IEWB Vol II Ver. 4.1 Lab4

OK, it’s been a wild time this week. My DSL went down for 3 days and took time to troubleshoot with Verizon. Waited to get a new DSL modem and all is well.

I started Lab4 this week, my 4th level 6 lab. I will be starting the next lab at level 7 to get used to the more difficulty. Things that are getting me this time:

• Task 4.6 – triple paths between 2 routers. I didn’t read the task very well. It stated to load balance between two of them, but I somehow got it in my mind that it should be three, so I set the OSPF cost for all three. The next task states to use the PPP link as a backup. Well, I racked my brain on how to do this if they all were same cost – backup interface, IP SLA both went through my brain. Because I didn’t read the previous task correctly, I did unnessary thinking and spent unneccessary time doing research. I only needed to have the PPP link as a lower cost and either the FR or the ethernet link would have failed over.
• Redistribution wasn’t bad this time. Just some summarization with it and metric manipulation with OSPF. It was nice to not have a monster redist lab.
• I learned how to do IOS menus. Kinda cool feature, but this is definately a DocCD topic. I’ll take some notes try to remember where on the DocCD it’s at and let it go.

I am still working on this lab, so I have a bit to go. I am getting more and more comfortable with QoS, especially with QoS on the switches. Doing the project at work has been helping tremendously. I still get hammered with the traffic shaping forumla and how it is used and applied, but I think this will come with time.

The Cisco docCD site is doing a bit better. The web people recognized the problems with the 12.4 section and now have put back the old stuff, but alos have placed a link to the new stuff. I will be using the new links to get used to them. Now that there is some structure and order, I have more confidence in using it instead of my UniverCD reaped CD.

I think I will start including my time on Dynamips on my hours list. At first I wasn’t going to, but is still is IOS. I study at lunch once or twice a week with dynamips with the Vol III technology-based labs and it does help. I am planning on upping this quite a bit more very soon. I will become a hermit to the rest of our team until I pass the test, since I will be bringing my lunch and studying instead of going out with the guys. Honestly, there have been days where I haven’t seen or talked with anyone directly. I just come to work, go to our training lab, work all day and go home – all discussions by email.

Onward and upward…