As reported on cciepursuit, cisco has announced changes to both the lab and written parts of the CCIE certification.

On the written, the normal “style” of cisco exams will take place, where you cant go back and forth between questions, and no review. On the lab, some questions will need answering, which will take a certain amount of time. This is done to verify the CCIE candidate to verify the correct skillset in order for CCIE certification.

I skimmed over the ONT blueprint, and it sure seems like alot of voice. I am not quite sure howcome theres that much voice material on there. It bothers me quite frankly, because I dont find the voice part particularly interesting. But alas, I digress, theres just one way to the CCNP, and thats through ONT.

So I havent posted for a while, because i have been admitted to the hospital. I am suffering from anxiety attacks, and its something I need to do my best to combat in order to live a normal life again. So ill use this place to hold my thoughts regarding this goal as well.

I just passed ISCW. Im really glad this one is over with. But I have ALOT of reviewing for the material in this one, when i finish the rest of the CCNP track. I could especially feel that not having access to the FW and IPS parts really hurt me. Unfortunally I cant afford any of the very pricy IOS images, for any of my devices, that will support the FW and IPS feature set.

I really wish I would feel  more ready for this one. On top of things, I feel sick again… Never ending story. I wish someone could just cure me once and for all. I have been somewhat sick for the better part of 3 months now, and its really starting to take its toll. I feel really depressed and down at the moment. What to do? I have no idea. Neither does the doctors.

Okay, Xmas is over and so is new years as Im writing this.

Im behind regular postings, I know, which is frustrating.

I am done with the preliminary reading and lab work for ISCW, but I dont feel prepared for it at all. Its even worse than it was for BCMSN. I think the lack of an official study guide really got me off track. I will have to investigate further how to create a study plan on the topics on the blueprint and then come to a full understanding and assurance I got the topics down. The way im doing it now is spreading it too thin, thats my feeling at least. Also, motivation has become a factor at the moment. Maybe its because its the holidays, and you are “supposed” to relax, chill out, I dont know, but I need to get it sorted. Its cutting into my focus.

So today I have read a couple of more chapters about IPSec and GRE (Generic Routing Encapsulation). I have also watched quite alot of CBT on IPSec VPN’s, which really helped clarify somethings.

But I also really think its a hard topic to get to grips with, especially since you only get “half of the story”. The rest is most likely left out to “protect” the CCSP track, and all the stuff thats going on in that track. Even though I dont have any issue with that, it helps to understand the entire picture if you know the reason behind everything. Guess this is just something I need to get used to.

Im studying IPSec VPN’s at the moment. There’s alot of terms, protocols and exchanges taking place, and they all use names thats really hard to tie together with what they are doing 🙂

Isakmp for example, what does that do? well, it stands for Internet Security Association and Key Management Protocol. Its the first phase of the IKE (Internet Key Exchange). Basically its sets up a baseline (encryption, hashing (authentication), Key-material, and Diffie-Hellman group), for management traffic. DH uses assymetric encryption to make a secure channel, to send a symmetric key through, which is used for the isakmp SA (Security Association).

So I just started work toward the ISCW. The lab book for this is huge, so I think its going to be alot of lab work, and alot of lookups on Cisco’s doc site for further information. My reason for this thinking is the lack of a self-study guide for the ISCW exam. Its a shame really, since Ive enjoyed the self-study guides so far.

Thankfully I passed BCMSN. Thank god. It was driving me nuts.

Passed with an 864, which im satisfied with.

I am thinking about my study technique for the ISCW. I need to see if I can structure it somewhat better than BCMSN, where I ended up reading some topics over and over again. I think one of the things I will do better is to lab every chapter out more throughly to get it under my nails. Security has not been my strong side so far, and I need to ramp that up for the ISCW.

I am trying to get some reading done, even though its extremely hard when im still sick.

However, I only got about 5 chapters left in the examination guide. hopefully I can finish them soon, and do some of the last case studies in the lab book. I really want to get this BCMSN out of the way, its starting to get on my nerves. I dont feel prepared enough for the exam though, I dont know why. Ive read almost all the material available, and can sketch out switched networks and stuff. I guess there are just some details thats missing here and there.

