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