Aaron's Worthless Words

If you follow the blog, you know I’ve had quite an adventure getting my CCNP.  Finally, this past Monday, after what seemed liked years of struggling, I finished up my ROUTE test and got the email telling me I’d made it.  I’ve learned a lot over the course, but, more than the technical details, I learned more about how to prepare for the exams.  It’s too bad I hit the moment of enlightenment after I reached the end of the line.  Well, at least this line; there will be others very soon.

Here’s a list of some of the things I’ve learned about preparing for Cisco exams.  I’m not the authority on test taking, mind you, but I’ve done my fair share of test taking.  I hope someone can use the advice and not have to struggle through things like I did.

• Create a blog and update at least weekly.

A blog  makes you check your facts beyond a shadow of a doubt.  No one wants to get embarrassed by posting inaccurate information, and, by forcing yourself to go public with your studies, you’ll find yourself going that extra step.  One of my big problems was that I would read a topic, think about it for a second, then move on thinking I knew it thoroughly.  Usually I was wrong, and my blog actually forced me to go through a topic over and over again and focus on the details.

• Get on Twitter.

I try to avoid using buzzwords, but the collaboration is just astounding in the Twitterverse.  There are some great people on Twitter who are more than willing to help you out and provide motivation.  I’ve found that CCIEs are helping CCENT candidates, and CCNAs are all exchanging study notes.  If you don’t understand a topic, use your 140 characters to ask, and someone will usually help.

• Read more than one book.  Read more than 2 books.

The latest CCNP exams (ROUTE and SWITCH at least) go beyond any one book.  In order to understand a topic, I had to get the same information from several different places to understand what was really going on.  My ONT experiences taught me that.  I used only one book to study for that test, and that was a huge mistake.  The three chapters on wireless weren’t enough to cover the shear number of wireless questions on the exam.  I finally passed when I got other books involved, and, without them, I may still be scheduling that exam weekly trying to pass it. 

• Don’t rely on the official certification guides.

The official certification guides are notorious for being incomplete.  I had purchased the library a few years back, so I used those to study for the ISCW,  ONT, and BCMSN.  In retrospect, I can see that they are a good desk reference, but they fail to cover a lot of topics and situations that appear on the exams.  See “Read more than one book.”

• Use the blueprint.

The blueprint is Cisco’s official word on the topics on the exam, so make sure you understand each and every bullet thoroughly.

• Read blogs.

There are lots of network blogs out there, and they’re all worth your time.  Add them all to your favorite RSS reader and check them out daily.  Even if the author is speaking above your technical level, keep reading.  You will catch up quickly and learn a lot of valuable information.

• Read blog comments.

Make sure you look through the comments of a blog post you find interesting.  Someone may have left some information that will put you over the top of the understanding mountain.

• Study above the expected level of knowledge.

I’m not saying you should read CCIE books for your CCENT exam, but answer any questions you think of when studying.  If you’re reading about OSPF and read about type-3 and type-5 LSAs, natural curiosity should lead you to ask what type-4s do, right?  Well, what’s wrong with finding out and adding that to your notes?  You’re going to need that information later anyway.

• Learn the terminology.

One thing that got me was not knowing what terms were defined to mean.  I knew the general definitions of them, but, when presented outside of certain contexts, I had to scratch the old bean to figure out what the question was really asking.  If you encounter a term, define it in your head fully.  Don’t just picture it and move on.  A complete definition is the way to go here.

• Read the glossary.

After you are confident that you know a topic, go through your books’ glossaries and define everything from beginning to end.  Yes, it’s very daunting and boring, but it’s a great test of the terminology and reinforces how different terms are related.  You may know the definition of a term, but you may not realize how it’s related to a topic or line on the blueprint.  As an added benefit, the glossary also tells you where to look if you don’t know the definition.

Send any CCIE study guides questions my way.

As always, corrections are requested.

Study Questions

• I’ve got IGRP and EIGRP both configured with the same AS number.  What’s special about this configuration?

If both use the same AS number, then they automatically redistribute their routes into each other without using the redistribute command.

• When redistributing one IGP into another, where’s a good place to filter routes?

There’s no one good place, but at the router(s) that’s doing the redistribution is a good start.  There’s no need to send an IGP a bunch of routes it doesn’t need.

• When redistributing one IGP into another, where’s a good place to summarize routes?

There’s no one good place, but that may be best done at the router just inside the redistributing router.  If the redistributing router only sees the summary route, that’s what it will pass to the other IGP.

• What’s the default metric of RIP?

