Marrying 2 WANs

DragonCoding

I recently went on an interview for a position requiring heavy Cisco knowledge, CCNA a plus...

While at the interview I was being grilled by the current Cisco Tech that was leaving, one of the questions he asked me totally stumped me...

You have 2 WAN interfaces, RouterA S0 and RouterB S0, the routers are connected to the same LAN.

RouterA S0 10.0.0.0
RouterB S0 12.0.0.0

LAN 192.168.0.0


How would you marry the 2 WANs? :


The Cisco Tech was nice and tried to explain it a couple of different ways, but I was totally flabbergasted...

If anyone can explain it to me, please help.....


DragonCoding

lordy

What do you consider 'marrying WANs' ?

From the type of question I would guess that he wanted to test your knowledge on routing protocols and that he wanted you to tell him what routing protocol you would choose for what reason and how to configure it.

Just a rough guess though

2lazybutsmart

those two serial interfaces would never get married (whatever that's supposed to mean) because they're not on the same network.

You shoulda told him that no conjugal relationships whatsoever exist inside a router.

2lbs

QUIX0TIC

Can you tell us what he said as an explanation? Ive never heard that term for routers but switches... it just means trunking.

DragonCoding

The position was at a financial firm in which milliseconds count, And I do know they use HSRP, I didn't have a clue what that was until I got home and started researching it. It involves creating a Virtual router, so that if the first default router goes down all traffic is seamlessly rerouted to the backup router...

I not sure but marrying may have something to do with this : :


DragonCoding

DragonCoding

He was very insistent it was for the 2 WANs,

he drew a little picture and said,"How would you marry the 2 WAN interfaces?"

QUIX0TIC

and HSRP was involved? HSRP is Hot Standby Router protocol and it creates a "virtual gateway/ router" for constant going traffic.

rossonieri#1

DragonCoding wrote:

The position was at a financial firm in which milliseconds count, And I do know they use HSRP, I didn't have a clue what that was until I got home and started researching it. It involves creating a Virtual router, so that if the first default router goes down all traffic is seamlessly rerouted to the backup router...

I not sure but marrying may have something to do with this : :


DragonCoding

marrying 2WAN...
maybe you want to say to use load balancing/MLPP.
i dont know much about using MLPP in cisco router, but in nortel we use a virtual ip, and real ip (that consisting your 2 router IPs), real ports, etc... - simple mapping matter.
HSRP goal is providing another road to destination when one of the road is dead.

DragonCoding

Where would I find more about MLPP?

Also, in a nortel system, what steps would you go through to implement, just out of curiosity....


DragonCoding

voodoocat

lordy wrote:

What do you consider 'marrying WANs' ?

From the type of question I would guess that he wanted to test your knowledge on routing protocols and that he wanted you to tell him what routing protocol you would choose for what reason and how to configure it.

Just a rough guess though

I agree.

As opposed to focusing on all the terms for learning a test, they generally want to see how well you actually understand the concepts that the job actually requires. Don't get hung up on the terminology. They want to see how deep they can go! Beyond the surface of memorization skills.

But don't stress about it at even if you're a novice with networks. Be confident and they will offer different ways of explaining things. I've made some stupid mistakes on interviews getting caught up in the terminology. My last interview, I settled down midway through and asked the right questions to jog my memory even though it has been 4 years since I worked in it. A good interviewing engineer will conduct an interview in this matter. A really good engineer will also ask about something that doesn't make sense just to see how you work through it. I've heard from some engineers where they were asked questions involving made up hybrid protocols.

rossonieri#1

DragonCoding wrote:

Where would I find more about MLPP?

Also, in a nortel system, what steps would you go through to implement, just out of curiosity....


DragonCoding

just go to their websites...

DragonCoding

Thank you all for all your help....


DragonCoding