Again, for my own benefit, checklists for the Narbik, IPExpert, and InternetworkExpert v.5 technology-focused workbook labs.
Narbik Book 1
- 3550/3560 — skipping for now
- 3550/3560 QoS — skipping for now
- Frame Relay — done!
- On-demand Routing
- RIP — done!
- EIGRP
- OSPF
- Policy-based Routing
- BGP
- IPv6
Narbik Book 2
- NAT
- IP Services
- GRE
- Multicast
- QOS
- Security
- Prefix-Lists
IPExpert Workbook 1
- General Lab Setup
- Catalyst PVST — skipping for now
- Catlayst MST — skipping for now
- Catalyst Rapid PVST — skipping for now
- Layer 2 Tunneling — skipping for now
- Frame Relay
- Bridging and Frame Relay
- RIP — done!
- EIGRP
- OSPG
- BGP
- Routing Protocol Redistribution
- ACLS and Filters for IP
- Router Security
- Router Redundancy
- Advanced Router Management
- Multicast
- QoS
- QoS/MQC Conversions
- GRE and Routing Protocols
- IPv6
- IPv6 Advanced Routing
InternetworkExpert v.5 Workbook 1
- Bridging and Switching — skipping for now
- Frame Relay
- IP Routing
- RIP
- EIGRP
- OSPF
Posted in CCIE.
Tagged with CCIE, study, workbooks.
By blanders
– September 13, 2008
This is a bit rough, but it’s more or less what I plan to do between now and January to get ready for the R&S lab.
Week of September 8
- Narbik technology labs
- IPExpert technology labs
- InternetworkExpert v.5 technology labs
Week of September 15
- Narbik technology labs
- IPExpert technology labs
- InternetworkExpert v.5 technology labs
Week of September 22
- IPExpert multi-protocol labs #1-5
Week of September 29
- Note: work travel week
- IPExpert multi-protocol labs #6-10
Week of October 6
- Note: work travel week
- IPExpert multi-protocol labs #11-15
Week of October 13
- InternetworkExpert workbook 2 full labs, #1-4
- InternetworkExpert workbook 3 core labs, #1-2
Week of October 20
- InternetworkExpert workbook 3 core labs, #3
- InternetworkExpert workbook 2 full labs, #5, 10, 12
- InternetworkExpert workbook 3 core labs, #4, 5
Week of October 27
- InternetworkExpert workbook 2 full labs, #16, 17, 18
- InternetworkExpert workbook 3 core labs, #6-7
Week of November 3
- InternetworkExpert workbook 3 core labs, #8-10
- InternetworkExpert workbook 2 full labs, two or three of #6-10, 11, 14-15, 19-20
Week of November 10
- IPExpert on-site bootcamp
Week of November 17
- IPExpert 5-day mock lab bootcamp
Week of November 24
- Note: Thanksgiving Week
- Review results of IPExpert bootcamp
- InternetworkExpert mock lab #1 and #2
Week of December 1
- IPExpert workbook 3 full labs, #1-4
- InternetworkExpert mock lab #3 and #4
Week of December 8
- IPExpert workbook 3 full labs, #5-8
- CCIE Accessor #1
Week of December 15
- IPExpert workbook 3 full labs, #9-12
- CCIE Accessor #2
Week of December 22
- Note: Christmas Week
- IPExpert workbook 3 full labs, #13-14
Week of December 29
- IPExpert workbook 3 full labs, two or three of #15-20
Week of January 5
- Final Review, travel and exam!
Posted in CCIE.
Tagged with CCIE, schedule, study.
By blanders
– September 13, 2008
Lab 1: Hub and Spoke using Frame-Relay Map Statements
- On a multipoint interface, the router can’t ping itself unless you add a
frame-relay map statement pointing the interface IP to one of the DLCI’s.
- When configuring frame-relay maps on the spokes, don’t use the
broadcast keyword for mappings to other spokes. Otherwise, the hub will get redundant routing information (broadcasts/multicasts).
- The
keepalive command controls the LMI Status inquiry interval, and the frame-relay lmi-n391dte command controls the complete status enquiry interval.
- Status inquiries are LMI type 1 inquiries, full status inquiries are LMI type 0 inquiries.
Lab 2: Hub and Spoke using Point-to-Point Subinterfaces
- No need to manually disable inverse-arp when using subinterfaces.
- On a point-to-point interface, the router can reach all IP addresses (including itself) without a mapping, as long as the IP is in the routing table with a valid next hop.
Lab 3: Mixture of Point-to-Point and Multipoint Frame Relay
No notes.
Lab 4: Multipoint Frame Relay without Frame Relay Mapping
Using PPP between spoke and hub to distribute layer 3 information
! Hub
int serial1/0
encap frame
no ip address
frame-relay interface-dlci 102 ppp Virtual-Template 1
frame-relay interface-dlci 103 ppp Virtual-Template 1
frame-relay interface-dlci 104 ppp Virtual-Template 1
!
int virtual-template 1
ip address 150.0.0.1 255.255.255.0
!
