IE Mock Lab #3

I must confess, I'm hooked on the IE mock labs. I was nervous that they were going to start charging $250 for them again, but they extended their $99 special through the end of January. This works pretty well for me since my lab is scheduled January 25th.

Why do I like them? First off, the challenge level seems to be just right--they're just a little bit beyond me. So I can see what is being asked for, I just need to push myself a little bit. Also, the questions are clear and don't seem to be trying to trick you, just to really make sure you know what you're doing. And of course having them graded and a very detailed solutions guide is a big plus.

Here we go.

6:00am Printed out the materials. This one looks scary from the topology standpoint!
6:40am Diagrams Completed. Created BGP and Layer 2 diagrams as well this time
7:09am Readthrough completed
7:21am Task 1.1 completed, no issues
7:25am Task 1.2 completed, no issues
7:42am Task 1.3 completed. Wasted time assuming it was back-to-back frame relay and disabled keepalives. Also, task states "point-to-point" yet requirements don't allow it. It'd be nice to be able to ask a proctor for clarification.
Task 1.4 skipping for now
7:50am Task 1.5 complete, had to lookup end-to-end keepalives on the doc cd. Knew what to look for
8:04am Task 1.6 completed--stupid phantom space got me :(

TASK 1 complete, 10 of 12 points

8:34am Task 2.1 competed--L2 diagram helped IMMENSELY
9:07am Task 2.2 completed--had to research dot1q tunneling, especially getting CDP to pass
9:07am Task 2.3 already completed with Task2.1
9:07am Task 2.4 already completed with Task 2.1
9:07am Task 2.5 already completed with Task 2.1
9:16 Skipping Task 2.6
9:16 Task 2.7 alrerady completed with Task 2.1
9:16 Task 2.8 already completed with Task 2.1
9:20 Task 2.9 Completed

Task 2 complete, 18 of 20 points. (28 Total)

9:39 Task 3.1 completed
9:39 Task 3.2 completed, pretty sure authentication is correct
9:47 Task 3.4 completed
10:02 Task 3.5 completed
10:09 Task 3.6 completed, had to lookup k value order
10:15 Task 3.7 completed--some offset-list trickery
10:21 Task 3.8 completed
10:23 Task 3.9 completed
10:59 Task 3.10 completed --not bad time for figuring out redistribution. It looked a lot worse than it was. A couple of distance statements on a router did the trick. It was basically an EIGRP transit router that had an OSPF interface. Since OSPF distance is better than EIGRP external, the EIGRP routes weren't passing through. Setting OSPF external and inter-area distance to 180 did the trick.

TASK 3 complete, 24 out of 24 points (52 total)

11:00 performed mass reboot and am going to lunch. Will perform ping test upon returning.

Thoughts on lab so far: Not bad. As I previously mentioned, these IE mock labs seem to be just right for the level I'm at. Some tasks that make me think, but nothing I can't figure out. Looking back at my times, I'm not disappointed with anything. I'm a little concerned that I only have 3 hours left, but on the bright side if my scores are correct I only need to pick up 28 points in those 3 hours.

11:20 Continuing
12:07 Ping Test complete. Thank goodness for the mass reboot and the ping scripts. My virtual link didn't come back up. This was due to its cost being 65535. I had to adjust the bandwidth on the link inbetween to get this to come up.

Skipping Multicast for now

12:19 Task 5.1 not complete. I have no idea how to configure sw1 to obtain its ipv6 address automatically
12:24 Task 5.1 complete. Remembered I have to change the sdm before I can use ipv6 on sw1
12:37 Task 5.2 complete. I'm calling it complete. R1 doesn't seem to support OSPVv3.

Task 5 Complete. 5 of 5 points (57 total)

12:52 Task 6.1 complete--got mark-probability confused with exponential weighting constant
12:54 Task 6.2 complete

Task 6 Complete. 5 out of 5 points (62 total)

1:00 Task 7.1 complete
7.2 skipped

Task 7 Complete, 3 out of 5 points (65 total)

1:09 Task 8.1 complete
1:18 Task 8.2 complete. Couldn't set the message for some reason.

Task 8 complete, 6 out of 6 points (71 total)

1:32 Task 9.1 complete
1:36 Task 9.2 complete

Task 9 complete, 5 out of 5 points (76 total)

1:58 Task 10.1 complete
2:05 Task 10.2 complete
2:10 Task 10.3 complete
2:15 Task 10.4 complete

Task 10 complete, 12 out of 12 points (88 total)
Time's up!!! Well, if I didn't make any mistakes, I'll have passed. Now I'll go ahead and try to clean up the remaining tasks.

2:24 Task 1.4 complete
Task 2.6, I'll have to look this one up. Didn't think you could block a root port
I'm completely stuck on the igmp proxy piece, will have to look into that

Time to watch my son. Hopefully I didn't miss much on what I think I got correctly.

Proctor Labs Ebook #2

Well, I was hoping to redo IPexpert bootcamp lab 2, but I couldn't get a hold of the initial configs yet so I have to pass on it for now. Instead I'll go for Proctor Labs Ebook #2.

