uCertifys 640-802 Prep Kit

uCertify’s Customer Relationship Manager sent me a mail a few weeks ago (hey Im still busy ) if I want to review their PrepKits. First I realy was skeptic since I never heard about uCertify yet and thought it might be a BrainDump seller. But after a small mail conversation and the Certguard page I found out that it is definately not. They are writing their own stuff so I decided to give it a go and have a look into their Kits.

At the moment, they offer PrepKits for

• 640-460 IIUC
• 640-721 IUWNE
• 640-802 CCNA: ICND1 and ICND2
• 640-816 CCNA: ICND2
• 640-822 CCNA: ICND1

I decided to have a view on the 640-802 CCNA and give it a go, even though its a bit out of my scope CCIP would have been more interesting but hey sometimes its a good idea to reread or retest some basic stuff.

Misc

As you all probably noticed, the rate of newly published articles has slowed down for a couple of month now and probably will stay that way in the close future. This is manly due to more work, more business trips and a lack of mood during my spare time. Even though I did not lose interest in writing but well, you know, mankind is lazy

Nonetheless there are a two minor changes/upgrades within the blog you mind find useful/interessting.

First of all I just found a CCIE Study Wiki with tons of links to the different topics of the R&S Blueprint. The guy who maintains the wiki also wrote some articles to the different topics. Even though this Wiki is aimed for CCIE candidates it might be an interesting read for all people in search of knowledge about networks. Its the only page I know so far which has direct links to other blogs in such an organisation, it claims there are about 3000 links at the moment. Either click on the CCIE Study Wiki link at the right side or here to get to the Wiki.

The other little upgrade is a rating option for each article on the blog. WordPress added this option some when and well I just didnt notice until I saw it on another WordPress blog It would be very helpful for me if you could rate the articles so I know where I have to do some improvements or even rewrites

Book Review: Cisco ASA: All-in-One Firewall, IPS, and VPN Adaptive Security Appliance

I was invited to a Cisco education round table during the Networkers 2009 in Barcelona and I got a voucher to hand in at the Cisco shop for participating in that round table. After I screened the available books at the store I finally decided to buy the book Cisco ASA: All-in-One Firewall, IPS, and VPN Adaptive Security Appliance (written by Jazib Frahim and Omar Santos) for about 5 Euro

OSPF Type 5 LSA

OSPF uses the Type5 external link LSAs to advertise external routes originated from an ASBR. They are flooded through the whole OSPF domain (at least into the parts where they are accepted) and point packets for those external addresses to the ASBR. There is a field called Forward Address within that Type5 LSA, which is usually set to 0.0.0.0 which means that the packets should be sent directly to the ASBR.

Solution to Lab Challenge IGP (EIGRP, OSPF and RIP)

Please take into consideration that there are most of the time different ways to solve a task and some I did even not think about. I gonna show you the solutions I had in mind. If you think you got another or even better solution to a task, please feel free to comment about it or send me an e-mail.

1st Anniversary

Today is Just another CCIE’s first anniversary. Kinda strange since this means I got my number since a bit more than one year (already got CISCO’s 12 Month reminder) and I should start preparing for my recertification. But it does not feel like one year, more like maybe 6month or so

Also nice to see the blog got over 30′000 hits lately, even though Im really really lazy with writing updates (still working on the solution guide for the lab..) since a few month but during busines days the blog gets between 90 and 110 hits a day which is still good. Might be better if there would be more articles and more updates around.

Dunno this is somehow a nonsense article but I thought its worth to mention.

Anyway thanks to all readers and commenters and enjoy your day

best regards

Michel

CCIE R&S Changes

Rumors about it were already posted on the Groupstudy mailinglist two weeks ago, but Cisco now confirmed the changes yesterday:

https://cisco.hosted.jivesoftware.com/docs/DOC-4605

Cisco Revising CCIE R&S Certification

The upcoming Version 4.0 of Cisco CCIE® Routing and Switching certification will test hands-on troubleshooting, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), and VPN networking

To reflect the growth of the network as a service platform, Cisco is revising the certification requirements for CCIE Routing & Switching (CCIE R&S)–the expert level certification for network engineers. The new requirements were developed with assistance from Cisco enterprise customers and reflect the expectations of employers across industries.

The competencies required for CCIE R&S v4.0 certification were released on May 5, 2009, and are available on the Cisco Learning Network under the CCIE R&S v4.0 Written Exam topics and CCIE R&S v4.0 Lab Exam topics. Exams based on the new requirements are scheduled for release on October 18, 2009, and will immediately replace the currently available v3.0 exams. Candidates who plan to take their exams on October 18, 2009, or later should prepare using the new v4.0 exam topics.

Both the written and lab exams will be refreshed with new questions and will cover MPLS and VPN networking. The written exam will add scenario-based questions to the multiple choice questions, and the lab will now require hands-on troubleshooting of preconfigured networks, in addition to configuration. Exam duration and pricing will remain the same, with the two-hour written exam at USD$350 and the eight-hour lab at USD$1400.

A beta version of the new CCIE R&S v4.0 written exam (351-001) will be available to all customers in the July–August 2009 timeframe at a discounted price of USD$50. An announcement will be made when scheduling begins.

Looks like I gonna try to get my recert before october so I got more time to prepare on MPLS and VPN for the next recertification

Free Core Knowledge Quizzer from IPExpert

Its been a while since the last article but life and work keeps me busy (as always..) and the economy slowdown results in more work for less people but thats kinda nothing new. I still work on the solution guide for the first Lab and as soon as I got enough time I will post it. But now to what I actually wanted to write about. There’s a Mail topic over at the Group Study Mailing list which links a free core knowledge quizzer from IP Expert. I did not test it yet (although already downloaded it) but I think this is a good idea to either prepare for the Questions within the lab or for the written (recert, yeeha). Also according to the guys from IPExpert this thingie will stay free:

“We will me sending out monthly updates – and also adding free plug-in quizzers for CCENT, CCNA, CCNP, CCSP, CCVP, all CCIE Written exams and some Microsoft. The app will definitely be growing and maturing – and will continue to be free.

