CCIP done…. CCIE here I come!

June 18, 2011 · by · in , , , , , , ,

I have been a little quiet on the blogging front for a while, the reason being I have recently taken on some more responsibilities at work and have also decided to knuckle down and finish my CCIP. A little over a week ago now I completed my CCIP by doing the QoS exam which I have to say was quite refreshing, I had thoughts in my head that it was going to be a lot worse than it actually was. Now that I have completed my CCIP I have already…

Old Rack

Dynamips server reporting for duty…

April 25, 2011 · by · in , , , ,

Back when I first starting studying for my CCNP I built a rack of equipment to lab things up and practice with (picture below) and after completing my CCNP and moving down the CCIE track (after stopping off for a pit-stop at the CCIP station….) I quickly realised that the rack wasn’t adequate for what I would be needing. There were two options, spend a stupid amount of money and replace the lab with one equal to that of the INE/IPX racks (2811′s, 3745′s etc.) or just scrap most of…

Another one bites the dust – BGP+MPLS (642-691) PASSED!

February 25, 2011 · by · in , , , , ,

It has been some time since I last updated the blog but that isn’t to say that I haven’t been working/studying away. After finishing Internet Routing Architectures by Sam Halabi which alongside what I have learned both during my CCNP studies and whilst at my day-to-day job was going to serve as my reading to then go ahead and do the CCIP BGP exam. Before taking the BGP exam I started reading MPLS Fundamentals by Luc D Ghein and then decided that I felt that I would be comfortable enough…

MPLS QoS Marking : The rebuttal

MPLS QoS Marking : The rebuttal

February 2, 2011 · by · in , , ,

Earlier today Ivan Pepelnjak over at IOS Hints (url / @ioshints) posted a piece on his blog in which he mentioned the behaviour of MPLS QoS markings and how they don’t copy over upon label imposition at the edge-LSR (the post is here). Having only looked at this very same topic a couple of weeks ago I was almost certain that this was not the case, and so I set out to lab it out and either prove myself or Ivan wrong…. My setup for this lab is as follows:

2011 – Whats to come?

January 2, 2011 · by · in , , ,

I thought I would join every man and his dog and write either a 2010 recap or a 2011 prediction post. Over the past 12 months I have began and completed my CCNP certification and now have that certification bug that I swear should be a medical condition, the only way to cure it is to get yet more exams done! Some of my goals for 2011 may be a little farfetched however some are easily obtainable.

Snippet: BGP as a non-transit AS

Snippet: BGP as a non-transit AS

December 28, 2010 · by · in , , , , ,

In the example below we have three BGP autonomous systems (AS1, AS2 and AS3) each with one router in it. In this example assume that AS3 is a customer of AS1 and AS2 and is multihoming their connection with the two upstream providers for redundancy if one of the providers was to fail. In its default configuration BGP will re-advertise any routes advertised into the AS to all other peers, this means that if route x.x.x.x/24 was advertised to AS3 from AS2 then AS3 would advertise that route back out…

CCNP TSHOOT Complete… CCNP done!

December 14, 2010 · by · in , , , , ,

Well I know it was only a week ago that I did the SWITCH but after initially looking over the TSHOOT material I started to think that this was definitely going to be the easiest of the three certifications. In my day-job I do a lot of troubleshooting so my kind of mindset for the exam was already partially there, that coupled with the fact that it has been less than 6-months since I have done my ROUTE and SWITCH means that a lot of the things you learned whilst…