BGP..........Aghhhhhhhhh

Okay I know I haven't updated in sometime. I left my job at VZW working in a dead end position dealing with people's PDA, Wireless Air Card and the many pointless complaints from customers. I only accepted this position to work at a Telcom Giant but knew right away that this was not for me. So as of right now I'm looking for an opportunity to actually work with Cisco equipment. I have an interview with another company *Data Pipe* to work in there NOC and I'm really ready to sell myself. Sooooooo Lets talk about BG *Border Gateway Protocol*. I've been reading Chris Bryant Ultimate BSCI guide, CCNP Student Guide BSCI, Trainsignal BSCI and also CBT Nuggets. BGP is a pretty robust EGP and very tunable. It's like nothing I've learned so far in regards to Routing Protocols. I've completed a few labs and I'll update my blog soon. Sorry just so much has happen in the last two months and once again Iv'e been slacking on studying. Wish me luck everyone to get back on track while I figure out a few things as far as..uhhhh Employment lol.

Bless Family

A DAY Full of Labs.........

Good evening to everyone, tonight was a time for me to go over a few things that I need to nail down not just for the BSCI exam but for real world and for my sanity. You know I have such a hard time in remembering the authentication set up but tonight I re-did these commands until I have it down......that dang rip authentication key-string was killing me.. see below

r1(config)#key chain rip
r1(config-keychain)#key 1
r1(config-keychain)#key-string cisco
r1(config)#int s1/0
r1(config-if)#ip rip authentication mode md5
r1(config-if)#ip rip authentication key-chain rip

I'm always forgetting that key-string but tonight after labbing for over 2 hours and forgetting I hardcoded ripv2 on one of my routers.....troubleshot that for a few minutes until I ran the "sh ip protocol" and noticed I was sending vers 2 and recv vers 2 only I screamed lol...but hey thats how we all learn by making these mistakes now so they don't creep up on us later during the exam...

I'm going to take a break for a minute or two and start this ISIS...after setting it up a few times earlier today...I kinda like it better than OSPF....so much easier to configure no area 0 only areas and those L1/L2 routers.....work just like an ABR in OSPF...man I love this field....

I read a qoute and it went like this:

"Once you find something you really love to do, you'll never have to work another day in your life"

This is so true....because I'm am so fascinated on how data from point b gets to point c.... that's why they call us the plumbers of the internet...we work behind the scene to manipulate routes so that this can happen. Anyways guys I'm always checking out your post and my MAN "A" well he's hooked and I'll check out your blog a little later tonight to review lol....hey whatever works for you..I get writers cramp after writing my notes and coming here to write more notes..Nada, not going to happen but if it works for you.....do the thing...

See you guys at the cross road as always....

***mumbling, that dang key-string....ahhhhhhhh******

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ISIS.....WOW!

.....Today I tackled ISIS which at first sight of the NSAP address I was a little intimidated and thought this will take some time to understand but it was the complete opposite. ISIS was originally intended to work with the OSI protocol suite. The Connectionless Network Service *CLNS* is used by the OSI protocols and the Layer 3 routing protocol used is Connectionless Network Protocol *CLNP*. I found out after reading and viewing my CB trainsignal videos that the hardest part is learning the terminology and this is true but after writing my notes I felt pretty good with this....so here it is ISIS..

As I mentioned earlier the NSAP address through me for loop but reviewing how to read the address, it was quite simple...

The breakdown is very elementary after you viewed the address from right to left, example:
49.0001.4444.4444.4444.00

00 = NSEL or Network Selector ID is used to route within the ES and the router is always set to 00
4444.4444.4444.4444 = the next 12 digits or should i say 8 bytes is the system ID now this can be either the MAC address on a lan or the highest DLCI on a frame relay
49.0001 = is the area id which this router belongs too...
*any area that begins with 49 is only used fora Private areas and is similar to IPV4 RFC1981 Private IP Addresses*

I was quite pleased on how fairly well I grasped this and since working with OSPF it'll come easy to all as well.

It's a little late to be doing any labs tonight but I will tackle some tomorrow I have a few more EIGRP labs to complete and finish off the afternoon with ISIS and then on Thursday THE BIG DAY "BGP" I am so looking forward to really understanding BGP... I've read a few pages on it just to get a feel of it and like the other subjects, I'll do a little and understand it before going on.

Hope all is doing well and this journey has finally taken off, I'm more focus than I've ever been for the past few months.