That’s infinity, so it’s unreachable with an explicit metric.

• I’ve redistributed OSPF into RIP, but I don’t see my subnets there.  What gives?

RIP automatically summarized routes, so look for summaries instead of specific subnets.

• How can you limit the number of routes redistributed into EIGRP or OSPF?

Use the redistribute maximum-prefix X directive under the routing protocol, where X is the maximum number of routes.

• What are the metrics of connected routes when redistributed into EIGRP?

Those routes take the metric of the associated interface instead of using the metric you gave to the redistribution.  [This seems fishy at best.  Can anyone help clarify, please?]

• I have 845734928 interfaces on my router, but I only want to use 3 of them for EIGRP and only want to configure a single network statement.  What’s the easiest way to do that?

Set all the interfaces as passive with the passive-interface default router subcommand.  Next, make all your interesting interfaces non-passive with the no passive-interface X subcommand.  Now you can configure network 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 to match all the interfaces, but only the interesting interfaces will participate.

• What is the term for the rank of trustworthiness a routing protocol provides?

Administrative distance

• How can I change the AD of external EIGRP routes to 201 while keeping the default AD for internal EIGRP routes?

Router1(config-router)#distance eigrp 90 201
You have to set both, so you’ll have to remember that EIGRP has an AD of 90 for internal routes by default.

• How can I change the AD of OSPF routes to 192.168.0.0/24 to 202?

Router1(config)#access-list 88 permit 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.255
Router1(config)#router ospf X
Router1(config)#distance 202 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 88

• Is it possible to set the AD of different OSPF routes types like intra-area and interarea?

Yes.  You can give it the old distance ospf inter-area X to change the AD.  It also works for intra-area and external routes.

• Is it possible to set the AD of an external OSPF route to 192.168.100.0/24 to 202 without changing the others?

I would have though you could use a route-map for that, but I can’t find a proper set command in a route-map.  [A little help, please.]

I didn’t do so well on IGP redistribution the last time out, so here’s some more stuff to study.  As always, feel free to correct.

Study Questions

• What three things are needed to be able to redistribute one routing protocol into another?

1. One or more links into each routing protocol
2. A proper, working config for each protocol
3. The addition of the redistribute command to one or more of the protocols

• You just configured OSPF to redistribute EIGRP routes, but EIGRP, with the network statement of network 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0, is configured with a passive interface.  Does this interface’s connected network get redistributed?

Yes, it does.  Even if it’s not participating in routing, it’s still an interface that EIGRP is configured to use, so it goes along for a ride on the redistribution train.

• Name three ways to set the metric of redistributed routes in EIGRP.

1.  default-metric …
2.  redistribute X metric …
3.  redistribute X route-map …

• How can I set the metric for all OSPF routes redistributed into EIGRP?

Use the redistribute ospf X metric command.

• You are redistributing OSPF into EIGRP and want to set the metric of one particular route to another set of metric values (BW, delay, etc.).  How do you do that?

Use a route-map to match the single route and to set the new values.

• Routes from what routing protocol need a metric set when redistributing into EIGRP?  Routes from what protocols don’t?

Routes from another EIGRP instance have their metrics copied over; all others need to have it set.

• What’s the default metric of a BGP route when redistributed into OSPF?  EIGRP?

BGP has a metric of 1 in OSPF.  There is not default metric in EIGRP without some configuration.

• You left out the subnet keyword when redistributing EIGRP into OSPF.  What is the result?

Only classful routes will be redistributed and only if EIGRP has a classful route to redistribute.

• You left out the subnet keyword when redistributing OSPF into EIGRP .  What is the result?

There is no subnet keyword for redistribution under EIGRP.

• Routes from what routing protocol need a metric set when redistributing into OSPF?  Routes from what protocols don’t?

OSPF set metrics automatically.  If the route came from another OSPF process, the metric is copied over.  If the route came from BGP, the metric is set to 1; if it came from any other routing protocol, the metric is set to 20.

• What are three ways to manipulate the metric of redistributed routes in OSPF?

1.  default-metric …
2.  redistribute X metric …
3.  redistribute X route-map …

• My ASBR is advertising static routes into area 0, but I’m not seeing any type-5 LSAs in area 1.  What’s gives?

Assuming everything else is configured correctly and no filtering is done, area 1 is probably a stub area of some kind.

• My ASBR is advertising static routes into area 1, but I’m not seeing any type-5 LSAs in that area.  What gives?

Area 1 is probably an NSSA or totally NSSA area, so any external routes are flooded as type-7s – note type-5s.

