[300-101] CCNP Route - here we go

So after passing SWITCH 300-115 in February I was heavily involved with onboarding a new customer with a very large legacy Nortel voice estate transitioning to Cisco IPT.

The good: I'm finally doing what I love again which is voice (and doing a bit too much frankly but that comes with the package)
The not so good: i hate leaving loose ends. Having passed SWITCH, which I surprisingly enjoyed very much studying for, I kept getting that itch of diving deeper into routing and actually learn more about things like BGP, advanced EIGRP, OSPF, policy-routing etc

My plan is to use GNS3 to lab everything up.

For the material, I'm doing the same thing i did for SWITCH:

- OCG and FLG for ROUTE 300-101
- INE, CBT and LiveLessons for ROUTE 300-101

I plan on going through all 3 of the video series first as it's easier to understand some concepts from vids.

Then crack the books open, study each chapter from the OCG and FLG, take notes, watch the same chapter from each of 3 video courses and lab everything up.

When this is done, I'll be reviewing my notes, then go through the TSHOOT books material pertaining to ROUTE in order to get stuff settle in properly.

If all goes well, I hope to sit the ROUTE exam either late December 2017 or mid January 2018 but time will tell...then TSHOOT somewhere in March-April 2018.

...then the CIPTV2 300-075 until August 2018 but that's a subject for another topic

I will be using this thread to post progress on studies mostly for myself and others pursuing the same goal and writing down any catches/gotchas that I come across during studies.

Best of luck to anybody trying to tame the ROUTE beast!

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Good luck Negru!

I am also studying for Route, so I will be watching your progress closely. Your thread on switch was very informative!

Cheers,

Adrian

Good plan and good luck!

Thank you guys. I hope to stick to the plan as much as possible. It's going to be a very interesting 12 or so months ..

So right off the bat it seems that having done SWITCH first was a good idea. I came across early sections in the material where stuff done in SWITCH like FHRPs and even some STP vs RSTP stuff is being discussed in the context of how they affect routing (symmetric vs asymmetric).

Gotta love all those pieces coming together. Also the VRF stuff seems to be a very cool feature; I can already see this being a good candidate for VoIP or multi-tenant voice gateways and not only..

Good luck.... May the force be with you!

So progress has been slower than I would like it to be but beats stagnating. Think the biggest challenge for me is going to be IPv6 by the looks of things. Need to dig deeper into this topic. Can't say I'm very comfy with it so improvement area spotted

In between a 2 week vacation and work, studies took a hit but I'm back at it.

I've also bought some GNS3 Academy courses (there was a sale going on about 2 weeks ago) on MPLS and BGP which I've watched about half-way..just to get some more info on how you'd actually use this stuff in real life.

Stumbled into IS-IS and, much to my surprise, found out that IS-IS is still used A LOT in carrier networks so I'm also gathering some stuff on it as well.. I'd love to do a proper multi-tenant MPLS / BGP mock lab when I'm nearly done with ROUTE.

Going through the OCG material, I noticed mention of VRF and EVN. What bugged me though is that these aren't really given enough coverage (at least not on the official Route stuff) so I tried going a little deeper into VRF.

> managed to find out that 802.1Q trunks can link together VRFs on adjacent routers. All good but then I started contemplating what would happen if my peering VRF routers are separated by several others not within my administration

> did some research and found out that GRE tunnels can be used to link these VRFs across any number of intermediate routers, as long as there's routing of course

> one important thing I also found out is the tunnel key <key_number> command is needed on GRE tunnels that share the same source and destination addresses / interfaces. I was doing ping vrf stuff from one router to the far end one, got ICMP debug messages but they weren't being matched to the correct VRF to get the ECHO REPLY back

> found out that EVN is just a macro command; good when you've done things a thousand times over, awful if you're trying to learn stuff /new to the scene

> VRF Lite = VRF without MPLS ...glad this one was this easy to sort out

On to a thorough IPv6 review now. Got some material lined up on the topic so just need to dig through it; don't know why I'm so turned off by the topic .. could be I'm just getting grumpy the older I get and reluctant to change :P

So your step by step plan is:

(Watch all videos first) -> Study Books (Taking notes for each chapter and rewatching the videos corresponding) -> Then lab up what you have learnt?

dontstop wrote: »

So your step by step plan is:

(Watch all videos first) -> Study Books (Taking notes for each chapter and rewatching the videos corresponding) -> Then lab up what you have learnt?

