CCIE Candidate

I will be purchasing the NetMasterClass DoIT Workbook volume 2 to prep for the CCIE lab.  I need to get paid first…but in about a week, I’ll be set to make this purchase.  In the meantime, I have to get my CCIE rack prepped.  I have all of the equipment mounted at work.  But I [...]

Good sessions today.  Class on high performance computing that had little relevance to my life today, but was incredible to sit through, nonetheless. Outstanding information about the challenges of grid computing, etc.
Another class on PCI compliance (a payment card industry standard), was highly relevant to my day-to-day job, and well worth the time.
The closer on [...]

Pretty much classes all day.  The keynote was a pointless discussion with various folks speaking in broad generalities about how the fact that we can all afford video cameras makes searching for content difficult.  I think the most technical term I heard in the whole thing was “relevancy engine”.  So I could have passed on it.
Classes [...]

The afternoon sessions were good. I attended an IOS IP SLA class. Embedded in IOS is the ability for IOS to monitor the quality of a link, via latency and jitter measurements, and then make routing decisions based on that information. The technology is really targetted at providing VoIP users with optimal [...]

This morning’s keynote was by John Chambers.  To sum up about an hour of dancing skaters with hula-hoops, etc. (yes, really), the keynote focused on Web2.0 and collaborative technologies.  Essentially, learn to collaborate, or your company will be left behind.  And of course, Cisco will have products end-to-end to help the network deliver those collaborative services.  [...]

I passed 350-001 version 3.0 today.  If you’ve taken a Cisco test before, you know that if you violate the terms of the non-disclosure agreement, Cisco will kidnap your family, seize your financial assets and probably conscript you as an employee to work at a trade show for the rest of your life.  The NDA [...]

I’m at Networkers now, pretty much completely disoriented, as I’ve never done this show before. But it’s slowly making sense how it’s all organized. There’s so many different technical sessions going on at any given time, that they are spread out not only in this conference center, but also into the adjacent hotels. [...]

07/18/2007 - 1.0 hour. More test questions and review from my new test database. I should have mentioned yesterday that if I don’t understand the correct answer from the new question database, that I’ll dig through cisco.com or the OECG until I find the answer. I’m finding that a lot of the [...]

I am officially done posting blog articles about the Official Exam Certification Guide, 2nd Edition, for CCIE Routing & Switching. It took me 6+ months to plow through it. Remember that I have a job and family. I could have been more dedicated, and got through the material in perhaps 18 weeks…if [...]

This close to the MPLS appendix covers deploying VPN services over a service provider MPLS architecture. Frankly, this was a devil of a topic. While I finally wrapped my head around how, exactly, frame-mode operations work and the rudiments of Label Distribution Protocol, reading this section on MPLS/VPN has left me in the [...]

Imagine that someone asks you to explain a common, everyday item. Let’s say, a tree. You’re asked to explain a tree. And you say, “Well, it’s a bit of a big rooty thing with leaves and bark. Squirrels live inside. Hitting one with your car is bad.” And for [...]

Moving along in our study of MPLS, this post will close out frame-mode (i.e. unicast routing application) MPLS operations. Sort of a grab-bag here, but we’ll hit convergence, penultimate hop popping, and MPLS interaction with BGP. All powered by my shiny, new wireless mouse. I actually wore out my old Intellimouse - [...]

Here, we shall discuss not the forwarding of MPLS labeled packets themselves, but rather how the databases are built that tell the routers what label to use for a given FEC. Think routing protocols, only in the context of MPLS.

While the earlier portion of the appendix discussed the concepts and drivers behind MPLS, the remainder of the appendix focuses on MPLS implementation and application. The first application is that of “frame-mode operation”, otherwise known as unicast destination-based IP routing in an all-router environment. This is called “frame-mode”, because the packets are switches [...]

We soldier on with MPLS architecture basics, covering now packet forwarding and label switched paths (LSPs), to complete the picture of how labeled packet is forwarded from one part of an MPLS domain to another. So to the bombastic strains of the Dvorak Piano Concerto Opus 33, let us continue.
MPLS Packet Forwarding & Label [...]