• If I look at the OSPF database on my router, I see that a whole bunch of type-5 LSAs advertised from the router with the ID of 1.1.1.1.  What does that say about that router?

Among other things, that router is an ASBR and is redistributing external routes into that area.

• I see several routes in the OSPF database with a cost of 20.  What metric type are those routes?

More likely than not, they are type-2 routes (O E2).

• I have two type-5 LSAs for the same network through two different ABRs; both are of the type-2 metric.  How does the router decide which one to use?

Since both routes are E2, they will have a metric of 20 (unless manipulated somehow), so looking at the intra-area cost results in a tie.  The router will then look at the type-4 LSAs which contain the cost from the ABR to the ASBR.  Since each ABR floods these type-4s, the router knows which ABR is closer to the ASBR advertising the route.  The lower metric in the type-4 LSAs wins.

• I have two type-5 LSAs for the same network through two different ABRs; both are of the type-1 metric.  How does the router decide which one to use?

Since both routes are E1, the costs to the ABR are first compared since they may be different.  If tied, the type-4 LSA’s cost to the ASBR is compared.  If still tied, the external (type-5 LSAs) cost is compared.

• I have two type-5 LSAs for the same network through two different ABRs; one is type-1 and the other is type-2 ?  How does the router decide which one to use?

E1 routes are always preferred over E2 routes.

• Why can’t you redistribute static routes into a stubby network?  How can you make it work?

Stub networks do not flood type-5 LSAs, so the routes cannot be advertised into the area.  You can change it to a regular area to make it work.  You can also make it an NSSA or totally NSSA area.

• How do OSPF routes that come from type-7 LSAs appear in the routing table?

They appear as “O N1″ or “O N2″ depending on the metric type.

I took the ROUTE test today and failed like I usually do.  That makes me 3-4 on these P-level tests if you’re scoring at home.  Don’t worry, though.  I’m not giving up. 

In atypical fashion, I must say that the ROUTE test was a good test.  Let me say that again.  The ROUTE test was a good test.  I said good, though…not great.  There were a few problems with it that I’ll get to, but, overall, this is the best test I’ve ever taken for a Cisco cert.  The questions were very well-written and there were no obvious omissions or wrong details.  I failed this test because I simply didn’t put in enough work.

It wouldn’t be a complete test experience without a workstation crash, though, and I had one right away.  The test guy logged me in, and I started the test.  Like all of the Cisco tests, this one started with the same tutorial that walks you through how to use the interface and whatnot; I’ve gone this enough times, so I didn’t need to look at that again.  I clicked “End Tutorial” and was asked to confirm.  When I clicked “Yes”, the desktop (sans icons) was showing unexpectedly, and nothing was happening.  I waited for 3 minutes before asking for help.  This center hadn’t ever given a Cisco test (they just got the stuff to give Vue tests), so they called up Vue’s support for some answers.  It seems that this is a known problem (with this test?), and a hard reboot would fix it.  It did, and I found myself back in the game.

Like I said before, the test was good.  I might even give it a very good if not for the lockup.  Every question was clearly written by what seemed to be an English-speaking author.  There were no difficult phrases that I had to read over and over again to interpret.  When I read the question, it was obvious what I was being asked to do.  I didn’t have to guess like a lot of the questions on the SWITCH test, and, let me tell you, having a verb in every sentence makes things easier.  I also only had one or two questions where I had to infer a piece of missing information.  It usually helps if you have all the information, and this test did a really good job of doing such in comparison to the last 8589248 tests I’ve taken.

There was one particular question that I found annoying, though, and I let someone have it in the comment section.  A diagram showed a about 10 routes all interconnected in various patterns with the Internet and data center connected into the mesh.  Each link had a number on it with no description of what it was…it was just a number.  The question asked how many possible paths there were from the data center to the Internet if a certain setting change was made (I don’t want to violate NDA here).  Well, the setting had a lot to do with routes submitted to the RTM, and question didn’t ask about routes.  It specifically said paths.  I counted 18 different paths from one end of the network to the other.  Too bad the answers were in the low single digits.  I just guessed at that one since I had no idea what they were asking.

As you figured out by now, this is yet another testing center.  I think this makes the 7th one I’ve tried over my testing career, and it was a duesy.  This one is only 30 minutes away, so it’s much more convenient than all the others, so it’s got that going for it.  The building it’s in is pretty old, but the room is well insulated from the outside.  On top of that, the town it’s in is a sleepy little fishing/tourist village, so all the traffic is at the other end of the road which makes for a very quiet facility.  The people were great, too.  They were helpful and apologetic about the lockup (even though I assured them it was a Vue problem like I’d seen in the past).  Plus, do you know any testing center with a view like this?    I’ll definitely go back there again for my tests.

