My CCIE lab

My practice lab for the CCIE was made up of 3 x 3750, 1 3550 switches, 2 x 2821 routers , 2 x 2811 (one acted as a console - from the image thats the one with the green cables, 1 x 2851 router and three lower end routers to inject backbone routes. Just in case shit hit the fan, I had (still have) more than 1000 rack hours over at graded labs.

For the troubleshooting scenarios, I got extremely lucky. Happened to have a Sun Fire X4470 Server, 128GB of memory and some extremely fast processors that allowed me to load well over 30 routers. Virtualizing would have got me more capacity. Dynamips and Dynagen took care of the rest. I didn't even have to meddle with the idlepc. So obviously I had more than enough equipment to get this done.

*Being ready and having access to the right equipment and people clearly came out as one of the key factors if you expect to pass the ccie. Out of the 15 or so guys that sat the mobile lab, I think only my colleague and I passed which to me is very telling.

*I have never paid Narbik a single cent but for some reason he answered all my questions promptly - ON CHAT!....including after the lab when I had trouble accessing information on how to become a ccsi. So thanks for that...

I had (still have about 1500hrs rented rack over at INE) and the lab above was set up for the full INE R&S topology. I also have to add that INE/graded lab racks are probably more advanced than any other commercial rack I ever tried (and I tried quite a number). My time zone (+3 GMT) allowed me to get excellent service/rack hours.

Considering all the above, the only thing stopping me from taking the CCIE SP is the change in blueprint.

To the physical devices above will be added some IOS-XR devices and I expect that to form the basis for future blogs if I'm not too lazy to post that here. I am yet to decide on a vendor vs self study for workbooks and how much 'noteput' to produce (I could do my own workbooks). IOS-XR is not very well covered, there's not many examples for various scenarios, neither is the CRS-1/ASR's and other high end devices that I might have access to....I would expect that to add value here in between my rambling...we'll see
!!

CCIE Laziness

I think I have what I can only call "Post CCIE Syndrome": Symptoms include :

- Sleeping early, getting up late, having breakfast without panicking because you seem to have forgotten under what circumstances a default route cannot be injected to different OSPF areas.
- Occassionally slapping your face to confirm 'its not a dream, the 8 hrs happened and you passed'.
- Somehow having time to go to the gym, say a smiling hello to the neighbors (who hated you for being a snob).
- General cheer and high energy levels - if you passed, low energy levels if you failed (Imagining that you'll go through it all again sucks).
- Having time for girls/boys/dogs/cycling/hiking....
- Wondering where all the money people say you get after a CCIE is...(My CCIE debts are astronomical).
- but the one that really gets me is how lazy I have become. Yesterday I watched day time TV (I swear I could feel some IQ points flying away as a consequence but who needs those for another week right:-))...

**

Done

ccie#28352

30 days to go!

Closing some key gaps. From the blueprint i can pretty much tell I'll have issues with multicast primarily because I rarely work with those technologies.....for some very interesting issues from the INE workbook I curiously got stuck on a bgp (confederation) configuration that increased the time I took to do that lab by a whole 40 minutes....grr...oh well...on and on we go...

Key migration - done

Well it happened, our new core is fully functional. Lots of lessons learnt, most of them non technical.

This migration was mainly breaking up the old Huawei mpls core and making all their P/PE's into CE's to the new core comprising of CRS-1's and 7609's. It went very smooothly.

it seems the most annoying thing in this whole process is going to be mainly dealing with people.

- due to the size and components involved, even my manager was not sure we could pull it off. Which creates interesting scenarios, all of them annoying time wasters. Im happy for them to waste the time they pay for, unfortunately this has started eating into my personal time and I dont think I can/will allow that

- Other departments also need to be given the confidence that everything will work out and for us (my team) this (running/managing a network) is easier than a walk in the park - we have to watch out for thugs and other miscreants though. IP transformation needs to be understood as a process that takes time.

- I hate project managers especially if they dont have a technical background, even worse if they are not willing to listen and happen to sign your paycheck.

Next up of course there will be the usual setting up all the network monitoring systems, ensuring qos is well done, all this have been tested but we now have to confirm how it fares with live traffic.

If you work for a telco and have had to deal with the ip transofmation process, Id be very interested to know how you handled peoples confidence levels in the process without going nuts!

- the next four weeks are focused on my lab. and I feel like I've pretty much achieved what I wanted here. oh....from now on I am also scouting for contracts especially if they have anything to do with design/implementation and general IP transformation ....