IEWB – Volume II – Lab 8

Difficulty 8

Last night I started IE’s Lab 17 from Volume II and finished this morning. It all went pretty well, taking me just under 5 hours to complete. Obviously my verification could have gone for another 3 hours and I could have maybe got a few more points but I thought I’d just see how it went by just verifying as I moved along.

1.1 – I cant believe I missed this but it just skipped my mind to put the VTP password on the domain. Not sure if I would have picked this up a second time around….

4.1 – I dint get this this one wrong, but after looking at the solution guide this had the potential to cause lots of problems. It basically forces you to configure non-broadcast across the hub and spoke frame-relay network. The problem is, that it specifically tells you that interface OSPF commands are not allowed. This means that during DR election any router could potentially become the DR, breaking LSA advertisement. The highest IP router (R5) was correct to be the DR, but had that rebooted there would have been all sorts of problems. I very much doubt this kind of thing would be on the LAB, but who knows.

4.7 – I didn’t redistribute connected on R5 to advertise the link to BB2. This would have been a proctor question for me since it never asked to advertise it. Either way, it was wrong.

5.1 – Same thing, this time it was the same route to go into BGP. Again, it would have been the proctor question.

9.3 – This task was asking for EAPoUDP. I had absolutely no idea where it was in the documentation. Turns out it lives under the Network Admission Control section of Traffic filtering. I hadn’t actually got to reading all of this document yet, but at least now I know where it is.

IEWB – Volume II – Lab 8

Difficulty 8, Score 85

A pass I guess! Finished in 7hr and 30 minutes. Put a lot of emphasis on verification and going a little bit slower in order to make fewer mistakes. I even did fairly well in the multicast section.

4.4 – Didn’t meet all the requirements by forgetting to set no-export on the routes.
5.5 – Not sure if this was working or not. My solution was the same as the guide but for some reason R2 wasn’t receiving the UDP packets from the R6’s SLA. The other thing I noticed was the the IP SLA on R6 said “broadcast disabled”, and because I needed broadcast traffic to verify I couldn’t confirm.
8.1 – Made a stupid mistake here and forgot two ACL lines.
8.2 – Knew that policy maps were probably the answer here but didn’t know how to set them up properly.
8.3 – Same as above.
9.2 – Implemented WCCP correctly but not the same as the solution guide.

So overall I’m pretty happy with this one. I think I’ll give the full labs a rest for a day or two and do some reading or have a go at the Volume III labs.

IEWB – Volume II – Lab 7

Difficulty 9, Score 72

Struggled with time on this one which meant I had to leave one or two questions and not check my previous work.

1.6 – Since I’m working on a non PoE switch I somehow got the idea that I needed to do this differently to how you would on a 3560.
3.1 – Spent ages on getting the authentication to work. I’ve done this before but only with CHAP and couldn’t for the life of me see what the problem was. It was a simple typo in the password. In the end I just took the authentication off and moved on.
4.4 – Forgot to filter the more specific routes towards BB2.
4.6 – At the time this was correct, but once I got to 4.7 it was broken. Had I done 4.7 right, it still would have been broken because of the redistribution. Nasty.
4.7 – As the solution guide said, the do’s and don’t section never said you couldn’t create additional IP addresses, so a tunnel was the way to go. Either way I still would have tried to solve this question with a virtual link. Problem is you can’t use neighbor statements when you have virtual links in the same area (which I didn’t know at the time) and I ended up spending heaps of time on troubleshooting. In the end I just used broadcast network with virtual-links. Subsequently breaking 4.6.
4.10 – I managed to get this showing up correctly on SW1 but when it came time to do ping tests SW4 wasn’t able to reach SW3’s loopback. My initial solution was using the area range command on both SW3 and SW4. In the end I couldn’t figure it out, so just made sure that reachability was possible.
4.11 – Having lost so much time already I basically did what was necessary to get reachability. Turns out SW2 had the most optimal path, but I didn’t achieve the question because it said it needed to be done on SW2.
5.7 – I skipped this question and planned to come back later, never got around to it.
8.1 – Didn’t realise that I needed to remark on the other interfaces too. Wasnt paying enough attention to the wording.
8.4 – Same deal here, I prioritized correctly but only across the WAN.
9.1 – Not sure what I was thinking here, I actually put permit statements for VLAN 5 traffic and then put the correct commands. Kinda right….but not.
9.2 – My initial configuration for this was correct but I couldn’t confirm with the verification I was doing. Ended up changing it and then giving up.
11.2 – I thought this was asking Mobile IP and then found the document to be quite lengthy. I went to finish other questions and didn’t have time to do it. Turns out it required Local Area Mobility. Still cant find it in the DocCD.