Start time: 8:24am
8:36 Diagram completed
8:56 1st Read through completed
9:38 Routers IP addresses, basic OSPF, and iBGP completed
10:52 Layer 2 complete. Took way too long configuring spanning-tree root. The question said "forward" and I assumed "root".
11:40 IGP completed. Took a little while to find "ip ospf flood-reduction" in the doccd
11:58 Internal ping test completed. Found a mistake in the lab that took some time to correct.
1:44 eBGP completed. Another mistake in the backbone configs.
1:51 External ping test completed
2:01 returned from break
2:50 multicast completed. First time I've messed with BSR so it took a little longer
3:13 QoS completed
3:45 Lab ended. two tasks not complete

Summary
Some tricky wording cost me some time when configuring spanning tree
Mistakes in the diagram and configs cost me some time as well. A proctor would have helped (I hope!)
Never touching BSR before wasted some time
Otherwise, I'd say the lab wasn't bad

SDM Templates

The SDM templates are, sdm prefer

• access: maximizeds for ACLs
• default: balance to all
• dual-ipv4-and-ipv6: supports ipv4 and ipv6 routing
• default: balance layer 2 and layer 3
• routing: maximize routing, including ipv4 pbr
• vlan: maximum usage for ipv4 and 6 vlans
• routing: maximize routing
• vlan maximize vlan configuration, no routing supported in hardware

3560 Unicast MAC address filtering

The 3560 will drop packets with specific source or destiantion MAC addresses
Only supports unicast
Usage: mac address-table static xxxx.yyyy.zzzz vlan v drop

Doc CD

Here begins a new installment of my review of the Doc CD. I'll begin with the 3560 Switch Software Configuration guide.

Cisco IOS CNS Agents
The Cisco Configuration Engine automates network device and service deployment
There are 3 components: Configuration service, Event Service, and Data service directory
Initial Configuration works as follows

• When the switch comes up, it attempts to get an IP address from DHCP
• If no DHCP server on the subnet, the switch acts as a relay agent
• The DHCP server assigns an IP address, TFTP server address, path to bootstrap, and gateway
• The switch configures the IP address to VLAN 1 and attempts to download the bootstrap config file
• The Cisco IOS agents talk to the configuration engine using the ConfigID and EventID.
• The Configuration engine maps the config id to a template and downloads the configuration file to the switch

The prerequisites are

• Access switch: must be factory default
• Distribution switch: IP helper address and ip routing if a gateway
• DHCP Server: scope configured with tftp and path to config
• TFTP server: bootstrap config with CNS configuration commands
• CNS configuration engine: templates mapped to configids

Since I'm assuming the lab won't have much of this available, my guess would be the only likely part would be to enable the CNS event agent and configuration agent on the switch. To do that:

• cns event
• cns config connect-intf
• config-cli
• cns id
• cns config initial

to initiate a partial config

• cns config partial

Catching Up

Ok, so I have some catching up to do. Here's what I've been up to:

End of November and early December: Focused on graduate school. Between parenting and finals and projects I had no time at all for studies.

Mid December: I managed to get back on the ball a little bit. I completed half of lab 24 but the baby decided not to cooperate and I needed to quit half way through. Besides, I was pretty worn out from the end of the semester and had the holidays coming up so my motivation was lacking.

Took a break for xmas.

Upon returning from xmas I got back on the ball. IEexpert had a nice mock lab sale so I took one on Sunday and another on New Years. I felt I understood the concepts pretty well and did alright with time management but dumb mistakes brought my score down to the 50s.

At this point I feel pretty close to being ready. Grad school starts up again the end of January, so I really wanted to take a shot before then so I could focus. Fortunately, a lab date opened up for 1/25/08 so I grabbed it. I have now paid and the date is set in stone.

I've drawn up my schedule over the next three weeks and I'm hopeful it will be enough:

1/5: repeat bootcamp lab 2
1/6: IE mock lab 3
1/8: IEcore 5 (speed drill)
1/10: IPexpert core 6 (speed drill)
1/12: repeat bootcamp lab 3
1/13: Proctor lab 2
1/15: IE core 7 (speed drill)
1/17: IE core 8 (speed drill)
1/19: repeat bootcamp lab 3
1/20: IE mock lab 4
1/21: IE core 9 (speed drill)
1/22: IE core 10 (speed drill)
1/23-24: reading and rest
1/25: give it my best shot

The plan here is to get a mix of new stuff, speed drills, and repeats. I still feel the bootcamp labs, especially 3, were tough and covered a very wide range of materials, which is why I'm repeating them twice. This gets me about 70 hours this month. It if doesn't go well on the 25th, I'll take a break during the Spring semseter and repeat the IPexpert bootcamp over the summer and set another course of action at that time.

IPExpert Lab 23 Complete

Ahhh, a much easier one for a change. There wasn't anything too complicated in here at all. I did make a couple of minor mistakes--completely skipped a small step and messed up a couple of access lists.

I spent a little more than than I would have liked on OSPF authentication and a poorly worded RIP section. Other than that, things went pretty well.

I took a different approach this time. First I setup the required parts of the Cats. Next, configured IGP, EGP, and anything else required on R1. I intentionally left off anything related to security, redistribution, or filtering at this point. Then I did the same with R2, ensuring all adjacencies, etc. formed with R1. I followed the same process until I got through all the routers. Then I went back through on the items I skipped--authentication, filtering, summaries, etc.

I felt pretty good about the way things went this way. By 2.5 hours, the entire core was up and connectivity was verified. At 4.5 hours, all advanced core features were completed. At this point I just picked off the advanced features one by one and had the whole lab finished in about 7 hours.

The nice part about this approach is that I get any design concerns out of the way early on because I'm getting end to end reachability up pretty fast and including BGP in that initial design. I'm also saving a lot of time because I'm not jumping back and forth between routers so much. The only real negative to this approach is I am jumping around in the workbook a lot so it makes it really easy to accidentally skip something.