STUDY!!!

That’s a simple enough method. It’s a proven method I’ve used for the past couple decades or so to pass any test or exams I undertook. I also found that failing is a result of not studying or only marginally studying. I find that most interesting and I want to explore the reason why that is so.

Ok, all silliness aside! I passed my CCNA. Woohoo!!! Well, the ICND2 to be technically correct. But I have now bagged the CCNA under my belt and ready to move on to CCNP. It’s exciting! Who’s excited me? Whooo’s excited with meeee? <pause><followed by long silence>

The Exam

As usual I went into the week prior to the exam all nervous and doubtful of my readiness. I was actually tempted to re-schedule my exam against my wife’s advice to just take it. She knew how much I’ve studied and how focused I was on the venture so she had all the confidence in me, even though I didn’t have much for myself. And she was right. I was more than prepared. It was funny how my score was very indicative of how I felt going into the exam room. The last week of my review, I felt very strong about NAT and ACL – I studied these extra hard based on the accounts of some folks from Techexams that have already taken it. I knew that the WAN portion was my strength. There just wasn’t enough challenges in this area for me, at least not in the CCNA level. Well, sure enough, I scored a perfect 100% in this area.

Just as indicative the results were of my strengths, my known weaknesses also showed on the test score. Not surprisingly I scored on it the lowest. Somehow, switching just would not properly sink in for me – especially in the STP/RSTP areas. Given enough time on the test I would have probably been able to do better. Because of time constraints and my goal of sticking to a certain timeframe between questions I could not allow myself to spend more time than I had to for each question for fear of a repeat of my last experience with the ICND1 where I was on my last 2 questions when time expired. I was very conscious about managing the clock.

I was hoping not to get a switch simulation because I knew I would be toast if I did. I didn’t get one. What I got, though, was a simlet, or testlet, I think. I forget what the difference is but I think it wasn’t a simulation because I didn’t have to configure anything. But then again I was still required to use the CLI. So what is that? Who knows? It’s one of those where you have multiple questions on the same diagram. All I know is that I probably didn’t do too well on it. There was a couple questions from the set that I was sure of the answer but the rest were best guesses. I knew the subject of switching enough that if given enough time I might have scored perfectly on. But time was my enemy and what proficiency I gained by spending a lot of time on practicing subnetting, NATting and routing, I probably lost on not getting enough repetition on show commands on the switching technologies.

I was very happy, though, when I got a pretty “involved” NAT question (I can’t elaborate too much for fear of inadvertently violating NDA policy and divulge specific exam questions). When I saw it, I knew what had to be done and the commands popped right out of my eyes and I can clearly see Wendell Odom’s exact wordings on the book. J Suffice to say, I aced that portion of the exam.

Other than that, no problems with subnetting as I felt sufficiently fast enough for this test. There were also questions that only took me as long as the time required to read before I knew what the answer was. I love those “gimme” questions. If anything they serve as a motivational warm up to help you get rolling. I hate that I got a simlet early in the exam before I even got the chance to get the ball rolling. But once I got passed that and a series of easy questions built up my confidence, it was all downhill from there, as they say.

Here’s how I fared:

The Score

Passing score: 825

My score: 930

Total possible score: 1000

Time remaining when I finished: approx. 7 minutes

The Preparation

It’s no secret to anyone the amount of detail and work I’ve put into studying for this exam. I’ve even had several people leaving me messages or emailing me saying that I’m putting in too much into little details and focusing a lot on documenting instead of studying. While that may be true and I appreciate everyone telling me that, I also had to do this the way I think I know how. That’s just my style. And I’d like to get this method as efficient and effective as possible. So you should expect to see a little bit more detail and organization moving forward. I hope!

I guess I might have over-studied for the purposes of this test. But if I did, I should’ve scored 1000/1000. I don’t really believe you can over-study for something like this. With all the preparation I’ve done, I’m still just a beginner. There’s still so much more I don’t know. Even a CCIE would tell you that even after passing the CCIE test, there’s still much to learn.

