CCNP BSCI Chapter 2 Lab

I spent a total of 4 hours configuring, troubleshooting, and manipulating what has to be the biggest Cisco lab I've worked so far. I used a total of 11 routers, 1 switch, and a connection to the outside world. Following the book instructions I spent a good portion of my time configuring two back bone routers and a Cisco router as a Frame-Relay switch. I implimented a lot of commands I wasn't to familar with including some BGP commands and even some multi-cast commands. Everything some how came up as expected with not to many real hitches. The purpose of this lab was to pretty much bring everything I learned in Chapter 2 together. I had 8 routers that I ended up setting RIPv1, then moved to a default route, then enabled ip classless, enabled RIPv2, and last but not least I practiced scalibility by manually summarizing routes on my edge routers. All in all it was a good learning experience and I'm slowly but surely starting to see my knowledge grow.

I have 7 more chapters in this first book and I'm estimating that it's going to take between 2-3 weeks per chapter. Once I'm done with this book then I'm going to buckle down and prep for the exam by going through the Cisco Exam-guide along with the Lab manual. Hopefully by then I should be prepped enough to take this exam, then repeat this process times 3! As you can see there's a long way to go and a lot of dedication needed for any Cisco certification, especially the high level certs.

RIP Protocol and Floating Static Routes

Today I read up on topics related to the two different RIP versions 1 and 2 which was mostly review for me. There was some good stuff such as using both RIPv1 and RIPv2 on a network which i of course created a lab for. I also went over topics related to classful and classless routing over a network and how routing updates are summarized over Dis-contiguous or over different major classful networks. It was a good read and confirmed my suspicion that you can subnet within a classful network using RIPv1 as long as that subnet number is consistent throughout that network. However the network will still be summarized to a /16 when crossing major network boundaries.

I finished up today by learning about Floating Static Routes which was A LOT simpler then I imagined it to be. A floating static route is primarily used when a dynamic routing protocol fails or when you have a WAN link fail and would like to have an automatic fail-over route say through anISDN/DSL backup connection. A floating static route is configured by setting the administrative distance (AD) on a static route higher than the dynamic protocol (AD). By doing this the static route "floats" above the dynamic protocol since best routes when using mutli protocols uses AD to determine the best protocol to use. By default a static route has an AD of either 0 or 1 depending on the configuration. The higher the AD the less likely it is to be used over another protocol as indicated in the picture above.

Static Route and ODR Overview

Well today was my first real study session on CCNP, from the get go I could tell there is a higher level understanding needed if I'm going to pass this certification. The BSCI goes a lot deeper into routing than anything I've came across so far and just through the first few pages I already set up a few labs pertaining to the information I was reading. I went through setting up a simple static router network which was easy enough followed by setting up a static default lab which wasn't bad at all either. I then finished up by learning and creating a lab for On-Demand Routing (ODR) which is really a Cisco Prioperty way of setting up a cisco network by using CDP rather than a true Dynamic Routing Protocol or setting up Static Routes. All in all not to bad, I didn't get as much as I wanted done today because I came down with a cold and I'm sitting here hoping it doesn't turn into a fever or the flu. Tomorrow I am going to go over some RIP topics and labs which shouldn't be too bad hopefully but we'll see!

SDM Setup Through GNS3

I spent the past two days trying to setup SDM on a router on GNS3 but after several attempts I wasn't successful. I finally decided to use a real 3600 router at our NOC thinking that it was an issue with the GNS3 IOS's I was using (which it was). Before I began the upgrade I noticed that the router IOS version I was using was 12.2 and I needed at least the 12.4 version so I spent quite a bit of time scavenging cables, tftp software, and even a switch (didn't have a cross-over cable). FInally after I upgraded the IOS I noticed that one of the commands I needed to run on that router wouldn't work (ip http secure-server)! So finally I scratched using the real router idea and went back to square one. I ended up using the more appropriate 12.4 IOS I downloaded on my machine for GNS3 and sure enough everything installed. When I finally went to connect to my router through SDM I ran into one last little snag which was the Java applet itself. I would enter my credentials to log in but not much else would happen. After updating to the latest and greatest version everything came right up! Good experience all around just to at least say I know how to install SDM if needed and know what to look out for in the future.

I started and finsihed what I am sure the shortest and easiest CCNP chapter as well. I went through Chapter 1 which basically goes briefly into network design and some processes to think about and implement when trying to build a completely converged network with data, voice, video, security, and etc. all running on one network. It was a good read but now to get into the meat and potatoes of network engineering finally!

IPv6 CCNA Lab Review

Well this is my 50th blog posting and most likely my last posting on CCNA related material! From here on out most of my post will be related to CCNP topics for the most part. I finished up the last chapter in the CCNA book by going through the IPv6 material once again and labbing out a quick scenario on the topic. The configuration is a little different and thankfully there are some good work a round's to not having to type out and configure those long 128 bit addresses! Tomorrow I'll probably mess around with setting up SDM in GNS3 and finally finally finally move on to the CCNP material!

Connecting GNS3 to the Outside World!

Well I knew the time was coming to learn how to connect GNS3 to the outside world aka the internet or at least my computer. The reason for this is that for the CCNP BCMSN (Switching) exam, I could use GNS3 for my router devices and all I would have to do is buy a few switches and I would have a full BCMSN lab! Setting everything up in GNS3 to connect to the internet was just as hard as I expected it to be. I spent the better part of 5-6 hours troubleshooting and following video examples to get everything working. I didn't want to connect to the internet for now, I just wanted to be able to telnet from my PC to a GNS3 router.

To do this I had to create a loop back network card on my computer and set it up with an IP address. Next I had to setup GNS3 with a switch and a cloud that pointed to my loopback device. In retrospect I'm betting I could skip using a switch but hey I was just following instructions. Last but not least I had to configure my GNS3 routers with IP addresses on the respective interfaces that connected to that cloud and then I was good to go! As you see in the attached picture, I also setup Putty for telnetting and configuring routers from here on out.

Yesterday I actually went through the VPN chapter of the Cisco ICND2 book along with reading through the NAT Theory portion in this book. I'm going to hopefully finish up today with configuring some NAT Labs and then it'll only be 1 chapter left befor I offically begin the CCNP!

CCNA Partially Meshed Frame Relay Network Lab

Today I polished off the rest of my CCNA Frame-Relay review by completing the Partially Meshed Frame Relay Network Lab. All in all I think I finally have my head wrapped around most of the CCNA Frame-Relay concepts and I'm ready to move on to the last few chapters of my CCNA material! A partially meshed frame network is a Frame-Relay network in which some sites are fully meshed while others are only point-to-points. The thing that could trip you up the most is making sure you have all your PVC's configured correctly and that you configure the right type of interfaces for the right type of VC connections. Not to bad of a lab without to many hiccups besides my Router E I forgot to no shut the physical S0/0 interface but once I did that everything came right up. I used EIGRP for my routing call which seems to work fairly well with this type of network.