Internetwork Expert Volume 3: Lab 3

Finally finished IEWB Vol 3 lab 3. Overall I would rate this at 7 with a huge IGP section. I did have a few issues but I was able to keep up the speed.

• Section 1 – Troubleshooting (10 min): There were two faults with the initial configuration. SW1′s ip address for fa0/1 was incorrect and SW3′s interface vlan number was wrong. I think IP address issues are tough to spot because you have to look at every single config and sometimes you can miss something obvoius. (10 min)
• Section 2 – Switching (45 min)
  • Task 2.1 – VLAN Assignments (15 min): This task did not state what mode to use on the switches but if you read ahead then you can see that one of the VLANs is 2569 which is extended range vlan. I had to look this up on doccd but basically all you have to do is set the vtp mode to transparent and then you can create extended range vlans . (19 min)
  • Task 2.2 – Trunking (15 min): Created dot1Q trunks between all the switches. (3 min)
  • Task 2.3 – EtherChannel (15 min): Configured L2 etherchannels between the switches using LACP. (3 min)
• Section 3 – WAN (40 min)
  • Task 3.1 – Point-to-Point (10 min): Basic frame-relay configuration with one little issue. They wanted me to use inverse-ARP for the related DLCIs but not for other DLCIs. So I had to disable inverse-ARP for all other DLCIs that were learnt on that interface. (6 min)
  • Task 3.2 – Multipoint (10 min): The key here was to use multipoint subinterface so that the interface will go down when the DLCIs change state to inactive or deleted. (8 min)
  • Task 3.3 – Point-to-Point (10 min): Basic point to point configuration to connect BB1 to R6.  (2 min)
  • Task 3.4 & 3.5 – PPP (10 min): Another easy PPP configuration. I am glad that I watched IE’s PPP CoD because now I really understand the concepts behind PPP. (4 min)
• Section 4 – IGP (1 hour 45 min)
  • Task 4.1 – RIPv2 (10 min): Configured RIPv2 between R3, R4 and R5. R3 required MD5 authentication between R3 and BB2. (8 min)
  • Task 4.2 – RIPv2 (5 min): I had to disable source-check for this to work. (2 min)
  • Task 4.3 – RIPv2 Metric Manipulation (5 min): This required offset-list so that R5 will see routes with a metric of 15. I misread this and thought they wanted metric 15 on R4. Lesson learnt: read read read and pay attention. (7 min)
  • Task 4.4 – OSPF (10 min): So another nbma configuration where we were not allowed to change the network-type. That’s a clue to use neighbor statement. (4 min)
  • Task 4.5 – OSPF (5 min): This one threw me off because I did not read ahead. I had no area 0 configured and they were asking me to setup virtual links Task 4.6 states that we need to advertise R1′s Loopback0 into Area 0. Other than that it was not bad. (6 min)
  • Task 4.6 - OSPF (5 min): So I was asked to advertise my loopbacks into OSPF but they have to appear as /24. As you know, by default if you advertise loopback interfaces, they will appear as /32. So this was a clue that we have to use ip ospf network point-to-point. (2 min)
  • Task 4.7 – OSPF Loopback Advertisement (5 min): This task wanted to advertise loopback of R4 into OSPF but same rule, it should appear as /24. The clue here was that this should not belong to any particular area aka redistribution. (3 min)
  • Task 4.8 – OSPF Loopback Advertisement (5 min): Another /24 loopback advertisement and this one had a restriction on ospf network type. So I went ahead and advertised into a fake area. (4 min)
  • Task 4.9 – OSPF (10 min): This task was an interesting one. It wanted to see loopback of R5 as /24 but we were not allowed to use ospf network type or redistribute connected command. After struggling to find a solution, I looked through the SG to see that they advertised the loopback into rip and then redistributed rip into OSPF. I am not sure if this is right but I guess they did not use redistribute connected so it is not wrong either. (5 min)
  • Task 4.10 – EIGRP (5 min): This was a basic EIGRP configuration so nothing fancy here. (5 min)
  • Task 4.11 – EIGRP (5 min): EIGRP configured on R6 and BB1 with MD5 authentication. (5 min)
  • Task 4.12 – EIGRP Summarization (5 min): This required some thinking because the task wanted us to advertise loopbacks of R2, R6 and SW3 as /23. So I had to configure summary address on those three. (5 min)
  • Task 4.13 – IGP Redistribution (15 min): I did struggle a little with redistribution but was able to get it going. (10 min)
  • Task 4.14 – IGP Redistribution Loop Prevention (10 min): Since I always do my redistribution with tagging so this was not that big of a deal. I already took care of this in task 4.13. (0 min)
• Section 5 – BGP (30 min)
  • Task 5.1 – Peerings (25 min): Setting up the peerings was not difficult but ofcourse it was time consuming. Then I also had to redistribute BGP into IGP to get the reachibility going. (15 min)
  • Task 5.2 – BGP Summarization (5 min): Very basic summarization task. Must know your binary. (5 min)

I am liking these speed labs because you know that they are only for core so you can really speed through. I need to have a game plan for 8 hour labs too so let’s see what I can develop after I finish these. Time to move on to Lab 4.