CCIE Candidate

Thanks for the links, everyone.  Googling “ccie candidate” brings this site up as #1, and “ccie blog” brings this site up as #2.  That’s pretty cool!

Not a banner evening for me here. The work week was killer, and I’m pretty burnt out right now. I got in about 2 hours worth of rack time, and did make a lot of progress, in some ways. I learned a lot of things tonight, details about OSPF configuration, specifically. [...]

Today I completed the build out of the frame-relay network, assigned all IPv4 addresses, verified connectivity on all links, built the RIP system, and built the EIGRP system. That was about 3 hours of work, but should have been more like 2.
Part of that delay was the way the frame-relay section was worded - [...]

All I managed to get done tonight was to put the initial configs on the routers and switches, and read the entire scenario through.  If I had to guess, I’d say this lab was written by someone at NMC different from whoever wrote the first two.  The lab’s focus is quite different; in my opinion, [...]

Including my commute time, I’ve worked 2 13-hour days in a row. Go ahead, feel bad for me. It’s okay. I crave your pity…actually, 13 hours isn’t all that bad. We’ve all done worse, right? It’s just that working that kind of day leaves me wiped out when I get [...]

Last night was Friday night, and I was just wiped out from the week’s events. Long week, lots going on, and I wasn’t up for the rack. I was feeling a bit like Bilbo upon reaching his one-hundred-and-eleventieth birthday - like butter scraped over too much bread. Some days, it’s just hard [...]

The last couple of days have been a bit harrowing. Sorry I haven’t been posting more, but frankly I haven’t had much time on the rack. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that 2 speaking engagements at my church over the last 2 nights, plus a middle of the [...]

I went back through roughly 200 blog posts, and organized them into new categories by technology.  This should help if you refer to my posts in your studies.  (Some people have told me that they actually read my posts.  It’s a crazy, mixed-up world, isn’t it?)  So if you’re one of those people, the new [...]

I got about 2 and half hours in on the rack tonight. I would have had another 45 minutes or an hour on top of that, but I was tied up with my wife’s new laptop. She was complaining that web images looked lousy, which they did. Since I went to a [...]

Almost, but not quite as far as I’d planned to get today, in part because one of my 3745s had booted to an unexpected version of IOS. I hadn’t noticed. Everything was fine until I got to RIP routing. I had to set up RIPv2 to do unicast updates only (where you [...]

I have completed NetMasterClass.com scenario 1…finally. It took me the 2 hours I predicted last night to complete my review of VLAN Management Policy Server and private VLANs, and then write the IOS code.
VMPS allows you to force a specific MAC address into a specific VLAN.

The switch has been configured as a VMPS client [...]

Not going to get to any lab done tonight. Did some school shopping for my youngest, had lots of personal e-mail backed up that needed to be responded to. Someone in Vietnam who wanted some help with an F5 Networks installation. Someone else wanting me to review some radio station automation software [...]

A thunderstorm rolled through and took out my Internet connection (where this blog lives).  During the storm, we had a really close lightning strike that blew a GFI outlet in my house, taking out the rest of the outlets downstream from it.  Those outlets included the ones that power my workstation and my wife’s workstation.  [...]

I didn’t get much lab time in tonight, due to the intrusion of, you know, having a life that sometimes requires my attention.  But, I did get far enough to figure out what I had done wrong in my IGP redistribution.  I was not filtering my redistributed routes such that only the native routes from [...]

I’ve had a few people ask me either in person or via e-mail how best to prepare for the new CCIE Routing & Switching 350-001 version 3.0 written exam. These are my thoughts on the matter, for what they are worth. There are no secrets here, just simple facts, some of which I [...]