"The King of Kong"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Kong

As the title says, The King Of Kong is what I will be discussing.

If you have not watched this movie and you are a gamer or maybe your not - watch this movie.

Basically, it's a story about a Guy who's the best at King Kong in the entire world and the world of competitive retro gaming. I am not talking about Counter Strike tourneys or anything like that, I am talking about PacMan, Frogger, Galaxia, Mr. Doo, King Kong, Marble Madness...etc.

There is much suspicion about a tape that shows a guy beating a high score and it's reviewed by a panel of experts etc etc...

At one point in the film Billy Mitchell says "You can practice it all you want, but when you come to play live that's the only time it counts" I am paraphrasing here but that's the gist of it.

If you have a netflix account, you can instantly stream it. Youtube also has it in parts but it's severely edited.

The CCIE is like this - you either are prepared or you are not. You are either ready to take down the lab and prove you know what you are doing or FAIL.

Really good movie, like I said if you play games at all you might relate to these guys. Obsessive, compulsive and perfectionists - kind of like those people who chase the CCIE.

I am not as obsessive as these folks, but watch this movie and you will understand what I am saying!!

-Nick

OSPF resources the RFC "The Bible"

The following is a copy and paste of my response to someone asking about OSPF resources.

People, when you are studying for your CCIE Routing and Switch or whatever track you are doing research and consult and dominate. For OSPF I use the RFC which is a great document that tells you how it works.


Here was my response with some additional information:


I use http://www.rfc-editor.org/ to look up RFC's. I found that RFC 2328 is what the Cisco Press is based on. So while most people shy away from the RFC it's the STANDARD.

Let’s think about it this way. Let’s say you have a friend who tells you the following sentence :

My friend is coming over, tell Bob I’ll call him when I’m done. You decide “I don’t got time for this I’ll pass this on to Steve”

So let’s say that you are Mr. PERFECT and remembered exactly what was said, you tell this to Steve (who also doesn’t have time to go directly to Bob) who then tells it to Jack who tells it to Mary etc etc etc……

By time the last person gets the message to Bob the message reads:

THE CHICKEN IS IN THE OVEN AND IT’S ALMOST DONE.

Laugh if you want, go ahead knock your self out….there is a point to all this..


When learning networking you have 2 views on something

The Vendor neutral view and the Vendor’s implementation.

For OSPF you have the RFC view, on how from a vendor independent stand point how that technology was designed to work. Sometimes, the view a vendor takes on presenting the information to you gets a little off or is downright WRONG. I'm sure others can attest to this.......

For OSPF you also have the vendor specific way of doing it. In this case CISCO. Obviously there are additions to OSPF like certain types of stubby areas etc. Just like there is Weight for BGP on Cisco implementations, but this doesn’t exist on Juniper as it’s a Cisco only implementation.

If you survived reading all of that I assure you what I am saying if you read the RFC first before reading anything else – you will have a CLEAR picture of how something is supposed to work instead of jumping in and learning by configuration which I think is a mistake before tackling the theory. I realize, yes this is not what you stated Raghav, but I recommend starting out with the RFC.

CISCO press books interpret the RFC’s and so does every other Networking book out there. Start with the source (the RFC) and work your way up.

Theory, configure, validate and troubleshoot. The golden rules of the game.


Now for the actual OSPF RFC: You should have a list of these in your study materials for ALL IGP’s and know them well.

OSPF RFC 3228 (about 200 pages packed with excitement)
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2328.txt

Once you can nail the OSPF 'Bickity Bamn' you will be a master.

-Nick

When does this EVER end?

Sigh.....It's one thing when you read 4 or 5 or whatever the hell the amount of books I have read completely totaling over 5,000 pages....it's another thing that my notes are 100's of pages.

I've tried to condense these notes to something more manageable but doesn't seem to be working.

So I tried a new method, well not really new I should say just something I have been doing the last month.

I printed out the blueprint and imported into MS One Note 2007. I then added each subsection and topic.