Moral of the Story:  Cisco put out a good test, but I’m too lazy to pass it.

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Or neighborships, as they call it in the book.  What a terrible word.

Study Questions

• What settings must match between two routers in order to become EIGRP neighbors?

Both routers must be in the same primary subnet
Both routers must be configured to use the same k-values
Both routers must in the same AS
Both routers must have the same authentication configuration (within reason)
The interfaces facing each other must not be passive

• What are the default hello and hold times in EIGRP?

On links with bandwidth > 1.544Mbps:
Hello:  5 sec
Hold:  15 sec

On links with bandwidth <= 1.544
Hello:  60 sec
Hold:  180 sec

• How do you change the hello and hold times?

You set these values at the interface.

R1(config-if)#ip hello-interval eigrp 1 X
R1(config-if)#ip hold-tim eigrp 1 X

• How do you keep an interface from being used for EIGRP discovery?

Don’t configure a network statement that includes that interface
Make the interface passive
Configure static neighbors for that interface

• Why might NTP be a good thing to use in regards to EIGRP?

EIGRP uses key chains for authentication.  Key chains can be configured with a range of valid dates and times.  If the time on two routers was off by even a few seconds, some keys would expire, causing neighbor relationships to drop.

• How do you configure EIGRP authentication?

In each interface participating in EIGRP, you configure the authentication mode and the key chain to use.

R1(config-if)#ip authentication mode eigrp 1 md5
R1(config-if)#ip authentication key-chain eigrp 1 KEYCHAIN1

• What are the k-values that EIGRP uses?

k1 = bandwidth
k2 = load
k3 = delay
k4 = reliability
k5 = MTU

• How does a router choose its router ID in EIGRP?

First, it looks for a configured router-id in the EIGRP configuration.  If none exists, it uses the highest (largest) IP address configured on a loopback interface.  If no loopbacks exist, it uses the highest IP configured on the other interfaces.

What Command Was That?

What command tells you…

• …whether a neighbor was discovered or statically configured?

show ip eigrp neighbor detail

• …what interfaces are involved in EIGRP?

show ip eigrp interfaces

• …what k-values your router is using?

show ip protocols

• …how long your router has been neighbored with another router?

show ip eigrp neighbors

• …what your router ID is?

show ip eigrp topology
show ip eigrp accounting

• …a summary of the configured network statements?

show ip protocols

• …the configured hello interval?

show ip eigrp interface detail

• …the configured hold time?

There’s isn’t a way to do it directly.  You have to check your neighbors several times over the course of a few seconds to see where the hold timers drop to before resetting.

I’ve seen and used the command before, but I’ve never really seen any use of the show ip protocols command until tonight while reading up for my ROUTE test.  There’s a lot of good information in the output, and, from the way the book is reading, this is a great candidate for use in a lab question.

To check it out a bit, I set up a small network with four routers connected only to a single Ethernet segment.  I set up one router to run EIGRP, OSPF, and BGP to each one of the other routers just so I could see the output for the different routing protocols.  Here’s what puked out after struggling with GNS for a few minutes.

R1#sh ip protocols
Routing Protocol is "eigrp 1"
  Outgoing update filter list for all interfaces is not set
  Incoming update filter list for all interfaces is not set
  Default networks flagged in outgoing updates
  Default networks accepted from incoming updates
  EIGRP metric weight K1=1, K2=0, K3=1, K4=0, K5=0
  EIGRP maximum hopcount 100
  EIGRP maximum metric variance 1
  Redistributing: eigrp 1
  EIGRP NSF-aware route hold timer is 240s
  Automatic network summarization is in effect
  Maximum path: 4
  Routing for Networks:
    192.168.0.0
  Routing Information Sources:
    Gateway         Distance      Last Update
  Distance: internal 90 external 170

Routing Protocol is "ospf 1"
  Outgoing update filter list for all interfaces is not set
  Incoming update filter list for all interfaces is not set
  Router ID 192.168.0.101
  Number of areas in this router is 1. 1 normal 0 stub 0 nssa
  Maximum path: 4
  Routing for Networks:
    192.168.0.0 0.0.0.255 area 0
 Reference bandwidth unit is 100 mbps
  Routing Information Sources:
    Gateway         Distance      Last Update
  Distance: (default is 110)

