IEWB Vol II Ver. 4.1 Lab5 & 6

Boy this lab had its ups and downs. I am getting the L2 stuff pretty down pat and pretty quick. It’s all the other stuff…

• One plan of attack for me is to do my Etherchannels and then my trunk links before even worrying about VLANs and VTP.  This way I have infrastructure and will have minimal hiccups with VLANs.
• I’ve also figured out that there are only so many way to configure FR, PPP & HDLC. These have been exhausted so far in the labs so far, I think. I even took a small peek at a level 10 lab scenario and the FR , PPP and similar stuff is roughly the same as the level 6-8 stuff.
• Multicast got me this time. I need to get good at creating multicast ACLs, especially how to configure a range of groups for RPs or MAs. Quite a bit of filtering in this lab.
• IPv6 was not bad, but I didn’t do the IPv6 BGP. One of the proctors announced in the Cisco forums that there wasn’t any IPv6 BGP and so I stopped studying it. I skipped these and just gave myself the points. I hope he was right about it being gone from the lab test.
• I have been concentrating a lot in my book and lunch-time studies on QoS. The QoS questions are making sense to me now and I am starting to solve these easier. I did get one out of the three tasks wrong (RTP header compression), but I didn’t pooch the FRTS or the interface shaping with MQC. I was definately happy about that.  I did learn that you can apply RTP or TCP header compression on the frame-relay map statement. I used the interface-dlci mode, but I guess it wouldn’t have worked since the interface wasn’t on a PtP link.
• I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out and configure privilege levels. I eventually did do it, but it took me a whole evening to get how it works and to do it. I am going to find where this is located in the DocCD, so I don’t have to remember it.

All in all, I didn’t do too bad. I deleted my configs off my router rack too early, but as I went through the tasks to see what I would have gotten, I figured it would be right around a 73, give or take 5 points. I am doing about the same as the other labs, so I need to figure out what I need to do now to improve. I am finding that I get the L2 and IGP done in a good amount of time, but all the other topics are the time killers. This isn’t so bad now, since I am taking the time to learn and get these topics under my belt.

I officially scheduled scheduled my first mock lab with IE for May 31st, about three weeks away. I am nervous, but I will just do the best I can. I have 3 more to do before lab day – one for June and two in July.

I have turned up the studying gas and really started to put hours in. I need to be done with this process, so life can get back to normal for me and my family. I am having visions of what it will be like when I pass and want them to come to fruition. With the help of the big man upstairs, I know I can do it.