Friday, November 28, 2008

IPExpert R&S Dynamips Support + Everything IE!It seems Santa Claus is coming earlier this year! :)

IPExpert will be lauching Dynamips support to their R&S Track really soon! This is AWESOME news for anyone who doesn´t own a rack just like me! Follows the link for this post on their blog:

IPexpert to Announce Dynamips Support and  "Everything IE” Private Beta Launch

Also, EverythingIE will be launch in the following days! I´ve heard about it a few months back, and I´m really anxious  to check it out! An online community (like Facebook, Orkut and others) just for CCIEs! Really helpful! Check this comment from Wayne about this:

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Wayne Lawson II says:

November 27th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

Caue - Thanks for the support - EIE will truly be an amazing resource and community for CCIE candidates. It’s essentially going to be Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, Twitter, Meet up, Groupstudy, CCIEblog and Certification Talk / IEOC on steroids….Everything you need with a single login (and SPAM-free and heavily moderated so the community stays productive and valuable!) - many free resources, an “Ask the Expert” (online instructors), free labs, product giveaways, resume / job search (many recruiters assisting in placement), study groups (online) supported by the IPexpert team, etc - and we’re hoping that our competitors participate in this initiative so it’s truly a vendor-neutral meaningful community….more details to come soon!

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Exciting, don´t you think?! I can´t wait to check it out!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Recomended CCIE Books from Jared Scrivener

I just saw this post from Jared Scrivener at IPExpert CCIE Blog, he makes a very good point! Most candidates (including myself) get so anxious to solve some labs that we forget to make a solid foundation with some quality reading!

Of course, we all have our strong and weak areas, but his point is, most of our weak areas correlates to the books we haven´t read!

This is a very nice statement! That´s why a CCIE preparation is a 18, 24 months adventure! We must feed our brain with enough information about technologies and them put the theory in pratice on our labs to check  HOW  everything works together!

Want to check his list?! Just follow the link to the post:

http://ipexpert.ccieblog.com/2008/11/21/so-much-information-part-one/

I would add some more books, but, probably he will have those included in the next post! Wonderful reading! Enjoy!

PS: I´m actually working on a OSPF post from IPExpert VoD. These OSPF videos are AWESOME! I´m just a bit delayed due to the HEAVY end-year workload I do have right now! :(

Friday, November 7, 2008

CCIE Command Memorizer low price for the first 500 canditates who signup!

I just received an email from ConfigureTerminal.com (Mr. David Bombal) with GREAT news! The CCIE Command Memorizer (and all other tools available at his website) will be available for USD 9.99/month for the first 500 people who signup (regular price after that will be USD 29.90/month)!

This is a GREAT opportunity for those who want to know the tool, and how it works! A very nice move! You can try it for a month, if you like, you renew your subscription, if you don´t just cancel it! :)

Let me say this... I loved! Very nice tool, and it´s helping me in my studies, in fact, the CCIE Command Memorizer is key in my strategy (specially on the road)!

Oh yeah... The signup will not only give you access to the CCIE Command Memorizer, but to many other tools also!

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

What a "nice" way to do business! Thank GOD I didn´t bought from NMC!

To my surprise, this week while checking Sadikhov Forums (CCIE Other section), I saw many NetMasterClass customers complaining about their "products" being removed from their accounts! EVERYTHING, DOiTv2 Workbook, Video on Demand, Tech Library, everything!

WTH! Does the Cisco 360 Program gives the right to NMC to do that?! I would ask for my products back or a refund! I would NOT accept nothing less than that!

Oh my! Thank God I didn´t bought their Study Package (remember the slogan: This awesome study package will keep you busy enough bla bla bla...)... yeah! Right! It would keep me busy enough to try to have them back to my account!

So, if a company (NMC) sell their products to other company (Cisco), what happen to their customers?! Yeah... good question...

I wish more companies have the same police IPExpert and Internetwork Expert does regarding Investment Protection! That´s the way it should be!

You can check the original Sadikhov Topic by clicking here.

IPExpert Year End Special

Yeah! Year End Special from IPExpert!

IPExpert Blended Learning Solutions is priced at USD 999.99 again! At least for a while! Wonderful study package!

Today IPExpert just released a new Newsletter with some promotions for this year!

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I will hurry up to grabe some more Rack Rental hours! :)

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

How to check your Diagram for potential Routing Loops

One of the most challenging tasks in the CCIE Lab is how to deal with routing loops, specially when dealing with redistribution. I still working my way through it and I still missing alot (any comments, thoughts, suggestions will be welcome!).

Anyway... I will not deal here (in this specific post of course) with the details about redistribution, and anything else. I will just check the topology for potential routing loops, and redistribution points! (and please, correct me if I´m wrong, ok?!).

Let´s check this diagram from IPExpert Workbook Vol. 3 - Lab. 1 (this Lab 1 is available for download at IPExpert Website, go get yours).

image

To keep things simple, forget that R4 Serial connection is also connected to R5 through Frame-Relay network, just pretend it is connected direct through Serial Interfaces, ok?!

So we have EIGRP, OSPF and RIP all over our topology, and guess which protocol was choosen to be in the Frame-Relay network?! Yes, you´re right! OSPF!

Anyway, checking it a little deeper, we can see that routers BB2, R4, R5 and R2 have direct connections and those routers are using RIP. Also, R1 and SW1 are using RIP between them! That should not take too long to be configured (depending on what is being asked), but probably not very challenge.

In the EIGRP "world" we have BB1, R6, R7 and R9 routers. Note that there are two interfaces between R6 and R9. Again, that also should not take too long to be configured depending on what the task is asking and the restrictions applied!

Now... OSPF! It´s being used between R2, R5 and R6 in the OSPF Area 256, and between R1 and R2 in OSPF Area 12.

Now that we checked the IPv4 IGP Routing Protocols in this diagram, we also need to verify it for potential Routing Loops. Check the bellow drawing:

image

Starting from BB2, to the top of the topology, we can see two loops in our network. One represented by the "ORANGE" arrows and the other by the "RED" arrows.

First, let´s analyze the loop in "ORANGE" between R6 and R9. It´s inside EIGRP AS679. So, this loop is "contained" inside one routing protocol. The routing protocol will deal with it. No worries!

Now... the loop between R2 and R5 (represented by the "RED" arrows). This one involves two distinct routing protocols! So we must take care when doing redistribution between those routing domains, either by using different Administrative Distance (AD), route-maps, access-list or any tool that we´re allowed to use to avoid it!

Regarding the redistribution points... we´ll need to redistribute routes in R2, R6 and "maybe" in R1, it´ll all depend on the connections!

Just keep in mind that, when dealing with routing loops we can have situations like:

Routing Loop with a single IGP: That kind of situation will not create a routing loop when redistribution is performed, because, it´ll be filtered by the IGP in use.

Routing Loops  with two or more IGPs:  In  this situation we´ll need to take care off "manually", using filters, maps, access-lists, and other tools when dealing with redistribution, avoiding for example that RIP domain learn OSPF routes, and them send those routes back to the OSPF domain!

This analysis seens simple, but try to do it in some different diagrams on your own to get more practice, I´ll do the same!

Later we´ll discuss the details involving the redistribution and the IGPs!

Cheers!