CCIE Prep, Day 2IPExpert Vol. 1, Sec. 1-2

Tonight was my first real practice session using the ProctorLabs rack rentals and IPExpert’s workbook 1.  Overall, it went well, and I was quite impressed with both products, although I ran into a couple of minor headaches:

• some of the ProctorLab racks apparently have 4 x 3560 switches instead of 3 x 3560 and 1 x 3550 as shown in the lab topology.  This caused a couple of unexpected problems relating to different default trunk modes.
• the Section 1 logical topology diagram had a labeling error (swapped fe0/0 and fe0/1 on R9), which led to a bit of fun in getting layer 3 reachability.

In terms of the labs themselves, I did fairly well although I’m not quite at the level of concentration I’ll need to be at for the real exam.  I found myself getting distracted and making simple mistakes that would have resulted in dropping quite a few points on the exam.  I’m sure this will improve as time goes on.  Some specific things I stumbled on:

• not defining loopback interfaces on every router.   My verification scripts didn’t test this as I was only pinging directly attached interfaces.
• neglecting to enable VTP v2 to meet a specific requirement of ensuring the MD5 hash values match between authenticated devices.
• not reading/studying the SPAN-related question to see that it was actually asking for RSPAN.
• a pretty big fumble on the mac-address ACL section.  I really need to study this in detail, especially the bits involving matching on the EtherType.
• I ended up skipping the section on private VLANs.  I’m fairly confident I could have gotten by using the DocCD, but I definitely don’t have a solid handle on them yet.

In general, I think it went well for a first practice session.  I was hoping to supplement the IPExpert lab with the new InternetworkExpert v5 Bridging/Switching labs, but unfortunately GradedLabs seems to be booked solid all weekend and all next week.  Looks like I’ll have to hit some content I can practice under Dynamips.

I think tomorrow I’m going to spend some time going back through the STP and Catalyst security CODs and do some DocCD review and read the BCMSN study guide a bit.  I still need to hit the IPExpert MST and Rapid-PVST labs, but those are areas I’m definitely weaker in so I want to get some book knowledge in my head first.