IPexpert Volume 3 Mock Lab 6 Review

This lab took me about 7 hours to complete, verify and grade. There a few things I did not think I would get, but I ended up with solutions for everything and pretty much all of them worked. There was a task for something I had never heard of, SSG, which I got by looking in the DocCD and browsing the context sensitive help. The question mark is your friend!

Also another tricky one was R5 had a new loopback that needed to be NATTED based on the outgoing interface. I spent a good chunk of time on this but once I figured it out, it was pretty basic. I just had to match interfaces and addresses in a route-map, and use the route-map on a few NAT statements.

Here's part of it:

access-list 55 permit 55.55.55.55
route-map VLAN15 permit 10
match ip address 55
match interface FastEthernet0/0
ip nat inside source route-map VLAN15 interface FastEthernet0/0 overload

Here's what I missed:

-7 Task 1.1, 1.2 Switching

Didn't create vlan 400 on CAT1 or CAT2 and didn't make CAT4 root for that vlan. Vlan 400 did not have any hosts but was used as a native vlan. The task said to make CAT4 root for any vlans you have to create on that switch. CAT4 had no hosts, but nevertheless we had to create the vlan and make it root. This task involved a lot of stuff so to lose points for a couple unnecessary things is a bummer.

-3 Task 5.1 Multicast

IGMP Filter task said to deny 227.0.0.43 - 227.0.0.99 but only use a permit statement. Silly me included 227.0.0.1-42 and 100-255. I completely forgot this was denying all the 224/8, 225/8, etc groups.

-3 Task 8.1 QOS

I don't know if I would have got this wrong but I kind of misunderstood it. R9 has a Fastethernet connection while BB3 has an Ethernet. The task said to base your MQC percentages of off BB3's link speed. Well, I used "bandwidth 10000" under R9's interface so all the percentages worked out. The SG modified the percentages themselves. For example, the task said to give SMTP 25%, so the SG gave it bandwidth 2500 as opposed to 25000.

Other differences:

Task 3.3 - SG had an extra OSPF VL between R2 and R6 in area 246. Not really needed but probably a good idea.

Task 4.4 - SG used cost-community to influence path selection, I used "set origin" in a route-map. So much easier!

Well that's it for tonight. Lab 7 tomorrow and lab 8 on Monday. I am almost done with all the IPexpert material. I have watched and/or listened to all the bootcamp stuff at least once or twice as well. I bought an IE mock lab for next month, and I am planning on doing the Cisco Assessor labs as well.