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OSPF/EIGRP

.....Yawwwwwn Oh sorry, I just got back from Vacation visiting family and friends in the greatest state of the union, North Carolina (one of the homes of the CCIE Lab) and I enjoyed every minute of if. Since I'm focus more and dedicated to achieving my goals I took my laptop and some study material Trainsignal BSCI (Never leave home with our Chris Bryant CCIE #12933 LOL, I love when he says that) and I purchased Jeremy Ciora CBT nuggets package as well (he spoon feeds you the information for you to digest and he keeps your attention).

Well I haven't been here for a minute now and I've completed the labs for my OSPF but I do need to configure my authentication one more time, something about that command IP OSPF AUTHENTICATION and the Authentication Message-Digest Key1 MD5 blah blah that I always put too many authentications or message digest..oh well I'll get it, not a problem in that area. So the study schedule is back on track and since I no longer have to go to NJIT and pay for their equipment room to conduct labs, my trusty ole Dynamips is doing the trick for now.

I went over EIGRP while I was on vacation and I find myself writing down notes instead of just highlighting some points in the book to be more effective for me to retain this information and to really understand it (of course labs reinforce this as well). I'll complete a few stub routes and changing the AD and few redistribution before I go on to ISIS (I can't wait to get to BGP).

So with that said I notice a lot of other bloggers like to write their notes here, to each his own but I'm getting writers cramp so that will not happen at this point of time.

So until Sunday I see you guys soon while I go over plenty of your blogs (this helps as well with the studying factor)Stay alert, focus and as always stay bless Friends..

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Me..

Motivated w/Route Redistribution

I think I've tamed the beast "Route Redistribution"! As I mentioned before I tend to look too far into things that I miss the big picture. I put together a frame cloud along with multi-area OSPF with a little RIPV2 on one of my ABR/ASBR. All the routes were pingeable (is this even a word hmmmmm oh well you know what I mean) except of course my RIP routes but quickly that was resolved by redistributing the RIP/OSPF on my ASBR & Sweet Tameisha! I was able to ping my RIP routes from a router that was in another OSPF area and saw it as a O E2 route.

I know I'm babbling but it's so sweet to see the outcome you were expecting and realizing that your time you put in to learn your craft is not going in vain. I just started labbing through the use of Dynamips (which is fantastic) and instead of just reading theory that light bulb comes on when you're see a debug command or you run the debug ospf adj command it's just motivation to complete what you actually love doing. So I want to thank those who blog about their road to bigger and better things, you did motivated me to really finish this journey and beyond.

Tonight will be more redistribution and making sure I understand the different LSA's types...

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OSPF AND FRAME RELAY

Okay time to update my progress. I've finally put a schedule together to follow because I'm one of those individuals who would be all over the place i.e. trying to figure out IPV6 before I even begin BGP *which I've have looked at that multi-hop command is something else...oh gosh see there I go again all over the place..back to the blog...geeesh*.

I'm a big fan of Train signal CISCO Courses taught by the infamous "I'm Chris Bryant CCIE #12933" you gotta Love this Guy. And recently I've been tackling the OSPF portion (Train signal) which I must say I've gotten this down pretty well so far but I had a weird problem occur tonight. I've lab a hub and spoke topology where R1 was my spoke and so on. Well I had all the pings go through well from each router and then I placed OSPF to run over them.....and my Hub defaulted to the NBMA but R2 stayed as POINT-POINT which amazed me but like Chris Bryant says, one command that is usually left behind is the "show ip ospf interface" and there it was Point-Point. So I just changed the network typed made sure my neighbor statements were correct on the hub and SWEET TAMEIKA *Yes I'm African American so Sweet Mary just wouldn't sound right lol..okay I had to put that out there it was a bit funny to me" but anywayssss.
All worked after a few hours of trying to figure out why am I not seeing my OSPF routes but seeing my multi-area routes between R1/R3.... So the moral to this story, slowww down run a few show commands and you'll be up and running in no time. Tomorrow after church I'll finish this lab with multi area OSPF and using the Virtual Link command.

Side note... I think I look too far into things for instance Route Redistribution I'm really looking forward to it but a somewhat intimidated by it because why you might ask, I'm all over the place I want to know it right there and then *Being a Gemini I guess is my down fall*.

So let me end this at 3 something in the morning and dream of route distribution and BGP no, no route distribution :).

Hey Aragoen dude you're a study beast!

"Under Heavy Construction"

This page is truly in the beginning stage as is my pursuit towards mastering BSCI (well actually BGP and IPV6). I appreciate those who have shown interest and I'll be updating the site soon....