who can identify this gear? we’re moving into a new building and all this telecom gear is in there. i’m curious what each and every piece is/what it does.

if you can identify it, please leave a comment below. thanks!

you can view the originals photos (higher resolution) on my flickr photostream.

iman jalali, director of sales and support at trainsignal, was nice enough to send me a free copy of their ccnp video course.

the ccnp certification training package, according to the website, contains over 50 hours of training for the bsci, bcmsn, ont, and iscw exams for the ccnp certification.

the videos are led by chris bryant, ccie, who never misses an opportunity to try to get you to visit his own website (link intentionally missing), where he sells his own training products as well. i don’t particular care for him, but i’ll try not to let that bias my opinion of trainsignal’s course as a whole. i hope to “review” it here soon.

okay, let’s see if this works like i meant for it to…

here’s the video from youtube’s servers (just to see if it makes a difference):

thoughts?

i’m getting ready to do a quick video tutorial/demo using camtasia and so i needed to configure my cisco 2509 terminal server. here’s how i did it, from a completely blank configuration:

Router>en
Router#configure terminal
Router(config)#hostname TERMSERV
TERMSERV(config)#interface loopback 0
TERMSERV(config-if)#ip address 192.168.254.254 255.255.255.255
TERMSERV(config-if)#exit
TERMSERV(config)#line tty 1 8
TERMSERV(config-line)#transport input all
TERMSERV(config-line)exit
TERMSERV(config)#ip host s1 2001 192.168.254.254
TERMSERV(config)#ip host r7 2007 192.168.254.254
TERMSERV(config)#ip host r8 2008 192.168.254.254
TERMSERV(config)#end
TERMSERV#copy running-config startup-config

success!

below i’m going to illustrate how to configure a dhcp server on a cisco router running ios.

in this example, i have two cisco 2621xm’s running c2600-ik9s-mz.123-22.bin. each router’s fastethernet 0/0 interface is plugged into a cisco 2950 switch (ports 1 & 2) on the same vlan.

r1, which has an ip address of 192.168.1.1 (/24), will be our dhcp server. it will be configured to hand out ip addresses in the range from 192.168.1.100 through 192.168.1.254. it will also hand out information identifying itself as the default gateway and dns server. our local domain name will be “ciscolab.local”:

R1#configure terminal
R1(config)#interface fastethernet 0/0
R1(config-if)#ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0
R1(config-if)#no shutdown
R1(config-if)#exit

here we see the fastethernet 0/0 interface coming up…

\*Mar  1 00:15:46.306: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface FastEthernet0/0, changed state to up
\*Mar  1 00:15:47.308: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface FastEthernet0/0, changed state to up

…let’s tell the router not to give out the ip addresses from 192.168.1.1 through .99…

R1(config)#ip dhcp excluded-address 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.99

…and set up the dhcp pool with our options…

R1(config)#ip dhcp pool DHCP_POOL
R1(dhcp-config)#network 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0
R1(dhcp-config)#default-router 192.168.1.1
R1(dhcp-config)#dns-server 192.168.1.1
R1(dhcp-config)#domain-name ciscolab.local
R1(dhcp-config)#end
R1(config)#

…at this point, our work on r1 is done. now let’s go over to r2, configure the fastethernet 0/0 interface to use dhcp and bring it up…

R2#configure terminal
R2(config)#interface fastethernet 0/0
R2(config-if)#ip address dhcp
R2(config-if)#no shutdown

…we see fastethernet 0/0 come up…

\*Mar  1 00:23:39.746: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface FastEthernet0/0, changed state to up
\*Mar  1 00:23:40.748: %LINKPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface FastEthernet0/0, changed state to up

…and shortly afterwards, we see that r2 has obtained an ip address…

\*Mar  1 00:23:48.985: %DHCP-6-ADDRESS_ASSIGN: Interface FastEthernet0/0 assigned DHCP address 192.168.1.100, mask 255.255.255.0, hostname R2

R2(config-if)#end
R2#show ip interface brief
Interface                  IP-Address      OK? Method Status                Protocol
FastEthernet0/0            192.168.1.100   YES DHCP   up                    up
FastEthernet0/0            unassigned      YES unset  administratively down down

…and we should be able to ping r1…

R2#ping 192.168.1.1

Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP echoes to 192.168.1.1, timeout is 2 seconds:
!!!!!
Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 4/11/16 ms

…success!

my copy of cisco’s “ccnp bsci official exam certification guide” arrived in the mail friday.

i have the “ccnp bcmsn official exam certification guide” as well, but both bsci and bcmsn are a bit down the road. i’m currently working on the iscw as its topics are more closely aligned to what i’m working with at the present time.

a couple of months ago i decided to break down and take the cisco ccna certification exams, which i had no problems with. i passed the icnd1 exam and then passed the icnd2 exam a week later.

just prior to the end of our fiscal year (june 30th), we have our annual performance evaluations, which precede any raises we might receive on july 1st. a few days ago, i got my “letter” letting me know what my raise would be (we generally get 3%) and i was happy to see a nice bonus on there on top of that for completing the ccna. if i had known that i would be getting that, i’d have taken the tests a long time ago!

i have to say that the ccna was well worth the (time) investment i put into it, since it didn’t cost me anything financially ($work reimburses me for certification exams). by the way, i never got a bonus for the microsoft certs. :P

are you preparing for the cisco ccnp exam? do you blog about your experiences? leave a comment below and let me know so i can start following your blog!

in regard to my last post, “dynamips lab topologies anyone?“, here’s the first network map i drew up in visio.

it was made to simulate (closely, but not exactly) the topology of internet2, as depicted on the internet2 atlas (which is a cool piece of work, i might add).

if you’re interested in seeing a dynagen .net file for this and/or some sample exercises to work through, let me know.

while there’s a plethora of labs to work through if you’re preparing for cisco’s ccie examination, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot for the lower levels, specifically the ccnp (what i’m currently working on). it could very well be because i haven’t bought any of the “official” cisco press books, who knows.

regardless, i, like many others, have been making extensive use of dynamips for running labs on a pc (even though i have a stack of cisco gear sitting right next to me). it’s just easier to not have to mess with the physical cabling, plus i can take it with me (i have dynamips and dynagen set up on my macbook).

i’ve considering making up some of my own lab topologies and then creating some exercises to go along with me. there are plenty of lab topologies already available (some even with the dynagen .net file), but i haven’t found many that have actual lab exercises to go along with them.

if i were to make up some of my own (complete with visio diagrams, dynagen .net files, and exercises to work through), would there be any interest?

p.s. i don’t use gns3 so you’d have to come up with your own config files for that.