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    INE's New CCIE R&S v4.0 T ...
    13 August 09

    INE's New CCIE R&S v4.0 Topology

    Posted byPetr Lapukhov
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    Hi Everyone,

    I know you’ve been waiting for this for quite a long time - please take my sincere apologies for the delay. What we were trying to do is come up with an upgrade that allows for affordable home CCIE lab racks; hence the time spent seeing the if new scenarios will fit the upraded topology. Right now, our existing hardware list for a typical rack is:

    R1 – 2610XM 32F/128D
    R2 – 2610XM 32F/128D
    R3 – 2611XM 32F/128D
    R4 – 2611XM 32F/128D
    R5 – 2611XM 32F/128D
    R6 – 2611XM 32F/128D
    SW1 – 3560
    SW2 – 3560
    SW3 – 3550
    SW4 – 3550

    BB1, BB2, BB3 – 2511s

    And all the hardware is cabled as described on this page: How to build a CCIE rack (oh, ignore the old router models, just pay attention to the cabling). So what we're doing for the new topology is a gradual upgrade:

    1) Replacing R4, R5 and R6 with Cisco 1841 ISRs, having 64M flash and 128M RAM minimum.
    2) Getting new routers to run 12.4T images with ADVANCED ENTERPRISE SERVICES feature set and therefore supporting MPLS. Other routers may still run older 12.4 images with the same feature set (ADV. ENT. SERVICES).
    3) No interface cards need to be changed or replaced and no cables should be re-wired. You may re-use the same WIC cards with the 1841s, provided that they are v2 – AFAIR v1 cards are not supported in HWIC slots.
    4) In place of 1841s you may actually use any ISR, such as 28xx or 38xx or even the older 3725 – anything that can run 12.4T ADV. ENTERPRISE SERVICES.

    With the three ISRs being added you can play with any basic MPLS VPN scenario, using R4, R5 and R6 as MPLS P/PE routers and the remaining routers as CEs. Additionally, the three new routers allow for enough bandwidth to test all the features introduced in 12.4T train. As time passes we plan to gradually replace the remaining 2600XM models with the ISRs, but for the new blueprint becoming effective as of October 14th having three 1841s is enough to test the new features. Later this month and during September you will see our rack-rental partner Graded Labs Inc. upgrading its hardware, keeping a mix of the "old" and "new" racks for some time, to accomodate those preparing for the old blueprint.

    Lastly, I know there is a lot of people using Dynamips emulator for their studies. We’re working on releasing our updated Dynagen .NET topology shortly. To summarize the changes, we replaced R1, R2 and R3 in the Dynamips topology with 2600XMs and made R4, R5 and R6 to be 3725s running the latest 12.4T code. This should mimic our real hardware topology pretty close, with maybe some exceptions to interface names.

    Stay tuned for more updates!

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