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Well, I completed my first Mock Lab (IE Mocklab 5) last night. The Mock Lab was great and did just what I wanted it to do: push me just that little bit harder than I was used to. It definitely got me out of my comfort zone. It was rated an 8, which is supposed to be harder than the actual lab. This is a little comforting, because I didn’t do as well on it as I’d hoped.

I haven’t got my marks yet, but I’ve gone through the solution guide this morning and I think I would have lost about 20-30 marks on stupid mistakes and about 12 marks on things that I just didn’t know!

Summary:

• Limiting egrees traffic on a switch. I knew about srr-queue bandwidth command, however it doesn’t take a percentage lower than 10 percent. If you want lower you have to change the speed of the link with the speed command. I changed the bandwidth instead of the speed. This is an example of one of those things i thought i knew. I’d never even considered how to get it to set it to an effective lower percentage though. That’s the thing about CCIE study it forces you to use your tools in ways you would have never thought of before. I love it!
• I had no idea about MVR (Multicast Vlan Registration). Its something I’m going to have to lab up and play with.
• Didn’t know you had to use a point-to-point subinterface if you want backup interface to track a dlci. Makes sense when I think about it now. I tested this the wrong way while doing the lab (shut down the whole interface). I actually saw this in an earlier lab that I did, but it just didn’t register while doing the mock lab.
• I did the redistribution differently than the solution guide, but I still had complete connectivity. I had to tweaking an ospf cost as one of the switches was load balancing through an nssa when it shouldn’t have. I will see how the proctor marks it, but I’m going to have to lab this up in dynamips to find out why this was load balancing when it should be. I didn’t count the marks for this though, and we’ll see how it is marked
• I think I misinterpreted the BGP section. My solution matched the solution guide pretty well, except I also redistributed BGP into my IGP because some of the internal routers weren’t running BGP and if traffic was headed to the backbone networks it would have resulted in a black hole otherwise. Solution didn’t do this, so I’m not sure on this one. I didn’t want to break the overall requirement of “Upon completion, all devices should have full reachability to all networks in the routing domain, including any networks generated by backbone routers unless explicitly specified”. We’ll see what happen when the marking is complete.
• I’ll have to review ip igmp profile and filtering again. Again this is one of those things that I thought I had down, but the question forced me to use tools in different ways I hadn’t thought of.
• I didn’t know about service nagle! I picked ip tcp chunk size instead for a question that talked about telnet. I should have read the question a bit more carefully
• Instead of an ntp access-group i used an access list blocking incoming ntp packets on an interface. Still worked, but didn’t match the solution guide. ntp access-group is definitely a better way to go. Again stupid mistake!

On the plus side, I know I’m on the right track. I had mixed feelings after the lab last night, but after going through the solution guide I feel a little bit more confident. My mind focused on the things I got wrong, but there was whole bunch of stuff that pushed me that I got correct. That’s always a plus, and at this stage I want to focus on the positives a little and not get totally bummed and stressed out.

I was totally zoned afterward though, and still need to work on my mental stamina. I’m going to book some lab time today and tomorrow to do the lab again in a little bit more detail. I’ve also started recording my notes on my mp3 player after reading about it on Tassos’s blog. I’m amazed at how well this works. I wish I had done this sooner.

Next mock lab is in a week, so I’m going to work on my weak areas till then. Now back to labs.

Update (8th April 2008):
I got 55. Pretty much what I expected, but I was hoping for mid to high sixties, which i probably should have got if not for some really silly mistakes. I missed a whole question. I knew how to do it, but didn’t even attempt it! I must have been really brain dead at that point. The lab was rated 8, so i don’t feel too bad but still I think I can do better than this. Next lab is in a few days so we will see how that one goes. It is also rated an 8. I’m working on my speed with IE Volume III labs till then.

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© 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