Routing Protocol is "bgp 65001"
  Outgoing update filter list for all interfaces is not set
  Incoming update filter list for all interfaces is not set
  IGP synchronization is disabled
  Automatic route summarization is disabled
  Neighbor(s):
    Address          FiltIn FiltOut DistIn DistOut Weight RouteMap
    192.168.0.104
  Maximum path: 1
  Routing Information Sources:
    Gateway         Distance      Last Update
  Distance: external 20 internal 200 local 200

The EIGRP section shows some important details, including what k-values are used, networks configured, and administrative distance (AD) of the various route types (internal and external).  The OSPF section shows the router ID, number of areas on the router, and number of area types (normal, stub, NSSA), as well as the networks configured and the AD.  The section regarding BGP shows summarization status, neighbors (along with any filter lists, distribution lists, local weights, and route-maps if they were configured), and the ADs again.

That’s good stuff to know.  I’ll have to put that command in usual repertoire.

I did my standard 2ish-hour drive to the closest testing center today to take the SWTCH test (642-813).  Utter failure.  That’s 3 for those scoring at home.

The test was the absolute worst I’ve ever taken.  I know that I complain a lot, but this is totally justified in my eyes.  My 4th grade spelling tests were better than this.  I’ve seen kindergarten plays with better production value.

First of all, it was poorly written.  Whoever wrote those questions has a few pieces of information about English sentence structure missing from their skill set.  A sentence needs a verb, right?  Well, a lot of the sentences were missing those.  It’s kind of important to know what the whole point of the sentence is, or is that too much to ask?  The “drag this over here” exercise questions all started with the same 13-word phrase that left the question so long that it was unreadable.  A couple of commas would have been nice in some.  Others I just had to infer from the answers what they were trying to ask.

There were lots of spelling errors as well.  Most of them were just stupid stuff like switched letters or missing characters, but, at one point, I had to figure out that I needed to look at the “router” instead of the “route”.  That’s not really cool.  The misspellings were so bad that they were actually misspelling the hostnames on the diagrams provided.  Does anyone even try any more?

Let’s talk about the technical level of the test.  If I didn’t know any better, I would swear I was taking a CCNA test.  The technical material was so elementary that it bordered on comical.  If I recall correctly (which I never do), there were about 3 questions on trunking which were so easy that my wife could answer them.  There were about 4 FHRP questions that were out of the “Cisco for Dummies” book.  I could go on, but I have better things about which to complain.

“So,” you might ask, “why did you fail it if it was so easy?”  That’s a great question.  I failed it because the name of the test is misleading.  When Cisco says “Implementing Cisco IP Switched Networks”, they really mean “Collecting Documentation About VLANs.”  There were at least four questions on this test that asked what information you need to collect before implementing some unknown step of a project involving VLANs.  Sometimes, the reference was to rollback plans.  Sometimes it discussed IP assignments.  Sometimes it even talked about collecting user requirements.  It seemed that nearly half of the questions on the test discussed planning for making changes or preparing change documentation.  There was very little “implementing.”

To top it all off, too, one of my labs froze.  I entered a command into a router, and it didn’t come back.  I couldn’t change to the other lab windows, either (the “Scenario” or “Topology” windows included), but my timer kept ticking.  I could click around in the testing software, but the lab itself was toast.  I got the administrator who helped me out a bit after the machine was rebooted.  I didn’t run out of time or anything, but getting up to find help to troubleshoot a problem really throws you off.

How about some closing words?  First of all, I have given up on the Cisco Press books and other materials.  Each time I use them they have little to no coverage about topics on the test itself.  The ISCW was that way, and we all know about my problems with the ONT.  I figured that those were just aged text, but SWITCH is only a month or two old, isn’t it?  That means the test hasn’t had that much time to change, but the materials are totally different already.

I actually have an example of the books leading the reader directly away from the test materials.  I’m reading from the “CCNP SWITCH 642-813 Quick Reference” book by Donohue.  On page 8, it discusses the PPDIOO lifecycle approach.

Network engineers at the CCNP level will likely be involved at the implementation and following phases.  They can also participate in the design phase.

That doesn’t make any sense, does it?  Didn’t I just say that there were a good number of questions on preparation (the first P) and planning (the second P).  Both of those come before the design phase.

Somebody help me out here.  What am I missing?  Is there some magical book series that has the answers?

I should have bought testing vouchers in bulk when they were $150.