I decided to purchase the lab breakdowns for this as I haven’t seen any yet, plus I’m interested to know more about the thought process for the IGP section.

IEWB – Volume II – Lab 11

Difficulty 9, Score 69

2.4 – Got the PPP right but didn’t specify clocking on the DCE side. I’ve done this a lot of times and have trouble remembering.
3.5 – Didn’t read the question right and advertised the loopback address of R5 into EIGRP when I should have redistributed.
3.7 – Once again I didn’t read the question carefully enough and threw away easy points. I used the network statement instead of redistribution.
3.9 – At the time this was definitely right. But changes I made later one screwed me over.
4.4 – I didn’t actually do this task for some reason.
6.1 – Forgot to map the link local address to the neighbor for reachability.
6.4 – Went about this one the right way but didn’t exclude all required routes. Should have thought about the question for longer.
7.1 – This question was easy enough but I rushed it and made a simple mistake with the values.
9.1 – Wasn’t familiar with this and simply couldn’t find it on the DocCD.
9.2 – It sounded a lot harder than what it was. I thought I needed to specify daylight savings dates.

I finished this one in 7 hours and 7 minutes. Bit annoyed at some of the mistakes I made, but if I compare this one to previous labs, my configurations are getting much more efficient.

IEWB – Volume II – Lab 12

Difficulty 7, Score 76

I went pretty well with this lab. Its not a pass, and its only one lab, but I am definitely improving. Things are coming to me much more naturally and I’m learning what to look for.

3.3 – I actually got this question right, but when I applied the QoS later on it removed the config for this question.
5.7 – Had the right idea just didn’t implement it carefully.
5.8 – I got the regular expression statement wrong.
5.9 – I tried to do conditional advertisement for this one when all that was required was local-preference.
5.10 – There were errors in my filtering and I should have checked it.
6.2 – Spent a fair while on this and I didn’t actually understand the concept based on the DocCD information.
8.1 – I made a careless error with my BE calculation.

IEWB – Volume II – Lab 10

Difficulty 8, Score 66

Started off great with this one, and then it all fell apart at multicast and everything after.

3.4 – Not sure what I did wrong here, but its not a difficult question. All my note says is ‘misread question’.
4.5 – I just simply didnt do this right. Also missed the ‘bgp redistribute-internal’ command.
5.2 – I actually had my ACL’s right here but for soem stupid reason I used Auto-RP instead of static which doesnt support fancy ACL’s.
5.3 – Same reason for this one.
5.4 – Didnt get the multicast boundary command right.
7.1 – Would have like acces to a proctor here just to clarify something, but I just simply did it wrong. Fragmentation was required and I didnt do it.
8.1 – One important detail here I couldnt figuire out how to configure. “Only that user should be allowed to access the resources after authenticating”. I didnt know about the “host” keyword.
8.2 – Had no idea how to do this and couldnt find it anywhere. Spent quite a while on it.
10.1 – I used the wrong commands for this and it was actually the first time i’ve heard of it.
10.2 – Didnt get the ‘hostname’ part right. I used ‘client-id’.
10.3 – Spent a while on this one too. Required a little thinking outside the box. I was looking for a more direct way of acheiving this.