Sorry for the non-posts. I am quite sick at the moment. Some stomach issues that apparently takes its time to settle. I was hospitalized 10 days ago, but got out the next day. Since then, I have not been to work or been doing anything at all actually.

I now need to do the remaining labs in the lab portfolio. There are especially some case studies that bridge all the knowledge together (or so it looks like, we’ll see). I do know however, that wireless is a huge area in and by itself.

I have a sneaking suspecion that I better pay alot of attention towards the wireless section of the BCMSN. It seems like its “out-of-scope” of the BCMSN, but Im quite confident that Cisco will really smack me on it for some reason. The whole gain/loss/radio frequency stuff is not a topic I have paid much attention to in the past, so its quite new for me.

Lately I have been in the need of the right equipment for quite a few labs.

What I really need is some equipment that is able to do both Dynamic Arp Inspection (DAI) and IP Source Guard (IPSG). The dynamic arp part is supported on 3550’s as far as I can see, but IPSG is not. It is only available on 4500’s and 6500’s, and I dont think playing on the core 4507R’s at work would be a wise choice 🙂

Been reading the study guide about L2 security. You can really mess up a whole network very simply, and you can basically take down the whole thing pretty easily if your switches are not configured correctly. There was also alot of things about IP spoofing and ARP spoofing. Pretty nifty stuff, and you can all secure your network alot by making some pretty basic choices, and execute them all over your network.

Well, I broke the spanning-tree topology at work today. It was not one of my proudest moments 🙂 I was playing around with the very delicate portfast command, which states in all its glory:

“%Warning: portfast should only be enabled on ports connected to a single

So im studying redundancy features, especially gateway redundancy features. I think this is some impressing technology. Basically there are three versions, HSRP (cisco proprietary), VRRP (IEEE Standard) and GLBP (cisco proprietary). HSRP was introduced in 1994, and VRRP in 1999, GLBP is alot newer, introduced in 2005.

Been reading about CEF yesterday. It doesnt take up much of the exam blueprint, nor CBT nuggets coverage of it. However, it seems that theres more to this than what meets the eye.

I also need to figure out what CEF is doing in routers. My assumption is that its being implemented in IOS and where support for hardware is available, it downloads the FIB and adjacency tables from the control plane to the data plane for fast switching. I doubt all routers have asic hardware, capable of CEF operations, and i know CEF is running on some of my IOS 3640 dynamips boxes.

Today I have spent about 2,5 hours studying different features that enhances the switched network. This includes labbing up BPDU guard, Loop guard, UDLD Aggressive mode, BPDU filtering. Also I find the automatic error recovery feature very interesting.

You can set certain causes to put an interface into the errdisabled state. For example if you enable BPDU guard, and a BPDU is “heard” on the interface, it puts the interface into errdisabled. But you can set a timer to “wake” the interface back up again, so its not a permanently state that an administrator must take action to remedy, namely sh/no sh the interface.

I have been working my a** off trying to understand STP just fairly well. Its a hard topic, especially with Rapid STP. I have struggled with the synchronisation/proposal/agreement thing. It has helped seeing it on the equipment though.

An alternate port can be switched to immediately. If the root port goes down and the switch has a designated port, it performs the proposal/agreement bit, and another switch becomes a designated bridge for it. Nifty stuff.

Sorry about the lack of posting/progress reports. Also the server has been down for a while.

In the meantime, I’ve passed the BSCI exam with an 833 score. Really got my ass kicked on some topics I didnt expect (IS-IS), and ofcourse multicasting which has turned out to be my arch-enemy. I should have done some more labs on ISIS, but I didnt since it didnt take up too much space according to the exam blueprint.

Well, at least some of it. Adjacencies and how IS’s update other IS’s is the thing that nobody can give me an answer to. According to all the material IS’s maintain adjacencies to all others, but still elect a DIS.

So yesterday, I started with all the lab exercises that has to do with EIGRP. I did the one in the self-study guide, and one (2.7.1) in the lab portfolio. I also started on 2.7.2.

So far, the labs in the labportfolio are far better written than the ones in the self-study guide. Today, I have snuck in a few practice scenarios regarding default route propagation.

Alright, I am done with reading about EIGRP. I am now skimming through the chapter, and taking notes. I have an okay understanding of how EIGRP works, and I am looking forward to the labs to nail out unknowns.

