Journal

bermovick · February 2012

I'm not sure that I'm not going to regret doing this, but following in the footsteps of making a thread for my progress towards the IE.

Last night I grabbed a pdf for the routing & switching cert guide (I don't feel guilty about doing this, as the actual book has been purchased and is in transit. I may get it tomorrow or Monday at the latest - I just wanted to get started).

Read for about 3 hours last night and made it through Chapter 1 and most of Chapter 2. Everything seemed pretty easy / review until I came to a screeching halt at the end of Chapter 2 with the sudden introduction of PPPoE. Tried making sense of it for a while but gave up on it. I'll be looking at it more tonight, but may just make a note and move on. I'm hoping it'll make more sense on the re-read. That worked pretty well for a few areas in the Route studies.

To me learning is kindof like putting together a puzzle. It's much easier to do if you're adding to something you already know/have done. This surprise PPPoE felt like I was suddenly working on a totally new area of a puzzle where I didn't even have 2 pieces together yet.

bermovick · February 2012

Worked on Chapter 3 tonight - Spanning tree in all it's glory. This subject gave me major problems studying for the SWITCH exam, and I still think I'm a bit weak on it, but I made it through the chapter fairly well. Not really much to say so far.

Turgon · February 2012

bermovick wrote: »

Worked on Chapter 3 tonight - Spanning tree in all it's glory. This subject gave me major problems studying for the SWITCH exam, and I still think I'm a bit weak on it, but I made it through the chapter fairly well. Not really much to say so far.

Its all good. Keep going with that reading and the updates. You will get lost of encouragement from the guys here.

Par for the course with CCIE, but that's the challenge of becoming an expert. Expect to be confronted by many strange new things and when you pass the written and do the vendor workbooks for lab prep, many new ways to do things on technologies and protocols you previously thought you knew inside out

MrBrian · February 2012

Keep it going, I'll enjoy reading about your studies. I know you just passed you ccnp not too long ago, and I'm curious to see how the CCIE reading goes for you fresh out from the NP. I'm about to sit for ROUTE. After my CCNP studies I think I'm aiming for CCIP first, but definitely CCIE at some point. Good luck

davidspirovalentine · February 2012

Hi Guys,

Firstly, Bermovick congrats on starting your journey... I too will be tracking your progress...

MrBrian, I can't say much in regards to the CCIE but I can say one thing, sitting the CCIP before coming down the CCIE path has proven to be one of the best things I have done for my career. Not only has it given me an insight to the topics I will be coming across in the CCIE:R&S it has also shown my employer that I am keen on continuously learning and advancing in my career.

Just my $0.02

Kind Regards,
David

bermovick · February 2012

Yeah. I've been sick for the past 5 days - just a bad cold, but enough to make it hard to focus. I'm taking this time to consider if I want to stay on the CCIE path or swing out to grab the IP first. I'm beginning to think I should, just so the IE has as little 'new' material as possible.

bermovick · February 2012

Talked to my boss today who has made me irritated enough to put my focus back towards doing this. Spite can be a wonderful short-term motivator

Problem has been the first ~10 chapters of the OCG look to be mostly review. Of course it's not completely review - there's bits and pieces of extras I've found so far, so I can't just skim or entirely skip it.

Back to the grindstone though.

Turgon · February 2012

Just keep going. This year will be your apprenticeship and help you in 2013

Do the Odom tests in the book, and buy the Bosen tests and do those.

bermovick · March 2012

Figured I should update since it's been a while.

Feeling better and cracking open the books a bit again. Finished chapters 5 and 6 (although I'm sure I'll have to go back through them). Having some troubles cause ... I dunno; I'm just not getting into it like I did before. I'm hoping it's just a bit of a slump, or some material I just found boring (PfR).

I got into Chapter 7 (EIGRP), and it seemed to help a bit - familiar, interesting material, but I'm going to call it a night and do something entertaining for a bit.

Current reading time at 13.5 hours - although that's not really accurate since my reading times are frequently disturbed by outages, etc.

bermovick · March 2012

Finished Chapter 7 (EIGRP) and started on Chapter 8 (OSPF) tonight. Chapter 7 was about 99% review. I only managed to get in about 45 minutes, but I made decent progress in that time.

Total reading time: 14 hours

bermovick · March 2012

Have made it through chapters 7 (EIGRP), 8 (OSPF), and 9 (Redistribution) and started on Chapter 10 (BGP). Still mostly review. I've slowed down here in 10 - I wouldn't say I'm weak in BGP, but for all it's simplicity at the surface, it goes pretty deep, so I want to make sure I've got the fundamentals down well.

I flipped forward to see what the next couple chapters are, and I expect things to slow down soon - Chapter 11 continues BGP, but I expect the more advanced topics, and then QoS and Multicast chapters.

