Archive for July, 2010
A policy-map, by any other name…
Time is a valuable resource in the lab. In a lab task, if asked to configure a policy-map named “BOB”, it doesn’t get the same point value if we happen to accidentally name it “bob”, especially if they are looking to see if you configured what they asked for.
The challenge is, that when reviewing a lab task, and we discover that we need to change a name, it could be a hassle, as we need to remove the policy-map, recreate the policy map, and then put it in place again.
So if you are down to the last minute, here is a time saving solution, that can assist with that process.
IOS allows us to rename a policy-map, and the IOS will swap out the name in other areas of the configuration that reference that policy map. Continue Reading
So many students have written me excited for the upcoming Cisco Certified Design Associate (CCDA) 5 day online bootcamp. In this blog post I want to provide everyone with a preview of some of the hugely valuable content in this course.
Early in the week of the event, we review a network health checklist from Cisco Systems. We take this one step further during the bootcamp and show you how to actually obtain these measurements without breaking your budget:
- Ethernet segments should not feature a sustained utilization of 40% or higher
- All Ethernet segments should be switched – no shared segments (hub-based)
- No WAN links should feature a sustained utilization of 70% or higher
- Response times should be generally less than 100 ms
- LAN response times should generally be 2 ms
Are you wondering what the month of August 2010 will bring for INE fans?
Try all new, online bootcamps in the following disciplines:
- MPLS
- BGP
- CCNA
- CCNP
- CCDA
Watch the blog and your email for all of the exciting new details.
Join the INE Experts Online in August
Note: A complete study plan that utilizes all products in INE training program could be found here: How to Pass the CCIE R&S with INE’s 4.0 Training Program
The two foundation products for self-paced CCIE R&S studies are the IEWB-RS VOL1 and VOL2 workbooks. Together, these two sum up to 4000 pages of hands-on CCIE lab practice content. CCIE R&S VOL1 has over 600 technology-focused scenarios, while CCIE R&S VOL2 has 20 full-scale mock lab scenarios that now started featuring independent troubleshooting sections and detailed breakdowns, linking you to VOL1 scenarios relevant to a particular task. With this amount of training content, it is no surprise that people are having issues getting enough study time to cover all the material. Typically, the available time slots are random, highly fragmented (e.g. interruptions) and often limited to four hours per day at best. Commonly, students may obtain larger time-slots on weekends, which requires sacrificing personal spare time. Such limitation in contiguous time slots results in people biasing their study habits toward the exclusive use of small VOL1 scenarios, while neglecting the full-scale labs from VOL2, typically trying only a few out of 20 labs. This results in the following issues:
- Working mainly through VOL1 in linear fashion, people tend to forget the information they learned earlier during the study process. Based on the logical grouping of VOL1 topics, these are typically advanced topics from L2/L3 and IGP/BGP technologies.
- Lacking time to practice VOL2 (full-scale 8 hour scenarios), students find themselves in a situation where they know how to configure and troubleshoot technologies individually, but cannot deal with the complexity of mixed, multi-technology full-scale scenarios.
Tags: ccie, ccie strategy, ccie training, study planning
A common question for the CCNA Voice candidate is – “Just how can we translate our analog voice waveform into the digitized form that is required for Voice over IP transmission through the converged network?” These active reading questions tell the story – enjoy!
Me Singing in the Shower!
Questions Only
In its natural form, what signal type is the human voice?
To send voice as a series of zeros and ones is known as what type of encoding?
Converting analog voice into digital data begins with taking “snapshots” of voice very frequently. This is called what?
Tags: ccie, CCIE Voice, exam, lab, practice
As I mentioned in a blog article a few months back, INE installed 7961 phones in all of our Voice Racks used for customer rental, and simultaneously struck up an exclusive deal with the company called VoIP Integration so that our students could buy their fantastic Remote Phone Control Software at quite a significant discount. More students than I ever imagined would, have contacted me and received the INE Student Edition of this software for use during their studying sessions. In fact, many that already have phones of their own, bought the software just so that they could travel and stil practice labs – while on the road – with their phones and without having to pack up and take their phones with them.
