My CCIE Journey

Yep, the score is 72, good? I am not happy with it.

QoS, Security and IP Services blew me away. I have no idea on how to use it. I just know the keywords but I can't put it in place.

I notice that the questions are indeed give clue on the answers. Will the real exam be like this?

This is one of the day that I feel the usefull study in my University for a subject called 'Automata' and 'basic programming language'

I must admit that when I studied it, I was totally blank, blurred, unclear, etc. and I start feeling useless studying that subject.

What an embarassing moment if I recall that now (or at least few days back), when I need to use regex (regular expressions) more frequently.

One purpose is for my CCIE lab preparation and the other one is for the bigger thing: unix system administration.

I was always wonder on how to perform specific tasks in unix boxes (linux included!) more efficient.

My search for those two tasks are finally come to its dawn and amazingly I used to study about it! If only I knew the purpose of regex when I study it, I am not going to wonder around at that time (and almost failed the subject actually, thanks to the not-paying-attention and the amazing lecturer that understands 'very' deep of the knowledge but have no clue on how to explain it properly) --> hey, isn't that the common excuse from students? I am one of the teacher now :)

Ok, back to study and having fun with regex now (after quick dinner of course)

Chao!

76!

... and I have tried my most honest scoring method just like I do the scoring/ marking for my student.

One task missed, no score! Unsure whether I would understand the tasks, gone! Partial tasks completed, goodbye score!

I am tough on my students, but I have to be tough to myself as well (which is a student in this case).

Is this a good sign?

It might, but I need to ensure that I could maintain the highest score possible in the coming labs

Lab 9 concluded with score 76, no good to pass lab exam.

Lab 9 down, lab 10 to go :)

Tonight, I finally could catch up with the old uptime of my lab practices (4 hours+)

However, this is still not a good sign in my study time management.

Last week, there were: two birthdays, one weekend activities and another set of after hours appointment. The time that I must attend to those schedule was taking away my lab time. But ... it was worth it. At least I know that I need a break once in a while :)

Tonight as well I managed to catch up with th missing config (by reconfiguring it manually). Thanks to the missing config :) It is good for my practice in absorbing certain basic 'must-be-able-to-do-it-in-5-minutes' tasks.

Half way through lab 9 tonight, stopped at task 5.4 (that is more than half way through all lab9!!!) within 3 hours 45 minutes!!! Nw record, yay!!!

AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!

... but thank you! I just realized that my simluator script is not running as I expected like before.

All configs on lab 9 had just gone in a snap of a finger! I was trying to simulate one customer's network request and ... there you go ... it overwrites my lab9 configs! ALL OF THEM!!! :D

Good for practice though, but ... it hurts :(

Hopefully it does not happen in my lab exam latter :)

Finally I can kept in close proximity with my target lab progress!

Lab 8 was over with all its glorious moments and misery.

'rtr' command was not found in my IOS. Ok, technically it is there but there is not inline help ('?') that I could use for ensuring the command(s) that I put in was (were) corrrect.

Let's see with this lab 9, if I could start doing it in two days (total of 8 hours), then I would be ready to start the time trial lab progress in lab 10 onwards.

I am not a perfect person, nor an intelligent human being. However, I believe I could control my mind to follow what I wanted :)

Quote of the day:

almost 1 hour uptime and the latest kernel 2.6.17-r4 in my gentoo (x64) box is running stable

... wait a minute, this is my CCIE blog isn't it???

There IS a connection: both Cisco routers and my gentoo use kernel to control CPU. They are at two different world, but both need kernel to provide link to higher layer.

Since I am using 7200 simulator in my Gentoo box, I must ensure the highest tweaking possible to enable 7200 simimlator run as smooth as possible.

The last kernel I use was 2.6.13-r7, it provides good environment (containment???) for my simluated lab already. But few things are needed to make less 'screaming' fan from the Gentoo box. During the 2.6.13-r7, the fan always 'screams' everytime I started the simulator (it was release 0.2.4).

Then, the 7200 simulator changed to 0.2.5-rc1 with ... CPU idle!!! A very clever improvement that is needed to make sure CPU usage is better with lesser CPU utilization. However, with my 'full CCIE lab need', the CPU still stays at 100% (200% because I have two CPU cores) and yet the fan is still 'screams' for cooling down the CPU(s).

Then ... 0.2.5-rc2, far better improvements, the CPU are now steady at around 90-ish percent. A big imprvoement to make it less than 100%.

But, as an end user of this simulator, having an opportunity of 100% idle of CPUs would be better off. This happens after two things: (Gentoo) kernel change to 2.6.17-r4 and disable the 'noexec=off' in the Grub boot loader.

Now, on average the CPU idle time is between 80-90% per CPU, that means to run all 12 'routers', the simulator could reduce the CPU usage to as low as 3-4% per simluated routers!!!

WOW!!! Now I am amazed

But that's the fact, CPU is yet another logic set that could be simulated into another 'CPU'. And this is the good deal if one would like to make an appliance without needing to design the hardware directly. Anyway, that is the job for the hardware engineer doesn't it???

We (the software guys) could be the hardware engineer as well, thus we could pass proper needs for the hardware designers in meeting the requirements.

Time to go back to my 'lab' again (after dinner of course, gee ... I am starving!)

Oh wow! I am overwhelmed!!!

I always told my students on my famous quote: "as long as it is 1 and 0, nothing is impossible"

It is a very tough and challenging quote, but it has been proven to me and many people around me that: it is true! :)

As you noticed in the previous three blogs, I have tried to force a 7200 router into a 24-port switch just like Cisco Catalyst 35x0 (the famous Layer-3 switch for CCIE R&S lab exam).

Many people also mentioned that I am crazy to use 7200 router for preparing my CCIE R&S lab exam. The same skepticism also comes from various CCIEs that I bump into.

Come on, man, be real: in the (CCIE R&S) lab exam, you are faced with IOS, not the physical router config/ connections. I might be wrong on this, because I have never tasted the lab exam :)

On top of all, the famous quote above also proven to guide me in eliminating possible problem sources for troubleshooting.

So ...

It works!!!

Maybe some of you is wondering, what is so special of making 24-ports router as a switch?

Imagine this: this is a simulator, no visual view of how it really connects. Only logic view that I could see to interpret the logical (and physical) connection -> physic-logical, physio-logical??? hahaha ...

Anyway, most challenges were with the actual link between one device to another. Guess what??? it needs more check over and over again, just like the CCIE practice lab that I am doing.

If one check does not satisfy you, check it again and again and again ...

Prove your workbook answer are wrong before you belive in the answer. It is just another human creation (both router and the practice lab), so do not simply accept the answer as it is.

In the lab exam room, it would be different though. However, with proper preparation and knowledge, nothing is impossible.

I told my student many times: make mistakes during study, but no during exam; and make sure you know how to fix it.

25 actually :)

That's the output of the new attempt of using PA-8T module in the simulator :)

Problems: a lot! It is never meant to be a switch, so to make it a same function like a switch requires certain trick, which is good for my practice as well.

Off I go again, this time with new challenge: turning router into switch, Layer-3 switch to be precise.