Anyways, I'm up to ~18.5 hours of reading.

bermovick · March 2012

As a quick side-note, I'm definitely worried about becoming a paper tiger doing this, considering the lack of hands-on I get at my current workplace. I do my best to counter this with the thought that I'm either moving forward somehow, or stagnating; and if I can't get work experience, then studying is my only other option.

Things might change if I find different employment obviously, but I'm kindof spoiled - for all that I'm frustrated at my lack of getting to do stuff, I get to work from home - and with a 1 or 2 hour commute to anywhere, the time and money saved not having to is pretty nice.

jamesp1983 · March 2012

bermovick wrote: »

As a quick side-note, I'm definitely worried about becoming a paper tiger doing this, considering the lack of hands-on I get at my current workplace. I do my best to counter this with the thought that I'm either moving forward somehow, or stagnating; and if I can't get work experience, then studying is my only other option.

Things might change if I find different employment obviously, but I'm kindof spoiled - for all that I'm frustrated at my lack of getting to do stuff, I get to work from home - and with a 1 or 2 hour commute to anywhere, the time and money saved not having to is pretty nice.

Do you have your own lab? That will at least help you get the hands on part. Obviously the real world is a bit different, but you're not going to pass the CCIE just by reading a book. Hundreds, if not thousands of lab hours are required for a lab pass. Topologies will change, but you just have to remember what you've read and labbed and apply it. Pressure is something that a home lab doesn't help you deal with, but the CCIE lab will. You have to get comfortable in high pressure situations if you aren't already.

bermovick · March 2012

jamesp1983 wrote: »

Do you have your own lab? That will at least help you get the hands on part. Obviously the real world is a bit different, but you're not going to pass the CCIE just by reading a book. Hundreds, if not thousands of lab hours are required for a lab pass. Topologies will change, but you just have to remember what you've read and labbed and apply it. Pressure is something that a home lab doesn't help you deal with, but the CCIE lab will. You have to get comfortable in high pressure situations if you aren't already.

Oh! absolutely; and I always try to point out during interviews that while my "production" experience is somewhat lacking

, I do have a lab, so I do have some practical application of the material (I actually run OSPF in my home network - a coworker gives me a hard time about it, but it beats having to update static routes whenever I change my setup, since my lab is just another port off my core switch).

I understand the thousands of hours needed for a lab pass, but frankly most nights I have 4-6 hours available for studying/whatnot, and what better use could I have of the time?

Lab-wise I'm probably going to do the gns3+trunk to a "distribution switch" that then has access links to the 'topology' switches. It beats buying one of the multi-port NICs or buying more physical routers (considering the cost of a 3560 or two). Of course if I get annoyed at how complicated it is bridging multiple routers to multiple switches (and I expect I will), I'll change my mind.

bermovick · March 2012

I've stopped tracking my time, just because most of the time I'm grabbing 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there rather than a nice solid block of "me STUDY!" time. Irregardless, I'm up to Chapter 13 and starting to struggle. BGP in 10-11 wasn't too bad, since I was familiar with the basics from ROUTE, but Chapters 12-14 are QoS and this is pretty much entirely new. Yeah, switch covered it, but it just scratched the surface with COS/DSCP values, showed you the auto qos command and moved on to wireless.

Thinking of backing off, focusing on knocking out the CCIP with it's nice focused chunks, and then coming back. Right now I'm thinking the more of this that's review the better, since there's so. much. material.

In other news I complained loudly enough at work that I was told I would be moved to day-shift and start training under ... I'm not quite sure what to call him, but he pretty much does the day-to-day work of customer networks (T1 turnups, adjusting ASAs, configuring and shipping new hardware when it fails, etc). Pretty excited by that, but I know my studies will probably all but stop while I pick all that up (assuming they stick with it this time)

tl;dr version: switching to CCIP's 3 focused exams then coming back, plus execting study to halt for additional work responsibilities.

That's my update.

bermovick · March 2012

I apparently should rename this thread 'CCIE Journal or My descent into insanity'.

After a day of frustration at having basically 'quit', I found my resolve and cracked open the books again. QoS and traffic shaping and all that goodness is still having its way with me, but I have to remind myself this is only the first read-through and I shouldn't expect myself to understand it all.

So... back in the saddle.

Puffy · March 2012

I was thinking maybe you should just purchase the CCIP study materials, read through them, then tackle the CCIE. That way, you could save 600-800 bucks from the exams fees which could go towards your CCIE lab setup.

bermovick · March 2012

Puffy wrote: »

I was thinking maybe you should just purchase the CCIP study materials, read through them, then tackle the CCIE. That way, you could save 600-800 bucks from the exams fees which could go towards your CCIE lab setup.

I did something like that - watched the videos for the 642-642 (qos) exam, which helped immensely.

