Private, vlans. MST theory.

Thursday was a bit light on studying. I completed the Private Vlan task, over all i lfelt good and only missed a couple of statements.  One was adding in a few other interfaces to a secondary community vlan & i didn’t seem to figure that out.  In hindsight i am a bit perturbed by the topology diagram since its not drawn as well as i would like to have it.  I attribute my loss of the 3rd vlan configuration due to the topology.  Overall i am content with my config, i wish there were more private vlan tasks in this workbook, but i am hoping that will be answered in the rest of the workbooks.  I supplemented my private vlan commands by practicing them in notepad and am moving over to MST now.

I am excited to see an entire section of the workbook dedicated to MST, looking forward to going through the config this weekend.  But before that i need to do some theory reading which i started last night. It ended up being some light reading since i watched Obamas speech on tv.

Tonight i plan on working through my MST doc cd printouts.   I will probably spend several days going over MST since it has an entire workbook dedicated to it.

I found this interesting blog post on internetworkexperts blog about a 10 minute interview with CCIE candidates who are sitting for the lab.  Interesting stuff. I have heard of cheating on the lab exams,  rumours of how certain individuals out there have access to the labs which they memorize before sitting for the lab.  I dont place any stock in people cheating since in doing so they ultimately hurt themselves down the road with it.  cciepursuit mentioned on his post about brain dump schools which i myself have heard off.  nuff said about shady stuff like that, least from me.

On a lighter note, its almost Labor Day weekend, last major holiday till Thanksgiving so I plan on enjoying myself.  Hopefully there will be ample studying time, and studying done by me this weekend.

Happy Labor Day everyone.

Still thinking of switching.

I took some time off from posting this past week. I am still working through the IPExpert vol 1 switching labs. This time i am going back over some of the concepts and doing through research via the doc cd plus practicing thier related commands. I did a onceover on several of the concepts and found that i some holes in my knowledge of the theory. On my way from the grocery store last night, i was thinking about private vlans, and realized that i needed to refresh my knowledge about its theory. I got home and went back over some of the tasks i had done previously and could not recall the solutions.  Thus the reason for a re-visit with the concepts.   I dont think this is overkill from any angle, i spent several hours going over private vlans and woke up this morning thinking about them. Now i can rattle off the difference between, isolated, community, promiscuous with ease.   And that felt good.

Ipexpert Vol 1 Switching labs.

I started working on IPExpert vol 1 Switching labs on Wednesday, worked my way through some of the labs. some of the tasks i have seen before but got thrown for a loop on the wording. I blew it on the Etherchannel question and am still scratching my head about that. I plan on going back to it at another time to see if the keywords there tigger my memory. For now the question is fresh in my mind so no reason to look at it for now. I stopped at task 2.9, and am currently reading EEE 802.1x Port-Based Authentication since its not something i have worked on before. I plan on finishing up my reading and then moving on with the remaining labs.

Key things i have learned so far: Having workbooks from two vendors is really good. Why? Well the wording is different, which works out really good for a CCIE candidate. I have seen this being posted and discussed on GS, and now i can vouch for this debate myself. I plan on going through the CCIE assessor labs in October depending on where i am at with my studies by then.

Going forward my plan for this weekend is to continue working through the first Switching lab ( PVST ). Thats the game plan going forward, hoping to make it come true.

I meant to post this earlier, posted by etherealmind on twitter. shouldhavegonewithcisco.com passed his CCIE R/S. He plans on going for his voice track next. He used IPExpert material and thats good news to me since i am using their product this month.

Thats all for now folks. Hoping to post this weekend after some more successful labbing.

IPExpert Volume 1 OSPF Labs contd.

With some caffeinated energy supplemented by few bites of some Cadburys chocolate, my lab practice took off this evening. Glad to say i did quite well and worked my way up till task 10.18.  I opted to stop there so i could pick up on this tomorrow.  So i lied and said i would give OSPF 3 days to complete, well unfortunately it didnt work out that way. As such the rest of the tasks are to be done tomorrow.

