Port Priority and Port Cost

Ok, I finally have it figured out.

Port Cost: The primary metric a switch uses to determine which port is root. The cumulative costs to root are used. The lower the better

Upstream router id: The secondary piece used to determine which port is root. The lower the better

Port priority: Sent to the downstream switch to tell it which port to select as root.

Port priority on comes into effect if port cost and neighbor id are equal. Which pretty much means it only matters if there are multiple uplinks going to the same switch and the port cost is equal. Then, to influence which port is root, one can set the port priority on the upstream switch.

IPExpert Multiprotocol Challenge G

I liked the requirements of this one and with a challenge of only 5 I should be able to buzz through it relatively quickly. Since it's a weeknight, I need to be done by midnight. So, without much time to waste here I go.

6:30pm lab started
6:56pm diagrams and readthrough complete
7:00pm initial configs loaded, 1 point
7:30pm basic configuration completed, 3 points
7:32pm WAN configuration completed, 12 points
8:45pm I'm calling it a night. I got hung up on something really stupid in switching. I was even more frustated when the workbook game me a stupid answer for what I was stuck on. I've made it really clear to myself that I have absolutely no clue what the port-priority command does. I'm going to have to research this. I'll be back Thursday.

Continuing Bootcamp Lab #2

11:05am Configs from yesterday loaded and verified
11:27am TASK 17 complete,3 points--multicast went much better since doing IE mcast labs
11:37am Task 18 complete, 3 points
12:07pm Task 19 complete, 5 points
12:25pm Task 20 complete, 5 points--the MBGP stuff is still a little bit over my head
12:46pm Task 21 complete, 4 points
12:57 Task 22 complete, 2 ponts--easy, I was just distracted
1:12 Task 24 complete, 4 points--easy, took extra time for verification
1:23 Task 25 complete, 4 points
1:26 Task 26 complete, 2 points
1:30 Task 27 complete, 3 points
1:47 Task 28 complete, 2 points
1:47 Task 29 complete, 2 points
2:00 Task 30 complet, 2 points--it's "ip telnet"

I still intnetionally skipped task 5. It was only worth 3 points and would have taken a bit of time. First, I hate cos-maps. Second, it required changing Cat3 to transparent mode. Since pruning was enabled, this could have had undesired effects on trunked traffic. So, I would have then probably had to turn off pruning for specific vlans. Next, it would have probably taken a few minutes to find "switchcore wirespeed" in the doc cd. And finally, I'm not a big fan of smart macros, for anything other than pinging. So, I was more than happy to throw away 3 points.

All in all, I'm glad I repeated this lab. I understood a lot more about what was going on than I did back in September. I also didn't have to look much up on the doc cd.

Repeat Bootcamp Lab 2

I'm off to a little bit of a late start this morning. So I figure I'll redo a previous lab.

8:45am start
9:00am diagrams complete
10:00am readthrough and initial configs complete
10:00am 1.0 complete 3 points
10:00am 2.0 complete 1 point
10:40am 3.0 complete 2 ponts
10:40am 4.0 complete 2 points
Task 5.0 skipped for now
10:48 Task 6.0 complete 4 points
11:15 Task 7.0 complete 4 points (Watch those supernet addresses!)
Task 8.0 skipped for now
Task 9.0 skipped for now
11:45 Task 10.0 complete, 5 points. Back to task 9.0
12:00 Task 9.0 complete, 5 points
12:05 Task 8.0 complete, 3 points
12:35 Task 11.0 complete, 4 points
12:49 Task 12.0 complete, 3 points (took a 20 minute lunch also)
12:57 Task 13.0 complete, 3 points
1:19 Task 14.0 complete, 3 points
2:08 Task 15 complete, 5 points (and a 20 minute break)
2:45 Task 16 complete, 6 points (had to lookup as-set for aggregation)
3:00 Pingtests complete. Had to advertise one of the EIGRP links into OSPF.

I'm going to take it easy this weekend and call it a day. At this point I have about 2:30 left and the core is complete. I have 53 points and I skipped 3, mostly because it was "extra" and looked like a lot to go through for 3 points.

Mock Lab back and More Multicast

For IE Mock lab 3, the score was a 63. In actuality, there were some problems with the router code versions. For example, R1 wouldn't accept ospfv3 commands. So my real score was a 70. Once again, some dumb mistakes cost me.

• Missed portfast on some interfaces: 2 pts
• Missed a community string: 3 pts
• Misconfigured RMON: 3 pts
• Sent DHCP requests to the wrong place: 3 pts
• Missed a BGP peer: 6 pts

So, sans dumb mistakes my score was a 88. This makes me feel pretty dang good, since this lab was supposed to be equivalent in difficulty to the real thing. Also, I seem to be gaining 10 points a week on the actual scores of the mock labs. It's always nice to see progress.

I intended on finishing off the Multicast labs on Thursday, but my family has dinner plans so I moved it up to Wednesday. Honestly, I feel this was a bit of a mistake. I'm already studying close to 20 hours over the weekend. Two consecutive nights during the week is a bit much. Even though i was feeling a little burnt out, I forced myself through the remainder of the multicast labs. I learned a couple of little pieces of information:

• Anycast requires that the RPs be joined by MSDP. I never realized this before
• Running multicast over BGP requires the address-family commands under BGP. I've seen these before but haven't really messed with them so I need to do some more research

Other than that, the scenerios weren't nearly as eye opening as yesterdays.

Multicast Refresher

I've been struggling with Multicast and it's obvious I just don't get it. So tonight I decided to start going though the IE workbook 1 multicast session. The IE workbook 1 parts are great when I just need to immerse myself in a particular technology. However, it gets very redundant and monotonous, so it's not generally my idea of fun. I think they intentionally have it set up so you're constantly undoing and redoing configs.

On the bright side, it works wonders on muscle memory. It is also very detailed on the show and debug commands. I went through a whole bunch of the BGP tasks a few months back and felt it really helped me out there. I'd actually consider BGP one of my stronger areas, thanks in part to that and in part to actually using it at work now.

So I did about half the multicast tasks so far. At the beginning, I rolled my eyes becasue the tasks just seemed too easy. But once I followed along with the debugs and show commands, I feel I did learn a thing or two. As a bonus, I made a couple of mistakes and did have to do some troubleshooting.

I've been torn as to whether to speed drills or what on Tuesday and Thursday nights since I just want to spend a couple of hours. I think the Multicast section will work nicely for Thursday. We'll see what I want to do next week depending on how this weekend's labs go.

Contingency Plan

Let's face it--as hard as I prepare, there's a good chance I may not pass. Maybe I'm not prepared enough. Maybe I just make a bunch of stupid mistakes. Maybe I just have a bad day. Honestly, if I were to take the lab tomorrow, I'd give myself a 50/50 shot. I hope to have that up to 70 or 80 by time January 25th gets here. So what do I do if I don't make it?

1. Continue with the Sunday morning mock labs. These seem to be the most beneficial. I'll go ahead and purchase all 7 and then redo them all, ungraded, repeatedly
2. Use my free IPexpert retake in Columbus. Jun 9-13 seems good. So does July 21-25.
3. Retake the lab the week after the bootcamp.
4. Worry about a contingency plan for a second failure when I get closer to that.
5. Keep in mind, once August gets here, I'll have a Master's degree in Computer Science. Now that's something I don't have to recertify every couple of years!