Had a good week, managed 70 hours lab time. This was used to work through the last of the IPX vol 1 labs, IPX vol 3 lab 1 - 4 and INE vol 2 labs 1 and 2. I will finish off INE vol 2 lab 2 tomorrow morning. I found a liking in the IPX labs, but there is just something different about the INE labs. The INE labs are giving me flash backs of RS. One thing for sure is that it is taking longer to do the INE labs. There could be a few reasons, but one that stands out for me is the amount of configuration on these first two labs are tedious. Another thing that I noticed while doing the IPX vol 3 labs is that I hardly used the diagrams. With INE you constantly have to keep an eye on the diagram. This is mostly due to wording of the questions, this gives it that Cisco lab feel to it. The first two INE labs are tough but all the questions get answered, they are not too hard, this ensures that the new knowledge keeps flowing in, bit by bit. I could configure labs for a living, oh wait I do. Seriously though, real world scenarios are not 1% as exciting and challenging as the labs.
Study schedule: While I lost quite a bit of time last month, I did manage to gain this week, I am still about 30 behind, but should manage to catch that up later. That is, if all goes well. Someone mentioned that the open ended questions were added to another track, I have not researched this but I think the three tracks are RS, Sec and Voice now, so I guess OEQ on SP is imminent, therefore more pressure to get the practical out the way to be able to review theory before the lab. In fact, I have no idea what the OEQ are like or what to expect, so speculating about a study approach for them is pointless. I will have to read up a bit more, perhaps Cisco will have samples to get an idea.
I started full scale labs with the IPX vol 3 labs 1 - 4. I am roughly following Ed and Zay’s recommendation, which is to do IPX vol 3 labs before INE vol 2 labs and then lastly do IPX vol 2. This is because the IPX vol3 is actually just IPX vol1 labs 26 - 30 branded as IPX vol3. Therefore they fit like a glove after completing IPX vol 1:
IPX v3 Lab 1: If you are preparing for the new version 4 RS lab, this lab will be perfect for the new RS blueprint. This is a real easy lab, so get it done early in preparation. For the SP labs it is a good warm up.
IPX v3 Lab 2 - 4: Labs get progressively harder. While lab 1 took 4 hours to complete, lab 4 took 10+ to thoroughly work through.
IPX v3 Lab 5: I skipped this lab according to the recommendation. I will do this lab somewhere at the end. Therefore I can not yet comment on this lab.
Overall labs 1 - 4 are good intermediate labs. I definitely agree with Zay and Ed that these are the labs to start with when moving over to full scale labs. Most of the sections could be done on dynamips, except for things like turning off DTP and switchport security. I have not felt a real need for real switches during these labs. Lab 4 has a qinq scenario linked to a l2tpv3 tunnel that I could not quite do but worked around the qinq limitation by configuring a trunk and l2tp tunnels for each vlan.
I hope to do all the labs at least twice before September, but on the second run I will probably skip lab 1. Not much of a review, hope to add some meaningful insights in round 2
Yesterday I completed Vol1 for the second time. This is part of the strategy to cover the focus lab thoroughly before starting with full labs. I have to admit my opinion of the IPX labs has improved. If I compare this workbook to what else is available there is actually quite a big difference between IPX vol 1 and INE vol 1. IPX covers more topics on the blueprint while INE focus more on L3VPN and Multicast. I guess they both have their place, but for my strategy to cover focus labs before full labs, the IPX vol 1 is better suited. Initially I thought the workbook had a lot of mistakes in, especially when looking at the DLCI numbers, turns out the dynamips configs were the problem. For example the DLCI numbers at R2 all start with one (1), e.g 104,105,106 . This was a bit confusing in the beginning as I thought this was clearly a typo in the workbook. Turns out, the whole workbook use these DLCI’s for R2 so I solved this by changing the dynagen frameswitch configs.
Overall, the workbook does a good job of covering most technologies. Personally I think the multiple QOS labs can be merged into one or two labs. This should easily bring the total labs down to 20. More detail can be added in the Inter-As labs. The 1 to 2 hour labs is a bad idea, merge these in to 3 to 4 hour labs. Dont sell the workbook as 25 labs, which is deceiving, sell it as 50 hours of practice labs.
Last thought regarding vol1: I am glad I started with these.
Game on, what a relief, payment made successfully. I actually stressed quite a bit about this. At the last minute I entered my personal details as for some reason the Cisco site rejected the company card details. Now it is time to really get into the study mode. The last 10 days have been the lowest point in preparation thus far, managing only 15 hours. The next ten days I hope to be the most productive. I hope to finish IPX vol1 for the second time in the next few days then start with IPX vol3 full scale labs next week.
A few months back I made a post regarding the dmzlink-bw feature. Since the post is relatively simple and receive hits daily I decided to make a practical example and post the dynamips/dynagen minilab files. First things first, it is important to know what the feature does. In very brief terms it is a feature that will propagate the link bandwidth of the external links (ebgp) to the ibgp peers via an extended community. What this does is make it possible for the ibgp peers to load balance traffic out the AS in a ratio based on the external link bandwidth value. Imagine a network that reach the limit of fiber or atm links or possibly a scenario where a device run out of routing capacity. In these situations dmzlink-bw could be helpful to load balance traffic out in the ratio based on the configured bandwidth of the external links.
