4th Mock Lab - 82%

That was a strange one.

Last Saturday i had my 4th Mock Lab; level 7 this time.

This is how i lost my points:

1) I lost 1 task (2 points), because i didn't read it well enough. When the task says "do NOT configure this on that router" it doesn't mean "you should configure it on that router". A task, that costed me 15-20 mins to solve, was actually lost because i configured a single command on the wrong router; the router that i was asked to not configure.

2) I lost 2 tasks (3+2 points), because i didn't understand what exactly was asked for. As it seems, "area 0 adjacencies" means "area 0 interfaces", so regardless of whether an interface has any peer, it's still an adjacency (by itself?). Also, "forbid transit services between 2 AS" means "forbid prefixes learned from a specific AS move to another AS" and not "forbid prefixes originated from a specific AS move to another AS". In other words, "allow only local traffic". I believe an actual proctor would actually clarify such things.

3) I lost 1 task (3 points) , because the IOS on a specific router had a bug where it didn't allow you to enter spaces into a rmon event description, although the description was put inside quotes. Probably the proctor didn't even test it on the same router, neither he read the banner i had enabled after logging in, informing him of this "bug".

4) I lost 1 task (3 points), because of an RPF failure, which while i was testing didn't seem to exist. This time i tried not to use static mroutes, so i could experiment with the unicast routing table. Although i'm sure i configured unicast routing in such a way, that there was no mroute needed in the multicast path (all pings were working), the proctor had another opinion.

5) I lost 1 task (2 points), because the question was written wrong. When someone asks to allow a user to shut/not shut only a specific interface, it doesn't mean that the user should be allowed to shut/no shut all interfaces. In order to do the first, you have to use Role-Based CLI Access (which i used, without success as it seems), while in order to do the second you can just use privilege levels (something that the solution used).

6) I lost 1 task (3 points), because i though that "ip dhcp-server x.x.x.x" works the same as "ip helper-address x.x.x.x" for dhcp requests. As it seems, "ip dhcp-server x.x.x.x" doesn't forward the dhcp requests to the dhcp server, unless it's coming from an IPCP negotiation (i.e. if "peer default ip address dhcp" is configured under a PPP interface).

Finally, i guess that the IE's proctors who grade the mock labs, do not necessarily load the configs into the same equipment, neither they do try to configure the provided solution into it. Otherwise they would have noticed that some of the solution's commands couldn't be applied (possibly due to a bug), while some other wouldn't work as expected.

Of course, the support through their forums is still gone. Nobody is actually looking the mock lab sections in there. I still wonder about their reason of existence...

Next Mock Lab coming tomorrow... Difficulty Level 10!!! One more till the actual lab.

3rd Mock Lab - 97%

This was the first mock lab, i finished in about 7,5 hours! Of course it took me another 1,5 hour to review all of it and correct 2 "mistakes". But generally, i'm quite satisfied by the result.

There were 3 topics i had to look at the DocCD; one of them was complete unknown to me (MVR - Multicast Vlan Registration). I just knew there was a feature which provided the functionality i was asked for, but i didn't know, neither its name, nor its configuration. As it proved out, it wasn't so difficult.

Finally, to be honest, i believe i should have been graded with a 91%, because there were another 2 tasks that i didn't complete 100% according to the solution provided. I know that sometimes there are many correct solutions to each task, but i think (after looking the vendor's solution) that my own solutions weren't so correct.

On the other hand, there were 2 tasks that my solutions were correct and the ones from the vendor were probably wrong. That's because one task was influenced by changes near the end of the exam (new routes introduced) and the other one wasn't meant to be tested (full reachability while a backup link was active). If i hadn't checked all the questions one more time, i wouldn't have found them. Especially the second one, it took me some time until i come up with a solution; i was trying to find out why an OSPF router was load-balancing between a correct path and a "wrong" path, when the "wrong" path was through a totally NSSA area which was having a default route back to this router. So i was getting a loop there. I finally changed the cost in order to avoid the NSSA area and everything worked fine.


Today i'm having my second CCIE Assessor Lab... hoping for something >80% this time.

2nd Mock Lab - 72%

That was HELL!!!

The 2nd Mock Lab from IE was a lot more difficult from the one i took one week ago.
Which was actually nice, because i wanted to test my strengths. I feel satisfied by the result, but i'm not satisfied by the time i spent in order to finish the whole mock lab...almost 11 full hours! I spent around 1.5 hours on a single ospf question, designing & trying all possible virtual-links (total 5), trying to find the smallest possible number.

