Bad, bad Wendell. Zero progress on my cert goals this year. How about you?

Back in January, I posted about our collective new year's resolutions regarding certification. We had a pretty healthy response on the survey as to what certifications you each planned for 2008. I promised then to help in an ever so slight way by asking you each quarter about your progress. Hopefully, stopping for a few minutes to consider your current progress will be worth the time. So... how's your progress?

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It took me almost 3 months, but together we made it through a good discussion of how to build a CCNP lab. After I finished the CCNA lab series before that, I posted a summary page with links to all the blog posts in the series. Likewise, here's a set of links to all the CCNP lab series posts. Enjoy!

Wendell

CCNP Lab Part 1 - Overview and Budget Survey

CCNP Lab Part 2 How Badly Do You Need an L3 Switch?

CCNP Lab Part 3 - Which L2 Switch?

CCNP Lab Part 4 - Where's the Beef in ONT?

CCNP Lab Part 5 - CCNP Wireless Config (Poll)

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A few weeks ago, I announced a small contest for anyone willing to give a suggested alternative to some of my CCNP lab suggestions. After countless analysis, considering, and a few coin flips, I've chosen a winner. More interesting to most of you though will be why I chose the winner, so let me ramble about that for today's blog.

In my posting for a $1200 CCNP lab, I had posted the following build list:

$1200 Lab 1: Switch-centric

3 X 2950 w/ standard Image                $450

2 X 1710                                             $160

3 X 2610                                             $375

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Finally... last budget of the 3 options. If you haven't been reading the blog, there's a lot of background to catch up - should be relatively easy to find in the past weeks. Last week, I posted about a suggested CCNP lab with an $800 budget. Earlier this week, I posted about the $1200 budget.  Today, I'll hit the $1600 budget.

Same rules as last post, with almost the same assumptions. I'll repeat them here for completeness:

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If you're new here, well, you picked a bad time to start, unless you want to read the last 10 weeks of posts. We're almost to the end of the CCNP lab madness. Last week, I posted about a suggested CCNP lab with an $800 budget. Today, let's expand that to a $1200 budget.

Same rules as last post, with almost the same assumptions. I'll repeat them here for completeness:

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Well, I'm finally ready to spell it out - what would I buy with $800 for a CCNP lab? Your job is to tell us all how you'd tweak my suggestion, or what you'd do that was totally different. Also, if you want to join in the free book contest I announced yesterday, then make sure you post your alternative design using those same requirements.

Again, my assumptions:

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As promised, and just for fun, I want to do a contest. There's no one right way to build this CCNP lab we've been discussing for a while, even making lots of assumptions. So, I'm going to offer a few suggestions for each budget range. As usual, you can comment about my choices, tell me what you'd do different, tell me what models/IOS versions/cards might make it better, what models you can get for cheaper, and so on - just like we've been doing. However, for the contest, if you'll take just a little extra effort, you'll have a shot at a free Cisco Press book.

So, here are the rules.

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What a mess! There's just too many variables for my little processor. There's no right answer, and there's no best solution.

Yep, it's time to pick which routers I'd suggest for a CCNP lab. We've discussed many in the last few months in this blog. But "best" depends on a lot of factors, including cost that varies from week to week on Ebay, features supported by each platform/IOS/feature set, the availability of that IOS version/feature set based on your relationship with Cisco, whether Feature Navigator lists all features or not, and whether you really need to practice several features that have only a little coverage for the CCNP exams.

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Just a quick invite here - nothing about certs in today's posts. Skyline ATS, where I teach classes, is having an open house at their Chicago offices this coming Thursday. If you're in the neighborhood, feel free to stop by for a visit. I'll be there talking about CCNA exam tips, but there will be other short techie topics, free food and giveaways, and the like. It's near O'hare. To register, go to: http://www.skyline-ats.com/Corporate/Training/T_Promotion.php#OpenHouse.

I'll get the next CCNP lab post up in the next day or so....

Wendell

Yes, for those of you who've been sticking with me on this seemingly un-ending ramble about CCNP labbing: it' finally reaching it's conclusion. I've covered all I'm going to about content on th eexams. Next, I'll spend a few posts making suggestions on gear, topologies, and build lists for building your own CCNP lab. I'll start by listing some thoughts about which switches to buy today, routers next post, and the pull together some build lists.

For budget, I'm going to fall back on the budget survey I asked about a few months back. Feel free to weigh in if you haven't already - I'll look at the results again before I put the final build list together. Or just post on today's page and I'll see it there.

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I just forgot. Of all the CCNP exams, ISCW covers the broadest range of topics. When I covered ISCW a few weeks ago, I covered all the main ISCW topics, focusing on the security topics. But I just forgot MPLS. Any interestingly enough, as our survey has shown over the last few weeks, MPLS is one of the topics that more people want to hear about when this series is finished. So, before turning my attention to the bigger picture of what to put in a CCNP lab, I need to post a few comments about MPLS and the ISCW exam.

First, for those of you unfamiliar with MPLS, today "MPLS" is almost as big as saying "IP routing".

