Thats sums it all up for me. The title that is. Its labs galore, filled with a day or two of theory for a break from lab practice burnout. I m keeping my posts to a minimum since i spend as much time as i can muster for practice/theory.

Not a lot going on other then studying every day. Its hard trying to log on and post an update, thus my late posts. Not much to mention other then i am cracking the whip on myself to keep at the core stuff till its second nature.

On the R/S  track, every one can see all the new changes coming and as such the lab dates have all but disappeared.  I havent found a good date for myself, but am hoping to get one soon enuff. Till then i m spending as much time doing ** quality studying **.

Thats all i have for today. I ll post later on in the week or as time permits. :)

Just recently got back to the working world once again. Thank God for that.  There isnt much going on with me other then work/study and errands around the house.

Since the big annoucement this week about the ccie lab changes, i am trying to gear myself up and spend as much free time i can with grind my nose down studying. I am on pace to fini up one more Narbik workbook this weekend and plan on knocking out two more through the end of the month. Key for me is repetition. I am going to leave it at that and get back to my labbing. Just wanted to come through and post once more where i am at.

Lately i have spent some decent amount of time trying to keep the idlepc values down, as well as stay in tune with labbing/going over mock core questions. Today i struck gold.  A snapshot of my idlepc via the Activity Monitor on my Mac Book shows it running  at 18%. It does peak up to 25-30 % and then drop. For that i dont have any answers.  All i can say is that i am happy with it.  I kept trying different idlevalues and eventually i was able to get it low enough for my satisfaction.  Only problem here is that i have to do this each time i run dynamips so it could be 2-3 times a day depending on if i opt to turn of my laptop.

Ok nuff about idlepc values. Studying is still going strong. I noticed while going through some eigrp labs today that default-information all out command doesnt show when you check the running config.  I had it all set up after going over some eigrp tasks, and a show run | s eigrp came back with zilch on the command. I had to do sho hist to confirm that i did enter it in. A quik look at the doc cd doesnt say any mention of the fact that its not evident in the show run output when you enable it. Hmm, just something i came across today.

k well back at it again. Time for some labs, then watch some rescue me, and off for a good night sleep after that. Happy Labbing all.

i finally got dynamips up/running. it took me some time, plus i m a but rusty with loonix/unix commands so i had to go digging around in the terminal on how to get dynamips going. Well its full blast cept i have to major concerns left. One find an ios that will let me set up a swi mode acc vla command on my fa/eth interface & two get this idlepc thing down. Although i am running 4-5 router instance for some of the labs i do, the idlepc is going over 100% as soon as i get two routers going. So intead of wasting precious time trying to get the idlepc settings going, i am taking it with stride and just spending my breaks trying to figure it out.

Thats all for now. back to the ole cli. Breaks over as well…………

Dynamips up and running.

April 12, 2009

Ok i finally got dynamips working after some silly errors. I have spent the last couple of hours tinkering with it to my liking as well as miserably trying to get the idlepc to around 40%. yes 40 is all i want for now, as soon as r1 gets cranking my 2gig processor goes to 100%. per the tutorial on the dynagen site i tried what they said but its no worky for me. Thus after spending the last 4 hours messing around with it. I feel that i have got it to a point where i can kick off some labs. Tomorrow i ll try to get the idlepc running to my liking. A good nights sleep never hurts, plus i am itching to go watch the latest episode of breaking bad.

:)

And yet another study session going full steam. Lately i have been going over Switching theory/labs and writing my own core questions as well. I noticed this on some of the other blogs and decided it would be a good idea to come up with some core questions of my own.  I finally decided to get dynamips working on my mac as well. All has gone well cept for the ios which doesnt seem to be found via the image link. I have tried several ios versions 2600, 3600, & now am on a 7200 version. I m hoping to get it working tonight so i can start breaking in some lab time with the routing protocols as well as continue on with my switching labs.

Just wrapped up reviewing Private Vlans with a smattering of voice vlans. The voice chapter is really small but i threw it in for good measure. Private vlans used to give me the fits but not anymore. Ok its time for me to get some claritin, allergies are killing me.  I m going to go watch the latest episode of Rescue Me and then its back to studying tomorow morning.

Mike Down from IPX provided me with their core questions quiz software. Its a .air ( click the link to download it ) installed file which is quite neat and doesnt require a login as compared to IE. There are 100 questions in it, and i am hoping it will increase in the weeks to come.  BTW its FREE, did i mention that.  What with the economy being what it is, and well yours truly being unemployed i definitely am not knocking it. I look forward to using it in the upcoming weeks as its questions total increase. I dont think it ll be a bad thing at all since i own the IE product and using both will only help me learn more if not hammer away some of the core stuff in my head. PS with todays economy who can complain about getting a free product. Not me.

Happy studying all. time for me to get back to the cli.

Full Steam ahead.

April 7, 2009

Yesterday i covered every dot1x command there is in the doc cd. I also spent time working on some open ended question material.  Toss in some qos commands and i cn honestly say it was a good day of studying. Today i plan on finishing out all the QoS related commands. My goal is to cover mostly every command under the switching section of the doc cd before renting a lab rack. The lack of switches doesnt give me the luxury to browse the doc cd while the clock is ticking away on a rack rental. I am hoping that in two weeks i have covered all that there i to switching and then move back in to routing protocol labs.