Certainly not as many silly mistakes, but I let myself down with multicast, and some of the later topics. I learnt an awful lot from this one.

IEWB – Volume II – Lab 9

Skipping on to lab 9 and I’m now starting to take these as pretty much the real thing. I’m doing L2 / L3 diagrams, reading all the questions, making some notes (not many), and trying to visualise how each section is going to be configured.

Difficulty 8, Score 68.

1.1 – I didnt know how to configure a macro and simply couldnt find it in the DocCD
1.4 – The VLAN assignments were based on the diagram and I missed one for a stub VLAN
1.5 – This stumped me for a while because I knew I needed to use the “diamater” keyword but it didnt change the timers to as low as the question stated. I figuired it was a trick question and used all 4 required commands. Had I used the context sensitive help I would have seen that after the diameter value there was another option.
2.2 – Missed one of the DLCI’s.
3.6 – I got the question right be mucked up AM and PM times.
3.11 – I just didnt think about this question for long enough and simply left it. I got everything right except for how I was going to get R4’s loopback into the table while not breaking the requirements.
4.4 – Couldnt thnk of how to acheieve this one.
4.5 – I made an error with my filtering here which I should have verified. 2 points.
5.2 – Didnt think a tunnel was allowed, had I realised that this was the only way to solve it then I would have I guess :)
7.1 – Made an error in my calculations here.
9.2 – Missed ‘ntp master’ on R5.
9.3 – Forgot to actually apply the key, should have verified properly.
10.3 – First time i’d done this and had my ACL wrong.

Still, some pretty poor mistakes in there and I’m deffinately not verifying my configurations as well as I should. Moving on to lab 10.

Intro

Let me start off appropriately with some form of introduction….

My name is Paul. I’m 27, Aussie, and going bald.

I decided to start this site in order to serve as journal for my studies towards obtaining CCIE for Cisco’s routing and switching track. If I document my progress and findings I figure I can use the site as a review prior to my labb exam, and at the same time hope that the information (or random dribble) contained can also assist others with their studies.

For the last 8 or so years up until two months ago I worked in Melbourne at an ISP doing support and implementation with mostly Cisco equipment for small to medium businesses. I’m now living in London on a 2 year working holiday visa hoping to get some good work experience, do some travelling, and of course, get my CCIE. I have been looking for work, but apart from a short two week contract I’ve been unemployed.

In the last two years I really focused on furthering myself and worked my way up the certification ladder. I currently hold a CCDA, CCNP, CCIP, IPTX (Callmanager Express), and I passed my written exam in April.

I decided to get my CCIE for a lot of reasons. The main one being that I actually do enjoy studying, plus all the jobs that catch my eye stipulate that a CCIE qualification is an ‘advantage’ or ‘highly desirable’ :)

So my lab date is on the 11th of December, I’m in London, a bum with no job, what better time to study. I had my Cisco press books sent over and hopped right into it.

What I’m using

I don’t have a rack of equipment so Dynamips is my primary form of practical study. I’ll also be purchasing rack time for 3550/3560 practice, and mock labs. To run Dynamips I purchased a dedicated machine which included a 22″ LCD screen that I use for dual display on my laptop. It’s a Dell Inspiron 530 with an Intel 2.4ghz Quad Core processor and 3GB of RAM running Vista. I can run a full IE lab in Dynamips without a hitch.

For study material I’m going with Internetwork Expert for basically everything. Purchasing Volume I,II,III workbooks, their Class-On-Demand videos, and I’m booked to attend the 12 day bootcamp from October 13th to the 24th which I am very much looking forward to.