Lastly, yesterday i found out that the 1st Mock Lab i had taken was rated as level 6, which is easier than CCIE (level 7), while the 2nd one was rated as level 9. So i decided (since their price went down; someone must have heard me) to take another 2 labs on January, rated at least as level 7.

For the next 2 days (Thursday & Friday) i have booked 2 rack rental sessions, because i want to try some strange L2 scenarios (some i met on these 2 mock labs and some other i have in my mind) on the 3550s/3560s. Dynamips is great for L3, but it lacks a lot of functionality on L2.

I also booked 2 CCIE Assessor sessions (Cisco's online CCIE preparation labs) during the next 2 weeks, because i read somewhere that they resemble the real CCIE lab, especially the style of the questions. So i decided to give it a try.


It's a shame that although the IE's ML scenarios are very clever, the post-sales support is non-existent. Nobody seems to actually read the forums, or if someone reads it, he/she answers mostly the pre-sales questions.

IE Mock Lab dissapointment

Taken from http://www.internetworkexpert.com/iemlcod-rs.htm

Manual Grading

The CCIE Lab Exam is not a multiple choice exam. Instead, it is a highly complex exam with advanced protocol interactions that more often than not result in subjective answers. For this reason we do not run your configurations through a grading script to simply compare them with the solutions that we came up with. Each of your solutions are meticulously checked by hand by our highly skilled CCIE instructors. Once your exam has been graded you will be sent a detailed score report from our CCIE instructors. Sections that are marked incorrect include detailed feedback as to why there were incorrect, and typically include additional links to outside resources.

detailed score report : It was a simple 2 page report with some comments on my errors
detailed feedback as to why there were incorrect : The largest feedback on a section was 27 words, the smallest 3
additional links to outside resources : I wish i could have seen them

Solutions Guides

In addition to the detailed score report and lab breakdown you will receive a solutions guide broken down on a task-by-task basis for each Mock Lab Exam that you take. With this solutions guide format there is no need to sort through long configuration files to guess which configurations correspond to which task. The solutions guides show you not only the configuration for each task but also give important "show" outputs and explain how you can verify that your configuration is functional per the lab requirements.

lab breakdown : nice to have it, but not when some sections are out of date (refering to 2005)

Post-Lab Support

Once you have reveiwed the Mock Lab Exam and solutions, it doesn't stop there. Internetwork Expert also offers free support for each of the Mock Lab scenarios on our CCIE Support Forum. In the real CCIE Lab Exam there is no outlet for getting more feedback on your performance. With our CCIE Mock Lab Exams you'll have the opportunity to ask our instructors why your work was graded a certain way, 24 hours a day!

the opportunity to ask our instructors : ...Still hoping to get an answer...


The good part: Excellent diagrams! Clever scenarios! Tough Tasks!

1st Mock Lab - 74 %

On past Friday i had my first Mock Lab attempt, which proved easier that expected.

I was expecting IGP redistribution in multiple points, IPv6 BGP/OSPF/RIP routing, DVMRP, etc, but most of the sections where quite "easy". That of course doesn't mean that i passed. I missed 10 whole points in the Bridging & Switching section, which is one of my favorites.

The reason? I was in a hurry to finish the first sections which i have more experience with, in order to have enough time to do the rest. But, many questions were tricky and passing through them in a hurry, proved to be the wrong method. I missed 3 points on a simple task (because i didn't configure a vlan) and another 4 points (in two other questions) because of the first error.

There were only 2 sections that i didn't know at all and i had to improvise (one proved correct with a minor error in an acl entry, the other totally wrong). Also there were another 4 sections that i had to look into the Doc CD. At least i have now learned to use the Doc CD more efficiently. It's surely invaluable in such situations.

Also, when i finished, i had only 30 mins left (according to the actual 8-hour lab, because in the mock lab you're allowed to exceed this time by 3 hours). So instead of looking back all the sections in order to verify them, i decided to reload all routers! What was even more disastrous, was the fact that i reloaded them all at the same time and i didn't look at their logs while booting.

The result? After the reload, something wasn't working as expected. After a quick search i found one router which seemed not to be running OSPF. I checked its configuration (thank god i had saved all my session locally) and i found that there were two "neighbor" commands missing! I added them and reloaded again. This time i watched the logs and there was an error message saying that this particular command is not supported on this kind of topologies (a bug? command is accepted while configuring, but it's rejected after reloading). So i saved my configuration and warned (through email) the proctor about this behavior.

