two days til CCENT

Deathmage

Any pointers gents?

Using flash cards atm and the Exam Cram tear-out-sheet as my refresher till Thursday.

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v1ral

Deathmage wrote: »

Haggled three of these perdy Cisco 2821 for $22 each if I ordered all 3 of them, felt like a steal.

I just couldn't wait to unbox it, rack it, and config this sucker with the config from the 1721.

This puppy is fast and I thought the 3750G's were fast....

Dam dude Im jealous, I only have a 2960 and a 2811! Where are you getting your gear for dirt cheap prices? I want to get more stuff for my home lab and practice dynamic stuff.

Deathmage

Verities wrote: »

Good golly Deathmage you are on a roll with pursuing all of these certs. Its inspiring to see someone with big goals being able to meet them. Good luck and keep up the good work.

Thanks bro. I'm super pumped since I passed the CCENT and I think different in regards to that aspect of IT. Just adds more logic to how I troubleshoot things now, finding so much overlap also with Storage + from CCENT and VCP-DCV so a ton of the principles I already know. Just going to keep the momentum and keep chugging along.

I'm always talking about I want CCNA and MCSE, but I'm just put my foot in my mouth, waste less hot air and spending more time studying and using that hot air on brain cells and neurotransmitter connections.

...goals aren't done by saying they are achieved by doing...

v1ral wrote: »

Dam dude Im jealous, I only have a 2960 and a 2811! Where are you getting your gear for dirt cheap prices? I want to get more stuff for my home lab and practice dynamic stuff.

Ebay and having a vision of what I want to build...

Chev Chellios

Deathmage, you are inspirational man. Keep up the good work!

steele84

Man looking at your lab, I hope you have good cooling in your office!!! Nice setup though!

Verities

Deathmage wrote: »

...goals aren't done by saying they are achieved by doing...

That's a good quote.

Deathmage

So I'm now getting to the doing GLBP on the home network now with the 2821's and I'm curious would I need a 'heatbeat' link between two GLBP enable routers in the group so they would know if the other is up or down? ... going to put this together tonight and figure it out with the labbing aspect of the ICDN2 book. Got up to Chapter 14 now and want to do some labbing to sink the concepts of these earlier chapters into my brain.

I drew this drawing, it's basically the link highlighted with the ?.

I'd like to use that link for a alternate path from the 3750G's ate the distro layer so each 3750G has a connection to each GLBP enabled router, but also not sure if that logic applies to this kind of router configuration.

Lastly, for the virtual IP, say the routing protocol is a OSPF area 0 for a 172.16.0.0 0.0.0.63 network, if each of the links are essentially a /30, would it be ideal to make the virtual IP even thought it's just one IP to be a /30 or could the virtual IP be a /32 at the end of the VLSM for the /26 subnet? - does that make sense?

Any help is appreciated, I'm doing review of this chapter on my lunch break.

GLBP thoughts.jpg

Deathmage

Been studying Storage+ a ton lately but finished the first two section of the ICDN2 book. With that being said, storage + is the 19th.

ICDN2 is October 24th. Pass or fail...

Chev Chellios

Good luck man! Go crush them both

Deathmage

Chev Chellios wrote: »

Good luck man! Go crush them both

Thanks bro!

Kind of excited.

Two others books arrived Friday, the VCP6-DCV and 70-410 book.

I still need to do the extremely boring Project + too.

Mooseboost

I remember when I first looked over the topic and watched as you you progressed, determined to pass the exam. I have no doubt you will conquer these exams as well.

Nans

U'll get it.. U are doing your homework..

All the best bro..

Deathmage

Been spending the past month doing a split on ICDN2 and Storage +, and I wanted to make sure my brain still remembered CCENT, so I did a Random Boson exam right now, wanted to make sure I still remember the fundementals.

I'm up to chapter 8 in the CCNA book, I keep reading two chapters and then going back to the 1st and reading over, then read two more chapters, and then read chapter two, so-on and so-on as reveiw and to keep my past-learning sharp.

I'm just reveiwing Storage + at this point, and I got tired of watching the videos, and I guess I still got it!!!

Will take the Boson version once I'm done with the book.