So this is exactly how I prepared for the exam (almost exactly, but not quite exact ):

1. Schedule Schmedule! I created a schedule before I even started reading (a nice way to set little goals and milestones). Ok that’s a little lie. I actually started reading before I finished my schedule. But I started working on it the same time I started my readings. I believe it’s very important to have a written schedule to know where I’m going to be tomorrow and what I expect to know by a certain date. Then based on that, I can tell how quickly I learn things or how slow my response is to a certain new material. Then I can accordingly adjust the amount of time I spend on certain things. ‘Cause we all know, there are certain things we can learn with one reading and some require several re-readings. A schedule will also be advantageous for keeping a record of what you’ve done so far. So the moral of the story: keep a schedule. Otherwise, you’ll just be jumping around from one thing to another without method to the madness – might get the same results but at least with the former, you have a template you can use for future studies – one I plan to use and continually improve on.
2. Select a study guide/book. With tons of study materials out there I spent a lot of time in the beginning trying to find the right books. I was determined to find THE book of all books that will help me pass my CCNA. I scoured the Internet and read industry forums to find what the right book for me is. And what I found was there is no one right book to learn from. It was pretty much a consensus that there is no consensus about what the right book is. What I ended up doing was picking anything from the Cisco Press collections and happened to end up with Wendell Odom’s CCNA exam guides. I’m pretty happy with the books and personally feel that it’s all you need to pass the exam. And no I’m not getting paid to endorse it so you can take this statement at face value. I also bought the Todd Lammle book and the CCNA Portable Command guide but a barely used them. In fact, Todd Lammle’s style is too different enough from Odom’s book that it just threw me off when I tried to use it. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of people that swears by Todd Lammle’s book. And I believe them. That’s why I maintain that there is no right book. The best thing is to pick one of the more popular ones (e.g the Odoms, Lammles or Bryants) and stick to them.
3. Schedule exam. This goes along with point #1. It was important for me to set a goal for everything I do. At least as pertains this certification. The study schedule is a series of small goals I had to meet. The exam date is the goal you set for the culmination of all the preparation. And eventually I’m building on that. I will follow that goal with a bigger goal of attaining a CCNP. Starting with smaller goals of passing four tests, broken down by even smaller milestones of, perhaps, accomplishing a chapter reading for a definite period of time.
4. Commit to a daily study schedule. It was important that I developed a consistent habit of studying. I could not just study whenever I can during the day. I made sure in the beginning that my wife was supportive of this little “project”. With that, we learned to schedule things at home accordingly. I had two regular study sessions daily. One in the morning and one in the evening. The morning sessions are a lot easier. My wife and I usually wake up at 6 in the morning and she is out of the house with the toddler by 7am. I don’t usually get to work until 9am. Depending on the day, I’m usually able to put in a solid hour of study. My evening session typically start around 8:30pm – 9pm after dinner and some family time. The evening session is more challenging because I’m usually tired by this time. And when I’m tired I usually find myself dozing off or browsing the internet. However, I try to make it a point to put in at least a good 2 hours of productive studying. I think there was only about 4 or 5 times when I actually fell asleep on my chair through the course of 6 months of study. I thought that was an acceptable ratio. In the weekends, I’m usually able to put in about 5 hours of studying, on average. This requires good planning because weekends are usually reserved for catching up on house chores and seeing friends. Changing the way we do things around the house is pretty easy if you are committed to it. And you can pretty much do the same things as before without too much change. For example, I’m still able to watch all my favorite TV shows by recording them on DVR and watching them as a family during dinner. After dinner, we have more family time, either by running to the store together, walking outside together, or building things with our 2 year old. Of course if I’m studying for a CCIE, things might be a lot different. Who knows?!?
