Passed CCNP Switch exam

So I passed my CCNP Switch exam on the first attempt. So far its always been fail on the first attempt, and pass on the second. I missed my first CCNA attempt by just a couple of points, and same with the first attempt at Route.

But first time round on the Switch exam, passed with a score of 890.

Will book the TShoot for a couple of weeks time, and then straight into CCIE studies!

Alternatives to the Cisco 2511 access router

So the list of equipment is a long and expensive one. There are two components that really stand out as overly expensive, firstly the access switch (2511) and then the frame relay switch (2522).

Both are actually fairly easy to find alternatives for. So lets look at the access switch first.

Getting started with Cisco IOU - IOS on Unix - Part 1

Firstly the standard erratas apply - I can't give you Cisco IOU, or the images, but its up to you to find them (and it's easy to find them).

What is Cisco IOU?

Cisco IOU is a fully working Cisco IOS environment running within Linux. And its awesome.

It is intended solely for Cisco personnel, so it's a bit of a grey area as if you should use it or not.

But anyway, many do use it, and its superb, so let's learn how to use it.

I am using the IOU-Web interface made by a great guy called Andrea Dainese. You can find his page over at http://www.routereflector.com/. So check it out. Anyway he made a web interface for IOU and here is where we are going to start.

On the routereflector page are links to a VM you can run in the majority of virtualization platforms, I am running it on VirtualBox for Mac, its requirements a fairly minimal, with just 4Gb memory needed and a bridged network card. Once its fired up, head to the IP address given in the terminal window in your browser of choice.

The first thing you'll need to do is get a license. There is a very handy python script (CiscoIOUKeygen.py) that I am sure you can find, and run from the VM. Once you have license click on Manage on the menu bar and then on Manage License and paste it into the little box and click Save.

Now we need to add an image to use, I will be using an IOS 15 image I found, so again on the Manage tab, click on Manage IOSes. Firstly give it a name and an alias, then browse to the image and select it.

Then hit Upload. After a moment it will appear in the list of available images to use:

Now we are ready to start making our own environment!

Click on the Laboratories and then click on the icon for Add New Lab on the icon menu on the right hand side.

Give it a suitable name and description, you can set it as a timed lab if you want (I am leaving it as 0 to say that there is no time set), whether to display the network diagram or not and any additional information. 

Next we have to design the topology of the lab and this uses a NETMAP file, I am following the example given on the routereflector page.

A NETMAP file consists of a rows and each row contains an entry for where a link starts and where a link ends and includes the device ID. So to link device 10 to device 11 on ports 0/1 on each the line would look like:

10:0/1 11:0/1

So say we wanted to have two core routers (devices 10 and 11) connected to two WAN routers (devices 12 and 13) by a hub then we could do this:

10:0/0 11:0/0 12:0/0 13:0/0 1

The 1 at the end signifies that the link type will be an IEEE 802.3 ethernet link. For a list of what you can do refer to this page: http://www.tcpdump.org/linktypes.html.

Now if we wanted to have the two WAN routers connected to three branch routers (devices 30, 32 and 34) via frame relay (device 20) we would do this:

12:1/0 20:0/0 107
13:1/0 20:0/1 107
20:0/2 30:1/0 107
20:0/3 32:1/0 107
20:1/0 34:1/0 107

The 107 specifies a Frame Relay link.

Our finished NETMAP now looks like this:

Now click on Add so we can start setting up out devices. The device setup looks like this at first, with our devices set for us as per the NETMAP file. Depending on what version you are on you may or may not see an entry for the hub.

We start by naming our devices, and selecting the IOS for them to run, in the dropdown will be BASE-15-0, which is the alias we gave our uploaded image a little while ago. Then we can either set the RAM and NVRAM or we can take the system default.

The next two columns are important, these are how many Eth(ernet) and Ser(ial) portgroups there are. There are four ethernet ports per portgroup and four serial ports per portgroup. Ethernet portgroups are installed before serial portgroups - so a device with two ethernet portgroups and two serial portgroups will have the port layout of e0/0-3, e1/0-3, s2/0-3 and s3/0-3.

L2 keepalive is not supported on all IOSes (used to overcome the always-up ethernet interfaces) and Watchdog should be checked.

Lastly we can select an appropriate picture for the device, a boot delay if required and, if we have created one, an initial configuration that we can apply here.

The final configuration should look like this:

Once we click save we are taken to the main Laboratories tab and we can see our new lab. If we start the lab and look at the diagram we should see (after moving the devices around a bit, something like this:

The devices tab will look like this:

So lets fire up our first router Core1 by clicking on the blue start button. The picture for Core1 should now go a nice green color on the Devices tab and blue on the diagram window. Clicking on it will open up a terminal connection to the router:

So lets start by getting Core1 and Core 2 talking...

Fire up Core2 from the Devices page and open a telnet connection to it. Skip the intial dialog and set them up with IP addresses, then try and ping them... it should work!

See I told you it was awesome!

In another part of this little tutorial we'll set up the other routers on this lab and really start to see how far we can go with IOU and IOU-Web. 

Update - 15/10/2013 - Frame Relay and IOU does not seem to play well together. See more here.

