OH THOSE MORNING JITTERS

[Merk]

Bleh, I'm going to need some Layer 2 practice. Would it possible to set up 4 of those switches with a full-mesh topology? I'm confident in my knowledge of Layer 3 stuff but I don't have too much practice in Layer 2 stuff and I'd like to get some under my belt before the test.

[MonMotha]

I can give you more than 4 if you need, as well, just bear in mind only two of them are Cisco. The others are Foundry/Brocade, which has a very IOS-esque CLI (almost the same but with different keywords, and VLANs do work differently in the config language) and of course won't support Cisco-specific features, and one is an HP. Of course, getting inter-vendor practice is always a good thing.

Do you also need to do any link aggregation? Obviously that requires multiple links between each switch.

I'll get the other stuff cabled up for you, too. I actually ran out of patch cables somehow, so I'll need to find/make some. I've got the Cisco lab all cabled up but still need to configure the terminal server. I assume you can work an SSH client?

[Ho]

The name Brocade makes me laugh every time I see it.

[MonMotha]

Brocade actually made a (company sanctioned, apparently) video quip comparing their name to the slang term "bro" IIRC shortly after the Foundry merger. It was something about how despite coming from different backgrounds, they were all "bros" or something like that, but it was pretty humorous for an official marketing piece. I can't find it right now, unfortunately.

Took me forever to figure out that "brocade" is also a real word meaning a kind of fabric or textile, and that's why all the classic Brocade SAN stuff has names like "Silkworm". All the Foundry derived gear is named after metalworking stuff, of course (Fastiron, Netiron, Serveriron, Bigiron, etc.). I don't deal with SAN stuff much, especially pure Fibrechannel. I mostly do Ethernet and a little bit of converged (iSCSI, FCoE, etc.).

Brocade has a pretty cool logo, at least, though the Foundry logo was also pretty neat.

[Ho]

I just looked at the logos...

Brocade is fine, I guess. But I love the Foundry logo.

[Merk]

I can give you more than 4 if you need, as well, just bear in mind only two of them are Cisco. The others are Foundry/Brocade, which has a very IOS-esque CLI (almost the same but with different keywords, and VLANs do work differently in the config language) and of course won't support Cisco-specific features, and one is an HP. Of course, getting inter-vendor practice is always a good thing.

Do you also need to do any link aggregation? Obviously that requires multiple links between each switch.

I'll get the other stuff cabled up for you, too. I actually ran out of patch cables somehow, so I'll need to find/make some. I've got the Cisco lab all cabled up but still need to configure the terminal server. I assume you can work an SSH client?

Ah, yeah I should be fine with the Brocade stuff but I will have to learn their config language for VLANs / STP. Do you know if they have a nice little "show" output for STP stuff? That's primarily what I need to get practice on.

If you could get up multiple links between the Ciscos that would be good. I won't have to do much other than put ports into a port channel and shit.

I can work in a SSH client, good ol' Putty!

[MonMotha]

Ah, yeah I should be fine with the Brocade stuff but I will have to learn their config language for VLANs / STP. Do you know if they have a nice little "show" output for STP stuff? That's primarily what I need to get practice on.

If you could get up multiple links between the Ciscos that would be good. I won't have to do much other than put ports into a port channel and shit.

I can work in a SSH client, good ol' Putty!

VLAN configuration is basically the opposite of Cisco. Rather than defining VLAN membership on each port, you define port membership (and tagged/untagged) on each VLAN. You can also "show vlan XYZ" to see a summary of that VLAN, similar to Cisco, though the output format is somewhat different.

For viewing spanning tree, there's "show span" and the various detail/drilldown options on it.

The Brocade config guides are available on their website, or I can get you copies. I'm running the 8.x full L3 ("router") firmware on the FCX platform, though I also have a spare FGS and FWS, both running the latest (last supported) L2 firmware .

[MonMotha]

I just looked at the logos...

Brocade is fine, I guess. But I love the Foundry logo.

Yeah, the Foundry logo was pretty cool. Something about making a giant, heavy looking gear move at high speed. It's a neat little contrast. They cared about that logo, too. Their pizza box switches usually had a giant, full color version of it on a side where almost nobody but an installer would see it.

I think the Brocade logo is actually pretty good for what they had to work with. It's a stylized B that looks like it might also be moving somewhat fast or flying, and it also looks like a moth/butterfly/etc. that goes with their main (Brocade lineage, not Foundry) "Silkworm" product line.

[Ho]

Yeah. Not being close to either company and viewing both logos for the first time, I instantly liked the Foundry logo. And, while the Brocade logo looked fine, it didn't really resonate with me in any particular way. But I didn't really know any of the back story.

[Merk]

Props to Brandon for setting up a lab for me!

