Down to 3 Sections Left.

A little over a week before camp and I'm almost done with Soup 2 Nuts, IP Services, NAT, and IPv6 left. Hopefully I can finish up by the weekend and spend next week reviewing my notes!

Multicast S2N done!

It was very, very basic! And kind of an disappointment... plus the setup portions weren't "complete" in the sense that sometimes they wouldn't tell you, you need to configure a loopback as an interface or provide verification commands and the output.

2 things that I did learn, MSDP and Stub Multicast routing.

MSDP - Multicast Source Discovery Protocol - Peer 2 RPs from different multicast domains in order to propagate mutlicast traffic to clients on/through a different domain. The peering take place between 2 RPs, so RP configs need to be applied.

ip msdp peer A.B.C.D connect-source S1/0.2


Stub Routing - you can filter PIM neighbor relations through ip pim neighbor-filter 1. The acl specifies the hosts of the other PIM routers. On the stub router, under the interface that faces the multicast host clients, configure ip igmp helper-address a.b.c.d . It's basically the same as an ip helper address for DHCP.


Things that weren't covered, IP PIM NBMA mode, Auto-rp Listner for Sparse Modes, group-lists, rp-lists. etc.


... up next, Access-lists.

Done with QoS (minus 3560) (notes)

Done with QoS except for QoS on the 3560s since I don't have access to one of these.

Most of the MQC stuff is basic, one gotcha that I should use more often is the match not class-map ABC in another class-map. Comes in handy when having to apply attributes to "everything else".

Priority Queueing and Custom Queueing are setup like access-list (priority-list and queue-list) respectively. and then applied to an interface. Just like an access-list you should have the most specefic match in the beginning and the more general match at the end.
PQ - has 4 queues, high, medium, normal and low
CQ - has 16, of which 15 are usable

WFQ is enabled on the interface fair-queue, hold-queue. WFQ comes in when traffis is set with IP Precedence levels.

If packets are 1500 bytes and the IP Prec is set to 0, then
[32384/(ip prec +1)] x 1500 = size of the packets.
So for IP Prec 0 compared to 1, 1 is half the size of 0 and will receive twice as much bandwidth.

CAR- use acls to specify traffic, you can also use acls with a mask to match only certain IP Prec values Access-list rate-limit 10 mask 7

Policing - if burst is not configured, burst will default to 1/4 the access-rate value.

RSVP- need to review this in doc cd- found under QoS/Signaling.

BGP (S2N)(Notes) part 1of 2

Some notes from BGP

L3T6,T8: Advertise-maps, a way to advertise certain prefixes depending on a condition. The condition is whether another prefix exists or does not exist in the BGP table via the exist-map or non-exist-map. The difficulty with this is the logic and how a task is worded.

Exist-map: Advertise the networks if this network exists
Non-exist-map: Advertise the networks if this network does not exist.

The only condition is the presence or absence of a network/prefix.

L4T2: BGP Dampening is used to limit route flapping. Every time a route flaps a score is kept when bgp dampening is enabled.

Half-time is the time period in which a route with a penalty is decreased every 5 seconds such that when the half period expires, the accumulated penalty is reduced by half. The default is 15 mins, range is 1 to 45 mins. Reuse is 750 and surpess is 2000

Tips- by default configure 'Bgp dampening' and then do a "sh ip bgp damp" to see the default values. To get specific with certain route dampening parameters for certain routes, you can use route-maps w/ ACLs or AS Paths to match and then use multiple route-map statements.

L5T2:Route Aggregation, by default the aggregate route advertises the summary and the component routes.

- another way to summarize routes is to redistribute a static route (to null0) into bgp.

-Atomic Aggregate means a loss of info like AS-PATH (which is used to prevent Routing Loops), use 'as-set' to make sure that history is kept.

L5T4/5: Using AS PATH ACL you can advertise an aggregate address from a different router. Since the AS Path of it self is seen, the update is dropped. (This uses an advertise map and an attributie map (to set the metric)).

L6T4:BGP Communities - remember you can act on the inbound advertisments to affect downstream neigbors. Remember to "...Send-community" to the upstream neighbor that you're receiving the community from (even though you are RECEIVING, the command is still SEND community).
T5: When using 'local-as' do not send-community to neighbors. Local AS can be used with a route-map to neighbor w/out the need of send-community.

Completed BGP (S2N)

Done with BGP! That wraps up the IGPs and EGP. The BGP section wasn't as difficult as I had previously thought. There are still somethings I was able to learn, particularly in the Advanced BGP Lab.

I'll go over my notes and post them later.

I'm a little over half way done with S2N with just 3 weeks before camp. I need to make sure I don't lose motivation in the next 3 weeks, that way I can maximize the Camp experience and not have it be a big waste due to lack of prep.

I have mixed feelings about the Holiday Season this year, I usually look forward to it... right about now, I'm not looking forward to it (especially since I'll be studying).

There's always next year right?

3 weeks before camp and half way through S2Ns.

I have 3 weeks left before the boot camp and I'm about half way done with S2Ns. So far, I would say I'm solid with 70 to 80% of the material. I hope I can get through the book more than once before camp.

My understanding is that you'll get more out of camp if you can get through the 5 days almost be at the point where you're bored. Meaning you know and have seen the topics being addressed and can anticipate what's being asked/required.

Class is over, what next?

What's next is I'm concentrating on specific weaknesses like multicast while at the same time continuing to go through S2N before attending the class.

Here's my take on MUST know subjects:
You MUST know:

- IGP (RIPv2, EIGRP, OSPF, and redistribution, filtering, and route manipulation of these protocols)

- BGP, everything about BGP.

- QOS, the many ways of performing Quality of Services on both Routers (including Frame relay links and specific dlcis) and 3550/3560 switches

- Multicast

- IPV6

-Switching, (SPT, trunking, etherchanneling, VTP)

These are Must Know, must earn total points available.


Then I believe there are things that you "should" know.

- NAT
- IP Services like DHCP
- IOS Security
- Etc.

I hope this is correct, otherwise, I'm in bigger trouble then I think. :)

Working on OSPF (S2N) and gearing up for the last class!

This Saturday will be my last class with Terry. Overall, I think the class was good, not great, but good.

What I gained:

- an honest measurement of where I stand. I've realized my strengths and more importantly my weaknesses.

- a sense of strategy and methodology. Aside from learning the technology, I gained some really good habits of taking the test, redrawing the topology, aliases, certain things that make life a little easier.

What I felt was lacking:

- in all fairness, the class was to be taken by candidates who had been studying for some time and were about 6 months out from taking the test. I expected to be "taught" things I didn't know instead of having to know them coming in to the class. I felt that the teaching portion was lacking.

Overall, you can't expect to learn everything in 10 Saturday's, I think I'm much better off by taking the class then not taking the class but I'm not fully ready to take the lab. I'm a step closer.

Would I recommend it? Yes, for someone who has been studying on their own and know their IGP and BGP inside and out and can strictly focus on the other items. I guess it doesn't matter though, I don't believe he'll be holding another session.

6 weeks and I'm in another class!