This is what I will be doing next, just to recap then ts off to the land of the big bad assessor lab!

MST - not hard, but I dont get much exposure to this so I will do it again

DAI/DHCP Snooping - not something I do much either

BGP - Conditional advertisement, aggreration with leaking specific routes, communities and regexp (is there anything else left in BGP? :P)

Multicast - not difficult, but not exposed that much to it.

Did multicast…  for some reason I always thought it would be difficult but Narbik’s book brings you through it quite well.

Static & auto RP, dense, sparse, its all in there.  I think I’ll redo this section towards the end just so I get exposure to it again.  Which leads me to the next question..

Multicast???  WTF???  I remember the last networkers I went to.  At the start of each session (50-100 people) they ask what technologies do everyone use…

OSPF? 90% put their hands up…  BGP? 70%, MPLS? 10% VoIP? 50%, QoS? 40% (funnily enough the gap between QoS users was directly proportional to the VoIP users experiencing issues)… Now, who uses multicast?  Out of 15 or so sessions, each with 50-100 in them one ONE BLOODY PERSON puts their hand up for the WHOLE DAMN WEEK.

Yeah! Lets make it work 6 (???) points of a CCIE Lab…  To me that indicates Cisco think multicast assumes 6% of work we do is multicast.  Sure, make switching worth 20 points, OSPF 30, BGP 20, IP Services 10… whatever… But im my opinion multicast is that obscure and unused that it is only in there as a subject to test people on.. Rather than a real-world indication test of technology.

Having said that… its not too much of a bad thing, as CCIE isnt all about the stuff you would use on the job now, is it?  But maybe just a good (and I do mean “good”) way of testing our IOS-fu.

Not hard at all is it?  Narbik’s book is quite comprehensive.  Al the foundation stuff with a largish lab at the end on protocol redistribution, 6to4, 6 over 4, routing etc.

I find IPv6 quite user friendly as being a “new” IOS feature the code has been written more recently and if you dont do something right it tells you nicely rather than telling you cryptically or not even telling you at all.  Examples being ipv6 unicast-routing not enabled or OSPFv3 not having a router-id.

I normally do both those things as soon as I start configuring IPv6 so make things easier so I dont need to go around restarting processes and potentially bugger something up later.  These are just the two things that popped into my head first.

Moving on to some NAT now…

I spent a lot of time on BGP.  Narbik has some nasty regexps in his bootcamp book.  Hopefully they aren’t that nasty in the real lab.

My local Hungry Jacks would have me on their VIP list now.  This study stuff has increased my HJs (Burger King to the rest of the world) intake into orbit.  So much so that will be opening a HJs on the International Space Station just for me!  I have also been relaxing during down time by getting into playing Poker in the National Poker League and watching the World Poker Tour on Joost.  Vince Van Patten is a legend!

Anyway…

I will start work on IP Services now.  I always find that stuff pretty easy.  Security will be next… that’s pretty straightforward too.

So how about Spain last night?  Isn’t it amazing what Fernando Torres can do with a decent bunch of players around him.  Shame he has nothing like that at his current club… Well it’s not a shame really ;)  I was hoping Germany would win but Spain did the business.  Now all I can hope for is Christiano Ronaldo to piss off to Real and for Chelsea to sign Robinho!

Just starting on BGP now…  Thinking about the peer-session templates….

Not sure what I think… For lab purposes I prefer good old copy & paste.  Less crap to go wrong.  I mean I don’t mind peer-groups to have multiple neighbours…  Im a fan of KISS for this kind of stuff.

Onward and upward!

Stuff to work on:

conditional advertisements

aggregation with leaking routes

remembering what community does what!

regexp

Gone through Narbik’s OSPF labs. Went all good with most of them. Not much caught me out.. Just a few obscure commands… Like these:

max-metric router-lsa ! This guy advertises the largest metric so this router is the least preferred path through the network. Never used it before!

area x range xxxxx not-advertise ! to filter route updates as opposed to distribute lists

area x nssa translate type7 suppress-fa ! when converting to type5 LSAs makes the forwarding address 0.0.0.0 as opposed to the one in the type7 LSA

That’s about it really… Like I have mentioned previously, I am finding this stuff too easy for my liking. I dont know if it is because of the methodical nature of Narbik’s books or what. I am not that comfortable with this. I think I will go further through the books and when I’m done, so the Cisco Assessor lab to get my arse into a reality check. Hopefully I balls them up totally so I can see if my fears are realised… But if I do ok with them then I know I am doing something right!