Here's something I've noticed that I thought was a little interesting in relation to spanning-tree -- apparently on Brocades the MAC address they use for the Bridge ID is the lowest MAC address of an interface. Ciscos use the MAC address of the CPU on the switch. Important? Not really, just thought it was a little interesting.

On a Cisco:

Code: Select all

2950SWITCH#sho mac address-table
          Mac Address Table
-------------------------------------------

Vlan    Mac Address       Type        Ports
----    -----------       --------    -----
 All    [b]0011.5c17.9280[/b]    STATIC      CPU

2950SWITCH#sho span
VLAN0001
  Spanning tree enabled protocol ieee
  Root ID    Priority    32768
             Address     0012.f28a.9c80
             Cost        19
             Port        15 (FastEthernet0/15)
             Hello Time   2 sec  Max Age 20 sec  Forward Delay 15 sec

  Bridge ID  Priority    32769  (priority 32768 sys-id-ext 1)
             Address     [b]0011.5c17.9280[/b]
             Hello Time   2 sec  Max Age 20 sec  Forward Delay 15 sec
             Aging Time 300

On a Brocade:

Code: Select all

BR-FGS648P Router#sho span

STP instance owned by VLAN 1

Global STP (IEEE 802.1D) Parameters:

     Root             Root Root   Prio Max He- Ho- Fwd Last    Chg Bridge
      ID              Cost Port   rity Age llo ld  dly Chang   cnt Address
                                  Hex  sec sec sec sec sec
     80000012f28a9c80 0    Root   8000 20  2   1   15  890     38  [b]0012f28a9c80[/b]

BR-FGS648P Router#sho int br

Port    Link    State   Dupl Speed Trunk Tag Pvid Pri MAC            Name
0/1/1   Down    None    None None  None  No  1    0   [b]0012.f28a.9c80[/b]

lololol phpBB bolding doesn't work under the Code tab but hey, you get my drift.

[MonMotha]

I think that behavior depends on if you have the L3 ("router") or L2 ("switch") firmware loaded. All of mine currently have the L3 firmware installed, so it wants to fundamentally do everything it can to facilitate acting as a router, and that means it has a different MAC for each port.

[Merk]

I passed my exam with a 894 /1000! My resume can now be officially padded! Huge thanks to MonMotha for letting me use his lab for some switching study.

Trip report:

- Looooots of Frame Relay questions right at the beginning of the test - at least 9 of the 53 questions had something to do with Frame Relay configuration and troubleshooting. Do people even use Frame Relay anymore?

- Not a single IPv6 question was asked which I thought was a little unfortunate - they definitely dedicate three chapters to IPv6 and OSPFv3 / EIGRPv6 in the study material and I was expecting at least one question for one of these topics!

- Time is a huge factor. 75 minutes for 53 questions may seem like a lot of time but I definitely started getting nervous when I had 10 minutes left and 12 questions to go. The test simlet questions take up a lot of time and of the 3 simlets there were I had to really rush the last one. The majority of my missed questions came from the last simlet for sure.

- Cisco really, really does their best to word their questions in a way to trick you - you really do have to read their questions 3 times or so to be absolutely sure you're answering exactly the way they want you to. The available answers on the multiple choice usually go, "The right answer," "The sort of right answer," "The completely wrong answer," and "The right answer if you make an assumption not stated in the question"

- Lots of spanning-tree questions but I sort of knew that going into the test. A lot of "which port will end up being the blocking port?" questions and "why is this switch not the root for this VLAN?" questions.

- Next to no trunking questions. There were two interVLAN routing or "Router-on-a-stick" questions but no "will these two switches form a trunk?" questions.

All in all it was definitely a Cisco-style exam and I probably spent way too much time studying for it - I'm glad I know the things that I know though even if they didn't show up on the test!

[MonMotha]

- Looooots of Frame Relay questions right at the beginning of the test - at least 9 of the 53 questions had something to do with Frame Relay configuration and troubleshooting. Do people even use Frame Relay anymore?

As far as I can tell? Realistically, no. ATM is still in use, though, somewhat to my amazement.

I really do wish x.25 would finally up and die.

- Cisco really, really does their best to word their questions in a way to trick you - you really do have to read their questions 3 times or so to be absolutely sure you're answering exactly the way they want you to. The available answers on the multiple choice usually go, "The right answer," "The sort of right answer," "The completely wrong answer," and "The right answer if you make an assumption not stated in the question"

I don't think that's Cisco; I think that's pretty much all standardized tests, these days. It's become much more about the test-taking process than actually testing knowledge.

[Merk]

I guess Cisco is updating the CCNP as well early next year and the Cisco Press self-study cert guides are coming out in early February - guess what I pre-ordered today?

Looks like I'm going to tuck into some eBGP, VRFs, DMVPNs, and all sorts of other alphabet soup acronym bullshit next year.

[MonMotha]

DMVPN

I must confess that I didn't know that one.

Looked it up - yep, it's a Cisco thing. Figures.