! Spoke 2
int serial1/0
encap frame-relay
no ip address
frame-relay interface-dlci 201 ppp Virtual-Template 2
!
int Virtual-Template 2
ip address 150.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
!
- The virtual template ID must be different on each spoke, even though it’s the same on all DLCIs on the hub.
Lab 5: Frame Relay and Authentication
- Yeah, I need to deep-dive on PPP authentication. Very, very weak here.
Lab 6: Frame Relay End-to-End Keepalive
map-class frame-relay FREEK12
frame-relay end-to-end keepalive mode bidirectional
!
int ser1/0.12 point-to-point
frame-relay interface-dlci 102
class FREEK12
!
Timers that can be used to adjust FREEK:
frame-relay end-to-end keepalive [send|receive]
timererror-threshold — how many failures must occur before the interface goes downsuccess-events — how many successes must occur before the interface comes upevent-window — how many recent events to consider when testing error-threshold or success-events
Posted in CCIE.
Tagged with CCIE, frame-relay, LMI, Narbik, PPP, PPP-over-frame-relay.
By blanders
– September 4, 2008
Posted in Links.
Tagged with CCIE, Cisco, EEM, IPv6, monitoring, OSPF, OSPFv3.
By blanders
– September 1, 2008
Real-life and work have continued to intrude on my preparation hours, but hopefully that’s about to change. I now have the beginnings of a week-by-week strategy for labs and other prep tasks with enough slack to adjust for unexpected things popping up.
Haven’t done much lab work at all, but I have managed to get some reading done along with reviewing some video-on-demand:
Ongoing Reading: QoS Exam Certification Guide (Odom)
Ad Hoc Reading: Routing TCP/IP, Volume 1 (Doyle): RIP, EIGRP
Video Lectures: IPExpert EIGRP, RIP, IP Services, TCL, Access Lists
Assuming things go according to plan, this week and next will be spent working through the Narbik technology labs and (depending on time) some of the InternetworkExpert v5 labs. Planning to use Dynamips for 100% of this, except for the switching stuff. Will probably do at least one rack rental either next weekend or the weekend after to catch up on those.
Posted in CCIE.
Tagged with CCIE.
By blanders
– September 1, 2008
Since the iPhone does not sync SmartGroups from the MacOS Address Book (only regular groups), I wrote this script to automatically create ordinary groups with the contents of my SmartGroups. I name all of my SmartGroups starting with “SM_” and the script creates regular groups with the same name, but starting with “_” (so SM_Family would become _Family).
Note that this script will delete all contacts from any regular groups that begin with “_” and match the name of a SmartGroup, so be a bit careful before you run it the first time.
on replaceString(theText, oldString, newString)
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldString
set tempList to every text item of theText
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to newString
set theText to the tempList as string
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
return theText
end replaceString
tell application "Address Book"
set theGroups to every group
end tell
repeat with aGroup in theGroups
if id of aGroup contains "ABSmartGroup" then
set theName to "_" & replaceString((name of aGroup), "SM_", "")
tell application "Address Book"
if group theName exists then
remove every person from group theName
else
make new group with properties {name:theName}
end if
add (every person in aGroup) to group theName
end tell
end if
end repeat
tell application "Address Book" to save addressbook
Posted in Projects.
Tagged with addressbook, applescript, iphone, osx, sync.
By blanders
– August 29, 2008
Posted in CCIE.
By iphone
– August 29, 2008
Catching up a bit from the weekend. Didn’t get much done on Friday or Sunday, other than a bit of reading, due to other commitments. However, on Saturday I did a 4-hour rack rental with CCIE2Be.com and a second 8-hour rental with IPExpert. The CCIE2Be session was spent working on the IEv5 Workbook #1 bridging and switching content. Ended up going about halfway through. For the IPExpert session, I re-did the first half of their Switching focus lab, concentrating on speed and not making stupid oversights. Went pretty well.
Last night I tackled the first half of the IEv5 frame relay lab, using my Dynamips lab setup. Went very well, and the virtual setup seems to work well so far. We’ll see how it goes when I get to more involved labs, but if it continues to go as well as the frame stuff did, my rack costs should go down quite a bit. As far as the content, I had a bit of trouble with back-to-back frame relay and some of the more non-standard Inverse-ARP scenarios, but after re-watching the IE frame relay class-on-demand I now feel comfortable with those as well.
Tonight I’ll be finishing up the IE frame relay lab and probably hitting the IPExpert version. I may spend a bit of time getting my Dynamips lab working with the IE initial configs (updating interface names and the like). My Narbik workbooks should arrive tomorrow and I’ll be hitting his FR labs then. After that, it’s on to IP!
Posted in CCIE.
By blanders
– August 26, 2008
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.
Posted in CCIE.
By blanders
– August 21, 2008
Hi Brian,
This email is sent to notify you that your order has been shipped.
Your order was shipped via UPS and your tacking number is 1Z0000000000000000.
Looks like my Narbik workbooks will be here next Friday Wednesday (they’re coming UPS Ground from California). I have no shortage of things to work on until they get here, of course.
Posted in CCIE.
By blanders
– August 21, 2008