Somewhat yes. Watching the vids helps with getting the lay of the land. Reading the book and highlighting stuff is the next step. However, I often lab stuff up while watching the vids and / or highlighting stuff from the book / reading stuff up.

Albeit hammered at work this week, managed to make some good progress.

- IPv6 recap done and dusted. Watched all the vids I could on the topic, used some of Cisco's SalesConnect (old partner training) courses for ROUTE to fill in some gaps. Also managed to get some CCNPv5 BSCI material where IPv6 is a little better explained

- Also reviewed Stateless Autoconfig, DHCPv6 and DHCPv6 Lite notes from the SWITCH course. Very good refresh.

- Looked into 6to4 tunneling. Important note is that on the GRE tunnels used for 6-to-4 tunneling, tunnel mode ipv6ip (not ipv6) or tunnel mode gre is used. I made the mistake of using mode ipv6 which didn't do the trick (would work for pure ipv6 tunnels though; good catch)

- Labbed up most of the topics in the 2nd chapter in GNS3 like DMVPN. Also did labs on IPsec, GRE over IPsec, Encrypted/Secure GRE (using ipsec profile vs crypto map like in traditional GRE over IPSec) and DMVPN with IPsec; not really stuff on the blueprint but stuff that always pops up in real life.

- Jeremy from CBT has some good stuff on DMVPN but the best resources on these Chapter 2 topics were from GNS3vault and networklessons.com (Rene Molenaar really knows his stuff).

- Might look at buying Rene Molenaar's "How to master ROUTE" book; his stuff is really good

On to RIPng and EIGRP stuff; this is where the real fun begins.

Slowly moving ahead with studies due to work

The upside is that going at a slower pace, lets stuff sink in just a little better.

Anyway, labbing some IPv6 RIPnG up and found out there's no passive-interface command in RIPnG which is a bummer. However, a quick google-fu and came across Rene Molenaar's suggestion to either:

1) use the redistribute connected command
2) use a prefix-list to filter any RIPnG advertisements on the interface that should be passive

..just one of those gotcha moments.

On the same note, trying to ping IPv6 hosts with EUi-64 addresses is a pain; I can see how DNS would help a lot with IPv6 addressing.

On to EIGRP.

In preparation for what's coming after ROUTE, I went ahead and bought Boson's Ex-Sim 300-135 TSHOOT test suite. Heard very good things about it and it ought to help when preparing for TSHOOT and getting familiar with the topology.

What are you going to use for TSHOOT, apart from Boson?

By the way, had the same experience with EVN, VRFs, DMVPN etc. - Novodyne videos are much more up to date.

Harry Roles wrote: »

What are you going to use for TSHOOT, apart from Boson?

By the way, had the same experience with EVN, VRFs, DMVPN etc. - Novodyne videos are much more up to date.

Well, for TSHOOT I have the OCG and vids which is about it. I think i'll use GNS3Vault and going to buy Rene Molennar's ''How to master Tshoot" book.. seems like his stuff is top notch. Don't think the other big ones (INE, CBT) have more on TSHOOT.. I would expect that passing ROUTE and SWITCH help pass TSHOOT without TOO much trouble.

Had a little bit more time to glance over EIGRP material and it looks like it builds harmoniously over what the CCNA taught

Named EIGRP seems to be a little bit funky but I recall having to use it for CIPT2 (CCNP Voice track) for SAF and CCD which uses EIGRP to exchange dynamic number information between clusters - sweet feature; named EIGRP didn't make too much sense then but it does now.

Also had the chance to go through some of the TSHOOT stuff from Boson's Exsim-Max pack and it's AWESOME - actually went ahead and purchased their Exsim-Max for ROUTE today.

Just need time now

Fingers crossed

Good Luck! I too just picked up the 300-101 PDF book and started watching Jeremy on CBT. (I love this guy). I have some Chris Bryant stuff too, and hope to be ready before the end of the year myself. I need to renew before April 2018.

