Messing with ether-channels

No Etherchannel, one end isl, the other dot1q:
Results:  Trunk and lines showed up and up, no data would pass over line (could not get pings going)

Etherchanneled two ports, configured one Po interfaces as isl, the other as dot1q
Results: Portchannel went down, the ports on the side I changed to dot1q started trunking as dot1q even though I had hard coded them with isl.....I only changed the Portchannel interface to dot1q and it reprogrammed the individual ports in the channel groups encapsulation values!

I also tested those rules regarding what has to be in place for an etherchannel to form:

1. Duplex settings must match
2. speed settings must match
3. Native Vlans must match
4. channeling protocol
   

Back in the mix

Well, I am still not 100% healthy, but have been studying none-the-less.  As you can see I have started to add links to the blog.  Most are going to be direct cisco links to whitepages and topic areas for exams.  I pretty much blew away all the transcender tests scoring 100% on all their "compiled mock exams."  They were fairly straightforward and easy...I am not expecting the exam to be that simple.

I did do some labbing tonight, and really wrapped my head around the fairy simple technology that is VTP.  I just needed to verify some things, and I did.  I also went back over DAI in the cisco documentation.  Then I reconfigured VACL's on the rack.  Those seem pretty straightforward as well at this point.  At work I dove pretty deep into STP features, and re-read all of them (they could be of some use to us at work as well!).  Last night I got freaked out about wireless, and did some additional reading on LWAPP.  Again, I think that as long as I recognize that there is both control and data traffic on UDP ports 12222, and 12223, I should be ok.  The technology is not that difficult for me to identify with.

Lastly, I read some really good CCIE stories on IEOC.com.  And another techexam.net member passed his CCIE SP lab recently as well.  Hearing stories like this makes me realize that the goal is obtainable, it just requires a great deal of effort.  I still have hopes of 2011 being my year!  Oh ya, this saturday is my rescheduled BCMSN exam...hopefully this will place me halfway through my CCNP track!

Sick!

Got sick!  Sicker than shit actually.  Had to delay the exam until next Saturday the 19th of Sept.  Bummer, I was extremely ready to knock this bad boy out!  I'll let you all know.  Still killing the Transcender exams.  Got 100% first time through on all the voice topics (28/28).  Happy with that.

Transcender

So I bought the BCMSN Transcender exams for the first time.  They are actually pretty good and raising my confidence significantly.  I have not scored below a 90% on any of them, and normally over 95.  So I am feeling relatively prepared right now.  I will dig away at the remaining questions in their bank over the next two nights, and finish up the opened ended questions in the exam study guide.  I did get CCIE LAN Switching the other day.  Looks like a good read, but is all CatOS config stuff.  The theory is there though, which is nice.  So, I will probably post again Friday night, and then let you all know Saturday after the exam on how that went.  Cheers!

Book Time

I finished up looking over all of the Foundation Summaries in the BCMSN Official Exam Certification Guide.  Good little review actually.  I still plan on reading all the question/answers in the back of the book as well to finalize my preparations.  I DID book the test.  Date: Saturday September 12th.   So now I am in overdrive trying to fill in any gaps.  I have done alot actually over the weekend.  Studying qos again, and hitting the books for some theory review.  I also went to the Cisco Learning network and tried some of their practice exams out.  I found alot of glaring errors, and some common mistakes.  One however caught my attention, and I had to lab.  The question was something like, if two routers/switches in an HSRP group have the same priority, which one will become active?  The answer was the device with the highest configured IP address in the HSRP interface.  hmmm.... lab time?!?

I think so...

Upon further testing and configurations....this is not completely true.  You see...I set up 2 interfaces on two L3 switches.  Both in vlan 1, both with the default priority of 100.  The only time the higher IP address device took over active, was if it came up before the other.  Meaning I had to shutdown the other interface...and let the higher IP'd router take the active role.  It would not just take the active role over if the lower IP'd device was active and it was standby. (I cleared up my confusion posting a topic to techexams.net//nevermind).  

Last Week!