This is the very tool we use during all of the live online and recorded CCIE Voice Deep Dive’s to show you exactly what is happening in real-time on the actual phones (which happen to be in front of me so that you can hear what is going on as well) for any given task we are all working through configuring or testing & troubleshooting.
Tags: CCIE Voice, cisco, Deep Dive, IP Phones, Remote Control
INE wants to thank IEOC member Ray Aragon (NET_OG) for his awesome contributions to our Cisco forums. Thanks so much Ray and enjoy 100 complimentary GradedLabs Rack Rental Tokens.
Ray's IEOC Avatar!
I am sure many of you would love to know more about Ray – here it is:
Ray Aragon is an SE in the Networking World and after 10 Plus years working with State/Local government and Major Carriers around the world he decided to get his CCIE using INE products as his primary study aide. Here were some facts Ray shared with me:
• I think I try to be helpful to others, and identify “pitfalls” and my “ahhh-haa” moments
• I like it when I run into a stumbling block and there is already a good discussion on IEOC
The author and poet Maya Angelou said “Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.”. Well that is certainly what we have attempted to do with the CCIE Voice Deep Dive self-paced Class on Demand series – that is to bring the human instructional voice element to infuse deeper meaning to what is already fantastic Cisco Documentation. Anyone that has set out and determined to undertake the task of studying for and ultimately passing any CCIE Lab exam, knows that at some point during your studies, the words on paper (Cisco Docs, RFCs, books) – while a absolute phenomenal source of information – can at times seem to loose their impact. Perhaps you have been studying too long, read one too many docs, have the time pressure of your family and friends waiting for you to return to be a part of their life, or perhaps you are just starting out on your adventure and don’t know where to begin. Whatever stage you are at or whatever the case may be, it is certainly helpful to have a tutor and mentor there beside you at times, assisting you in understanding what each complex technology’s documentation is trying to teach you, in possibly a deeper and more insightful way than you can manage on your own.
Wait no longer for such help to arrive! INE is happy to announce that each Live-Online Deep Dive course that we have taught has been recorded, and you have the ability to access these extensive repositories of knowledge at any time.
Here are a couple of great demo’s of just a portion of the latest Deep Dive session we held on Globalization & Localization in order to whet your appetite:
Demo 1: Globalization Prezi – Theory and Reasons
Tags: announcement, CCIE Voice, class on demand, Deep Dive, knowledge, sample, study, training, troubleshooting
Can you solve this puzzle?
R2, R3 and R4 create the service provider network, with MPLS on all three routers, and iBGP at the PE routers. R1 and R5 are the CE routers.
R2, prefers the BGP next hop of 4.4.4.4 for network 5.5.5.5 (R5 loopback). R4, at 4.4.4.4 is an iBGP neighbor.
R2#show ip route vrf v | inc 5.5.5.0 B 5.5.5.0 [200/409600] via 4.4.4.4, 00:06:47
Is R2 preferring an iBGP learned route, which has an AD of 200, over a EIGRP route, which would have an AD of 90?
Can you identify why the routing for 5.5.5.0 on the VRF of R2 is using BGP instead of EIGRP?
Below are the relevant portions of the configuration, which also can serve as a great review of how to configure MPLS VPNs. Continue Reading
As a CCIE instructor, this type of question is one that I see (in IEOC) or hear (in class) often. To help directly address this question, I have maintained a document I call the Expanded Blueprint for many years now. I was quite flattered to see the CCIE team at Cisco publish their own version and name it the Expansion Blueprint. 
I made sure to correlate their’s against my own and ensure that I did not miss anything. In fact, what I learned quickly was the fact that they had some very glaring omissions of topic areas that were on the original Lab Blueprint. I would hope they have since corrected that.
But what I want to discuss in this blog post is the fact that regardless of which blueprint document you are relying upon in your studies, Cisco does make it very clear that it is their Certification-given right to test anything they deem appropriate from the 12.4T IOS code (in the case of the routers in the exam). Hmmmm, wait a minute! So they can test anything that the routers or switches can do!?!?!? This will certainly go a long way in dashing the hopes of many feint of heart candidates.
