BSCI - Study Pointers - IS-IS

IS-IS:

• Level 3 routing - routing between separate routing domains
• All ES's and Level1 IS's must have a unique system ID area wide
• IS-IS is able to have more routers in an area compared to OSPF and fewer Link-State PDU's are used.
• In Frame-Relay, the highest local DLCI is used to elect a designated IS (if all priorities are the same)
• the cmd R1(config-if)#isis password [password] [level] -sets authentication for a specific link, when level is not specified the default is level 1
• an INIT state can exist is there is a mis-matched authentication config or mis-matched MTU.

Review Documents

It's been a while since I last posted. Mainly due to personal commitments at home and work but also through a lack of inspiration.

Out of the blue I had a message for an old colleague at the weekend to say that one of my posts got him out of a fix in his new role and that made me think again.

Since my last post I've been covering Redistribution, Distribution Lists, and Route Maps. I'm also about half way through my BGP studies which on the face of it seem fine. That said I haven't got in to the fine tuning of the protocol  yet and that doesn't look pretty.

I'm intending on covering of the main configuration and verification commands of the previous topics mainly to keep them fresh in my mind as I look forward to Multicasting, IPv6 and the case studies on my BSCI Networking Academy course.

BSCI - IS-IS - Differences between IS-IS and OSPF

• OSPF supports 50 routers per area
• IS-IS can support up to 1000 routers per area
• OSPF includes more features, including route tags, stub/nssa configuration, on demand circuits
• OSPF requires many LSA's to advertise and withdraw routes.
• IS-IS only requires one LSP per IS-IS router in a given area.
• IS-IS doesn't support a Backup designated router (BDR).i.e. you only have the primary Designated Intermediate System (DIS).
• IS-IS repeats the DIS election process every time a new router is added to an area.
• If the new router has the same of higher priority it will become the new DIS.
• IS-IS is designed to be deterministic so that the same set of IS-IS routers always produce the same DIS.
• Every time a DIS changes a new set of LSP's are flooded to the neighbours.
• IS-IS form adjacencies with all routers in the area not just the DIS.
• OSPF uses a scaled metric by default where as IS-IS uses a default metric of 10 for all links.

BSCI - IS-IS - High level operations

Routers using IS-IS issue Hello packets out of all interfaces enabled for IS-IS to discover neighbours and establish adjacencies.

Routers will become IS-IS neighbours  if their Hello packets contain certin information for the creation of an adjacency.

Routers then build Link-State Packets (LSP's) based on the adjacencies present and then flodd the LSP's to their neighbours.

All routers then build a Link-State Database (LSDB) using the information in the received LSP.

The router then runs the SPF algorithm, the shortest path to each dsestination is then calcultated and added to the Routing Information Base (RIB or OSI routing table).

Next, the Partial Route Calcultion is performed using the IP information contained within one of the Time, Length, Value (TLV) fields in the LSP. This generates shortest paths for IP traffic and in turn is entered in to the IP routing table.

CCNP ROUTE Cert Kit Giveaway

Rofi Neron over at ITDualism.wordpress.com has a Cisco CCNP Route Cert Kit to giveaway.

To enter check out his competition here: http://itdualism.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/giveaway-route-cert-kit/

Well worth the time and an excellent opportunity to bag some Cisco Press material.

Good Luck!!

Starting the BSCI

Today sees me start the BSCI course at my local Cisco Networking Academy.

I'll be doing more lab work in GNS3, I've already made a good start with my notes covering off EIGRP, and I'll be going over both Jeremy Cioara's CBT Nuggets videos and Chris Bryant's Train Signal videos.

Fingers crossed, here we go...

Cisco Intelligent Information Network

The Cisco Intelligent Information Network (IIN) is a framework aims to align IT resources with business objectives across multiple products and infrastructure layers.

It aims to provide you with a route map to integrate resources and information assets, and benefit from a truely converged network infrastructure.

IIN helps to reduce maintenance costs of managing separate voice and data infrastructures.

IIN is achieve by following SONA as the architectural framework to guide your network development. Taking advantage of Cisco Unifiied Communication products and allowing you to virtualise your applications and infrastructure across multiple sites. It results in greater speed, enables scalability, and reduce costs.

To attain the goal of implementing IIN you need to progress through 3 phases
i) Integrate teh transport network
ii) Move to intregrate services
iii) Finally, intregrate the applications used in the enterprise.

Welcome to CiscoStudies.co.uk

Hello and welcome to CiscoStudies.co.uk

Over the coming weeks and months I'll be taking a look at the Cisco CCNP cirriculum and adding relevant articles that help me with my studies. Hopefully you'll agree.

On this site you will find resources such as subnetting charts and binary tables to RFC references and well known port numbers.

It's early days at the minute but please be assured that I will be adding to site over frequently. Please keep coming back to see whats new.

Thanks and good luck with your certification.