Back in the saddle again.  The past week or so I have been working on switching and frame-relay mainly.  I feel I am pretty much across these topics.  Trouble is, and what scares me is they (especially frame-relay) just seems a little too easy.  Last thing I need is to settle into some complacent state thinking I know everything when really I am leaving something out.

I have been looking a lot at these topics because if your L2 is broken nothing else will work.  I will put a similar amount of effort into OSPF/EIGRP/BGP too.  If I lose (say) 5 points because I completely screw multicast then that’s too bad.  If I screw IGP then I have the potential to lose a hell of a lot more.  This does not mean I will ignore QoS/Multicast/IPServices, but I think these topics are a hell of a lot more granular and also don’t have the dependency that L2/L3 does.

Now… onto EIGRP for the next few days then I will drill OSPF more than a couple on their honeymoon night.

Some rough notes- Ive been up a long time

Summarising:

ip summary-address eigrp xxx a.b.c.d mask leak-map yyy

leak-map will advertise specific routes that match the route-map yyy.  If route-map yyy does not exist, then no specifics are advertised.  If route-map yyy exists, but the ACL in yyy is not there then is matches any, therefore will advertise ALL specifics as well as the summary. No leak-map advertises the summary only.  Multiple summaries are allowed, unlike RIPv2.

Authentication:

md5 only.  key-chain

ip authentication key-chain eigrp ASNUM xxx

ip authentication mode eigrp ASNUM xxx

Default route injection:

interface#ip summary-address eigrp xxx etc -> best way!

router#ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0.0 null0

router#network 0.0.0.0

redistribute static/connected etc is bad in EIGRP because the external AD is 170

ip default-network w.x.y.z -> classful network, network must be advertised into EIGRP

router#no default-information allowed in -> stops the propagation of default route if received elsewhere via ip default-network command

Metric:

Betty Doesnt Really Like Much - Bandwidth (kbit), Delay (sum of all delays), Reliability (x/255), Load (x/255), MTU (bytes)

((sum of all delays/10) + (10,000,000/lowest BW in path)) x 256 = metric

to change:

router# metric weight 0 a b c d e -> 0 = TOS (always 0) a = K1 (BW multiplier) b = K2 (load multiplier) c = K3 (delay multiplier) d = K4 (reliability multiplier) e = K5 (reliability multiplier).  

[K1*BW + (K2*BW)/(256-Load) + K3*Delay] * [K5/(Reliability + K4)]

Default is: EIGRP metric weight K1=1, K2=0, K3=1, K4=0, K5=0

Stub networks:

Suppresses transit eigrp updates.  Will receive updates, but will not pass down to downstream neighbours.

R1(config-router)#eigrp stub ?

  connected      Do advertise connected routes

  leak-map       Allow dynamic prefixes based on the leak-map

  receive-only   Set IP-EIGRP as receive only neighbor

  redistributed  Do advertise redistributed routes

  static         Do advertise static routes

  summary        Do advertise summary routes

Ive been studying for a while, and I have nearly finished Narbik’s Soup-to-Nuts workbook. When I finish it, I will go over the Internetwork Expert CoDs for a few topics I missed then repeat those sections in the book.

I missed a few things on:
OSPF
BGP*
Multicast
Dynamic and Reflexive ACLs

I’m pretty happy with it so far

* I am pretty comfortable with BGP… Been working in ISPs/Hosting etc for a while. It’s mainly regexp that gets me.. sometimes I would use ^xxx when the solution requires _xxx or .xxx etc

This is my first post of my under construction CCIE blog. Speaking to Arden convinced me to start so here I go.

I am studying for my CCIE (Routing and Switching) at the moment. The materials I am using are:

InternetworkExpert Workbooks and Class on Demand. The CoDs are FANTASTIC and are a requirement if you wish to pursue your CCIE.
Narbik’s Soup-to-Nuts book
Micronics bootcamp - May 2008 in Sydney
Dynamips PC - 4 GB RAM, Ubuntu 7.10, GNS3

Feel free to post comments!