The configuration is straight forward:
1) Enable the feature on the devices that need to consider the bandwidth value (CE1,CE2,C):
bgp dmzlink-bw
2) Enable the feature on the external peer neighbor statements (CE1,CE2):
neighbor ebgp-peer-ip dmzlink-bw
3) Send the extended community to the ibgp peers that need to consider the bandwidth value (CE1,CE2):
neighbor ibgp-peer-ip send-community extended
4) Enable bgp multipath where necessary (CE2,C)
maximum-paths ibgp 2
In the example I used the SP terms PE,P and CE, but in all practicality it could be any two routing domains with multiple links between them.
The three links between the two domains are 100mb, 30mb, 120mb.
P, PE1, PE2 are in AS 5
C, CE1 and CE2 are in AS 2
AS 2 want to make use of unequal load balance to send traffic to AS 5
CE1, CE2 and C are configured for bgp dmzlink-bw
CE2 is configured to accept two paths.
C is configured to accept two paths.
CE1 and CE2 send extended communities to C
CE2 uses the link bandwidth to load balance over 120mb and 30mb pipes in the ratio 4:1
CE2 sends the total bandwidth of the two links to C
C use a ratio of 3:2 between CE1 and CE2
The dynagen .net file zipped with the configuration stored in the nvram files can be downloaded here bgp-dmz.zip. AS2 has been preconfigure to do unequal cost load balancing to AS5. The objective of this mini lab is to configure AS5 to unequal cost load balance to AS2. To keep it simple, load balance only to the loopback address on router C.
A quick video to briefly run through the configuration and verification:
Dismal week and a half. Only managed 18 study hours, spent most of the study hours (another 20+) working overtime. I should be able to take this time off at a later stage but starting to worry about the time left. I am falling so far behind that I might not be able to catch up. I started working through the IPX vol 1 labs again. After these labs I will start with IPX vol 3 labs, since the vol3 labs are apparently easier than the other labs.
Quick update: The last ten days went by too quick. It is almost 10% of the total time left and it is as if no progress has been made. I am still busy with the AMsoares labs, it is taking much longer to complete than what I expected, but I am also using this time to read the relevant chapters from Mpls Fundamentals. Slow progress, but hopefully quality progress. The last ten days yielded only 40hours averaging 4 a day, which means 10 behind. Fighting a loosing battle with this schedule. Hope to finish the mini labs soon, where after I would have completed IPX vol1, read briefly INE vol1 (decided not the practice these labs) and the AMS mini labs. I will then work through (read) the INE Vol1 labs and then do the IPX vol1 labs thoroughly for the second time. I will probably work through the AMS labs one more time before the lab. Either before starting full labs or closer to the lab date, have not decided yet. Suggestions welcome?
Rick is the first of the 2009 SP bloggers to get double gold. Congrats to Rick on an awesome achievement. This gives the rest of us a bit of motivation.
Update: Rick posted his preparation overview. This has made me think again about my preparation strategy. I will have to review my strategy and make some adjustments. I will probably move IPX vol3 earlier into prep and IPX Vol2 later into prep.
I have started with the scenarios, so far so good. I would rather call them practical configuration examples and the best way to use them is probably debatable. Currently I load the configuration example, read the documentation, break it, fix it and then try alternative options.
Word of advice: The net files are setup for Windows, it will take a while to convert them to linux unless you don’t use something like perl or sed to run through and change the strings. Try to get the net files ready early in prep. I used the source of the mini scenario page to get a list of all the .zip files to download. Below is a script that might be useful in changing the .net files. Once the strings are changed, its a matter of point and shoot
#!/bin/bash
### Change directory to where you downloaded the net files
cd /dyn/ams/
### Create a list of net files
list=`find | grep .net | grep -v netflow`
for dir in $list
do
### Change the windows directory structure to linux
sed ’s/g:\\_CCIE\\Emulator\\Dynamips\\images\\c7200-p\.120-32\.S9\.bin/\/dyn\/images\/C7200-p-mz\.120-33\.S3\.bin/g’ < $dir > tmp.file
### Change an idlepc value
# sed ’s/0×60a600a8/0×623bbedc/g’ < $dir > tmp.file
### Move the temp file to the original
mv tmp.file $dir
done
30 days left before payment. Now is probably a good time for one last check whether the lab preparation strategy is all in order. Thus far the strategy was quite simple:
1. Begin with professional level theory via CCIP
2. Use professional level theory for preparation for the SP written
3. Pass the written
4. Book the lab
5. Practice individual technologies via focus/tech labs
6. Practice full scale labs
7. Attempt the Cisco lab
Well if only we lived in a stable perfect world. Since Cisco now introduced the core knowledge questions to the security lab and made it clear that they intend to introduce it to all tracks, it is obvious that SP or voice will be next. Speculation is worthless, but if the trend is something to go by, SP will be next. The trend being the most to least CCIE numbers: RS - Sec - SP - Voice. By the time I sit the lab almost a year would have passed since I started with the theory prep. It is unknown when Cisco will make the announcement but with only four months to go, the study schedule is quite tight. If I don’t prepare for the worst and Cisco make the announcement that core knowledge will be on the SP lab, I wont have enough time to recover. I would have to drop something in the lab preparation to make way to review the theory material. Therefor I am preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. I am considering to supplement practice labs with reading Cisco documentation in more depth or use two to three weeks before the lab to refresh on theory. I might have known the header fields and sizes for the written, but doubt whether I will still know them by September. I am hoping either strategy or a combination of both will work.
Gloomy figure: After making the adjustments to compensate for the theory, the hours scheduled for the last 120 days adds to 600 hours. This averages 5 hours a day. Somehow I know something will break. Me, the schedule or the lab.