Started off tonight with a practice exam.  Got a 96%!  Happy about that.  After a long round of golf today, it was hard to get myself into the office to actually do some studying.  After the practice exam I went back through the voice section in the BCMSN Lab Portfolio.  I think I am actually starting to wrap my head around the auto qos thing.  Here were my main tasks for the lab:

Set up VTP
Set up VLANS
Set up etherchannels
Set up HSRP on 3 VLANS
Set up access layer devices
Configure auto qos on access-layer devices
Configure distribution devices to trust qos/cos information being passed to them from the access-layer

I through some STP stuff in there to even out the traffic flow (making the active hsrp device the root bridge for that particular vlan).  I am not going to dive into any config stuff tonight...just want to leave myself a note to remember the "mls qos" global command on the distribution switches.  This will configure all ports as "untrusted" in this respect.  We will then need to go through and trust the links to our access-layer devices with the auto qos voip trust command. 

Tonight...

I started off tonight by hitting a practice exam.  Got caught off-guard with a few questions and got and 84% on the thing.  I will try again tomorrow.  I then booted up the rack, cleared my configs and vlan.dat files, and started off by configuring vtp, version, domain, mode, and password.....easy enough.  Then I created a couple of vlans on the server...and made sure they were given to the client boxes.  They were....Then I, without a book, configured MST, mapping vlans 10, 100 to instance 1, vlan 200 to instance 2, and vlan 300 to instance 3.  I had to do some research, but found the command to make a different switch the root for a specific instance:

(config)spanning-tree mst [instance #] root primary

as Borat would say.....niooooooccceeeee

Then I did a VACL to block a host from reaching his intended vlan.  He was still allowed access other vlans, unless the acl read somthing like

access-list 1 permit 192.168.10.100 0.0.0.0

then he didnt get to shit!

I changed it to:

access-list 101 permit ip host 192.168.10.100 192.168.10.0 0.0.0.255

and it worked as planned.

I also set up some inter-vlan routing using one of my 3550's.  Easy config....just set the default gateway on the other switches....configure routing with "ip routing", and configure the interfaces. Works flawlessly.  Going to go to bed and read some foundation summary's now.

Lab

Thought I would post a few pics of my home lab...nothing special, but enough to get me through the CCNP track:
I have
3 X 2620XM (1 with NM-4AS, NM-1T, and one with 2 X NM-1T)
2 X 2509 (terminal servers...thought 1 was broke, so I bought another...good little 1 serial routers)
1 X 3550-24-PWR
1 X 3550-48-EMI
1 X 2950T
 Not shown is an 871 wireless

Good times.

Almost there....I can feel it!

Did a couple more practice tests tonight.  Downloaded the free Transcender demo for the test as well.  Only had like 20 questions, but they were still insightful.  I also went through the "Foundation Summaries" chapters 1 -8 in the BCMSN Off. Exam Cert Guide.  Got some good review of some things I had already forgotten :(  Its a fucking shame that a man can just remember everything!  Guess I should stop drinking while studying!  :)  Anywho...will finish up probably one more night of practice tests...then the foundation summary's...then a bit more labbing.  I think that I am going in to sit this beast not this saturday but next.  I also ordered the book Cisco LAN Switching (CCIE Professional Development series).  Hell of a deal at like 15 buck...I was tired of reading the damn thing under google book previews anyhow.  Bastards..they always take away the pages you want to read the most.  But it will soon be mine, thanks amazon.  Alright, time for bed.  Update again tomorrow.

Boson Practice Tests

Well, the last 2 or 3 nights have been dedicated to Boson practice tests.  I am scoring around 85 - 92 % on all of them, so I think that it is going well.  I need to take a couple more nights of practice questions to wrap my mind the topics, and then identify my weaker areas on the blueprint.  So far I should go back and look at:

1. Basic qos configs (auto qos, etc...)
2. VRRP, GLBP (protocol specifics, timers, etc..)  I can program these all day, but need to go over their details again.
3. STP features ( I am pretty good here, but know that they will hit on it)
4. MST
5. Wireless (pretty good here too, but hey it's cisco.  They always seem to hit you where you least expect it)
6. etherchannel gotcha's