I Look forward to keeping up with your progress and seeing if you have any questions that I may be able to answer or to see if you have the same questions as I do.

Again, Good luck! I'm sure you will study well and do amazing on the exam.

GB

worldmac1 wrote: »

Good Luck! I too just picked up the 300-101 PDF book and started watching Jeremy on CBT. (I love this guy). I have some Chris Bryant stuff too, and hope to be ready before the end of the year myself. I need to renew before April 2018.

I Look forward to keeping up with your progress and seeing if you have any questions that I may be able to answer or to see if you have the same questions as I do.

Again, Good luck! I'm sure you will study well and do amazing on the exam.

GB

Thank you for the kind words. I hope you have a good time going through it. So I'm somewhat deeper into EIGRP and yeah, the distribute-lists with ACL, route-maps, prefix-lists kinda get blurry at one point so definitely gives you that ''fine print'' feeling. I guess I'm not making as much progress as I would like to but whatever..as long as I'm moving ahead, it's ok.

Best of luck with your studies. I would also recommend you have a look at Rene Molenaar's stuff and the GNS3Vault labs; they're very good.

Came across this recently vimeo.com/networkcollective and these guys seem to have some nice talks about topics that are relevant to ROUTE as well. Really enjoy their stuff.

Almost wrapped up with EIGRP; just need to take some additional notes on EIGRP for IPv6 and Named EIGRP. Otherwise, things ought to be good I guess. There's a lot of meat to the topic compared to CCNA but what I feel adds to the weight of it all is SIA stuff and getting filtering right (ex. deny + deny in route maps and matching criteria ACLs etc).

I used both the OCG and FLG as well as an old BSCI course to get stuff to sink in, lab and take notes. Feel like Jeremy's vids did a way better job for EIGRP this time around than the others.

The OCG also has some mistakes in regards to prefix-lists where it mentions on several occasions that the prefix-length <= ge value which is not correct. If you try it out in IOS the router starts "screaming" make sure: len < ge-value <= le-value ..can't help but wonder why Cisco did it this way..might have been more intuitive if they allowed additional operators or if you could actually have had len <= ge-value .. this way around if you want to filter say 10.0.0.0/24, 10.0.0.0/25 and 10.0.0.0/26 you'd have to get 2 entries in the prefix-list:

seq 10 deny 10.0.0.0/24
seq 20 deny 10.0.0.0/24 ge 25 le 26

There might be a good reason for it but I can't think of it right now; Cisco might know better

Time for some rest and wrapping up EIGRP fully tomorrow early morning.

ROUTE feels like a marathon right about now..

Labbing up some summary stuff and suboptimal forwarding & came across the summary-metric command which allows the admin to hardcode the metric (bw, delay, rel, load, MTU) for a given summary-address (I know MTU is not used!).

The summary-address command seems to inherit the metric from the member/subordinate route with the least metric in the bunch which might or might not be desired.

Was only able to do this in IOU (15.5); didn't work in IOS 15.0(1)M with a 7200 IOS which is odd as going by this https://supportforums.cisco.com/t5/network-infrastructure-documents/how-the-eigrp-summary-route-metric-is-determined/ta-p/3153842 it should be there as of IOS 15.0(1)M.

EDIT: Also works on IOSv (VIRL) - VIOS-ADVENTERPRISEK9-M), Version 15.6(2)T

Negru one thing I will say is your probably going a bit too deep with some aspects of studying for route.

Its all good to know , in just saying try not to lose sight of the exam objectives

Welly_59 wrote: »

Negru one thing I will say is your probably going a bit too deep with some aspects of studying for route.

Its all good to know , in just saying try not to lose sight of the exam objectives

Thank you brotha! Yeap, I really need some of that from time to time - usually get a bit paranoid when studying stuff because I know what I run into on a daily.. especially if you get the CCNP title under the belt (was that way for Voice lol). People will come at you with all sorts of wacky things.

I think what adds to this is that I'm often curious to find stuff out but when I'm going against the clock, it kind of hurts me, I admit. Finding the balance though is the biggest challenge when all is said and done (and i'm not just talking about CCNP studies).

