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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.

Lab Break-down (May contain spoilers)

• I used a vlan access-map instead of arp inspection to block arp between two hosts. The solution guide used ip arp inspection, but my solution worked (I tested it by changing the mac address on one of the devices). Don’t know if I’ll get the marks on this one.
• Spent about 20-30 minutes searching the doc CD on how to log ACL messages to a syslog server once every 6 hours. Cisco, you really need to fix that DocCD. It is sooo frustrating. The 12.4 docs keep pointing me to a blank page with a recursive link. Grrr. I eventually found it remembering one of Ethan’s posts (thanks Ethan!) and by using ? on the ip acl command. It was the ip access-list logging interval command. Never knew about this one. I’d link to the command but I still can’t find it on the doc cd anywhere. :)
• There was a question regarding RIP where Rip updates should only be sent out the Ethernet connection to BB2. I took that to mean, you should only send it out ethernet 0/0 and only to BB2.

  The solution guide had:

  router rip
   version 2
   passive-interface default
   no passive-interface eth0/0
   network 0.0.0.0
   no auto-summary
  

  I had:

  router rip
   version 2
   passive-interface default
   network 0.0.0.0
   neighbor 192.10.1.254
   no auto-summary
  

  I still like mine better. In their solution they are still sending updates out to all hosts on eth0/0, mine you only send to one neighbor. The passive interface command stop’s updates from going out, but you still receive. The neighbor command still makes you send unicast updates, even in spite of the passive-interface. I verified this via debugs and pings from other routers after redistribution. Depends on the interpretation of the question on this one.

• There was some weird question wording where they wanted the NMS in VLAN 46 to send TCP echo packets to R3 every second and for R3 to respond. I was like “yeah well what’s its ip address and I will configure an ip sla monitor for it?!”. They didn’t give it you. They wanted service tcp-small-servers and ip tcp timestamp. Grrr. I knew the service tcp-small-servers but it just didn’t register during the exam.
• I used BGP prepending to get the sh ip bgp summary matching what they wanted. They changed the paths an AS took. Mine still matched the output they requested, but again don’t know about this one.
• I didn’t do QOS for frame-relay using a map-class, instead just put it on the interface. This was a stupid mistake. I really don’t know what I was think here. I even remember thinking, okay don’t forget to create the map-class. I totally didn’t do it. Mind mush.

Overall, I feel better about this one than the last one. I had time spare and I checked through it, although not very thoroughly due to the mind mush factor.

I’ll update on my results as they come in. I have a CCIE Assessor Lab on Wednesday and Friday, so hopefully I’ll do okay. I’m going to spend the next few days going through the mock labs again (5&6) and trying to work on my speed and thought processes. I’m also going to try find some of those drugs the scientists are on…. lol.

Anybody got any strategies for lasting the full 8 hours on the CCIE lab? I think that brain fatigue is one of my biggest problems at the moment.

Update: I got 71% on this one. Seem to be hovering around the 70% mark. It was rated 8 and Internetwork Expert says if you got in the high 60’s you are doing okay so that is a bit of a relief. Still need to work on those silly errors though.

© 2008 Arden Packeer. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway. This material is not sponsored or endorsed by Cisco Systems, Inc. Cisco, Cisco Systems, CCIE and the CCIE Logo are trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and its affiliates