Each subsection has the configuration for the topic and short notes on what the command does and what it's for, and also where the information is located on the Cisco Doc CD.

For example,

1.40 Implement Ethernet Technologies

c) PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE)

- Under Wan configuration guide under "Broadband Access Aggregation and DSL Config Guide" on Cisco Doc Cd. (12.4 IOS)

Utilizes VPDN Connections and virtual access interfaces like dialer or Virtual template
Can be done on Router or dot1q trunk sub-if
Has Global and int specific config
Server: Accepts PPPoE "Dial in"
Client" Accepts PPPeE "Dial in"

Then I have the configurations for the Client, Server and the template. I'm not posting them here right now as that would be a lot of text.


Ahh it's 11pm gotta get up in 6 short hours.....SON OF A BITCH!!!!!!!!

Endless endless studying.

Why the hell I torture myself, is still a great mystery.........oh I remember I want a CCIE that's why :)

Good night.

STUDY STUDY STUDY!

It's 9:42pm. I got home from work at 5:30 and have been studying ever since sans eating a frozen dinner (Salisbury steak). My wife is out with 'the girls' doing dinner so I got a chance to study for a nice long session.

Something VERY sneaky I found about while tooling around on the Cisco 3560. I was trying to get damn Ipv6 working and didn't know about the SDM. This is not the Security Device Manager GUI that some might now, it's different.

Switch Database Modifier.

It's a group of profiles that manages how the switch works. It optimizes the switch to run in different environments. For example if using the 3560 with VLANs (That's what I use them for, don't know about you) a lot then you can use the VLAN profile. For routing functions you could use the routing profile, or . If you want to run IPV6 You MUST reload the switch to get the profile to switch over. Yes, for routing you could just do IP ROUTING, but this is for "Optimizing resources". Once of those trickery items I can see Cisco tossing at me in the lab. I imagine something like:

"Cat1 must be optimized in such a way as to be efficient for the purpose of routing" or something vague like that........great right? lol.

Issue the command sdm prefer ?

There is a list of items, but the one I was looking for was "Dual-ipv4-and-ipv6' which says "Support both IPV4 and IPV6"

This is REQUIRED if you want to use IPV6 on the switch. I was going NUTS trying to figure out what the flying BEEP was happening......until I used that profile. You have to reload in order to make it change though, otherwise it won't work. I can see this costing points on the lab, so I reached out to a buddy who passed the exam and he said "Yep, that will get you and cost you 2 or 3 points as they might tie it to a section"

Awesome. 2 or 3 points is HUGE when passing is 80 and if at the end of the day you add up your points on your task list and think you got it in the bag, things like this will bite you in the ass.

Just imagine all the other little stuff that will come out to haunt you. Flex links are evil, I know I said that before but damn. If you have BGP, OSPF and STP set up and set up flex links without taking into consideration what it will do - BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN.

1st - it kills your STP.
2nd - it kills your OSPF since routers that are part of the VLAN will no longer form adjacency.
3rd - it KILLS, MURDERS, STRANGLES your BGP since if you have OSPF running and doing any redistribution or maybe you have ibgp rocking out with something else etc -

You just went NUCLEAR BLAST on yourself, costing a couple hours potentially of lost work. All over a simple little innocent flex link.

I will tell you this right now, CCIE = Nothing but a big combat boot that constantly kicks you in the ass. Right when you think you UNDERSTAND - Guess what? YOU DON'T.

That's all I got to say about that, which was a lot but I think I shared what I wanted.

Time for some hang time with the wife for an hour before bed, get up early and start another day in paradise at work, come home study rinse repeate.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

Cisco website.

I use Cisco.com for everything, mostly for the DOC CD which as a CCIE Candidate, we have to know this thing VERY well for weird obscure commands and special case scenarios.

I also find it handy for other things as well - such as this little gem:

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/473/vtp_flash/

I know VTP inside and out from a configuration standpoint, but decided to watch this. I got a reminder of what the 3 types of advertisements are Summary, Subset and Request - when they are sent out and how often. The little things in life y'know?