Overall i am quite happy with the questions i received on this lab, i found some real gems that i had never come across before. Especially the task about not using the area x command when advertising a block of ip addresses. I was leaning towards the passive interface command, but kept telling myself that it didnt make sense to use it. I was correct but did not get the solution right. Overall it was a great learning experience and another addition to my CCIE notes list under OSPF.  There were not many zingers that had me thinking,  the key was to know the technology and read the question for an understanding of what was asked.  I totally screwed myself on a virtual link and missed an ip ospf flood command even though i knew it was the answer.  What bugged me not to use the flood command was a lack of options underlining the time. I had to re-read the solution to understand what the answer accomplished.

Overall some great lessons learned. I need to pick this Volume later on in the week depending on where i am at with my Switching studies and go back over the labs.

I plan on finishing the OSPF labs tomorrow and then will go headlong in to Switching.

IPExpert Volume 1 OSPF Labs.

I have been working on both Switching and Ospf labs this weekend.

I have been working on both Switching and Ospf labs this weekend. As such i opted out of posting for the weekend, and decided to concentrate on reading/practicing labs along with some household chores.

I decided to strictly practice OSPF labs as of yesterday for the next 3 days, then get back on the horse with switching.

Last night i focused strictly on the IPExpert Volume One labs. I spent some time working in the garage so a couple of hours were spent there. After getting done with the household chores i went about building my dynamips file. Once i got an idea of what needed to be done, after reading the instructions i started with my configuration. The questions appear to be simple when you first look at them, but nothing is simple as it appears to be. What I noticed is if you don’t know the technology well you know where you are headed, its either the Doc Cd or spend time troubleshooting why the solution doesn’t match your configuration. Back to my review, the questions focused on technology, there are subtle hints ( case in point one of the questions asks you to not implement priority 0 on any routers, also Spokes cant have a router-id on them. Aha that means the hub can be configured as such. Easy one might think, but in the heat of the moment it could mean the loss of a couple or more points. And that in itself would be a bad thing on the day of ze lab.

I stopped at task 5 on OSPF. The solution guide is worded in a storybook type manner, its almost as if the author is telling you a story on how to approach the task at hand. This is a different approach for me, since i am used to the usual cisco press dry wording. I did appreciate the manner in which the solution is given, its easy to understand and retain.

I plan on continuing on forward tonight. Need to do some tweaking of my dynamips and then its going to tackling the rest of the tasks on this lab.

To SPAN or not to SPAN. ok well you get the point of this topic.

I decided not to post the past few days, its not that i was lazy, just busy and at the end of the night wore out. I have been stopping around 11-11:30 pm (ish) since my jet rockets start to taper out.  All the caffeine buzz wears out by the end of the night.  Point made about me getting tired. hah.

So these past few days i have been working on Switching.  My plan as noted in an older post was to start working on  Switching in addition to having already began practicing OSPF. I feel fairly comfortable with OSPF, but not at an expert level where configs will flow off my finger tips as i read a task.  Been reading quite a bit lately before practicing any labs, a couple of hours are spent every night reading Switching before any lab work takes place.   I completed some SPAN & RSPAN last night, overall a short chapter but quite interesting stuff.   During this week, i have gone back over Etherchannel & Ethernet Switching. I pretty much have  printed out the whole Doc Cd for Switching.  Sorry trees. .  Deep down inside i have this burning urge to just get really badass on Switching.

I have been laying low on OSPF this week, since i wanted to get caught up with some reading on Switching. My plan for this weekend is get blaze out some OSPF labs & brush up on my FR, EIGRP, RIP, HDLC configs. Focus will be on OSPF for the most part.  Then its going back to Switching again.

So far thats all for this week, on a side note its been raining around here so the heat isnt that bad to live with.

Etherchannel & PPPoFR.

I got back on the lab horse once again as of yesterday. It felt good to start up ole dynamips after almost a weeks hiatus. I did feel a bit rusty typing some of the commands. I dont think thats good, thus from here on going forward i wont take such a long break from ye old keyboarde. Now that i am running through some Switching configuration, the realization has kicked in that i need access to some 3560/3550 switches. Dynamips can only do some much with the basic Switching stuff. For now i am going to work on getting a good grasp on the technologies and then start to rent some time on some remote rack rentals.

I read up on Etherchannel documentation courtesy of the Doc Cd. I have a good grasp of it, all i need to do now is some labs for it so the keywords, items i need to remember stay with me. I got stuck on PPPoFR, never touched this before, but i did some reading. The Doc Cd material isnt in depth, but i did get a good idea about what it offers. I stopped there for the night. Tomorrow is going to entail working through Lab 8 and hopefully finishing up or close to it.

