. I started with Anki but the iPhone app is so expensive and unfortunately in order to get the deck to my iPhone, I would need to purchase that full app ($25). There is a free version but could only create flashcards locally and with the amount I will be creating, it wouldn't work out. With that, I moved to Flashcards++ (free) which you can pull decks from Quizlet (free). I wasn't into that process very much. Then I realized my wife has a Nexus 7 so I commandeered that for a little while to run Anki (free on Android). So, now I'm back to using Anki again on my wife's Nexus. I then started to look at other capabilities of the Nexus with books and videos to see if it would be worth moving from my ancient iPad 1. I might keep an eye on the rumor mill for the Nexus 7 2nd gen which from what I read is expected to be announced soon (if not tomorrow according to a few rumors). The Nexus 7 has a much better display than the iPad 1 that I have (as would be expected). I could go for a new iPad but to save a bit of money I could pick up a Nexus since I really only use my iPad for reading and videos now.

OK, back to studying BGP for now.

-dan

silver145

Also on BGP here now! Just going through BGP Exam course from INE first to get me warmed up!

I use the Ipad mini for reading/videos, i found the bezel size was perfect for reading as the nexus seemed a little.....2000's (bigger bezel)

I am not an applefanboi but i wanted to be comfortable and happy with my revision tools so that was how i justified the extra ££, (what a dumbass, i know) haha.

64:61:6e

silver145 wrote: »

Also on BGP here now! Just going through BGP Exam course from INE first to get me warmed up!

I use the Ipad mini for reading/videos, i found the bezel size was perfect for reading as the nexus seemed a little.....2000's (bigger bezel)

I am not an applefanboi but i wanted to be comfortable and happy with my revision tools so that was how i justified the extra ££, (what a dumbass, i know) haha.

I'm reading Internet Routing Architectures right now. I'm enjoying this book so far. I might try to tackle the BGP related chapters in Routing TCP/IP Vol II once I'm done this book. After that I'll go through the ATC Videos for BGP. I also might look at adding the option to download the ATC videos so that I can speed them up a little using VLC or another media player on the Nexus. I watched the RIP, EIGRP and OSPF Written VoD at 1.2x-1.3x the speed and was still effective with taking detailed notes. I watched a few of the ATC sections using the streaming option and felt I was wasting time on some of the areas. I didn't want to skip through and jump ahead in the video to not miss any details but would have been nice to pass through at a quicker pace at times.

I wish the Anki app was free on the App store or at least $5 then I could justify buying the app. With it being free on the Google Play store, that's a very attractive price. I would normally lean towards the Apple product without question just because everything I have all works together with the iPhone, iPad, iMac, AppleTV but the price of the Nexus is attractive and fits my current requirements.

64:61:6e

Got through A LOT of BGP theory these past few days. By far my favorite routing protocol. I'm going to pause on this topic and get into some switching. I'm going to run through the Cisco Press Quick reference for switching and hop into some labs tonight. Need a break from reading for a little bit.

64:61:6e

Not sure if I'm liking this Cisco Press R/S Quick Reference book. Looking at the section on "Root Bridge Placement" on page 15 it states that if you set a VLAN ID of 100 to a priority of 4096, it will set the priority to 4096 for VLAN 100 on the local switch. In the next paragraph it states that if you use the "spanning-tree vlan VLAN_ID root primary" command, it will examine the priority of the existing root and set the priority on the local switch to be 1 less. And that if the default is used on the root, the priority is set to 8192. It also states that if you use the "spanning-tree vlan VLAN_ID root secondary" command, it would set the priority to 16,384.


This is ALL wrong.


If you set a priority of 4096 to VLAN 100, the priority would be 4196, not 4096.
If using default priorities on the root and you use the macro to set another bridge as the root, that priority would be 24576 plus the system ID so for VLAN 1 it would be 24577.
Then also using the default priorities, if you use the macro to set a bridge as a secondary, it sets to priority to 28672 plus the system ID, not 16,384.


Think I'm done with this Quick Reference book with the issues I've found so far.

NetworkVeteran

Hi 64:61:6e! Here's the relevant snippet from the actual 802.1D specification and Cisco documentation--

IEEE 802.1D wrote:

The four most significant bits of the most significant octet of a Bridge Identifier comprise a settable priority
component that permits the relative priority of Bridges to be managed (17.13.7 and Clause 14). The next
most significant twelve bits of a Bridge Identifier (the four least significant bits of the most significant octet,
plus the second most significant octet) comprise a locally assigned system ID extension.

Valid Bridge Priorities are in the range 0 through 61 440, in steps of 4096.

