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All of us in IT have all been there. Sitting around talking about how something on the network is wrong and it was the old guys fault. They did something lazy or wrong or did not document well and because of something THEY did you are now running something sub-optimal and performance is suffering. We have all been there. Now in these times I like to think would I have done the same? Why not? Do I really know what what made them choose what they did 2 to 3 or more gears ago? No I don’t so in many cases we need to cut the old guy some slack. Sometimes however we don’t. This is when something was clearly configured wrong, no description listed for ports on the switch or maybe redundancy that was setup wrong and would never work.

Well take this opportunity to fix the problem! At least create a plan to fix the issue. Don’t just sit around complaining about it, take some initiative and document what is wrong and detail the steps to fix it. It may not happen for many reasons (political, budget, etc) but at least you got off your butt and tried fixed it. If it is just poor documentation you have no excuses to not fix that.

Now think about what your are doing today. When you type a command will someone 2 years down the road be able to know exactly why you did that? What about port descriptions? Do you like coming into a network with no labels? Or what about when you do a “sho int status” and every port is labeled with server names but half are not connected? Clearly the documentation is wrong so can you trust the labels that are connected? Take the time to do right every time, even when removing something. What about network diagrams? Are yours done right? If someone walked into your network today would it take them 10 minutes or 10 hours to get a basic understanding?

The bottom line is take pride in your work and do it right. You should be happy to show of your configs and diagrams. Don’t be the guy that is blamed for everything years from now, be the guy they are still talking about how you did things the right way.

Here is my schedule as of this second but it may change at any time:

Sunday
8:00 AM
5:00 PM
TECCCIE-8000
South Pacific E
CCIE Routing and Switching
4:00 PM
5:30 PM
GENCOL-1001
Mandalay Bay G
Cisco Collaboration Welcome Session
5:30 PM
7:00 PM
GENCOL-1002
Eye Candy Lounge
Cisco Collaboration User Group Reception
Monday
9:30 AM
11:30 AM
BRKCRS-2041
South Seas E
WAN Architectures and Design Principles
12:30 PM
2:30 PM
BRKARC-3470
South Seas F
Cisco Nexus 7000 Switch Architecture
3:00 PM
5:00 PM
BRKCRS-3045
South Seas E
LISP – A Next Generation Networking Architecture
Tuesday
8:00 AM
9:30 AM
BRKDCT-2049
South Seas F
Overlay Transport Virtualization
10:00 AM
11:30 AM
GENKEY-7846
Event Center
Keynote and Welcome Address
12:30 PM
2:30 PM
BRKCRS-2042
Islander H
Highly Available Wide Area Network Design
4:00 PM
6:00 PM
BRKCRS-3036
South Seas J
Advanced Enterprise Campus Design: Routed Access
Wednesday
8:00 AM
10:00 AM
BRKCRS-3032
Islander G
Advanced Enterprise Campus Design: Resilient Campus Networks
10:30 AM
11:30 AM
GENKEY-7847
Event Center
Cisco Technology Keynote
12:30 PM
2:30 PM
BRKRST-2043
Islander C
WAN Design: Network Virtualization
4:00 PM
6:00 PM
BRKRST-2301
South Seas F
Enterprise IPv6 Deployment
Thursday
8:00 AM
10:00 AM
BRKRST-3363
South Pacific J
Routed Fast Convergence and High Availability
10:30 AM
11:30 AM
GENKEY-7848
Event Center
Closing Keynote: Author Ben Mezrich
12:00 PM
2:00 PM
BRKARC-2002
South Seas E
Network Diagnosis: Prevent Prepare Repair
2:30 PM
4:30 PM
BRKDCT-2053
South Seas F
Near zero down time architecture strategies and technologies for “Always On” …

Just a reminder but always keep an eye on the CCIE blueprint and checklist. I think a good example of why is RIPng on the current 4.0 R&S track. If you look at current blueprint its not mentioned at all. In fact one of the comments from Maurilio Gorito on Oct 31 2009, the R&S program manager at the time, he says “RIPng is not part of the exam. It has been removed.” So this lead people to not study it and several instructors to not teach it at all but maybe just mention it in passing.

Fast forward to March 5th 2010 and a new expanded checklist comes out for the R&S (and other) tracks. This new list says it is provided as supplement to the blueprint but other topics may appear. People looked at this listed and again noted no mention of RIPng but a few topics where missing, most no notably OER/PfR. Jump a month ahead to April 1 2010 and the list is updated to fix typo’s and add OER/PfR and RIPng! Wait Maurilio said no RIPng, what gives? Well what I see has happening is the R&S program went though a number of changes of the last few months and as the labs are updated they added RIPng as it technically is covered on the original blueprint because it mentioned RIP and IPv6 so from that you could have assumed RIPng. Plus they have the nice catch all “and other advanced features” so that pretty much means they can do anything they want.

What does this mean for you? Remember to always keep an eye on the blueprint AND the checklist. Don’t just assume its always the same just because its still v4.0 of the lab. And if your unsure if you think you should study a topic just study it.

