All quiet on the western front.

Well all is quiet for me. Jes keeping my head down, studying, reading, trying to stay focused on the STN workbook.  I lost last weekend to a wedding that i was invited too. Thus barely any studying took place. I was able to get started with the ACL portion of the STN workbook.  Thus this past week has been about ACLs theory, and lab practice. So far i have worked my way up till the Reflexive ACL lab.   Tonight was spent just reading through the Reflexive Access Lists chapter from the Doc Cd.

Time is flying,  Jan is gone in a couple of days. In hindsight i did good. I could have done better, but i feel really good about what i have accomplished so far. Out of the 11 sections given in the STN workbook, i have covered 5 so far this month. ( Well almost completed the ACL part )

So heres to some better progress, if not several great repeat sessions in Feb.  I am hoping by the time Narbiks bootcamp rolls around, i ll have gone through all his labs plus any commands that were missed in them via the Doc cd.

The router she speaks to me.

Wowza. Never saw this one before. I didnt delete some old default route statements for the ACL practice that i was going through tonight. It eventually bit me in the behind once i started working on some icmp unreachable ACLs from the STN workbook.  I had my r2 default pointing to r3 and well vice versa so when some of my pings went through for a bogus address this is what i ended up with below.

r2#ping 5.5.5.5
Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 5.5.5.5, timeout is 2 seconds:

*Mar  1 04:05:44.010: ICMP: bogus redirect from 131.1.23.3 – for 5.5.5.5 use gw 131.1.23.2
*Mar  1 04:05:44.014:       gateway address is one of our addresses…..
Success rate is 0 percent (0/5)

A bit o background on the STN ACL tasks. They are great, but a real task to find in the Doc Cd.  Well least i am having this problem while sitting in the comfort of my home rather then the lab with months of practice/ $1400 on the line.

Changes afoot.

Yes changes afoot but i am still studying. lol.  Lately the sadikhov forum as been onfire for the past few days about the new format of questions that are going to start on February 1, 2009.  One of the forum posters mentioned the questions are going to be computer generated per a reply from Cisco themself.  This was via the IE blog. I browsed over there to check out the IE forum and confirmed for myself what it said there.

I realize in one of my previous posts ( jan 18 ) i stated thats what i had to say at that time was all for this.  But its hard to ignore all the posts out there regarding this change.  So i take my previous comment back.

Going along with the title. Nortel made a major annoucement about thier bankruptcy.  No links needed for that we all have read the news, and now just while i was posting/multitasking i see Microsoft is going to layoff 5000 of their workers in the next 18 months.  Makes me wonder whos/whats next on the horizon.

Oh and during all layoffs, bankruptcy news i am still studying.  I finished  the STN RIP labs a second time yesterday,  the previous week i revisited the Gre labs.  I did change my study pattern and am now tackling the ACL portion of the STN workbook.  Also going over redistribution theory courtesy of CCIE Routing and Switching 2nd Edition guide by Wendell Odom.

Well i went headlong in to the ACL portion of STN last night. So far i have done well. I did answer some of tasks with extended ACLS when i could have done as the solution asked and used a simple ACL for the answer.  I need to work on not overthinking the solution.  I have made this mistake before when i was going over the IE workbooks.   Live and you learn.

Rip wierdness.

The other night  i was finishing up some RIP STN labs. One of the tasks had a solution worded to use the validate-update-source command.   Simply put what the commands does it eliminates ” validating the source IP address of incoming routing update”. Well i did the task, ran the command but for some reason i kept getting an odd message on the console.  Bad route from neighbor. Actually thats what i remember from the other night, i need to go back and lab this again since the complete syntax. Old age i guess isnt letting me recollect correctly the exact syntax.   I did however get it working after redoing my entire config, which i swore was right to begin with. I mean how many ways can you go wrong with the following:

r1

router rip

no aut

ver 2

net 1.0.0.0

net 131.1.0.0

Duplicate on r2 with 2.0.0.0 for the loopback interface.
Although i am missing the syntax of the error i wanted to go ahead and post it for a future reference for myself and anyone else who might frequent my blog.

So this morning i went over to Emans blog and read quite an interesting post that he has today about the  League of Superhumans. Its a link to a survey where well you simply fill out and submit. I found it interesting since we lack techie groups ( cisco techie groups ) in the DFW area.  There is only one that i know of and its the DFW CUG, but it only holds monthly meetings which i at times do miss.  Anyway i digress on that, do head over to Emans blog and take some time to read the latest post, and will out the survey if ya like.

