Cisco Says, “No PBR for You, We’re Going with Miller Lite…”

I just found out through working with a TAC Engineer on an issue where our brand spanking new Catalyst 4900M won’t accept the command to place a Policy Based Route map on a vlan interface that PBR will not be supported until an upcoming IOS release, most likely in June.   Ugh.  This is not the first weirdness we’ve had with our 4900M’s.  The first was with one of the 4900M’s we have deployed in our new datacenter core.  This switch displayed some weird behavior when we were troubleshooting what appeared to be an issue with a fiber uplink in a twingig module we had plugged into one of the ten-gigabit ports.  We shuffled around some known-good GBICs in these twingigs and next thing we knew, the ports had error-disabled due a Cisco “feature” that keeps you from using illegal hardware, giving us an error of “Unapproved GBIC” in the output of a show interface status.  A reboot got us our ports back, but to this day one of the ports still shows that error even though it works and TAC hasn’t been able to help us be rid of it.  Apparently, on most of the higher-end switches, the database that keeps track of GBIC serial numbers times out entries after a certain period so that you can reuse a GBIC from one module in the switch to another without much trouble…in the 4900M’s they have yet to perfect this.

Don’t get me wrong, the 4900M’s are definitely good hardware and allow you to double your port density in modules you don’t want to use TenGigabit in by using the twingig modules that give you 2 1Gig ports instead, while still giving you the option down the road of using half as many tengigabit ports.  That can be a very handy feature when combined with the port density they already have and is the reason we have 4 of them in the core of our datacenter.  I just wish Cisco had worked out a few more kinks before releasing them.

But enough complaining…it’s good to have job security in these uncertain times!  My BCMSN studies are coming along well and I’m up to chapter 8 in the self-study guide.  That doesn’t sound like much, but the self-study guide’s chapters are all pretty meaty.  I also managed to watch 4 hours straight of CBT Nuggets this weekend before needing a nap.  My lab setup is almost finished and I hope to get it accessible from my desk as soon as there is a lull in the datacenter cabling.  Until then, I hope to keep pushing on my reading.  I’ve already really enjoyed some of the information on MST, which allows you to combine multiple instances of spanning tree into one instance, saving resources and allowing you to more easily use redundant links for load-balancing instead of just leaving them in blocking.  I’ve also really enjoyed the section on etherchannel, particularly doing more sophisticated load-balancing over multiple etherchannel links.

Back to BCMSN!

Well, I have survived both the first part of the data center move as well as the first game of the softball season, so I am ready for a new exam to study for.  I am going next for the BCMSN and I received my copy of the BCMSN self-study guide from Cisco Press.  It’s definitely the heftiest of my Cisco books right now, even outweighing Routing TCP/IP vol 1.  I’ve just started digging into the first chapter and already, from judging the table of contents, I’m wishing I’d read this one about 6 months ago!  There is an entire chapter on dhcp snooping, something which was giving me fits at one of our autonomous wireless sites a few months ago.  It would have been easier then if I’d been familiar with the concept of dhcp snooping.  Oh well!  I always feel like I’m 1 exam behind what I’m doing at work.

This ought to be a great exam for me to study for right now.  We don’t have many routers in our enterprise, but mostly rely on big layer 3 switches.  We use HSRP heavily and have rapid-spanning tree implemented.  These are all things I’ve worked with in practice but never had the time to dig deeper into how they actually work.  My studies for the CCNA-Wireless ought to also make the wireless portion of this exam a little easier to handle and I’m thinking that having already taken the ONT will help with the QoS portion.  There really is a good amount of overlap in some sections of these exams, which might be why everyone thinks their last 1 or 2 CCNP exams are the easiest of the bunch.

This weekend is all about resting up and relaxing.  I’m planning to do some reading, some grilling, and maybe playing catch with the family, but nothing hardcore.  The past 2 weeks have involved a lot of physical work in the datacenter installing switches, running cables, and labeling the heck out of everything.  The payoff is a brand new datacenter with a 10 gig backbone which hopefully will lead to fewer calls of “application slowness” when I’m on call!

ONT Down, New Job, Studying ISCW!!!

I’ve neglected my humble little blog lately and I’m sorry I have.   Since I have been gone, I have successfully passed my ONT exam, making me 1/4 of the way to my CCNP.     I really have to say that this exam is much more focused on theory than practice than many of the Cisco exams I’ve taken and a lot of the material just isn’t possible to recreate in a home lab.  Here’s what I used to study and pass:

CBT Nuggets – These are entertaining and great for getting a basic grasp of exam concepts.  I felt that they really helped with making information “stick.”