As reference material I also have the following books:

- Internetworking with TCP/IP
- TCP/IP Illustrated Volume I
- Interconnections, Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking protocols
- Routing TCP/IP Volume 1 & 2
- Cisco BCMSN Exam Certification Guide
- Cisco QoS Exam Certification Guide
- Internet Routing Architectures
- Developing IP Multicast Networks
- Cisco Router Firewall Security

The Guide

Some would call it a plan, I’m calling it a guide. Most of which is based on the content of this page here and the class on demand video’s. I’ll follow this method for as long as I think I’m benefiting from it and then reassess if its not working out. But the general idea is to understand all the technologies, complete all the labs at least once, take some mock labs and Cisco assessor labs to gauge my progress, and read the DocCD from back to front for 12.4 mainline router IOS, and 12.2(25)SEE switch IOS.

Progress So Far…

Studying for the written exam took me about 6 weeks, and since I arrived in London I’ve been studying for a about six more. The average day for me consists of getting up at about 10:00am, cooking poached eggs on muffins, with spinach, mushrooms, and tomatoes, accompanied by a strong coffee. I’ll then study anywhere between 6 to 10 hours a day depending on whether I do theory or lab work. Weekends do encompass some form of study but I’m more or less treating this as a full time job job so that I can still enjoy my weekends to an extent.

I started my lab study by watching the Class-on-demand videos from start to finish making notes all the way through, and I have to say that these are by far the best learning investment I’ve ever made. I’m a big fan of class based training and watched quite a lot of Jeremy’s CBT Nugget videos during my CCNP / CCIP studies. Internetwork Expert also recently revealed that updates to these videos are coming soon and the content will grow from 80 to around the 120 hours.

After watching the videos and doing some additional research on the topics I had a tough time understanding, I started the Volume I version 5 labs, beginning with frame relay and then using some rack time to do the bridging and switching. Once I was done with these I had a glance at the remaining version 4 technology labs, but they just didn’t compare to the newer ones. The version 4 labs dont have any detailed explanations, breakdowns, comprehensive verifications, or preconfigurations. Because if this, I decided to wait for the new ones – I think I’ll get a lot more out of them.

As I understand Internetwork Expert are working hard to finishing the remaining ones, and only a week or two later they released the RIP and EIGRP versions, both of which I completed. But I’m especially looking forward to the multicast one as its probably my weakest area.

So in the meantime I decided to start doing some labs.

Beginning with lab 1 and working my way through to lab 4 I took the approach of reading an entire section, completing it, and then checking my work with the solutions guide. This made sure that any mistakes I made were corrected before trying to solve the next section. I struggled with the first two labs as the wording of the questions was really throwing me off. My score and completion time wasn’t important for these, but I wanted to make sure I understood exactly what I was doing. So if I came across a question or a technology that I didn’t understand, then I’d read up on it until I did.

The structure of these initial labs are great. They teach you a lot valuable lessons, methods, and techniques in a progressive approach that I think is easy to understand.

By this point I was getting pretty comfortable with question wording, how labs are structured, the importantance of thinking something through before implementing it, and how crucial verification is. My weak areas were definitely multicast, some security, IP services, oh…and of course human error.

Moving on to lab 5 and 6 I completed these fully before checking the solutions guide. I scored 62 & 68 but still made quite a lot of silly mistakes because I wasn’t checking my work or pinging every possible destination from every possible source. Also there were a few things that I knew required the DocCD but had trouble locating the answers. Completion time was just under 8 hours but obviously that’s not fast enough.

Next I went on to Volume III and did labs 1 to 3. In order to set these up I had to run a search and replace the initial configurations because they’re built for real hardware, so interface names and numbers differ from the diagrams and questions which takes some getting used to, but I managed to get over it.

Obviously speed and accuracy were what these are all about so I used a stopwatch and started it before I begun to read the questions. I actually lost the score sheets for these but I completed them in around 3 hours with great accuracy on two, but on the other I dropped 8 points by doing stuff and not checking it. It’s pure laziness, or overconfidence, and I just need be more thourough.