Victor Cappuccio Passed!

Looks like another one of the bloggers I read regularly has passed: Congratulations Victor Cappuccio CCIE#20657! Man, all these CCIE bloggers passing…not that I didn’t feel enough pressure already! :)

Internetwork Expert Brainteaser #1 Solution

Richard Bannister has proposed 4 solutions to the Internetwork Expert Brainteaser. They are great examples, especially on how to match certain fields of a Layer3 packet using Cisco Flexible Packet Matching (FPM).

Ethan Passed!!! CCIE #20655

Head on over to Ethan Banks blog and congratulate him on getting his CCIE! That is awesome news. Well done Ethan CCIE #20655!

List of Configuration Registers and what they do…

Here is a list of all the configuration registers that you can use in ROMMON and what they do.

Blog: 10 Days to go…Last Mock Lab Done!

“Knowing is not enough. We must apply.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

I just finished Mock Lab 7 which is the hardest of the Mock Labs. I should probably rephrase that…it is the Mock Lab with the highest difficulty rating. I actually thought this one was easier than Mock Lab 4 (which is the spawn of satan! lol). I answered everything. There were plenty of tricky questions but each question was fairly independent of the others so if you stuffed one up, it didn’t really effect any other question. Couple of things I had to figure out because I had never done before, but that is where the DocCD really helped.

DocCD Reading List

I was putting together some notes on what DocCD chapters I should read and I found this from Internetwork Expert: CCIE R&S DocCD Recommended Reading List. Now why didn’t I know about this before!? :)

Troubleshooting: IP Addressing Tricks & Tips Using PPP

Let’s say you have this scenario: R4 and R5 are connected via a serial cable. Configure IP Addressing so that R4 and R5 are in the 192.168.45.0/24. R4 should have an IP of 192.168.45.4/24. R5 should have an IP address off 192.168.45.5/24. The catch: Do not configure an IP Address with the ip address 192.168.45.4 255.255.255.0 command directly on R4’s s1/1 interface. Let’s have a look at the different ways we can solve this….

NetKit – Full Network Emulation on Linux

Just found about NetKit thanks to a follower on twitter (I’m starting to love twitter!).
“Netkit has been conceived as an environment for setting up and performing networking experiments at low cost and with little effort. It allows to “create” several virtual network devices (full-fledged routers, switches, computers, etc.) that can be easily interconnected in [...]

Blog: Mock Lab 4 is the spawn of Satan!

Mock Lab 4 is the spawn of Satan! lol.

*sigh*. I know I stuffed that one up. I just finished it. Didn’t have much time to check anything. I got full connectivity, and answered most things. I think I got something fundamentally wrong in the IGP section. I got to the end, and i was utterly exhausted. I’m sure I made mistakes, but I will see how it goes.

New Version of Dynagen Out!

Version 0.11.0 of Dynagen has just been released. The Dynagen tutorial has also been updated with info on how to set up PIX emulation. This is great news for those preparing for their security CCIE (and for those of us who want to play!). Check out the release notes here.

Blog: 17 days to go….

I spent this morning going through Mock Lab 6 again. I booked a 6 hour lab session and gave myself a challenge of completing the whole thing in those 6 hours. I just managed to do it (with a few minutes to spare!). I had spent the greater part of Thursday and Friday going through it thoroughly, analyzing it, trying out different things and multiple solutions. I figured out a couple of things that I stuffed up the first time.

Repeating labs definitely helps. I tend to do a lab now repeatedly until I know it back to front. A lot of people have said “what is the point of doing a lab over and over again, you just end up memorizing it”. This is true in some respects, but what I tend to do is go through the lab again until I don’t need to look up the answers for that lab.

Tutorial: BGP Conditional Route Injection with inject-map

One of the great new features that was introduced in IOS 12.3 is BGP conditional route injection. With conditional route injection we can insert more specific routes into a BGP table based on the existance of another route. Most of the routes in the current internet BGP table consists of aggregate routes. This is used to minimize the size and number of routes in global BGP routing table. The aggregation of routes can sometimes obscure more specific and accurate routing information. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could control and “un-aggregate” those routes on demand? Well that’s kinda what BGP conditional route injection does. It allows us to originate a more specific prefix into the BGP routing table based on an existing aggregated route.