Appreciate the insight!

Well think I'll be giving up on INE for ROUTE. While I loved their stuff for SWITCH, on ROUTE it just seems like they're not structured the way the SWITCH ones were, very often get lost into the weeds and overall harder to follow or stay engaged. Might be back to them when reviewing, who knows. Got the salesconnect.cisco.com access to the ROUTE topics and those are pretty cool. Also, Rene Molenaar's stuff seems to be a lot more easier to assimilate. Doing OSPF at the moment.

Its been my experience Jeremy C of CBT nuggets is always great, but after following his teachings, I checked out Pluralsight and they have really stepped up their game since taking over Train Signal. Give it a go and see what you think. I will admit the guy dives pretty deep on some stuff, and when he was covering LSAs my eyes glazed over. LOL.
Good luck!

If you have their AAP, I highly recommend the CCNP Candidate's Guides. Travis Bonfigli has three series under that title. One for BGP, OSPF, and EIGRP. It was a nice change after listening to Keith for Switch.

Phiers wrote: »

If you have their AAP, I highly recommend the CCNP Candidate's Guides. Travis Bonfigli has three series under that title. One for BGP, OSPF, and EIGRP. It was a nice change after listening to Keith for Switch.

Hmm I actually do for another 2 months or so. Let me check that stuff out. Thank you for the tip.

Fun fact: between areas OSPF kinda acts like distance vector logic.. if you only build the topology for the current area you're in, routes from other areas slip in through the ABR or ASBR.

Annoying fact: traffic between 2 areas always has to flow through area 0; kinda sucks if you have 2 routers in area X and Y where you could just have a direct link between them; i understand the logic though but from what I read so far IS-IS doesn't necessarily have the same issue.

L3-1(config)#router ospf 12
L3-1(config-router)#exit
L3-1(config)#
*Nov 16 20:38:35.640: %OSPF-4-NORTRID: OSPF process 12 failed to allocate unique router-id and cannot start

So I recall reading that OSPF must have a router-ID otherwise it doesn't play nice. I wanted to use the interface level ospf command ip ospf 12 area 0 command instead of the traditional "network" one and ran into the above syslog message to enforce the subject once more

..this is tricky exam question type of material lol

Sticking it here for future referencing:

Day 1 - RIP

4.5 hours - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KyP...ature=youtu.be
Notes: https://1drv.ms/t/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnjP7pSy_QgR0dnrO
Topology: https://1drv.ms/t/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnjP7pSy_QgR0dnrO

Day 2 - EIGRP

Part 1: 1.3 hours - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEQi...ature=youtu.be
Part 2: ~2 hours - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfRO...ature=youtu.be
Notes: https://1drv.ms/t/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnjZTGT6VbCHzlDfq
Topology: https://1drv.ms/i/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnjWs9_vU-K8hkctO

Day 3 - OSPF

5 hours - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_2J...ature=youtu.be
Notes: https://1drv.ms/t/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnj0JKLO7J2xF9kkA
LSA Database: https://1drv.ms/t/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnj8ofG4Rmm5WnIJ_
Topology: https://1drv.ms/i/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnj6m5n38NmiKfWO5

Day 4 - Deeper Dive into OSPF & Redistribution

~5 hours - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kak2...ature=youtu.be
Notes: https://1drv.ms/t/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnkIV55cF9snkgAgp
Redistribution Topology: https://1drv.ms/i/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnkTgG_lWQ74k8KmX
Topology 2: https://1drv.ms/i/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnkNABrIEqzffM-5f

Day 5 - BGP and MPLS

4.5 hours - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MWq...ature=youtu.be
Notes: https://1drv.ms/t/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnkeSdPDR6Aoi38NN
BGP Topology: https://1drv.ms/i/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnkmQk3G0Wv_LWIFf
MPLS Topology: https://1drv.ms/i/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnkr6ilMtAGk4LRfd
LFIB-LIB: https://1drv.ms/t/s!AkNQfbs8Cj_bnkhxcTNka8wEfHZM

Pretty much a killer course on EIGRP, OSPF, MPLS/IS-IS and BGP for the CCNP wannabe

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