I am not 100% convinced about taking notes, or rather doing it in the order im doing (reading first, then skimming and taking notes, then going to the lab).

Today, I am continuing reading about EIGRP.

My goal for today is to get at least 40 pages of EIGRP reading done. Lots of nitty gritty details such as unequal-load balancing and route authentication.

To understand and process the material, 10 pages takes up 30 minutes of reading time. This includes reading the material, looking at the topologies being presented and thinking it through (in case of metrics and bandwidth calculate a bit to see where the authors are getting at).

Chapter 3, EIGRP.

Started reading about the inner workings of EIGRP today. EIGRP is an improved distance vector protocol provided by Cisco themselves. It is an improved distance vector protocol, because it passes updates directly to its neighbours. It is more advanced than traditional distance vector protocols, because it supports VLSM and it does not use periodic updates. It uses hello packets like link-state protocols.

Okay. I will try and document some information regarding my study to attain the BSCI (Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks) exam.

This is by many considered the hardest exam on the CCNP track (1 of 4 exams). I will tackle this one first, and then continue forward to the other exams knowing they will be easier.

Okay, so its been a while since my last post.

Been having some issues to deal with, which has taken quite alot of energy.

I am going for the CCNP, starting with the BSCI exam. Ive got the books for it, and started studying. There’s alot of detailed information, and lots of labs to do. Chapter 2 is 40 pages long, and its taken me two days to reach the end of the information in the book, now im starting the labs in the end of the chapter 🙂

I am happy to report that I managed to pass the CCNA exam yesterday. What a relief.

Here it is:

Hopefully Maibrith passes her exam today as well!!

Update: She did pass it!

So, test is scheduled for tuesday, and im looking through and updating my notes. My plan is to look through all of my notes on the morning, trying to pick up on anything I might have missed during my studying.

I read on Slashdot today, that a “Jack Thompson“, walked out of court, apparently because he was being disbarred for 10 years. I couldnt quite remember who he was, but then it dawned upon me, he’s the smock thats been trying to ban what he thinks are violent games, because he’s of the opinion they are bad for society.

I just purchased a Rack from Dantrak UK. I need some sort of solution to mount the gear I have and will be getting. I cant have it all lay around the floor. They (Dantrak UK) is basically a reseller of Dantraknet.

I like sunny weather when its moderate, but temperatures in the 25+ Celcius range is a bit too much for me. Especially when I need to spend time in front of my computer. I will need some kind of cooling solution this summer for sure.

Interesting indeed.

I was checking piratgruppen.org (A place in favor of sharing things online) the other day, and found that a new site, rettighedsportalen.dk had been started by a former spokesperson of piratgruppen.org.

The site aims to shed some light on immaterial “rights”. This is a good idea and I for one welcome it.

Im writing this on my 3rd HP laptop in 2 years. This is a company owned laptop, because if not, I would never have purchased another laptop from Hewlett Packard.

My first HP laptop was a so called NC8430, which is in their line of business laptops. It replaced a T20/T21 (I have forgotten), which was 3+ years old, and still working fine. The NC8430 has a 15″ display, 256mb graphics card, comes with 1 gig of ram (which I had upgraded to 2gig right away), and as far as i remember, a 60 or 80 gb harddrive. It also had a 2.0 ghz Core 2 duo processor from Intel. Pretty nice machine from reading just the specs. And thats where the story takes a turn for the worse.

This is cool, a p2p program based on real life trust.

Alliance is a program that everyone has seen before, but with a twist. Instead of searching everybody and their uncle’s stash of bits, you only search a much smaller circle of people whom you already trust. This makes it virtually impossible for the RIAA/MPAA/ to catch you in the act (if you were doing something illegal with the technology in the first place).

Since starting my now almost infamous Cisco course, I have become very interested in ways to learn new material.

How do you plan out a semester, how do you organize a study schedule, where do you study? what kind of tools do you use to get you through it all?

This is another great strategic move by the republican party. Let the two democrats fight against each other all they can, while taking focus of John McCain.

Then when the real election cycle begins, they can put credibility behind a claim that the democratic candidates are focusing more on getting elected than the real issues, and they dont have a clear focus on solving the problems that the United States faces.