Trainsignal Videos – These are a little drier than the CBT Nuggets, but have much more detail to them along with some information that may not be covered by the exam, but is good to know for real life.  I credit these with being the most helpful towards passing my exam of all my study resources, but I’d recommend you use them after you have used the other resources you plan on studying as they can be overwhelming to just dive into.

Cisco Press Exam Guide – This book alone wouldn’t have given me a passing score and didn’t on my first exam attempt, but I think they are still necessary to read and should definitely be a part of anyone’s library studying for a CCNP exam.

The Cisco website, on the job hands-on with QoS, and some work wih the NetworkSims simulator and a 1710 router.  Like I said, it’s not really feasible to recreate some of the objectives in a home lab, but I found that the simulator I used was pretty good for the price and helped me practice.   My 1710 gave me some good hands-on time with both the MQC and the SDM interfaces.

Now I’m studying for the ISCW and plan to have a study guide posted for that as well as soon as I’ve gotten deeper into my reading.   My strategy for this one is as follows…

1.  Watch the CBT nuggets for an exam objective, for example, watch all the nuggets for MPLS.
2.  Read the Cisco Exam Guide chapters relating to that objective, so here that would be all the chapters relating to MPLS.
3.  Once I’ve made it through the Exam Guide and Nuggets, watch each objective in the Train Signal series one at a time.
4.  After watching each Train Signal video, get some hands-on lab practice as well.
5.  Take a practice exam and repeat until scoring in the 90%’s for every objective!

In somewhat related news, I start a new job in 2 weeks as a full-blown Network Engineer!!!!   Woo-HOO!  I’m very excited to be officially doing what I was unofficially doing and have a permanent home rather than remaining a contractor. 

It Is DONE! My ONT Study Guide is Complete…

I probably need to flesh out some more of the Cisco Unified Wireless marketing stuff, but other than that, I’m pretty happy with this guide. I’m thinking a couple of weeks of practice exams and labs ought to get me ready to finally take this exam and be 1/4 closer to the coveted CCNP. I have it in Word doc format, but if anyone requests it, I can post it in a html, txt, or other open format.

Enjoy!

Do You Know the Way to Use Ebay? Yes, I do…

Well, I probably blew too much of my last paycheck on hardware, but my CCNP lab is finally beginning to start to take shape!!! So far, here’s the list:

1 – 2950 (I want at least another one of these, probably more for BCMSN)
1 – 1710 (I hope this will help with ONT and ISCW and plan on getting another)
2 – 2501’s (For the price, I just couldn’t pass them up!)

I know…not much there…yet, but you’ve got to start somewhere! As soon as I get them all set up I will be taking pictures to post.

Growing My Own Little ONT Lab

The ONT exam for CCNP is all about QoS with some wireless and VoIP thrown into the mix. Since we don’t use VoIP where I work (yet!) and we pretty much leave our wireless confined to its own vlan with its own cable modems, I’m thinking that this exam will be the least applicable to everyday work of them all, so I’ve decided to tackle it first rather than leave it looming at the end. So far, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed learning about QoS…it’s basically like writing rules for network bouncers…certain packets get special treatment, like a pretty girl in line for the club that only has to stand in line 5 minutes before the bouncer picks her out and lets her in. Other packets like VOIP get the red carpet treatment and never even touch the queue, like Paris Hilton hopping out of her Hummer and strutting right into the club. Other poor packets are like the rest of us, stuck in the line. Some of us get through in decent time if we show up at the right time and others of us are plain just told No and dropped.

In order to practice some of this, I’m building a virtual lab with dynamips. I’m using 4 2811 routers, 3 with Advanced-IP images and 1 with a Security-Plus image. I’m hoping that plus a real wireless AP and some sort of traffic generator ought to do the trick. As soon as I get everything set up, I’ll post a visio of my topology here.

Mainly, though, I’m glad to be back on the learning track again. I was starting to get cobwebs growing in my brain!

Back in the Cisco Saddle Again!

My employer has decided to help me along in my quest to become a real network engineer. To that end, they have agreed to pay for my books and exams for the CCNP. I couldn’t be more excited to get back into study-mode and learn some cool new tricks.

Unfortunately, despite my employer’s generousity, I still do not have the money for a home lab. I’m planning on going the sim route, either using dynamips or the Boson CCNP netsim. I’m leaning more towards dynamips because it’s free and I already have access to IOS images for it through my employer. I did like the Boson netsim, though, for CCNA. It comes already loaded with many labs, making it easier to concentrate on just studying the subject areas and saving you needing to buy separate labs to set up yourself. The equivalent Boson product for CCNP is about $400 and really won’t help you much for other exams like CCSP exams. Like everything else, it’s a trade off.

This does mean another busy summer of studying, but as hot as it is where I live, what else is summer good for?!