Regards,

Wayne A. Lawson II – CCIE #5244″

You can get the tool here: IPExpert Core Knowledge Quizzer

It also needs the Adobe AIR app to run on your PC.

If you got problems or other stuff with it, the IPExpert guys respond kinda quick on the Mailing list, but keep in mind its free so dont demand something

IOS Version 12.4(22)T and Banners

Its quite some time since the last article but work keeps me busy and at the moment I work in Singapore which means even less spare time to spend with blogging or other techie stuff. But nevertheless I thought I share the following thingy.

Usually Im used to configure  motd and exec banners with a layout similar to this:

#########################################################################################
#                                                                                       #
#                          UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS PROHIBITED                               #
#                                                                                       #
#       We will kick your but if you try to hack this device                            #
#                                                                                       #
#          or other bla bla bla                                                         #
#                                                                                       #
#########################################################################################

Nothing special and like everything a question of your taste, but the fun part is, is that the IOS 12.4(22)T will not accept this banner. Well not accept is the wrong word, it does accept it, but it will not save nor display it. It just eats the input and says nothing. If you have a look into the running config, thats all you see:

banner exec ^CC
banner motd ^C

The banners just disapeared. So whats it all about? 12.4(22)T does not accept a line which starts with the # symbol, its simply that, if you add a banner with the # at its beginning, it will just accept but not write it. There may be other signs which are not accepted, but I know that * works So do not wonder about why you dont see your banners, you either have a # at the beginning or you just found another symbol which is not compatible with Cisco

Networkers Review

I finally got some time to write a little review over the past week in Barcelona.
So far I can say that it was a great experience, just the sheer knowledge is overwhelming. If I had the time for it I could spend at least 3 weeks with working and reading the slides we got. But lets start somewhere else.

I arrived in Barcelona on Sunday afternoon and got to the hotel (Hesperia del mar ****) by taxi. After the check-in I went to the room and was a bit surprised, the room layout was a bit strange. A quite small room with a big beed and (in comparison to the room) a real big bathroom. Well nothing bad about this but usually its a bit different Afterwards I just got out of the hotel to check the closer neighbourhood to get to know where I can find what, sadly there was no store close to buy some water (which is something I usually do).  So I went back to the hotel did some surfing (Internet Access is free, but not very stable and there sadly was no open AP close by) and reading until Cisco opened the gates for the registration. I thought I gonna get there early cause I didnt know how long it would take, to my big surprise I went in and got my stuff after about 3minutes. It was just like entering your name into a notebook, getting your batch and then the Networkers bag, with presents and informations about the conference. After that I went to a shoping mall close by where I thought I might be able to buy water but guess what, its sunday (stupid me) and the market store was closed, no other open store was selling water in bottles. End of the story I had to use the bottles in the room bar which is in my opinion just too expensive but well…
I went back to the hotel thinking I could spend an easy evening/night in the hotel and its restaurant without having to go out and look for a suiting restaurant, another gotcha the reception told me, that their restaurant is closed over the weekend.. thanks! I ended up in a close by local restaurant which was serving good food.

Going over the Networkers itself I got a few impressions and gotchas I probably file under lessons learned:

• It was the first, only and last Techtorial I ever took. For myself I cant stand it to have 8h talk and listening for US $500 (I think it was). Even though the topics were good and the slides also (happily I got a CD with all slides hehe) but I tend to forget stuff I heard quite soon if I do not do anything with it (write it down, test it, make a testlab, you name it) and I cant just sit there and listen for 8h. But thats just me.
• The food is well.. Im no gourmet but I like good food so the next time I gonna frequent the restaurants close by more often
• Either take a hotel which is closer to the conference or get better walking shoes. My feets were hating me after that week since I did not get some proper shoes with me to walk the distance from the hotel to the conference and back 2-4 times a day.

The Sessions (except the Techtorial that is ) where great, I luckily had (I was told other stories) native English speakers on all sessions I attended which really helped a lot to get what they were talking about. I got out of every session thinking about that stuff and trying to match it on our companies environment, comparing the actual situation and finding the points where we can make some reasonable improvements. I think that shows that the sessions were good. And the good thing is we got all slides from all sessions, which means I can have a look into every session I was not able to participate due to lack of time or schedule problems with other sessions.

The Lab Session itself was neat, I really wish Cisco allowed us to schedule more than only one session per networkers. But well the world isnt perfect so..

A special thing to mention is the round table I was invited to. I really enjoyed (besides the free EUR 40 Gift card, which allowed me to buy a book about ASA’s for EUR 6 , did I mention already that I bought myself an ASA 5505? ) the discussion with Mary from Cisco and the other guys, the first time I felt somehow that Cisco is actually asking their customers and partners on what they think about stuff the plan to do. Sadly we’re not allowed to talk about what Cisco is planning or better thinking about. Mary also mentioned that there are options to participate in more things like this. Im still thinking about if I send her a mail or not

Another highlight was that I met Stretch (packetlife.net) in person, I’d really like to send him some congratulations on his passed CCIE written exam at this point. Well done and it was nice meeting you in person. Through Strech I also met Greg Ferro (Etherealmind) and Kevin Dorrell (dorreke.wordpress.com), sadly we only had just a short time to talk together but I guess we’ll meet again, somewhen and somewhere and hopefully with a lot more time