I think later, I'm going to do a little bit of subnetting.net, cause a few of the subnetting question I got correctly but had to use my finger subnetting to figure them out and took a tad too long.

I have off today and tomorrow, so it's been a 4 day weekend of nothing but study and little bit of World of Warcraft action plus Chuck reruns on the Amazon Fire Stick, the fiance' is doing her master program so were in two seperate parts of the house. win-win!

I still got it.jpg

Deathmage

Just finished chapter 11. Liked the review of OSPF version 2 and I thought EIGRP was interesting.

About 200 pages to go and then Boson testing and then some review reading and subnetting.

But back to more redundant study with Pluralsight videos as review for Storage +. Hope it's not a hard exam, I feel like storage is growing out of my brain.

Deathmage

Well I finally got around to racking the two other 2821's and the other 3750G I had in the garage that have arrived over the past few weeks, aswell as the 16U Expansion rack that I mounted a few days ago. Just hooked up a battery backup expansion unit so I have more run time now.

My cable management for CCENT went to ****, so I won't post a picture till I clean this up, tomorrow I'm actually doing a side project for the house and that is running 22 CAt5e runs with a the D-Mark in my room for a wall-mounted 24 port punchdown, once I get that done and make a nice neat cable management for the patch cables into the core HP Procurve I'll take some pictures.

In the long run, the core switch will be a Cisco 3750G, just been waiting for a deal on a 48 port switch, my problem is I'd used the switch for the lab, so I need more than 22 ports, lol!

But now that I got 3 2821's I can do a GLBP enabled Cisco lab so now no one can say I have a SPOF in the lab, going into the core home-switch well now that's different. I've found a use for the older 2600 routers and I'm using them as 'remote' location routers for the 3550's with the 2821's and 3750G's with the 2960G's making up the 'corporate' network. I figured I could somehow haggle with into a point-to-point WAN topology later on down the road into the CCNP pursuit but I might see what I can do with them in the R&S part of this exam.

Once I start labbing I'm sure this post will start having more questions in it.

....for now, the hardware that I think is needed for R&S, has been racked, basic configuration and cabled.

Chev Chellios

Dude, your motivation and determination constantly amazes me. Keep up the good work bro and good luck nailing the extra certs

Deathmage

Whelp the 16U Expansion rack is done and I got home a tad late tonight from gym so I still need to rack two more 3750G's at the top of the rack and then I'm off to do some cable management. Got a few Panduit Cable Managment brackets that I did tonight; 2 6U's and 1 3U.

Will be wiring this rack tomorrow to make the network design of the home-network, might end up moving things around a bit so the design flows better at-least for a visual aspect.

I think these last two 3750G's will be the last of the switches I'll rack, I also racked a spare HP Procurve 2910al-24G-PoE and a Netgear 24 port smart switch. I have no idea if I'll use them but it's nice to have them for whenever I dream up some crazy idea.....and we all know I'm a dreamer....plus there nice spacer holders. I want the other 2 3750G's at the top of the rack.

forgive the messy wires, for the CCENT i was swapping cables all the time making different types of labs. Need to clean it up a bit and dust, lol!

However now that I have all this space I may just really think about switch placement now, but I'm pooped, off to watch Heroes and then bed.

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Deathmage

about 20 minutes ago I finished the OCG from Odom, now to stary doing the CBT Nuggest and Pluralsight videos and take notes. Once I'm done with them I'll transscribe the highlight areas to the spots in the notes and then do the Boson practise tests and then just review the distilled notes with pictures....

Ocotber 24th is still the primary goal...

mikeybinec

Odom's OCG is turning out to me to be a waste of money. In FHRP he doesn't go into preemption, priority, and the big puppy of them all interface/object tracking. I'll be writing a scathing amazon review soon. Since he is affiliated with Cisco, I think he did that on purpose so people fail. Be careful

Deathmage

mikeybinec wrote: »

Odom's OCG is turning out to me to be a waste of money. In FHRP he doesn't go into preemption, priority, and the big puppy of them all interface/object tracking. I'll be writing a scathing amazon review soon. Since he is affiliated with Cisco, I think he did that on purpose so people fail. Be careful

Koodos, I'll be supplementing with CBT Nuggets, Pluralsight, and Udemy videos. I still got Todd's ICDN2 section to read but somoe recommended the OCG so I got it and read it.