I've finished the QoS chapters and am moving on to the Wide Area Network chapter, which doesn't look any easier (ppp header compression, frame-relay payload compression, etc).

bermovick · April 2012

Still here, still plugging away. QoS finished and I'm into multicast, which is pretty interesting stuff.

I'm still having trouble finding my determination or focus though - I'll go a couple days without studying any because 'meh'. This worries me some, since you can't really do that long-term, and the IE is definitely a long-term commitment. I'm hoping I'll figure out what's missing and remedy it.

bermovick · June 2012

Wow; it's been 2 months since I last posted.

I'm still here. Having motivation troubles off and on still, but slowly making progress. I'm nearly done with my first reading through the Certification Guide. My plans are after I finish to flip back to page one and start over - this time taking notes. Hopefully the second read-through + notes + labbing stuff will make me strong enough to take a practice exam after the second read-through.

bermovick · June 2012

And I finished pass 1 of the book. I was faltering there at the end with IPv6+ QoS/multicast just because they rely on a good understanding of previously-covered ipv4 QoS/multicast, which I didn't entirely have. That's what the 2nd (and 3rd if necessary) passes are for.

I'm halfway through night 1 of this "week". Think I will take a short break to grab some grub, then flip back to page 1 and start taking notes. I remember the first 10 chapters or so were a rehash of things I already knew, so I'll see how much progress I can make over the next 2.5 nights.

bermovick · August 2013

Is it bad to necro your own thread? HOPEFULLY NOT!

Studying took a long break there - started a new job back in November of last year. Moved the family and immersed myself in the job here. Had to get the Security+ for DoD requirements and have been waffling between the CCNP Security and the CCIE. I'm still waffling on it - the CCNP:S I'd think gives me a bit more spread for a shorter-term time (and money) investment, but it's not as ... prestigious now, is it?

ANYWAYS, rather than doing a day-by-day chapter-by-chapter synopsis, I think I'll just use this as a thoughts and musings thread of various things, along with milestone-type updates, starting with the next post (which I think breaks another forum etiquette rule)

bermovick · August 2013

So some of this stuff is possibly CCNP level stuff, but I'm really trying to 'go deeper' with the technologies. For today's example, we're looking at OSPF Type 4 and 5 LSA's along with ABRs and ASBRs. My lab had something unexpected, and googling shows this to be a topic with lots of confusion.

My scenario involves 7 routers. R1 is in Area 1 with FE links to ABRs R2 and R3. R2 and R3 have serial links in the backbone area (0) into a partial-mesh frame-relay network, with both having PVC's to routers 4 and 5 which are also ABRs to areas 2 and 3, respectively. Router 5 has an FE link to ASBR Router 7, which is also running EIGRP to R6. R6 has loopbacks being advertised into EIGRP. You know what? I'll edit this later to add an image cause I think it's needed.

Originally everything was area 0, and I'm going along with the book, seeing the Type 1 and Type 2 LSA's. Then creating areas 1, 2 and 3 to see the Type 3 LSA's. Then I create R6, the EIGRP process and redistribution on R7 to check out Type 4 and 5's and all hell breaks loose! (I may be exaggerating slightly). What I expected was to see the Type 5 LSAs over on R1 and a Type 4 LSA from Router 5 (The ABR out of area 3) that references R7. What I saw instead was that R5 had a type 4 of its own! Further review of the OSPF database indicates that R2 and R3 (the ABRs between area 0 and area 1) create another Type 4 for R5 in area 0 in addition to passing along the Type 4 that R5 itself created for R7.

A mystery! Google shows some interesting information. Apparently if Area 3 was a (Totally) NSSA, R5 WOULD be considered an ASBR, since it's the router injecting the Type 5 LSA's into the OSPF process. Remember for an NSSA area, the actual ASBR is injecting Type 7's. However I haven't yet configured stub areas, so I'm led to believe R5 gets promoted to ASBR based solely on it adding the Type 4 LSA referencing R7. More review is needed I feel, as this doesn't quite seem right.

Update: After restarting GNS3, I'm only getting the expected Type 4's listing R7 as expected. GNS3 has been disappointing me a bit lately, giving bad values for EIGRP FD values and now extraneous entries in the LSDB.

While I'm talking about LSA's, I should add some information I looked up yesterday regarding Type 2 LSA's, as I was wondering why they were necessary, when Type 1's would provide all the necessary information. From what I could gather, one of the main reasons was to reduce the SPF algorithm. Rather than having 5 routers on a broadcast subnet each having its Type 1 listing a "link connected to" entry for all 4 other routers, we get one "connected to" to the DR, and a type 2 that links all of them together. Interesting stuff and it makes a lot more sense now.

powmia · August 2013

On a broadcast segment, the DR advertises a Type-1, which is the DR's router LSA, listing all of its directly connected links. One of those directly connected links, is a link to what is referred to as the "pseudonode." The pseudonode is a representation of the broadcast segment. Imagine that your layer-2 domain is a router, and that router is connected to a bunch of other routers. That layer-2 domain is the pseudonode.