Your own CCIE Lab - Option 2: Rent

Following on from the previous post about building your own rack, which we found to be expensive, the second option is to rent a rack from one of the many vendors online. The third option is to build a hybrid of emulated routers and real switches, which you can read about here.

Assuming this was the route we were going to take, it's then a question of who to pick, so lets have a look at some of the vendors out there. I did a search for "CCIE rack rental" and will compare the top four. All four offer blocks of four hours.

Your own CCIE Lab - Option 1: BYO

So when starting the CCIE (or any Cisco qualification for that matter) you have to decide whether its best to purchase your own hardware, use one of the rental labs that are easily found on the internet, or a hybrid approach or real and emulated equipment.

We are first going to have a look at purchasing your own equipment.

Buying your own hardware

Knowing what hardware to buy is a bit of a minefield. I have seen lots of people reference the INE Networks lab topology as the go-to reference for purchasing hardware. 

Their lab topology, allow with its connections can be found on their website (if you search for it). So I plan on using this as my frame of reference.

Device	Platform	Modules	RAM	Flash	Approx price (£)
R1	2610XM	2x WIC-1T	128	32	25-40
R2	2610XM	2x WIC-1T	128	32	25-40
R3	2611XM	1x NM-4A/S	128	32	40
R4	1841	2x WIC-1T	256	64	90
R5	1841	2x WIC-1T	256	64	90
R6	1841	1x WIC-1T	256	64	90
SW1	Catalyst 3560-24TS-E				150
SW2	Catalyst 3560-24TS-E				150
SW3	Catalyst 3550-24 EMI				60
SW4	Catalyst 3550-24 EMI				60
BB1 / FR Switch	2522		16	16	150
BB2	2501		16	16	20
BB3	2501		16	16	20
Access Server	2511		16	16	150

If you purchase the devices without the modules referenced and need to pick them up separately then you are looking at about £10 per WIC-1T, and about £25 for the NM-4A/S, so all in all there is about £1000 of hardware to purchase.

But can we change, substitute and combine hardware to make a more manageable and perhaps cheaper option?

I did find one seller on eBay offering a slightly different setup, still one that will fulfil the INE labs, and also the CCIE 4.1 blueprint (including MPLS).

In this alternate lab R4, 5 and 6 are 2611XMs, all the switches are 3550s, this will save a few hundred off the price.

So lets look at the platforms and the different options.

2600 Series Modular router

From this series we can give the 2612 a miss, its a token ring router, so no use to us (or pretty much anyone nowadays). The difference between the 2610XM and the 2611XM is that the 2611XM has an extra ethernet port. This is the same for the 2620XM vs the 2621XM, 2650XM vs the 2651XM. The 2691 comes as standard with 2 ethernet ports. The only other difference is that as you go up the model number the performance (measured in kpps) goes up with the 2610 range at 20, the 2620s at 30, the 2650s at 40 and the 2691 comes in at 70.

Price wise there isn't a huge difference between the models really, all hover around £40.

You can check out the Cisco comparison page here.

1841 Integrated Services Router

There arn't many options in this line-up, infact the 1800 product line has a huge jump between the entry line up (1801, 1802, 1803, 1805, 1811 and 1812) and the 1841. If you are keen on following the INE blueprint then go for the 1841s, but as we have already shown we can swap these for the much cheaper 2611XMs. This could cause an issue with MPLS support though and the software version must be at least Advanced Enterprise 12.4T.

35XX series switches

If money is a consideration (and let's face, for most people it is) then definitely go for all 3550s instead of the 3560s and 3550s. The 3550s are end of life, but the 3560s are still being touted by Cisco, therefore the prices are higher. Don't head downstream into the 29XX range. Although the 3550s are missing some of the features of the 3560s (LLDP, per-VLAN port policies, Private VLANs, DHCPv6, Source Specific Multicast, MP-BGP) its possible to do without these. A full comparison between the 29XX series and the 35XXs can be found here. 

Backbone and access

The backbone and access switches you cant really do much about. Prices will be roughly £350-400 for the four. Though I did pick up BB2 and BB3 for 99p!


*Update* - There is an alternative to the 2511 - read about it here.

Final notes

It's going to be expensive to buy your own, especially when you factor in delivery charges, racking, cables, and power. No matter how you look at it, you probably won't get any change out of £1000. There are plenty of places to buy and sell used Cisco equipment, a quick google for "used cisco equipment for sale", or being more specific such as "used cisco equipment uk" will bring up pages and pages of results. I stuck to ebay though as there are many people (possibly people who have completed their CCIE and are wanting to recoup some of the cash) and companies willing to sell used cisco equipment at good prices. Take your time though, keep a watch on the prices and set a (realistic) budget.

Keep an eye on sites like freegle and freecycle items do crop up occasionally, I managed to get a full sized rack for free. Saved me about £100, and like the advert says, every little helps.

There is also a comfort factor in having your own rack to play with, and at the end of your course, once you have finished and have your plaque proudly displayed on the wall, you can sell the equipment back on eBay, and recover some of your hard-earned cash!

In another post we will have a look at the other alternative, which is renting a rack.