I'm not one that just uses one resource, except what I've found recently is don't spend 4+ months leisurely studying, realy focus for 2 months and take it. I'm retaining the knowledge better this way with labbing.

verbhertz

Check out the OCG addendum online, there is a whole section on RSTP. Reading both books will be enough material. The videos will only further guarantee your victory.

Deathmage

OK, well its Wednesday and I'm back at work but yesterday was pretty fun.

While listening in the background to CBT Nuggets from Keith Barker I was building out the lab.

Here is the most up-to-date picture of lab:

This is what I got going on:

Lab Equipment:

3 x Cisco 2600XM's with 4 port serials - I also have 6 spare serial wics I'm moving around as I test out stuff.
3 x Cisco 2950's
3 x Cisco 3550's
2 x Cisco 2821's
4 x Cisco 3750G's. - 2 are mounted, ran out of mounting screws so I'm basically laying them on the top rack when I need them and taking them down at night.
1 x Cisco 1141 series AP.
1 x Netgear GS24TPS.
1 x HP Procurve 2910al-48-PoE+ Layer 2+.
1 x HP Procurve 2910al-24-Poe+ Layer 2+.
1 x HP 2848 L3.
1 x Belkin 16 port IP-KVM.
1 x QNAP TS-420 NAS.
2 x Dell R610's with Dual Xeon's and 32 GB's of RAM and 12 1 gigabit nics, dual power supplies.
1 x Dell Optiplex 7010 - i7, 8GB, 2 broadcom nics.
3 x 3U Cable Management.
2 x 1U 24 port Punchdown.
3 x APC UPS 1500
28 gauge copper insulated ground to the outside.
More Cat5e than I can count..

Frame Relay:

I got 3 Cisco 2600Xm's that each have 4 Serial ports, the twin Cisco 2821's have a serial wic card per router. Not to get into too much detail on the 2821's yet but they have a connection each going to one of the 2600's I'm calling the remote hub in a Multilink but it's also a SPOF too but meh it's a lab..

Each of the 2821's go to two of the 2600's, might see what demac'in them on one 2600 does. and then from the primary 2600 this has a solo connection to the 3rd 2600XM in a PPP.

Routing:

I'm using OSPF in the corporate network, which has the 2821's, 3750G's at the core, and the 3750G's at the distro. The 2821's and the connection to the core 3750G's are the Backbone Area 0 with the connection to the 3750G's at the distro layer being the ABR to Area 1.

Area 1 is the is just the twin 3750G's for inter-vlan routing and ACL's. The connection

Area 2 is just the Cisco 2960G's or anything at the access layer.

Each one of the layers at the core and distro layer's have a multiple gigabit connection forming a etherchannel between the switches for fast inter-switch upinks. The core has 6 gigabit's and the distro has 5.

Each of the 'remote' 2600XM connections make up Area's 3, 4, and 5 respectfully and each 2600XM has a 3550 L3 and a 2950 L2 switch.

WAN Routing:

Both of the 2821's have twin gigabit connection, one port goes to the 3750G at the core layer and the other goes to the HP Procurve core home-switch' which is technically the Cisco Lab's 'Internet'. The Procurve has routing on it for pass-through traffic to the internet for the Cisco lab's vLAN's.

More importantly the 2821's have a GLBP enabled on them for load balanced routers with one virtual IP for the Cisco lab.

STP:

Each 3750G's at the distro layer are a root bridge or in a standby bridge mode, one is always active, if one fails the other kicks in. Each of the switches at the access layer have BPDU and portfast enabled on them..

Right now the uplinks from the distro to the core are on a 4 gigabit etherchannel, if one of the 3750G's are the root bridge then the etherchannel to that switch is the active link and the other etherchannel to the other 3750G at the core that is in standy-by mode is the blocked link. Both of the Cisco 2960G's have 3 gigabit connections criss-cross between both 3750G's, except one of them is always blocked.

