IPExpert Multiprotocol Challenge H

7:36 Lab started
7:51 IP, routing, and BGP diagrams complete
8:20 readthrough and initial configs complete
8:21 Infrastructure complete, 1 point
8:30 Basic configuration complete, 3 points
9:20 WAN almost complete. Need to find RFC2427
9:30 found it--frame-relay ietf, WAN complete, 12 points
10:42 LAN configuration complete, 9 points
10:51 RIP complete, 6 points
11:20 EIGRP complete, 10 points
11:20 lunch started

Lunchtime thoughts

• I spent some extra time trying to get fallback bridging to work. I have to keep remembering that it doesn't bridge IP. The question I was working on obviously had some tricky wording. I caught onto that right away, but wanted to go ahead and try it the hard way. It didn't work, so I eventually reverted back to the other way.
• I wonder if there is a way to verify the DE bit is getting set
• I'm assuming /31 is the most effective use of point-to-point IPs
• It took a while to figure out RFC2427 was frame-rel IETF. I never could find it on the DocCD, but I found it by doing an interface-level "encap frame-rel ?". I had a feeling this was frame-relay from the start but I wanted to try to verify it. Since it was an RFC, HDLC was ruled out. So that pretty much left PPP or frame-rel IETF.
• I learned something new about MSTP. I was always setting the costs wrong before. I need to set the cost for the instance of MSTP, not the STP way. This explains a lot of confusion I was having regarding priority in the past.

3:44 down, 41 points complete

Not quite there

Well, I didn't pass on my first attempt. I was close, but no cigar. I finished early, doublechecked everything, and really thought I had it. So, back to the drawing board. I'm going to focus on the IE practice labs this time to see how they go. Even though I didn't stick to my last study schedule too much, I'm going to set one again. One thing to note, my speed ended up being fine, it was mostly an issue understanging the wording and some of the non-core tasks. So I'm going to be focusing on the full labs.

2/2 IPexpert Challenge H
2/3 IE Lab 5
2/9 IE Mock Lab 4
2/10 IE Lab 10
2/16 IE Lab 12
2/17 IE Lab 16
2/23 IE Mock Lab 6
2/24 IE Lab 17
3/1 Rest
3/2 Lab Attempt #2

IE Mock lab #5

This will be my final mock lab. It's actually my fourth. But IE Mock lab #4 had a difficulty rating of 9, as opposed to an 8 for this one. I didn't really feel like psyching myself out 5 days before the exam. Let's just hope a 8 doesn't hurt me too badly either.

7:12am printed out materials
7:31am layer 3 diagrams complete. I don't have enough information to complete layer 2 diagrams yet
7:47 readthrough complete
8:08 layer 2 diagram complete
8:12 1.1 complete
8:30 1.2 complete, still had to lookup qinq and took time for switch reboots
8:54 1.3 complete, strange I had to remove and put the l2 configs back on
8:58 1.4 complete
9:01 1.5 complete
9:03 1.6 complete
9:13 1.7 complete, had to renumber my port channel to match the diagram

Skipping 1.8, have to look it up and non-core
Task 1 complete, 15/18 points

9:34 2.1 complete
9:39 2.2 complete
9:44 2.3 complete

Task 2 complete 7/7 points, 22/25 total

Task 3.1 partway complete, need to finish virtual links
10:25 Task 3.2 complete, 1 point
10:28 Task 3.1 complete, 3 points -- I may not have needed this VL after all
10:33 Skipping task 3.3, messy OSPF summarization and non-core
11:03 Task 3.4 complete, took WAY too long. CHECK LAYER 3 FIRST!!!!
11:10 Task 3.5 complete, watch those subinterfaces
11:23 Task 3.6 complete
11:31 Task 3.7 complete
11:39 Task 3.8 complete
11:55 Task 3.9 complete, had to fix some virtual-template ip addressing
12:01 Task 3.10 complete
12:17 Task 3.11 complete
12:29 task 3.12 complete

Task 3 complete 27/30, 49/55 total

Taking lunch at 12:31. 5.5 hours down, 2.5 hours left
12:48 back from lunch
1:03 ping tests complete
1:15 task 4.1 complete
1:41 task 4.2 complete
1:43 task 4.3 complete

Task 4 complete, 9/9, 58/64 total

2:04 task 5.1 complete, needed to tunnel over the non-broadcast interfaces
2:21 back from break
Task 5.2 skipped

Task 5 complete, 3/6, 61/70 total

2:26 Task 6.1 complete
2:39 Task 6.2 complete 3 points--is ipv6ip the least overhead?
2:47 Task 6.3 complete

Task 6 complete, 9/9, 70/79 total

2:58 Task 7.1 complete
3:21 Task 7.2 complete

Task 7 complete, 6/6, 76/85 total

Skipping Task 8.1 0/3, 76/88

3:29 Task 9.1 complete

Task 9 complete, 3/3, 79/91

3:39 Task 10.1 complete
3:46 Task 10.2 complete, out of TIME

Task 10 almost complete, 6/9, 85/100

Well, if I got everything right that would be a passing score. We shall see.

