Bridging the gap between CCIE RS and SP

Well, I have been away from studying for two and a half months. It is hard to believe that time went by so quick. Time is one of the most mysterious things, one day you are preparing for a lab the next two years have passed. The last two months have been hectic, both at work with projects and becoming a dad. That was and still is an awesome experience and would not have traded it for two ccie’s. The little one is a month old today, this earmarks a new era for us, no more extended quality dad time for hopefully only a few short months (see quote 6). Need to roll up the sleeves and ‘make’ time, this is not going to be easy. In fact this is going to be hard, I wont hold it against the family if I am not awarded dad of the year this year. This is where I really appreciate my supporting wife. I have a new found respect for CCIE’s that did the journey with little ones in the house.

When coming out of a study slump I often first need to get myself motivated. I actually enjoy this part. I usually start meditating about what I want to achieve and why, some music might be involved and would probably start with something depressing like Scorpions – ‘Winds of change’ and end up with Bon Jovi – ‘Its my life’, perhaps even proclaiming “Aint gonna be just a face in the crowd!”. Some motivational quotes work to get the meditation going and by the way motivational posters dont work

I made a list of some quotes I read tonight that struck a cord:

1. “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” Unknown
2. “Success doesn’t come to you, you go to it.” Marva Collins
3. “Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly. ” Stephen R. Covey
4. “Where the heart is willing, it will find a thousand ways. Where it is unwilling, it will find a thousand excuses.” Arlen Price
5. “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” Jim Ryun
6. “You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it. ” Charles Buxton
7. “Will you look back on life and say, “I wish I had,” or “I’m glad I did”?” Zig Ziglar
8. “The only goal you can’t accomplish is the one that you don’t go after!” Vilis Ozols
9. “When you shoot for the moon and you come up short, you still end up among the stars.” Les Brown
10. “What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Napoleon Hill
11. “Luck favors momentum.” Unknown
12. “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” Albert Schweitzer
13. “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” Chinese Proverb
14. “The belief in a thing makes it happen.” Frank Lloyd Wright
15. “Enthusiasm spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.” Norman Vincent Peale
16. “In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins not by strength but by perseverance.” H. Jackson Brown
17. “When a man is willing and eager, the gods join in.” Aeschylus
18. “Always make a total effort, even when the odds are against you.” Arnold Palmer
19. “Success isn’t how far you got, but the distance you traveled from where you started.” Proverb
20. “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great,” Mark Twain

Next a strategy is needed on how much time to spend on labs and theory. I will probably spend more time reading than working through actual labs as I can cover more ground this way to refresh all the grey matter. A few days before the lab I will work through some full-scale labs and focus on speed. If the SP seats continue to be available as they are at the moment, I think this is a good season to put this one to bed.

About an hour after the lab, while still researching my OEQ answers the results arrived. By this time I already knew that I got one completely wrong because I did not have an idea what the abbreviation stood for and the second question I could only remember two of the required four answers. So it was game over in the first 1.5 questions. The rest of the lab went humorlessly without incident.

Three of the open ended questions I would rate fair and acceptable, but only if there were four of them. All three I encountered somewhere along the Cisco studies. Only one was related to lab preparation. The list of four of which I could only remember 2 of was way back for CCNP/IP and the RS/SP written. I have memorized these a few times, but four was just too much to remember from a year+ back. The very first question was just insane, I bet none of the proctors knew what it was or that it existed before adding it in the OEQ. I doubt Russ White or Narbik’s gran knows. Forget about 4 questions, there are only three possible questions of which all three are required to be answered correctly. They might be a short answer, an explanation or a list of answers.

Apparently the OEQ are not repeated. Not sure how sustainable that is but since the introduction of OEQ the proctors have much more time on their hands as they dont have to manually grade the lab after the script. What they used to do and do when the OEQ are passed was to check the questions the script has marked incorrect. Since there are multiple ways to do the same thing, the proctor could reverse the mark. They dont have to do this anymore, since the OEQ’s are a sure thing, which gives them more time to develop more OEQ’s and most importantly, more time to develop more labs. This also means the results in case of a fail arrive very soon, 30 minutes to 1 hour after the lab.

The lab portion went well. I managed to complete the lab with 1.5 hours left. During verification I found some errors, like referencing an acl 101 while I configured acl 107.  The time was much more manageable than the lab I had in Brussels where it was a complete race against time. There were about three questions where I had to look up in the documentation but could not find any related docs. During lunch I thought about the questions, figured it out and made it work after lunch. By the end of the lab all I thought about were the OEQ’s, the list of four of which I tried my best to come up with two more possible correct answers. I was unsure about one lab question but according to the lovely score report I got all the points for the section.