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Of all the CCNP exams, BSCI is probably the most familiar to most people. It has the most overlap with the topics in CCNA, it's got a lot of topics that people use in their real jobs, and the topics covered haven't changed a lot over the years. So, I left it as the last of the 4 exams to look at in this CCNP lab series. Today, I'll look at the topics, and talk about some really inexpensive options for BSCI labbing.

First, for perspective, the main hands-on topics for BSCI are:

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ISCW focuses on router features, so after the discussion of features and feature sets in the previous post, we next need to look at the routers that can support these feature sets. Of course, doing an exhaustive search takes a lot of time, so I've decided to list the platforms supported, according to the feature navigator, for the three feature sets I mentioned in the last post - both for 12.4 mainline and 12.4T. They you can search for your favorites.

While searching, I was paying particular attention to some of the popular cheaper routers that we've discussed here in the past. In particular, I was looking at 2500, 2600, 2600XM, 3640, 800's (837/877 just because of some earlier posts), and 1801/1841 to look at some more current routers for perspective.

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So, back to the CCNP lab stuff. I've already discussed some of the considerations for the BCMSN and ONT exams in this blog during the past 3-4 weeks. Today, I'll begin to examine the ISCW exam, which means we'll look at the configuration topics for the exam, and in this case, focus on IOS versions and feature sets.

First, a quick review of the ISCW exam topics shows quite a variety of features. After reviewing the exam topics and doing a little research, two important items seemed to leap to the forefront:

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I'm back! The beach was great - high 80's every day, beautiful weather, plenty of sun - just what the doctor ordered. But I returned to a surprise about one of the surveys I left in the previous posting - that around 50% of the folks that responded as "pursuing CCNP" said that less than 25% of their current job required them to work on routers and switches.

Frankly, the stats surprised me. Maybe it shouldn't have surprised me, and maybe everyone's ahead of me on this observation. So, today I'm going to make a few guesses about CCNP and job progressions, and ask all of you to give me your ideas regarding your current and hopefully future job roles.

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7 hours it took to clear the driveway after last weekend's snow. (Last time I buy a house with a looooong driveway!) But in a mere 48 hours and I'll be on my way to the beach. I've got a bad case of Spring Fever, and it's going to translate into a brief break from the CCNP lab series - to get your opinions, get some ideas for later in the Spring, and to avoid getting knee-deep in ISCW right before going to the beach.

So, let's say your boss gives you $1500 in capital to buy gear to study for CCNP - gear the company will own, but you can keep it at home or at work while you study. He also gives you enough budget to go to one CCNP-related course. There's not enough $$ to go to a bootcamp that covers multiple courses - the courses each cover 1 of the 4 exams.

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So far in this CCNP lab series, we've discussed all of the gear you'll need for studying the topics in BCMSN and ONT, except for the wireless coverage. Today I'll look at the wireless coverage in CCNP - it's only in the BCMSN and ONT exams, not in the other two CCNP exams - and look at what should be some clear trade-offs when building a low-cost lab to prepare for CCNP. Then I'll let you all click a poll so we can know what the group is generally thinking about for wireless.

First, for perspective, here are the official exam topics from ONT that mention wireless:

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Writing about exams that have clear non-disclosure agreements can be a bit of a challenge. So, in this lab series, I've been taking the published information about the exams at face value, looking for the words "configure", "verify", and "troubleshoot" in the exam topics to state what hands-on skills will be tested on the ONT exam - and it makes me wonder like the old lady in the old Wendy's commercials, "Where's the Beef"?

Here's why: roughly 75% of the ONT exam topics related to QoS on routers, with the remaining 25% on wireless. Ignoring wireless for now, there are only 3 QoS exam topics that use those three keywords (config, verify, t'shoot):

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LAN switches could be the largest expense in a CCNP lab. In keeping with the goal of looking at CCNP labs with the cost being one of the most important factors, today I'll look at three layer 2 switches - the 2900XL series, the 2950 w/ standard image, and the 2950 with enhanced image - all with an eye towards doing the functions covered for the BCMSN exam.

I settled on comparing these three options in part because that's where the CCNA discussions led us in our efforts to keep the cost low while still getting something out of the hardware. Briefly, the 2900XLs are cheap, and have many of the functions needed for CCNA level switching, but the syntax of the commands often differ from the 2950 and 2960 series L2 switches.

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The single biggest cost for gear for a CCNP lab will be the cost of a layer 3 switch - assuming you really need one. Of the four CCNP exams, only the BCMSN exam requires a lot of LAN switch features. So, today, I'll examine the LAN switching features included on the BCMSN exam, and consider whether you really need a layer 3 switch or not.

First, let's break down the list of BCMSN exam topics. Here's a list with enough detail to make the discussion robust, separated separated by whether the feature is a layer 3 feature or layer 2:

Layer 2: VLAN, VLAN trunking, Etherchannel, STP, RSTP, MIST, RPVST, switch security features, LAN QoS, wireless clients, switch IP phone support

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