Found it neat and to the point. Good stuff.

That flash tutorial came from here, just in case you were wondering :)

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk389/tk689/technologies_tech_note09186a0080094c52.shtml

IPEXPERT Video On Demand Version 4.0

I received my Ipexpert Video on Demand 4.0 a few days ago. I already have version 3.0 which Scott Morris took the helm. Scott of course has since left Ipexpert to go to work for Internetwork Expert.

Joe Astorino is the new kid on the block for the video on demand. So far I have watched the Intro, bridging and switching and another video which the name escapes me at this point in time....hate it when that happens.

Joe speaks delibrately and concisely. At first, I was thinking "Ok buddy talk faster, lets keep it moving" but now I really enjoy it. The STP section was fantastic, talking about the costs and port priorities and all the differences between 802.1d,w,s in addition to basic configurations of those technologies. He also covers lightly on some real world scenarios that could occur with STP convergence times and discusses that as well, briefly.

So far compared to the old version 3.0 with Scott Morris - I like this a lot better. No offense to Scott, I still have my hard drive with his videos on it and I have watched them all. Scott is a monster powerhouse who knows a TON about things, so I do not ever discount what he has to say - I mean come on the guy has been through 4 CCIE's and passed them all!

What I like is not necessarily the content of the lesson, just the way it's presented. I feel this is more technology focused. What I mean by this is on the old version 3 Ipexpert VOD, most of the time you saw Scott's face. Now I am not a chick, so really this doesn't appeal to me - I can understand if you are a chick and are going for a CCIE and you want some eye candy to look at.......hey no problem there lol.

With comparison to how Joe does it there are at least 1000 slides that he goes through. I downloaded them from the website to look at as he goes through things. These are the same slides he used during the filming of the course. I feel that every second is PACKED with information and explanations that are just simply awesome.

I rate this very highly, and I recommend Ipexpert to you if you are on your way to the CCIE RS.

-Nick

FLEX Links - Evil to the extreme.

I was just running through some self made scenarios. I was reading about "Flex Links" and what they are and how they work. Essentially it's a pair of links such as port channel or physical that back each other up in case of failure.

I had a very nice MST (multiple spanning tree) and PVST environment up and running.

The SECOND I configured Flex links - poof! Broke EVERYTHING. The links where I configured flex links went into forwarding state and caused massive loops. Options like preemption bandwidth, delay etc along with MANUAL Vlan pruning are essential to really working with flex links.

This was BRAND NEW to me, I never even heard of a flex link until 30 minutes ago. I read about it, configured it then tried to validate it and well, it taught me a lesson.

It's within scope for the CCIE RS lab, so I can already tell this is something that one can get in a LOT of trouble REALLY fast if they are not aware of what can happen.

Neato.

Point and shoot.

So something I started doing recently is what I call the wheel of CCIE.

It's goes like this.

Print out the blueprint. I prefer to use the expanded 4.0 blueprint from internetwork expert. I of course expanded it well beyond to be more granular but that is beside the point....

So you have your blueprint printed out. Good.

Close your eyes, now take your blueprint, put it on a table or other flat surface and point your finger randomly down on the paper. The major topic section that you fall on do the following:

Bust out notepad and see if you can whip out a basic config for that technology.

For example, let's say I wanted to set up OSPF

Router ospf 1
router-id 1.1.1.1
int s0/0
ip ospf 1 area 0

Of course there might be frame relay so the ip ospf network command might be used etc, still that would be part of a basic configuration for either just serial links/fa interfaces. Frame relay would be automatically considering neighbor commands and changing the network types around etc etc.

Basically, I know that I can look at ANY major topic section and whip out a basic config. I am not talking about filtering, or authentication or anything fancy just basic, core configuration.

It's a neat little game. There is also something called "Ccie command memorizer" that my friend swears by, but it's $150 bucks and I'm still considering it but for now my little game works just fine :)

Enjoy.