Weekend update.

Yea ok so i took the title from SNL. Whatever.

Well the weekend has come and gone.  I barely caught 10 minutes of the Steeler/Ravens game.  But most of the weekend was spent going over GRE ,  FR Fragmentation theory, and well i also covered all of the STN GRE labs.

This past week has been busy for the CCIE lab.  A new change came about that had a ongoing post on GS. I was just thinking so much buzz about how many ppl will be passing in the next month, what type of questions will be asked is being asked on GS and other forums. Funny though, i m just thinking why dont ppl just study and go do their best.  My opinion so far, is that its a good thing that happened.  CCIE doesnt need to get watered down.

Thats all i had to say about the new change.  For now its back to studying.

Already two weeks in to 09. Time is flying.

Its been a few days since i last updated my blog.  This past week i had to battle a toothache which turned in to an extraction a couple of days ago. I lost 1 day of studying due to it.   This week i covered all of eigrp from the STN workbook.  Mostly all of the commands were covered here as well.  The labs are great, only thing that isnt 100% clear for me is the stub network command and its sub commands. I need to work on that some more, as well as get better at redistribution.

Last night i got cracking on the FR labs.  So for the rest of the week it ll be FR labs, and then the big task of BGP.  I am truly looking forward to the BGP labs since its one of my weak points.

I see the lab format is changing. No big deal there, my opinion after my initial attempt is if you are prepared then theres just nothing to worry about cept for power outages and an act of god.

Heres to happy studying for the rest of the week.

STN Ospf section completed.

Finally completed OSPF section from STN otherwise known as Soup to Nuts workbook tonight.  Out all the OSPF commands, the STN workbook didnt cover 44 of all the OSPF commands that are listed in the Doc cd command book, dictionary or whatever its called.   Some appear obscure, but since i have failed the lab once already, i dont plan on ignoring any of them even if they have to do with a sham link or snmp.   My feeling of the overall breakdown of the labs was that i should have started with this type if not this same workbook for my 1st attempt.  The small labs build on top of each other, and they do make you think about what you are doing.

I have told myself that i need to finish this workbook at least twice before my march 09 date, as such its time to get cracking on the RIP section. I am hoping it ll be done within one day. I already have the dynamips topology built for it and have started off with a few tasks.  Lets see what tomorrow brings STN RIP wise.

Happy studying everyone.

Soup to Nuts.

Yup thats it. Thats what i have been working on every night this week.  Since i received it all i have worked on is the OSPF labs. Last night i got my hands on the BLS courtesy of IPX. Thus started watching the vids from that as well.  So far Videos look really good,  i like the way the theory is being broken down by Scott along with some subtle hints tossed in there as well.  Not much other then a nagging toothache which is bugging me.  I plan on visiting the dentist tomorrow and hopefully will get some meds for that.

Thats all for now.  Time to finish out the rest of the work day and then head home for some more labbing. 

Bootcamp ahoy.

I took the plunge on Friday and paid for the March 30th bootcamp with Narbik in Richardson Tx.  And for the past couple of days i have been diligently working through the Soup to Nuts workbook.  I started off with Ospf since thats a topic i have been hammering away at since returning from my initial lab attempt.  I also have copied all the ospf commands from the doc cd, and am making a note of which ones i have coverered so far. The STN workbook is working out just fine for me, so far i have only been stuck on a few tasks.  I am hoping before March 30th rolls around, i ll have gone through it at least twice if not more. 

Thats it for now. Back to dynamips/labbing for me.

1/1/2009.

Feels wierd typing in 1/1/2009.  Another year gone by. Lessons learned the hard way, and hopefully for the better.  Ok enough sentimental crap about the new year.

I am still battling jet leg or lag whichever it is.  I was up at 7 am cst, studied for a couple of hours, then played with my daughter for an hour or two. Ran some errands,  and decided to have a mid day nap which lasted 5 hours. Nice. Woke up around 7:30 pm. Now back to going over ospf configurations via the ospf command book.   I plan on spending the rest of the week/end going over ospf. Tomorrow i plan on signing up for Narbiks bootcamp, and depending on how soon i get my hands on the soup to nuts workbook then it ll be off to the races with that.