Time to see if I can do what I skipped

4:02 Task 1.8 complete, would have been 3 points.
4:27 Task 3.3 complete, as I thought this was kind of messy, 3 points
4:41 Task 5.2 complete, 3 points
5:08 Task 8.1 still skipped, it's killing my ipv6 tunnels :(
5:18 Task 10.3 complete

Continuing Bootcamp 3

54 points, 7:40

Yes, I'm running really far behind. Something I neglected to mention, I handled reachability a little differently. Usually I just filter the routes unless it says redundancy is required. I decided to make it hard on myself this time. Playing with the Distance and tags and policy routing, even though not necessarily required, taught me a heck of a lot. Tomorrow's mock lab #5, that's the one I'll be focusing on time with.



Starting Task 20, 3:40pm

3:55 Task 20 complete, 4 points. This was evil because the switchport was to only allow 1 mac address. So for the standby router, I had to "use-bia"

5:00pm Task 21 complete. 4 points. More fun with different strategies. Rather than using an as-path list, I tried it with manual communities. Took a bit to figure out. The problem was when using a route-map with dapening, I must use a match clause and a set dapening clause



On break

Returned from break, 7:25pm

7:42 Task 22 complte, DocCD fun

8:27 Task 23 complete, 4 points

Continuing Bootcamp Lab 3

Here we go, the last weekend before the lab on Friday. Time to get real. The following topics scare me

• Advanced NAT configurations, such as NAT on a stick
• Advanced bridging configurations, such as frame relay bridging
• Advanced Multicast configurations, pretty much anything beyond anycast
• MLS QoS, particulary cos maps and distributed configs
• Advanced Redistribution

I'll need to put some time into all of these topics this weekend. For now though I'm going to finish off bootcamp lab 3. At this point I'm 4 hours in.

6:15am Initial configs loaded

7:00am Task 15 complete, 3 points

7:00am Task 16 complete, 5 points--I don't see anything saying I can't use policy-routing here

7:00am IGP complete, pingtests complete

7:30am Have to do some rl work for a few minutes. Currently hung up on an annoying BGP peer that won't come up. Oops, there it is. Have to remember that inter confederation peerings are like ebgp and require multihop

8:45am Ok, work's done and I grabbed breakfast too

8:50am Task 17 complete, 3 points

8:58am Task 18 complete, 3 points

9:30am taking a break

10:45am back from break

11:20am Task 19 complete, some bgp next hop issues to resolve and some conferation as-lists

12:30 External Ping testing complete. This was one of the more complicated BGP scenerios I've dealt with. It consisted of 2 additional points of redistribution required and a router not running BGP next to one of the BB routers. That created an interesting scenerio because I had to redistribute into IGP and then use policy routing to adjust the next hop so the routes continued to go the correct way. Additionally, a bunch of distance modifications were needed. Finally, something I have not run into before. BGP by default will NOT allow you to redistribute internal routes into an IGP. The command bgp redistribute-internal allows for this. However, it warns that this will create a mess, and indeed it does. Every router needed to be adjusted so that OSPF had a higher AD than BGP so that everything remained reachable. Why did the task take so long? About 45 minutes were spent learning the BGP internal redistribution situation.

Time to move on to the non-core portion of the lab

Repeat bootcamp lab #3

It's a short night, so this should be fun.

6pm: Started
6:23pm diagrams complete--not bad time
6:33 Inital configs loaded
7:41 returned from break. Total time so far, 23 minutes
8:00 readthrough complete
8:21 2.0 complete, 2 points
8:47 3.0 complete, 3 points -- fun with macros
8:54 4.0 complete, 2 points
9:00 5.0 complete, 2 points
9:11 6.0 complete, 3 points
9:23 7.0 complete, 2 points -- finally get private vlans
9:57 1.0 complete, 3 points
9:58 8.0 complete, 2 points
10:01 9.0 complete, 3 points
10:06 10.0 complete, 3 points --default frame-rel keepalive is 10
10:09 11.0 complete 2 points
10:25 12.0 complete, 3 points -- read too deep into obvious neighbor statement
10:54 13.0 complete, 3 points
11:13 14.0 complete, 3 points -- lots of virtual link encryption, probably wasn't worth 3 points

Need to make sure I get my configs saved, so I'm calling it a night
36 points, 3:55 down, 4:05 to go

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.