what's everyone working on right now?

I've just gotten the basics of IPsec down and now working on the NHRP part of DMVPN. I find it to be a very interesting piece of technology, perhaps the most interesting thing I've studied so far. Seeing the development from crypto map based ipsec to gre+ipsec to VTI to DMVPN is just plain cool. A small piece of networking history in a way that you don't see when studying the routing protocols since the old ones are dead and buried.

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lrb

My job is pretty much 100% DMVPN and GETVPN right now. I literally come in at about 7am and work on customer's connectivity until about 5-6pm because we are migrating a lot customers onto these services. Probably sounds interesting especially for those of us studying for CCIE but my L2 and multicasting knowledge has definitely dropped since I started this contract.

And you could reminisce with RIPv1 and IGRP if you really want to venture down memory lane

Do you have a tentative date for your written and lab? I've read most of your posts on your website and you have got some very strong knowledge

fredrikjj

lrb wrote: »

Do you have a tentative date for your written and lab?

Not really as there are too many areas where I have no clue like multicast, QoS, security, services, and probably things I haven't even thought about. I might know around 50% of the material, with a heavy focus on L2, IGP and BGP which makes sense since I studied those in CCNP (I started CCNP in September last year). I've tried to follow Brian McGahan's advice on becoming strong at the the "core" topics first. At least I think it was him. I am excited about starting on those peripheral topics though, especially QoS and multicast.

I guess I could take the written in like 6 months or something if I studied the remaining topics, but I've pretty much decided to not do the written until the lab as I don't really see the point, and I don't want to be another one of those people who take the written but never the lab. In my mind, if someone is ready for the lab they should be able to effortlessly do the written without special preparation. Perhaps that's delusional, who knows. Then there's the cost of the lab itself. There's no way I could pay for it anyway so I don't really feel any urgency. A good thing is that I have really low expectations since I don't even work in networking; I don't have peers that I need to beat in terms of credentials and prestige. Just getting through all the books and the INE material, and actually learning the material would be a huge victory for me.

Most of all I want to actually work in networking but it's not really working out it seems, which isn't terribly surprising since my resume is kind of weird. In a sense, this forum and my blog are my resume now, but it's hard to get someone who is hiring (and who has the background to understand it) to sit down and read it.

lrb

Interestingly, L2 and L3 makes up 60% of the lab anyway so if you have those topics nailed you are well on your way to passing the lab. I think since they took out the L2 QoS component it makes the overall QoS section of the lab less of an issue, as MQC is fairly straightforward and the only real difficult thing (in my mind anyway) with QoS is understanding the token buckets for policing and shaping. As for QoS, I read Interdomain Multicast Routing: Practical Juniper Networks and Cisco Systems Solutions: Practical Juniper Networks and Cisco Systems Solutions: 9780201746129: Computer Science Books @ Amazon.com on the weekend and it has cleared up a lot of the areas I think I had problems with so it may help you when you get around to it.

I only have about 6 weeks now before I start my new contract for the next year or so which isn't anything Cisco related and is more on the security side of things (Juniper firewalls, Gigamon taps, etc) so I've scheduled my exam for the week break I have between my current contract and my old one. I'm just working on "minor" topics for the next week or so (PPPoE, MLP, netflow, syslog, etc) before I start full scale mock labs for the next month. Should be interesting

gorebrush

I've finished up the switching section of the workbook and now am going through the INE ATC videos for v5. I watched v4 videos 3 times - and some of the v5 I've watched twice already. I've read some books and done some labbing, but predominantly been concentrating on getting the basics down, hence the 600+ hours of theory I have under my belt for the lab.

The CCDE live online is next week - I'll be making sure to catch that as I am considering this exam too and I think I'll probably learn a few things that'll ultimately be useful for CCIE anyways.

Scales

fredrikjj wrote: »

I've just gotten the basics of IPsec down and now working on the NHRP part of DMVPN. I find it to be a very interesting piece of technology, perhaps the most interesting thing I've studied so far. Seeing the development from crypto map based ipsec to gre+ipsec to VTI to DMVPN is just plain cool. A small piece of networking history in a way that you don't see when studying the routing protocols since the old ones are dead and buried.

What materials are you using for DMVPN?

fredrikjj

Scales wrote: »

What materials are you using for DMVPN?

Configuration guides from Cisco.