5. Lab it up. There’s not a lot of lab scenarios available for a CCNA candidate. I myself found it hard to create an interesting lab for myself that kept me interested or excited. But you have to be inventive and try as much as you can. I understand that for a beginner, it’s hard to come up with interesting ways of configuring a hostname for a router. Well quite frankly there’s only one way I know how. Two switches and a router is all you really need to get things going. For me, I had as many as routers as I wanted to play with – although I never went more than 5 routes at the same time. Ahh! The awesomeness of dynamips. It doesn’t hurt to go beyond what the CCNA calls for when it comes to labbing. Even if you don’t plan to go beyond CCNA, it also helps to experiment a little further to get a bigger and better understanding of the concepts. I figure if you study two things, you tend to remember both. If you study ten things, you tend to remember 3 maybe 4 out of the 10. So if you go a little bit beyond CCNA-required knowledge, you might end up retaining more than you would if you just stuck close to the blueprint.
6. Read and Re-read. This is a very important step for me. With all the broad technologies covered in the CCNA, three times is really minimum amount of time to re-read. Even then, there were still concepts and facts from the book that I swear weren’t there before. Let’s face it, for people like me that have bad memories, you need to constantly drill things into your head. That means constant repetition. People who can configure routers and switches in their sleep pretty much learned that from rote memorization. Meaning, that because their jobs required it or they spent enough time in a lab environment, that they’ve done it over and over. Note my distinction between what I described above and “experience”. Experience comes from doing something over and over through a period of time that one develops an inner sense to solve a problem quickly (and correctly). Typing a command over and over through a period of time is not solving a problem. Neither is remembering facts from reading. Experience and remembering of facts both hold their proper weight when it comes to doing your job. What I’m basically saying is reading and re-reading will help you solidify concepts and remember facts – important for passing the exam.
7. Supplement. Now I mentioned that you should pick one source of exam guide and stick to it. However, it was important for me to find outside materials that either confirmed or solidified my main source. For that, google and wikipedia were indispensable. For example, when trying to understand frame relay, most specifically confusions I had with understanding addressing, supplemental materials made all the difference for me. I made heavy use of Cisco DocCD. The documentation on this site is very extensive. To be honest, I’m still not sure how to properly use it. Most use I got out of it is by googling a certain topic (e.g. OSPF configuration guide, Rapid Spanning Tree) and more often than not, the first things that come up are documentation from the DocCD. I didn’t always read the entire documentation. Often times I only skipped to what I needed clarification on. In addition, CBT Nuggets was also very helpful with understanding concepts and laying out the foundation of the technologies. What I didn’t use CBTs for is for the exam prep itself. I don’t know if I would have passed the exam by watching the videos along. I doubt it. In the end, it was still the Odom materials that gave me the meat of the information I needed. Finally, I devoured the Boson exam prep that came with the Odom books. I found that the exam questions presented in them were more challenging than the actual exam. That was my impression.
8. Pray. I consider myself to be a man of God – or at least try to be. You don’t have to have a God in order to do this. I guess the basic message is have faith. Faith in yourself and belief that you will reap what you sow. That is not just Christian way. It’s every way. I’ve had a lot of doubt coming into this test. Heck, I had a lot of doubt coming into the ICND1 exam and all the other exams I’ve taken in college before. But know that you will almost always get what you put into it. To be honest, I came in to the exam thinking I was under-prepared. I never get the feeling that I was prepared enough. I basically just went with the facts and trust the facts to get me through the exam. And the facts are:
   • I studied for 3 months on this particular exam almost never missing a day, studying for at least 3 hours a day.
   • I have read the book 3 times during those 3 months.
   • I have taken extended notes and had them well documented on my blog.
   • I played with lab practices at home and when I can, at work – I used dynamips primarily and real equipment when I needed to.
   • I also took the boson practice test (much harder than the actual exam IMO) that came with the book and made sure I understood the fundamentals it covered well enough.