Jonathan

CCNP and Networking Academy students

Since Cisco announced their plans to move to the new 3 exam path back in January there's been much discussion at my local Networking Academy about what that actually means for those who have already passed some of the exams but won't finish the Academy programme until after July31st.

Cisco have posted the following information;

http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/netacad/downloads/pdf/CCNPv6FAQJan10.pdf

on the last page it says

Q. Until when will Networking Academy students be able to take the current CCNP certification exams?

A. The four current CCNP certification exams will be available to the general public through July 31, 2010 and to Networking Academy students using a special voucher through July 31, 2011. More information about how to obtain a special, non-discount voucher to enable students to continue to take the retiring exams will be communicated as soon as it is available. 

CCNP Exam Combinations:
BSCI+BCMSN+ISCW+ONT      = Last day is July 31st 2011
COMP+ISCW+ONT                  = Last day is July 31st 2011
BSCI+SWITCH+ISCW+ONT     = Last day is July 31st 2011
ROUTE+BCMSN+ISCW+ONT  = Last day is July 31st 2011 
ROUTE+SWITCH+ISCW+ONT = Last day is July 31st 2011 
BSCI+BCMSN+TSHOOT         = Ongoing
COMP+TSHOOT                    = Ongoing
BSCI+TSHOOT+SWITCH        = Ongoing
ROUTE+BCMSN+TSHOOT     = Ongoing
ROUTE+SWITCH+TSHOOT    = Ongoing 

This should be a weight off anyone's mind who is doing their CCNP through a Networking Academy (including me!)

  

Using Cisco SDM in GNS3

One of the great things about GNS3 is that you can practice your labs using real IOS images. The same goes for Cisco SDM. Tasks such as configuring GRE over IPSec tunnels or applying IOS Firewall can be made so much easier via the Cisco SDM.

In this entry I'm going to show you how I configured my laptop to access the Cisco SDM within my GNS3 lab.

This lab assumes you are using a Windows XP system, you use IE, and your Java version is  jre-1_5_0_09-windows-i586-p.exe (other versions of JRE may be fine but this is what works for me).

1) Configure a loopback interface on your laptop.
The first task is to configure a loopback interface. To do this go to:

• Start - Settings - Control Panel - Add Hardware
• Select Next when the wizard starts and then 'Yes, I have already connected the hardware', select Next
• You are presented with a list of currently installed devices, scroll to the bottom and choose 'Add a new hardware device', select Next
• Check the button for 'Intsall the hardware that I manually select from a list' and select Next
• Select 'Network Adapters' and then select Next
• On the next screen choose 'Microsoft' from the left column and then 'Microsoft Loopback Adapter' from the right column, select Next and then Next again to install.

2)  Create your lab
Build your lab and make sure that you install an FE-TX interface on the router/firewall you'd like the laptop to connect to. Save the lab and close it.

3) Make a note of the Loopback hardware address
Go to the directory for GNS e.g.) C:\Program Files\GNS3 and locate the file 'Network device list.cmd'
Run this and make a note of the output for the new loopback address you set up in point 1 e.g)
NIO_gen_eth:\Device\NPF_{19DB09AF-0DC2-43C6-B9B7-69A0E722FA45}
 Name      : Local Area Connection 2
Desciption: Microsoft Loopback driver
N.B - copy the equivilent output that I've marked in Bold

4) Insert the output for your Loopback interface in to your lab

• Navigate to the saved location for your lab and and right click on the file e.g) mylab.net then select edit network file (if prompted for an application choose Notepad).
• Locate the device you wish to add your Loopback connection to and insert the interface address like the example below:  [[ROUTER R3]]
          model = 3620
          console = 2003
          slot0 = NM-4T
          s0/0 = R2 s0/1
          slot1 = NM-1FE-TX
          f1/0 = NIO_gen_eth:\Device\NPF_{19DB09AF-0DC2-43C6-B9B7-69A0E722FA45}
          x = 108.0
          y = 19.0
• Save this.

5) Open GNS3 and open the Lab you have just added your loopback interface. 

• If correctly configured you should now see a cloud marked something like C0 or C1 connecting to your FE interface on the router you choose to assign the connection to.
•  Assign IP addresses on the same subnet to both the loopback interface on your windows XP system and the FE-TX interface on your network device.
• Ping the IP addresses from either side and you should have connectivity. If you don't, trouble shoot accordingly

Now you have a functioning connection into your lab you can do many things. For example download and install Cisco SDM launcher for PC and then enter the internal IP address for the router in your lab you'd like to connect to.


You can also set up a syslog server. Install Kiwi Syslog Server and then configure your network devices to send logging information to the IP address assigned to your loopback interface.


You might want to install a RADIUS server on your XP system and then foward all RADIUS authentication requests to your loop back adapter.


These are just some examples of what you can do once you have your Loopback configure. Enjoy!