Audio commentary

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UPDATE:  It seems that the idea of seeing topics on the exam that aren’t are the test go beyond just me.  I’m getting in touch with as many people related to the SWITCH book as I can to let them know that this is a serious problem.  I’m sure I’ll have a post or two on the outcome of that effort.

I took the ONT again today.  The stench of failure is upon me for a second time, and I’m beginning to think I’m not the god-like person that everyone thinks I am.  I went into the test very confidently.  I did extra time on my weak points from the last attempt and knew it inside and out.  I put hours and hours of lab time in and got other books and online materials involved.  I was absolutely convinced that I would blow this thing away, but, alas, it was not to be.

If you ignore the wireless questions, the test was pretty fair.  There were questions in the usual poor wording that made you doubt things that you know are absolutely true.  Unlike last time, though, I didn’t find any questions where I was totally lost.  There were some questions that were very ambiguous, but only one was out of realm of possibility (it actually required a calculator to answer correctly).  All in all, it was a good test sans the wireless stuff.

Ah, the wireless questions.  I complained last time that there was one needlessly-obscure questions about WLC CLI, and that exact question was on the test today.  The additional CLI questions were downright sadistic, though, and the question about how to do initial configuration was really uncalled for.  Oh, I almost forgot about the question asking what model of WLCs support feature X.  Really?  Has there always been a requirement to know the features of each model in a product line?  I think I got two (maybe three) questions about the technologies like WPA and DCF.

Yes, I know it sounds like I’m making excuses, but I’m not the kind of person who shifts the blame.  If I’m the cause of the problem, I’ll fess up to it.  If I thought I could have done better, I’ll admit it.  If I chose to ignore a topic and get bitten for it, I’ll happily say it was my fault.  In this case, I did more than what I thought was appropriate and still failed.

I believe this puts me far enough behind my schedule to have to take another path to CCNP.  My first reaction would be go the ROUTE/SWITCH/TSHOOT path.  Since I’m already scheduled to take a ROUTE class, it seems the obvious choice.

Hear the Director’s Commentary on this post:

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I failed the ONT test today.  It was an utter lack of subject matter knowledge that did me in from the beginning.  When the first three questions mention things that I’ve never even heard, it’s going to be a long test.  I’ll take blame on it for sure, but the test was a lot darker than I imagined it would be.

I heard from a couple people that the ONT test was the easiest of the 4 CCNP test.  I must say today’s test was a LOT harder than the ISCW test I took back in December.  Most of the questions were fair, but there were a few that were down-right evil or unanswerable.  Without giving too much away, there were some matching questions that had multiple items with multiple answers, rendering the answer to a guess.  I even ran into a CLI question about the WLC, which surely wasn’t mentioned anywhere I studied, and I don’t have a spare sitting around on which to test.  The icing, though, was the number of questions about FRTS; I know I need to understand it, but the magical question dice landed on that topic way too many times in my opinion.

At the heart of it, I think my demise stemmed from using only the Cisco Press book.  I really needed to get a wider exposure to the topics.  Though the CP books might have mentioned some topics that I missed, a lot of it is mentioned in passing but appeared in detail on the test.  I would think getting different training would fix that problem and I’ll be using some of our CLCs this week to do just that

The facility was great, though.  I was comfortable and couldn’t hear traffic or the lecture across the hall this time.  At least I know a good place to take tests now.  I hope somebody gets some value from my absolute failure.

Send any test vouchers questions my way.

Elements of Cisco Unified Wireless Network

• Client devices – Cisco compatible extensions on WLAN clients
• Mobility platform – allows configuration of LWAPs through WLCs
• Network unification – integration into the rest of the network with WLCs doing RF management, IPS, etc.
• World-class network management – centralized management through WCS
• Unified advanced services – supports advanced technologies and threat detection

WLAN Implementation

Autonomous and LWAP

Wireless LAN Services Engine (WLSE)

• Part of CiscoWorks
• Manages autonomous APs
• Centralized configuration, firmware, and radio management
• Autoconfig of new APs
• Misconfiguration and rogue AP alerts
• Proactive monitoring of APs, bridges, and 802.1x servers
• Supports SSH, HTTP, CDP, SNMP for up to 2500 APs
• WLSE Express supports 100 devices in either automatic or manual setups

Wireless Control System (WCS)

• Supports 50 WLCs and 1500 APs
• Three versions
  • Base – can determine with which APs a devices in associated
  • Location – Base plus RF fingerprinting
  • Location + 2700 Series Wireless Location Appliance – Tracks devices in real time and stores historical location data