And in the end, it’s those facts that got me through.

If there’s anything I can take from the method of preparation, I think I’m getting a good grip of effective study method. This will only serve to help in my future studies. It will help a lot when the amount of materials and depth of technologies get more difficult.

What I Learned?

Not much! Haha! Ok that’s another little lie. I have already learned a lot in the past 6 months of study. There’s no question there’s a lot of valuable things that I’ve picked up during the course of the past 6 months that will help me become a good engineer. But what I’m really excited about is that I learned a lot about how to study. This whole experience was really an experiment on effective pedagogical methods. Ok just kidding. That’s not even the correct use of the word pedagogical. But really, learning is a science (or an art, if I may) in itself. And perfecting that art is exciting. That would mean being able to tackle anything I undertake, using the same proven methods over and over. And I believe I’ve gotten my first steps out of the way. And I can only improve from that.

What’s Next?

Today starts my official scheduled reading for BSCI

In a few days I will be sitting the final of the 2 exams required to attain the CCNA. From someone whose previous experience with routers and switches are simple show commands and adding ip addresses, the CCNA experience has really ignited a fire in me. Yesterday, I received my new BSCI study materials in the mail and I was so excited when I got home to see a nice little package with my books. Oh, it was also my and my wife’s 3rd wedding anniversary. I tried not to show too much but, yeah, I was just as excited to receive my books as I was about celebrating our anniversary. So after we had our nice, elegant, take out dinner, we sat on the dinner table reflecting on the past 3 blissful years, and had a nice cheesecake dessert, while I browse the pages of my new BSCI book.

I’m still a bit nervous about the test though. I’ve learned so much from the last 6 months studying for the CCNA, and yet I feel like I’m still months away from being ready to take it. And yet I’m so ready and itching to move on to the CCNP track and tackle all the challenges, as well as the new and exciting things that the networking world has to offer. It’s just that this whole testing thing is getting on my way. But I guess it is a necessary step to gauge where I’m at and give me a good indication of where I need to improve. Right now it’s not just learning the material that is challenging for me. Equally challenging is learning the right method of studying. It’s been a long 8 years since I graduated college. And I think I’ve forgotten how to study. Oh wait! I never did study in college. Never mind!

It appears that Scott Morris is now part of the dynamic duo known in the CCIE community as Brian and Brian. So now, what are they? Triple Threat? It’s being announced all over the blog world that the Ubergeek jumps ship and is now part of the Internetwork Expert team as a new CCIE instructor.

Scott Morris is one of the first “legends” that I started hearing and reading about since I started becoming interested in Cisco networking. When I started playing around the idea of going for a CCIE, I’ve visited many a blog of people trying to attain the same thing. And in following their blogs, one of the few keywords that come up constantly in their discussions and posts are the words like IPExpert or Internetwork Expert. Brian and Brian are also words that pop up all the time. Well, Brian and Brian are Internetwork Expert, and Scott Morris is (was now) IP Expert. These are two top-notch CCIE training programs from what I hear. And now it appears that my decision process of who to go with in the future might be a little bit easier.

Check it out on cciecandidate.com.

Here’s another inspiring account of how hard work and the right mindset pays off. It is indeed very inspiring to see these people accomplishing their goals as we follow them on their journey. Congrats on your accomplishments!

Interfaces Enabled with a Routing Protocol

• The network commands for the routing protocol does:
  • Look for potential neighbors on the subnet connected to that interface
  • Advertise the subnet associated with that interface

If the passive-interface router subcommand is configured, the router does not look for neighbors but still advertises the subnet connected to it

EIGRP Interface Troubleshooting Example

• show ip eigrp interfaces
  • Use this command to get a list of the interfaces on the router that has EIGRP enabled. If you expect an interface to be using EIGRP and is not listed here, check the configuration for that interface. There could be a misconfiguration or it is not configured to use EIGRP at all.
  • You can also see the process ID or ASN that is used on the router.
  • The list of interfaces will also show how many peers (neighbors) are connected.
  • If one of the interfaces in this router has a passive-interface command enabled, it will not be shown.
• show ip protocols
  • Use this command to see what parameters are configured on the network commands on each interfaces. If the show runnning-config is not available to check the network command parameters on the interface, the show ip protocols command can display the parameters under the Routing for Networks:” heading.
  • You can examine the networks that are being advertised.
  • This command can also display interfaces with the passive-interface command configured.

OSPF Interface Troubleshooting Example

• Keep in mind that OSPF:
  • Does not need to match process ID
  • Requires that interfaces in the same subnet has to be in the same area
• show ip ospf interface brief
  • shows one line per interface that has OSPF enabled.
  • It also shows process ID as well as what area the interfaces are configured in.