The answer from the support department the next day was to post my "problem" on the forum and i'll get an answer there. Of course, after a week there's still no answer there. And after a quick search on their forum, i found out that many questions remain unanswered. Too bad, because i have heard a lot of good words about InternetworkExpert's training material. I wanted to test their Mock Labs and maybe buy their Workbooks, but this kind of support made me rethink it. If i have one question in the Mock lab (and gets unanswered), i 'll probably have tens in the Workbook labs. Anyway, i still have one Mock Lab from them. If they keep the same -high- price and/or wrong "attitude", i'll have to look at a different vendor.

Let's hope this Friday, i'll have something tougher. The goal still remains for something >50%.

1st pass finished - IE's sample lab finished

Yesterday i finished the 1st step of my CCIE preparation!!!!

I have read (once) all chapters from the lab blueprint and during the last 4 days i was trying to run the sample lab provided at IE's site.

My system is a Core2Duo E6550 with 2 GB ram running WindowsXP & Ubuntu 7.04 (through wubi). These are the conclusions i came into after finishing the sample lab on Ubuntu (WindowsXP was too memory hungry):

1) 2 GB ram in Linux are more than enough to run 14 routers with full configuration ("ghostios" option used).

2) You have to change the idlepc value for each router after major reconfigurations, in order to keep the cpu load as low as possible (i used htop for monitoring it).

Regarding the 2nd one, this is what i did:

1. Configure all routers/switches without any idlepc values.
   
2. Start the switches one by one, finding a idlepc value that keeps the cpu load around 0-1%.
   
3. Save the idlepc value to the router portion of the net file ("idlepc save R1").
   
4. Start all the switches (you must now have idlepc values for all of them) and begin configuring L2.
   
5. As soon as cpu load goes above 5%, stop one switch at a time, in order to find which switch causes the high cpu load due to the new config (you have to save the configuration very frequently and don't use the confg parameter in the net file).
   
6. Stop dynagen, go into the net file and comment the idlepc value (which was stored before) for this particular switch.
   
7. Start dynagen again and try to find the new idlepc value for this switch.
   
8. When you find it, save it like in step 3.
   
9. Repeat steps 2 though 8 in order to have all switches with full L2 configuration and cpu load around 2-3%. The lower the better.
   
10. Then start the routers, repeating the same steps like in the switches.
    
11. If later you change a switch in order to add L3 functionality, then you have to repeat the whole "find the idlepc value" process again for this switch.
    
12. Finally start the BB routers and repeat the same process. These should be easier, because you don't have to change many things there.
    

I found out that most of the times, idlepc counts around 50 are the good ones, despite what dynagen says. Try changing the idlepc value (choosing 1 out of proposed 10) until you get 5%-10% cpu load for all currently running routers/switches.

I had to repeat the "find the idlepc value" steps 3-4 times for each router/switch, until i finished the core part of the lab (just before IP Multicast). At that time, cpu load was around 7-10%. After that, there was a minor increase for the extra configuration till the end, but that didn't have any impact on the L2/L3 functionality. If i didn't change the idlepc values, then when the cpu load was going above 70%, i was having L2/L3 issues with routing protocols reseting, interfaces going down, etc.

When i finished the lab, i noticed that having all routers with full configuration caused a cpu load around 20-30%, sometimes peaking to 50% (probably due to the BGP scanner and/or the "wr mem" command). I guess, that could have been lower, if i was experimenting with the idlepc values while being at the final config.

I had many cpu issues when i was using the access server (TermServ) to access the routers. Maybe console access through it or traffic passing through the tap0/br0 interface in linux, is causing increased cpu load. I decided to use the -default- tabbed xterm from Gnome (it was a little annoying closing/opening windows, but it worked fine).

I met a lot of issues with 3640s as switches running 12.3(14)T7. I changed them to 3725s running 12.4(17a) and everything worked fine till the end.

PS: There were some times that, while starting dynamips, the whole system became stuck (cpu load 100%) and i had to reboot it. I still don't know what was causing this (i haven't checked if dynamips has reported something on its log). If dynagen was successfully started, then everything was working fine afterwards.

Note to dynagen/dynamips authors: A feature to find/change the idlepc value, regardless if it's already known, would be a welcome addition. Then i wouldn't have to stop/start dynagen after each change in the net file (while trying to find the best idlepc value).

Note to IE's sample lab authors: There is an issue (probably in the initial config) with a BB router not having eigrp authentication configured, when starting. I had to manually change it.

For those who are wondering how i did in the sample lab... i failed with 70%. But i'm quite satisfied, because all the tasks i missed where due to me not understanding the exact meaning of a subtask, or providing wrong values (bits vs bytes) due to oversight. And on Friday i have my first mock lab...50% is the goal.