Both of the 3750G's at the core have 6 uplinks from the distro layer cause the tunnel is pipping traffic to both of the 2821's with GLBP. I might set it up so it only uses one router (HSRP) and if one of the core switch fails it goes to the other 2821 but then it wouldn't be load balanced just have fault tolerance.

Additionally each of the 3550's in the 'remote' location are there own STP root bridges for their networks.

TFTP, Netflow, SNMP:

Currently I'm using a Raspberry Pii 2 as my SNMP, TFTP, Netflow, and syslog server for all of the routers and switches on a vLAN that they can all access, also my laptop has access to the folder shares over the vLAN with Linux NFS cause my laptop has a dual boot of Ubuntu.

CCENT Stuff:

vLAN's:

Currently I'm picking up were I left off from the CCENT just expanding it to cover ICDN2 material. Most of the vLAN's are already in place, as are the Area 2 OSPF configuration it's just previously they were all Area 0, so it's just a number change really. All the subnetting is done really, with a few minor subnetting additions for the Frame relay and core/distro layers.

Router Updates:

For ICDN2, it covers router upgrades and licensing but I already did this for the CCENT so this was still fresh in my mind, hence the use of the Raspberry Pii 2 for TFTP.

Others:

I'm sure I'm forget other stuff like ACL's and Port security which I setup along the way but nothing major, at-least at this point in my learning....

===============================

Obviously the lab is a work in progress but I got another 4 day weekend coming up this weekend and I'll probably refine the lab even more, if anyone sees hole in the lab above please make suggestions. The reason I built this lab to completion is so I can literally lab every aspect of the CCNA: R&S exam. I'm more of a visual person in order for me to learn it.

home-lab updated.jpg

Nafe92014

Let me get one thing clear:
So ALL of this is going in your house?

Deathmage

Nafe92014 wrote: »

Let me get one thing clear:
So ALL of this is going in your house?

Would I do it any other way?

Check out the picture above.

bpenn

I would love to dabble more in this, but my wife prohibits any such equipment due to current funding

mikeybinec

Here's another complete fail on Odom's OCG book.. He doesn't cover WAN PPP authentication. For example, type out the command that fallbacks to PAP if CHAP fails.. Odom is a a fraud, and I'm only half way through his book. I can't wait to see what else he PURPOSELY left out.

Deathmage

mikeybinec wrote: »

Here's another complete fail on Odom's OCG book.. He doesn't cover WAN PPP authentication. For example, type out the command that fallbacks to PAP if CHAP fails.. Odom is a a fraud, and I'm only half way through his book. I can't wait to see what else he PURPOSELY left out.

Hence why I personally use multiple resources, then again I take my studies to the extreme. I find I learn something else always from a different approaches and different authors helps. I just won't ever take 6+ month to study again, at some point you just need to sit it.

Deathmage

Made some modifications to the 3750G network tonight, here is the drawing.

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DPN1

Your home network is awesome!

Deathmage

DPN1 wrote: »

Your home network is awesome!

Thanks! - Got some more toys last night, the last Cisco 2620 came and the (3) 4 port Serial cards for all of the 2600XM's arrived and so I racked the 2620 below the three 2600XM's and move some of the top racked switches around and setup frame relay with multimode and PPP in a full/partial mesh.

the network was all drawn out on a yellow notepad, so now it's putting it together, will be connecting the frame-relay to the Area 0 and Area 1 network tonight.

Then I re-did the Core Layer of the 3750G's for a /26 instead of a /27 and I swear I had a brain fart moment for like 25 minutes cause OSPF wouldn't form adjacencies and I was like WTF, I checked all the settings: the interface vlans were made, layer 1 and 2 were fine with show protocols and show ip int br, ip routing was turned on, manually hard-coded the router-ID's, even did a clear ip ospf process, but what it turned out to be was me being silly. I made the interface vlan's but I never did the 'vlan [number]' command to actually create the vlans, I was like ooo you idiot! ... good thing I know show commands cold cause that helped allot troubleshooting...once I found the boo-boo Area 0 and 1 started talking again.

Deathmage

Frame Relay tomorrow.....

Frame Relay.jpg