Archive for June, 2008

“verify end-to-end connectivity”

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

I love it when the practice labs say “verify end-to-end connectivity”. Yes, this means we must be able to ping everything. There is no way we have time to ping every IP in the lab manually. I’ve started using TCL scripts to do so. See below.

Just paste this in your router (edit the IP addresses) and you’re good to go::

tclsh
foreach address {
192.168.4.4
192.168.5.5
192.168.6.6
192.168.7.7
192.168.8.8
192.168.9.9
} { ping $address re 3 si 100

I set it to ping 3 times with a size of 100 bytes. Keep the size small so the serial links don’t slow you down. I think 3 pings is enough time for ARP to do its thing. Take 10 minutes to write down all the interface/loopback IP addresses and this will save you some time. Don’t forget to test on all routers. Also, I don’t think switches support TCL.

Posted in Routing&Switching | 2 Comments »

New study materials

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

It seems IPExpert has some new study materials coming out in the next week or so. They have a new blended learning solution that comes to you on a external hard drive. Looks pretty sweet! Check out the R&S demo.

Just when I thought I was getting caught up! I can’t help but be curious.

If you already have the V9 stuff, you get to upgrade to Vol1 and Vol2. The Vol3 part of things comes with 10 mock labs with a video walk through. What better than a live walk through? It’s nice to have someone share their tips and tricks with how they approach each lab.

They are offering the 1st lab for Vol 3 free as a demo. Check it out yourself. It’s cool because proctor labs supports the grading which saved me from doing a stare and compare.

I thought the 1st lab in Volume 3 has really improved. Right away I noticed the topology map was new. A problem I have with the Version 9 stuff is I found myself memorizing the network diagram. Having a new diagram is really helpful because you need to get practice drawing things out in your own way that makes sense to you. Seeing a new diagram layout gave me a good impression to start with. The lab went well, check it out.

That reminds me, I need to work on my Virtual template configurations. It’s not that they are hard, but the authentication requirement kept breaking my connectivity!

Posted in Cisco, Routing&Switching | No Comments »