The proctor Mahesh, didnt seem too bad. After reading swapnedu’s feedback I had low expectations. In the brief before the lab I asked for a 5 minute warning which he reluctantly agreed to but executed well. This is quite important at Bangalore as the time on the workstation was incorrect so I was never sure what the correct time was or how much time was left. The lab started very late at 9:40. If I ever have to come here again, I will definitely not be there at 8am.

The venue was good, I think it is on par with Brussels, except that at Brussels its the only place to get a decent lunch. The screens were about 21″ lcd’s. The commute from the airport to the Unwind Islands where I ended up staying is about an hour. Apparently this could be worse. Traffic is hectic so try to avoid it if possible. Cisco is within 10minutes walking distance, but think about walking once you are here. The area might be considered rough around the edges if you are not from this part of the world and therefore not everybody’s cup of tea. If you dont walk, the hotel will arrange drop off. I opted for a drop off in the morning and a walk back.

Overall I dont think the OEQ’s, besides the one below the belt, were too bad. The mistake I made was to do labs and read that specific portion from the documentation, anticipating that the OEQ’s will test core topics and concepts. Next time I will be better prepared on a pure theory level. I still think OEQ is a good addition to the lab that just needs to be refined and executed/implemented better on SP. If the OEQ release the proctors to spend more time developing fresh content then I am all for it. This is still early days and I think the SP proctors are still finding their feet regarding OEQ. I am sure this will improve as they get more experienced at developing content that test candidates accurately.

Most will know the feature and what it does, but to recap the process level command:

R5(config-router)#bgp fast-external-fallover

R5(config-router)#no bgp fast-external-fallover

This feature will enable fast fallover in the event of a link failure for all neighbors peers. In layman terms shutdown the bgp neighbor as soon as the interface reset is detected and not wait for the holddown timer to expire.

Then the interface command:

R5(config-if)#ip bgp fast-external-fallover permit

R5(config-if)#ip bgp fast-external-fallover deny

This is used to overwrite the process level command. Therefore if the feature is enabled under the bgp process, which is on by default, and a specific client interface is flapping frequently, the interface level command can be used to keep the client peer from flapping due to the fast-fallover and prevent upstream peers from dampening the client routes. Fast-fallover is important in multihomed scenarios where it is useful to shut the neighbor as soon as possible in order to avoid packet drops.

But the real reason for this post is that I have seen this a couple of times configured in both (RS) INE and (SP) IPX workbooks with the incorrect interface level command:

R5(config-if)#no ip bgp fast-external-fallover

This will have no effect, except removing previous fast-fallover config. Beware of this common confusion between the two syntaxes. The correct interface level configuration is to use permit or deny.

While on the subject of old habits, I had to mention this one. I remember back when studying for CCNA and maybe even CCNP that it was always recommended to configure soft-reconfiguration in order to propagate route policy updates/changes without hard resetting the bgp neighbor. This is one of those things that sometimes just becomes routine, a habit, something that is just pasted into new configs and forgotten about. Well it might be time to shake this one off as well.

In brief terms the soft-reconfiguration command will allow a ’soft’ reset. The tcp session between the two bgp peers will not be reset but new policy changes will take effect. E.g, a new route-map filter is applied. Therefore a way to cause minimal damage to overall stability of the network.

A decade or so ago RFC 2918 Route Refresh for BGP-4 September 2000 was published which made the soft-reconfiguration redundant. Two bgp peers that support the route refresh capability can implement a soft reset without any preconfiguration. In order to determine whether a peer support this capability:

show ip bgp nei 11.11.7.11
BGP neighbor is 11.11.7.11,  remote AS 11, external link
BGP version 4, remote router ID 150.140.130.120
BGP state = Established, up for 00:03:27
Last read 00:00:27, hold time is 180, keepalive interval is 60 seconds
Neighbor capabilities:
Route refresh: advertised and received(new)

Extract from: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_2/ip/configuration/guide/1cfbgp.html#wp1001128

To use soft reset without preconfiguration, both BGP peers must support the soft route refresh capability, which is advertised in the OPEN message sent when the peers establish a TCP session. Routers running Cisco IOS software releases prior to Release 12.1 do not support the route refresh capability and must clear the BGP session using the neighbor soft-reconfiguration router configuration command. Clearing the BGP session in this way will have a negative impact upon network operations and should only be used as a last resort.

Now what does this really mean to you and me? The memory consumption used by soft-reconfiguration since all routes from a neighbor with soft-reconfig configured will be stored in memory. For example a peer might send a full table but the router is filtering all neighbor AS and neighbor client AS’s. Although only a few thousand routes might be inserted into the bgp table from this neighbor, the router still has to keep the remaining 200k+ routes in memory. If the router has a couple on these peers, it will probably not scale well. By relying only on the route refresh feature, the router will be able to scale to far more peers.

In an enterprise environment with less routes, an old 3600 might still be active in the BGP routing domain and become unstable due to running out of memory. Removing the legacy “soft-reconfiguration” configuration might be the healing touch it needs.