• show ip protocols
  • shows the content of the network command for the interfaces in the router.

Neighbor Relationships

Criteria to meet Neighbor Requirements:

EIGRP Neighbor Requirements

• show ip eigrp neighbors
  • Lists the only neighbors that have passed the verification requirements to be considered a valid neighbor.
  • If an expected interface does not show up on the list but you are able to ping it, one of the requirements on the table above might have a mismatch.
• To verify the requirements that need to be met, use the following commands:
  • show interfaces – to check the subnet
  • debug eigrp packets – verify neighbor authentication
  • show ip eigrp interfaces – to verify use of same ASN
  • show protocols – verify matching K-values.

OSPF Neighbor Requirements

• show ip opsf neighbor
  • Shows a list of OSPF neighbors.
  • Shows the neighbor states (Full, 2-way, DR, BDR, DROther)
• To verify neighbor requirements, use the following commands:
  • show interfaces, debug ip opsf hello – verify same subnet
  • debug ip opsf adj – verify neighbor authentication
  • show ip ospf interface, debug ip opsf hello – verify matching hello and hold/dead timers.
  • debug ip ospf adj, show ip ospf interface brief – verify same area
  • show ip ospf – verify router IDs are unique.

OSPF Neighbor Example 1

OSPF Neighbor Example 2

The MTU Matching Requirement

Just after posting about the new wireless CCIE, there is an ongoing discussion at techexams.net about an announcement that Cisco will make regarding addition of 3 new CCNA “specialties” certification. These new specialties will add certification for Voice, Security, and Wireless.

Here’s a quote referenced by the original poster regarding the announcement:

127.0.0.1 wrote:

On June 24, 2008, Cisco will introduce the CCNA Security, CCNA Voice, and CCNA Wireless concentrations–the smart way for individuals to establish a deeper level of expertise in these three important areas of Cisco network technology.

Built upon Cisco’s most popular career certification—CCNA—these new new concentrations are relevant, role-based, and designed with the growing knowledge requirements of IT professionals and organizations in mind. These highly specialized associate-level concentrations represent areas of rapid development in technology convergence that makes up today’s sophisticated network environments and also offer a career stepping stone to the professional-level credentials.

I haven’t done much research on it yet but judging on how quickly the thread is growing, it is quite probable. A quick search on google doesn’t pop up anything from the Cisco home page although there seems to be a lot of individual pages alluding to them, including some hints from Chris Bryant’s blog.

CCIE Pursuit’s latest post talks about a new CCIE track that has apparently been confirmed. Check it out, including a link from his page. As usual, because I read it on his blog first, he gets the trackback credit.

Here’s an excerpt from Internetwork Expert:

After speaking with multiple Cisco employees within the wireless group, the Wireless CCIE has been confirmed. Beta candidate registration should begin this fall, along with a blueprint release. Beginning early 2009 the Wireless CCIE beta testing will begin! As of now, topics of the test are expected to cover all aspects of wireless from design through implementation including the implications of security, routing and switching and voice technologies. Check back often for any additional information!

I’ve been reviewing OSPF and EIGRP the past two days and in researching (google) some outside resource I stumbled upon this post by CCIE Journey. The article is originally by Ivan Pepelnjak, but because I read it on Carl’s website first he deserves a trackback for helping disseminate the info.

The article basically talks about the network statement no longer being needed to configure an OSPF interface. If you’re familiar with the basic concept (and I’m proud to say, I am – I think ), configuring the network statement on a router essentially adds the particular interface implied on the command. I say implied because instead of explicitly saying put this interface in OSPF area such and such, you configure the ip address or subnet range that implies the interface/s you want. For example, you typically configure the following router subcommand:

network 192.168.2.0 0.0.0.255 area 0

With the change, implemented in IOS release 12.3(11)T (integrated in 12.4), you can configure the command on an interface with:

ip ospf process area area-id

Routing Protocols Primary Functions

1. Learn routing information from neighboring routers
2. Advertise routing information to neighboring routers
3. Best Route – If there’s more than one route to a subnet, use logic to pick the best route based on a metric
4. Convergence – if a topology change occurs (due to failure or addition of a new route), advertise the change and pick new best route.