Blog: CCIE Assessor Lab B

I got 70%. Pretty disappointed about this one, as I missed some easy masks. Some I lost because of the grading again looks for very specific answers (although I think this grading script was better than the last one).

Blog: Doc CD Issues and fixes

It looks like even if you don’t have access, or you think you might require access to a DocCD resource that is missing, the proctor is able to give you access to those missing/broken links. This was from the proctor in the Sydney lab as well, so that is a bit of a relief. I am still going to make sure I know how to find the information on all the versions of the DocCD, but it is still nice to know.

QOS: Configuring Policing using the access-list rate-limit command

Let’s say you have a scenario that says we want to configure R2 such that all inbound traffic marked with an IP precedence of 5 and 3 should be limitied to a maximum of 1Mbps. Anything above this rate should be discarded.

Sounds simple enough. What are the different IOS tools that you can accomplish this?

Blog: CCIE Assessor Lab A

I just finished my CCIE Assesor Lab A. I got 72%. I have mixed feelings about this one. The script looks for very specific answers but it gave you a fantastic insight on what Cisco is looking for in terms on configuration and how they mark your exam….

Geek Humour….

nslookup 69.69.69.69
Try it. lol

Mock Lab 6 Analysis – RIP Summary Address and Default Routes

I ran into this strange problem while doing Mock Lab 6, and I thought it warranted an article because it highlights why the order of operations that IOS performs certain tasks is important.

Blog: 23 days to go….Mock Lab 6 Done!

I finished Mock Lab 6 yesterday. I think i did better than the last mock lab. Going through the solution guide this morning, i got a few things wrong. Most of these were really stupid errors that I’m gonna blame on my brain being mush at around the 6 hour mark. 8 hours is still a killer for me to sit down in one stretch. I was reading on Slashdot the other day how scientists are using brain performance enhancing drugs…my first thought was “Where do i get some?! That would really help studying for a CCIE!” lol.

Tutorial: IPv6 Tunnels Part 1 – Manual GRE & IPv6IP Tunnels

Lets face it, sooner or later we are going to move to IPv6. Probably closer to the sooner side than some of us are comfortable with. In this series of articles we will be introducing tunnels and taking a look at how they can be used as part of you migration towards IPv6. Working with IPv6 tunnels is also an important part of a CCIE candidate’s journey, so mastering them is important. In this article we will be looking at tunnelling IPv6 over IPv4 using manual tunnels specifically using GRE and IPv6 in IPv4.

Security: Common Ethertypes in Vlan Access Maps

I was putting together my study notes on Vlan Access Maps and all the common ethertypes that I was asked to match in all the labs that I have done. I was trying to figure out how to match spanning tree BPDU’s when they are transported in Ethernet frames, and was having real difficulty locating this on the Cisco DOC CD…..

Blog: 28 days to go….A day in the life of a CCIE candidate

4:45am: Crawl out of bed. I went to bed at around 11pm last night, and couldn’t really get to sleep. My brain just wouldn’t unwind, and I kept thinking about a redistribution problem i was trying to solve. My quality of sleep has definitely gone down lately. I’ve been doing a minimum of 12 hours a day on labs, and then about an hour watching COD videos before dozing off. I think i need to take a rest day sometime soon. Maybe just watch COD videos all day, otherwise I think I will burn out.

QOS: Applying CBWFQ to a sub-interface

By default IOS does not let you apply CBWFQ directly to a sub interface. I ran into this scenario and worked my way around it in a workbook lab (IE Workbook Vol 2 – Lab 15). I thought it was pretty cool and hopefully it helps someone else out..

Multicast: What is the difference between an igmp filter and an igmp access-group?

After doing IE Mock Lab 5, and analyzing it over the last few days, I had an epiphany with regards to an igmp filtering question. The question required you to limit users joining a certain multicast group, and also place a limit on how many groups users in that vlan can join. I immediately thought “Oh cool, no problem ip igmp access-group with a standard access list, and an ip igmp limit and we are good to go! This stuff is easy”. Brrr! Wrong! :)