Catalyst 3550 docs wrote:

The 2 bytes previously used for the switch priority are re-allocated into a 4-bit priority value and a 12-bit extended system ID value equal to the vlan ID.

(4 bits only allow 2^4=16 values, which explains why it ranges from 0 to 61440 only in steps of 4096.)

Now, returning to your disagreements with the text--

64:61:6e wrote:

If you set a priority of 4096 to VLAN 100, the priority would be 4196, not 4096.

The priority would be 4096. As per above, the priority can only be sets in steps of 4096. This is a limitation of the encoding--there's no way for Cisco to "sneak" extra bits into the BPDU, and if you sniff its BPDUs on the wire, you can see that.

The Extended System ID is what actually changes based on the VLAN ID.

This is a subtle distinction, but I believe your book's on the right side, and at the very least not wrong.

64:61:6e

NetworkVeteran wrote: »

Hi 64:61:6e! Here's the relevant snippet from the actual 802.1D specification and Cisco documentation--





(4 bits only allow 2^4=16 values, which explains why it ranges from 0 to 61440 only in steps of 4096.)

Now, returning to your disagreements with the text--


The priority would be 4096. As per above, the priority can only be sets in steps of 4096. This is a limitation of the encoding--there's no way for Cisco to "sneak" extra bits into the BPDU, and if you sniff its BPDUs on the wire, you can see that.

The Extended System ID is what actually changes based on the VLAN ID.

This is a subtle distinction, but I believe your book's on the right side, and at the very least not wrong.

Maybe I'm not reading it correctly and need to look at it again.

I can understand that the priority is set to 4096 but with using VLAN100 as the example, with the default PVST+ STP mode configured and setting a priority of 4096, the Priority would really equal 4196.

sw1#sho span v 100


VLAN0100
Spanning tree enabled protocol ieee
Root ID Priority 4196
Address 0011.9253.bc00
This bridge is the root
Hello Time 2 sec Max Age 20 sec Forward Delay 15 sec


Bridge ID Priority 4196 (priority 4096 sys-id-ext 100)
Address 0011.9253.bc00
Hello Time 2 sec Max Age 20 sec Forward Delay 15 sec
Aging Time 300


Interface Role Sts Cost Prio.Nbr Type

---

---- ---

---

---

---

Fa0/13 Desg FWD 19 128.15 P2p


sw1#

Also, I disagree with the statements regarding the use of the "primary" and "secondary" macros.
Why is this not making sense? I just don't see that section as being correct at all.

NetworkVeteran

64:61:6e wrote: »

Maybe I'm not reading it correctly and need to look at it again.

I can understand that the priority is set to 4096 but with using VLAN100 as the example, with the default PVST+ STP mode configured and setting a priority of 4096, the Priority would really equal 4196.

sw1#sho span v 100


VLAN0100
Spanning tree enabled protocol ieee
Root ID Priority 4196

The BridgePriority, again per the 802.1D clause quoted above, is really equal to 4096. The Extended System ID is what's impacted by the VLAN info. This is according to both the IEEE standard and Cisco's own documentation. This is enough for me to say, "The output's oversimplified" and "The author isn't wrong." Unless, of course, we are to consider Cisco IOS output authoritative.

64:61:6e

NetworkVeteran wrote: »

The BridgePriority, again per the 802.1D clause quoted above, is really equal to 4096. The Extended System ID is what's impacted by the VLAN info. This is according to both the IEEE standard and Cisco's own documentation. This is enough for me to say, "The output's oversimplified" and "The author isn't wrong." Unless, of course, we are to consider Cisco IOS output authoritative.

I'm not going to argue the facts . It makes sense. It's talking about 802.1D rather than PVST+ which is what I was thinking. I kept adding the system-id when I shouldn't have.

Moving on...
Thanks NetworkVeteran!

64:61:6e

Haven't posted on here for a little bit but am still cranking away. Went through all of INE's Bridging and Switching section in WB1 and started on QoS. Reading the QoS OCG now and am enjoying the book so far. Need to get more knowledge on QoS for upcoming projects at work. I'm also involved in some Data Center track related projects so might have to take a few days from IE studies and read up on Nexus and UCS stuff.

64:61:6e

I've been pretty quiet on here for a while but I've still be at it every day. Today was the first milestone with passing the written exam. It wasn't pretty but it was a pass so I'll take it. I know areas that I still need to brush up on so will be getting back to reading more specifically around QoS and Multicast. My plan is to review those 2 topics then begin labbing.

silver145

nice one! Few questions in there that just made you go..........hmmmmmmmm?.

any plans for the labbing?

carterw65

Great job! Now on to the labbing!