Today Cisco announced that effective May 10 on the R&S and Voice tracks they are removing the OEQ’s. The 30 minutes will be applied to the config section. This is a great move by Cisco and I am pretty sure only one person in in the world is upset by this. With the troubleshooting section the need for the OEQ’s to catch cheaters is not valid as cheaters will not be able to get past the TS. Big high five to Cisco on this.

Official link coming soon.

Whenever I get a good idea for a post its come out of something I have done that I think others might find helpful or I was looking for something but did not find a good answer. In first case I usually will search for content before posting because if someone else did it better I see no reason for meto do it again. In second case I usually take  my time to do it right and when I am working on it someone else usally beast me too it so I really just don’t have much content.

Thats what happened with the 6500 upgrade post. Check out Ruhann’s post at http://blog.ru.co.za/2010/03/18/upgrading-a-cisco-6500/ He did a great job in summing up the steps so I am not going to waste time doing that here.

I was going to do a great post on the modular IOS on the 6500 pre-SXI3 and post SXI3 but so far I am not sure exactly where Cisco is going with the newest modular IOS (12.2(33)SXI3 and later) because the hallmark of the old install process was the “install file” command. You can read all about it at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/swmod/configuration/guide/sw_mod_instl_cfg.html. But that process is now gone, look at the release notes for 12.2(33)SXI3: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_2sx/12_2sxi/12_2_33_sxi3_newfeatlist.html and you will se that process is deprecated.

So what now? Just install it like any old IOS upgrade and you have modular IOS. Pretty simple. Now make sure you read up on modular IOS before you chose it as it has some hardware limitation (some SIP modules for example.) Most people who have gone to modular IOS have been happy but not everyone. It has taken awhile to get fully stable which is funny because its supposed to be more stable. So read up on it and hopefully with SXI4 I will have something to add to this post.

This is Cisco big announcement for the CCIE Lab today, you can read about it at https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-6842.

The short version is if you take a class at an approved 360 vendor you can apply for a waiver to skip the OEQ’s on your lab date. While just 4 questions and 30 minutes you HAVE to pass that section to pass the lab. This means they are essentially eliminating 1/3 of the lab for you! I don’t like this. While my favorite instructor (Narbik) is 360 approved I think this is a bad idea. It gives people who used the Cisco preferred vendors 1/3 of their passing score before walking in and it give them an extra 30 minutes on what most see as the hardest section (configuration) because of lack of time. It is purely a money grab. I understand what Cisco wanted to do here, they wanted to eliminate the need for proctors to manually grad questions that open for interpretation. I relate this to back when I took drivers ed. Texas had just passed a law that if you took and passed drivers ed you no longer needed to pass a road test. Which was great, I did not need to mess with that test as I already knew how to drive! However not everyone knew how to drive but still got this exemtion because my drivers ed had not final test! If did all the work you passed. You think the drivers ed place is going to fail students who are then going to go tell their friend to go elsewhere? I see the potential for the same thing possibly happening here. Why would a 360 vendor deny a student a waiver? They are just going to Twitter/Group Study/etc and talk bad about them which is bad for business. I don’t want to imply vendors ARE going to give undeserving students waivers as I know a several of them will not do that. Just the potential for accusations of impropriety exist with this change.

While its too late to get Cisco to change they did say this is temporary but will give at least 60-days notice before it ends. So for at least the next 60 days its part of life, just need to deal with it. I do see this as the first step in removing the OEQ from the labs that have troubleshooting sections so that is a good thing.

On a side note about Narbik, he did say he is not in favor of this change while CCBootCamp is taking credit for the idea as theirs.

Been laying low for far too long. I have some real content coming soon. First up I expect to a post on monolithic vs modular IOS on 6500′s. I have avoided real content because I have been so busy and did not want post sub-par work. Hopefully what I end up posting will meet that goal. See ya soon.

So now I am just waiting until lab seats are available by reading about MPLS and related new topics. I keep checking the site for 3.0 seats even though I know its a waste of time. I decided to reach out Narbik tonight and talk about what I should be doing between now and when I sit for 4.0. It was a good chat, that was the first time I had called him and you can really tell he cares about what his students are doing and making sure they learn and become experts on the material then pass the lab. We chatted about study strategy for the new material and he remind me to not rush into to a date. I still see seats for the first day of 4.0 and I want to do that just because I want to get the cert…but not doing that. Going to master all the topics before I schedule a date.

Narbik also gave me an update on what he has been doing for the new class and it sounds great! The class format it is changing and its going to be even more intense! He also let me in on a few details of a few out of class things he is working that will help all of his students. More on that later.

That’s all, just wanted to give a quick update. Now back to the DocCD for me.

The cost is NOT going up $1000!!! Read closer, its just going up $495!!! Thats less then $500 more and you get all of Narbik 2.0 AND 360. Retakes are always going to be free, the cost I was talking about is for the 360 materials, NOT retaking the class.

Now go sign up! He talked more about it today, it will be totally worth it.