Since the pseudonode does not physically exist, it is unable to send a Type-1 LSA that lists all of these links connecting it to the other routers on that segment. So... the DR sends that LSA on behalf of the pseudonode... and it is in the form of a Type-2 LSA.

The pseudonode's links are all advertised with zero cost... so it does not affect the shortest path. The only link cost is the metric on the link to the pseudonode that was advertised in the DR's Type-1. In other words, the metric of the DR's connection to that broadcast segment.

Since the pseudonode is actually a node in the SPF tree... it affects your tree size. Though it has links of zero cost, it is a node, and is calculated as one when routers run their SPF computations. This is why it is best practice to manually configure any ethernet link as point-to-point if it is just a direct connection between two routers. Imagine a network that was pure point-to-point ethernet connections between routers. Leaving the default config for ethernet links of "broadcast" means you have type-2 LSAs, meaning you have pseudonodes in your SPF tree. If you have a full mesh of 20 routers, that's 190 links in your network [ N(N-1)/2 ]. This means your 20 router network has 210 nodes in the SPF tree. The 20 routers, and 190 pseudonodes.

bermovick · August 2013

I'm not sure if I'm understanding what you mean here. For "P2P" ethernet links, with 20 routers in a line, you'd end up with 19 pseudonodes. I agree that setting network type to p2p is wise, although I never considered the extra, unnecessary Type 2 LSAs there - I've always done it just to avoid the 40-second holdtime before the initial DR election. Also p2p ends up with an extra entry in the LSDB, since it lists both a "connected to: Stub" and a "connected to: Another Router" entries.

Whereas if all 20 were attached to the same segment, this is where the Type 2's start to shine - rather than having all 20 devices contain 19 "connected to: another router" entries in the 'show ip ospf database router x.x.x.x' command, (20*19= 380 entries), each device only contains a single "connected to: transit network" (1) and the Pseudo-node contains 20 "Attached Router" entries, for only 39 total.

powmia · August 2013

I said "a full mesh of 20 routers"

And if that full mesh is made of ptp links, not 20 routers connected to a switch... that's 190 links.

Anyways, just using that to illustrate what type-2 LSAs actually are. They can be good, but they can also be very bad.

bermovick · August 2013

Ohh! I misunderstood - was confused how p2p links would be meshed and couldn't visualize what you were referring to.

powmia · August 2013

No worries! I'm lazier than you and don't take the time to put my thoughts in diagrams

Good stuff.

bermovick · August 2013

OSPF Done. Redistribution Done. Nothing really new here. BGP Fundamentals done. BGP Routing Policies.

Taking my time here. The NP didn't go too deep into BGP really (that or I don't remember it), and the IP ended before I had a chance to focus on it.

I'm avoiding the AS_PATH filters by labbing up random other things, to get practice with the BGP commands more. Have thrown together a lab with confederations to compare (using wireshark) the AS_SEQ/AS_SET/AS_CONFED_SEQ/AS_CONFED_SET fields, and how they look in the 'show ip bgp' command. Have run into an oddity though and I'm trying to figure out if I'm doing something wrong or not. I'm summarizing within a confederation, and am not getting a AS_CONFED_SET field advertised to the confederate iBGP peer, even after guaranteeing that the component routes are going through separate confederate eBGP paths. In fact I'm not getting an AS_CONFED_SEQ even - just the AS_SET. I'm not using the summary-only option, so I'm still seeing the component routes with the proper AS_CONFED_SEQ and AS_SET fields, but the summary is just ... missing them! This requires further investigation, because as-is, I have a HUGE potential for a loop here.

[update]
Ah! It looks like there should be an as-confed-set option to use, rather than as-set. I kindof suspected this, but my image doesn't have it, despite being fairly recent (3725-adventk9-124-15.T14) (well, 3 years old...)

bermovick · August 2013

Arggh. BGP is killing me. I'm slowly going through the Decision Making process, but I keep getting stuck because it seems like certain things would have been caught by earlier steps. Then I waste an hour or two performing googling or Thinking Deeply (tm) until I can see how there are situations where the earlier step would have missed it. Of course that much deep thinking is making it more difficult to remember what I read and thought about a page ago.

instant000 · August 2013

How much have you labbed with it?

Labbing with it helps.

If you could, get a BGP-specific text. That would go a long way to help. IRA or the Volume II from Doyle would be great resources to try.

If it's just the question of memorization of the order, then I remember the WLLA OMNI acronym I read somewhere (and I forgot the author, but I remember the acronym).

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