The plan for this week is: Go over Doc Cd material for VLANs , PPPoFR.

Complete lab 8, begin lab 9. Start working & finish up IPExpert Lab 1. This will be a great mix of the two vendors since their wording is completely different from each other. Least from the way that i read it.

MSTP revisited.

As the title goes, MSTP revisited yesterday. I did have a few distractions that i needed to tend to. Got new brakes on one of our cars so lost a couple of hours with that. I also had to work in the garage and get some organization done there. Unfortunately a couple of racks i brought although appearing to be very sturdy in the pictures on the box turned out to be very flimsy. So i lost time there.

Over all got back to going over Lab 8 IE. Completed a few tasks, i was a bit scatter brained so missed a few items during my configuration. Still working through my switching so it feels good to have brought this bad boy in to the picture. I also went over some audio from Ipexpert for switching. This is the first time that i have heard Scott Morris speak. Although he has departed IPexpert the material is good. His approach when compared to the IE audio is a bit different. IE goes straight for the jugular and talks about the material and what it does. My thoughts on IPExpert audio was that it contained real world type scenarios where the lecturer would ask, would you do this in the real world etc etc insert example here.  The audio is good, i liked the concept, it was completely different in my opinion to IE. I am glad that both of these vendors ( and keeping in mind that this is the 1st time i have compared them on any product ) are different in their regards. Ok folks thats where i got too last night. Tomorrow i need to find some more racks for my garage and then continue on working some more STP switching etc etc & hoping to crush lab 8 along with working through some IPExpert labs as well. I think from IPExpert i will tackle their Volume 1 Switching to see what the wording appears to be. Overall i am excited as a kid in candy store to have all this material to work through. I just hope the next two months provide me with success.

time to bid yallz goodbye for now. Its time to do some reading on etherchannel.

Oh yes before i forget, found this link about memorization. Lately i have been trying to find an easy method on how to memorize stuff. This link does give me some ideas, although i would have to get very creative in figuring out how i would memorize some items in BGP, OSPF & Qos.

Adding IPExpert.com product to my study material.

As the title goes, i am adding IPExpert.com as another vendor whose material i am going to use in unison with IE material for my quest to get those cherished digits. I have been in conversation with Mike Down at IPExpert for some time now, and he was gracious enough to provide me with some material and my honest analysis of said material in return asking that i place the banner that you see on my blog. As such going forward i will be using both IE and IPExpert material to prepare for the lab. I am looking forward to this weekend since i am almost wrapped up going over the theory of Switching. My plan tonight after spending some quality time with the family is to go over VLANs via the Doc Cd, and then going over the core labs for the next two months. Well its going to be more of one week short of three months.

So going forth the game plan as stated previously is to work through as many labs over and over again till the end of September. The only other protocol i will add in during the next 7 weeks is BGP. But mostly i am going over these labs as many times as i can muster. The key here is to build speed, but also learn items i have missed or not yet learned.

Well folks this weekend is going to be busy, i hope to be posting some quality aliases/notes so stay tuned for that.

VTP. Done!!!!!

Ok folks, finished up on STP. I do need do some some fine tuning on it with hands on configuration, but i get the gist of what its about. I started up with VTP, going over that once i get off work today, and then hopefully i can incorporate some additional material via cisco.com. Ahh the feeling of learning, and actually understanding stuff. It does wonders for ones ego. lol.

Added note:

Went over the doc cd documentation of VTP, once i got home. Covered mostly all of it. Fine tuning will need to be done via configuration.  Over the past few months my method of learning has taught me that one, i need material to focus on visually,  & two practice some of the tasks that just reading isn’t wont become second had via reading.

Well overall I felt very good about reading today. I haven’t done any labs in a few days so come tomorrow i plan on getting back on that horse.  What i needed to do is complete some reading up on STP, VTP & well i never did any MSTP work thus had to read about that.  Tomorrow during my lunch i plan on reading about VLANs.

On a side note, while browsing for some helpful points on memorization. I found the ( see highlighted link ). Overall its not a bad idea, but one would have to do some serious memorization in order to make their method work. I think it would be good if a person is forcing them self to memorize a certain document or documentation.

Ok folks, its well past midnight,  the day went well.  Tomorrow is another day to study, and oh burn out 8 hours of work.