IGP vs EGP

• IGP – Interior Gateway Protocols
• EGP – Exterios Gateway Protocols

IGP Routing Protocols Algorithm

• Distance Vector (Bellman-Ford)
• Link-State
• Balanced Hybrid

Metrics

• RIP – Hop Count
• OSPF – Cost
• EIGRP – Combination of bandwidth and delay

Administrative Distance

• A number that tells the “believability” of a route. The lower the number the better.
• Defaults:
  • Connected Routes = 0
  • Static = 1
  • BGP (external) = 20
  • EIGRP = 90
  • OSPF = 110
  • RIP = 120

Distance Vector Routing Protocol

• A router learns about the distance of a route based on hop count.
  • Distance – uses a metric to calculate the measurement of distance
  • Vector – the outgoing interface that points to the direction of the next-hop router.
• Sends periodic full routing updates. RIP uses a 30-second update interval.
• Full updates are sent by default.
• Split-horizon rules can stop full updates on a route to prevent looping.

Distance Vector Loop Prevention

Route Poisoning

Split Horizon

• A loop prevention mechanism that prevents a routing update to be advertised back to the original route that advertised it.
• It’s a good way of avoiding counting-to-infinity problem.
• on by default

Poison Reverse and Triggered Updates

• Triggered Update – Immediately sends a triggered update when a route fails, instead of waiting for the nest update period.
• Poison Reverse – To learn a failed route, suspend spli-horizon for that route so that the posisoned route can be advertised. It is a poison reverse only when the poisoned route is advertised back to the router from which the failed route was learned.

Holddown Process and Holddown Timer

• Counting to Infinity problems can still cause loops in redundant network despite split-horizon.
• Holddown can prevent loops caused by countin-to-infinity problems in redundant networks.
• The process workds like this: When a router hears of a failed route, start a holddown timer for that route. While the timer is effective, ignore any other information about the failed route. However, that router may accept information from the neighbor that originally advertised the working route before the timer expires.
• The holddown timer defaults to 180 seconds for RIP

Link State Routing Protocols*

• All routers learn complete information about each other including all subnets in the internetwork
• Link-state advertisements (LSAs) holds information about the routers. They are stored in RAM in a data structure called link-state database (LSBD)
• Routers flood LSAs when:
  • they are created
  • on a regular (but long) interval, if the LSAs don’t change over time
  • immediately when an LSA changes
• The LSDB does not contain routes but it contains all the information needed by the routing algorithm to calculate the best routes
• SPF algorithm runs in each router to calculate the best routes (defined by the lowest-cost and lowest metric) to reach each subnets
• Link-state protocols converge quickly by immediately reflooding changed LSAs and rerunning the SPF algorithm on each router.

*Mostly referring to OSPF

One of the great things about the internet is the abundant sources of information available at your fingertips. Oftentimes I look for certain information online and suddenly find myself drowning in endless links upon links that never seems to stop. And in my wayward wanderings, I stumble upon various useful resources that I know could be valuable for future reference.

So in an effort to share some of my findings, I’m creating a new category of posts where I’ll be posting some useful resources that could be helpful not only to me but to a growing number of visitors I get everyday – Oh by the way, thanks to those blogs hot-linking to my page as I’ve seen my site grow more and more everyday. You know who you are. I gotta tell ya, it makes me feel important. I also plan to feature new blogs I stumble upon from time to time. I guess it’s my attempt to add interesting features to make this site somewhat helpful to others. So watch out for a new category called “Hot Links”.

The first and only “hotlink” for today is a website that every Network Engineer should know about.

• NANOG – North American Network Operators Group
  
  • It is an educational and professional forum for networkers of all shapes and sizes.
  • Learn from the experiences of Network professionals across the US and Canada.
  • Get insights on how ISPs operate.
  • Learn from real-life networking professionals how they do their work.
  • Tons of videos and pdfs from previous presentations in a wide range of topics (BGP, security, network engineering and administration tools).
  • Lots of video tutorials.
  • Get to participate in their meetings held three times a year all over the US and North America.