Tag: Cisco

Simple, Configurable Switching.

Greetings All. A quick-ish post today, but an important one for those of us set in our ways when it comes to different technologies.

I recently found myself in need of a new, small network-switch for my home office. Like many other professionals, I work from home. Unlike many other professionals, I have worked from home (when not traveling) for the last 12+ years. My home office resembles something of a lab meets a meeting space meets a man cave, with an office in the middle of that madness somewhere. I wired the home with Cat6 upon purchasing it but I need far more than just one wall drop (I converted Cat6 phone jacks to RJ45s, I love when contractors over-build!). To that end, I have a switch in my office that uplinks to the core/server switches in my network room. I need power over ethernet (PoE) as I have multiple IP phones and video units in various states of configuration as well as a Unifi AP installed that uses in-line power. I also need layer 2 capabilities and either LLDP-MED or CDP for my phones. On the flip-side I need a quiet switch as I am on the phone (or headset) multiple hours of the day dealing with customers that hold me to higher standards than they hold themselves.

In the past I’ve used, almost exclusively, Cisco switches as I work with the brand often in my professional endeavors and find them to be easy to deploy and understand (for the most part). The switch that I am replacing in this narrative is, in fact, a Cisco 3560CX-8PS. This flavor of 3560 is fan-less (quiet) and provides 8 Gigabit Ethernet ports with PoE+ (15.4 watts). It also has two copper/SFP Gigabit uplink ports as well. Additionally it supports basic inter-VLAN routing, which is not terribly important given the satellite nature of where it is deployed (VTP from the core). While this switch is great, it is bigger (physically) than it needs to be and it cost me around $800 on the gray market. Additionally, I found that I needed it for another project and thus I began searching for an office replacement. I first started my search by looking for another 3560CX, I can find refurbished models for $500-1000. I like Cisco gear, but not for that price. I looked at some HPE/Aruba options but those too are more expensive than I’d like and have roughly the same size constraints as mentioned above.

At this point I started to question what I really needed. I need the ability to tag and trunk VLANS and perform the other basic tenants of a solid Layer 2 switch. I need either Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) or Link Layer Discovery Protocol – Media (LLDP-MED) for my phones and video units. I need PoE, as stated before, but I honestly don’t need 8 ports, I could do with 4 in most situations. I want something small and I need something quiet. To that I end I looked where I should have started looking in the first place…Ubiquiti.

If you’ve read any of my other blog posts, you know that I have Ubiquiti wireless APs and that I also have a Ubiquiti USG security gateway, I’ll put a link here if you are curious about that adventure. With the APs and USG I have a Unifi Network Controller that is constantly running and provides very useful insights on the wireless and security portions of my network. With all of that said, their switching offerings were my next logical step and I went on Amazon and found a US-8-60W switch for $125 with tax (and free shipping). If you know Ubiquiti models, you will figure out that this is a previous generation of the controller-based 8-port PoE (on 4 ports) Gigabit Layer 2 switch. It is fan-less (quiet!) and has an external power supply that can be easily hidden. The 4 PoE+ ports supply up to 15.4 watts of power per interface and it has native support for LLDP-MED.

The installation was simple. I plugged it in and connected the uplink. It was adopted by the controller (with the help of Layer 2 discovery and DNS records) and the code was upgraded. From there I created port profiles and assigned them to the 8 ports.

From my initial testing, I found that LLDP-MED does exactly what I need it to and the interoperability with my Cisco core/server switches is seamless.

I also found that my Cisco IP phones had plenty of power and registered without issue on the correct VLANs.

I have been incredibly impressed by this switch, and the rest of my Ubiquiti gear. I am sure there are those that will argue that comparing Ubiquiti and Cisco is far from an apples to apples comparison. I believe that argument has merit, but I prefer to respond in this way; I was able to deploy Layer 2 switching with PoE for $125. I don’t really think anything else needs to be said.

Justin

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Quick & Dirty: Cisco Modern Router (ISR, ASR) Software Upgrades

Hello World!

Just a quick post today, and my usual apology for not posting more frequently.

If, like me, you find yourself doing ISR IOS XE upgrades, you realize that although it can be a quick process there is always room for improvement.

Today, while upgrading 15+ ISR 4451 CUBE routers, I decided to quickly “notepad script” my upgrade commands. For reference I am using an SFTP server for this upgrade but the plan works for FTP or TFTP if you wish.

My quick and dirty notepad script looks like this…

copy sftp: bootflash:
IP ADDRESS OF SFTP SERVER
USERNAME for SFTP SERVER
REMOTE SOFTWARE-PATH
LOCAL SOFTWARE-PATH
PASSWORD for SFTP SERVER
! (for Enter)

A quick copy and paste and the process has started. Once the copy is successful, a second quick and dirty script will change the boot path and then reboot your router.

config t
boot system bootflash:IOSXEFileName
exit
wr mem
reload
y

There is nothing special here, and there are far more elegant solutions but this works for me and hopefully it can work for you!

Justin

CUCM: The Logout Profile

Good Morning Readers!

Today’s post is quick and dirty. If you work in an environment where Extension Mobility is widely used, the content of this post is probably common knowledge and you can stop reading here if you like.

For those curious about Extension Mobility, there are a ton of resources on the Internet that can show you how to use and configure it as well as how it impacts your CUCM licensing. If you don’t know what CUCM stands for, this probably isn’t the post for you.

I was recently dealing some odd behavior from one of the 7841 IP Phones in my lab. Despite the fact that I had logged out my Extension Mobility (EM) user, their details (their User Device Profile) were still showing up on the physical phone. I reset the phone, checked the cluster for DB errors, and scratched my head a lot. I then proceeded to smack my head when I remembered the logout profile configuration in CUCM.

If you know anything about Unified Communications Manager Express (UCME), you know that the logout profile is very common on this platform. EM cannot exist on UCME without it. In CUCM we get spoiled, we can use existing device configuration details and do not have to specify a logout profile, there is however still a place for one.

In a perfect world a logged out EM configuration (in CUCM) should look like this:

This denotes that when a user logs out of the phone, the phone will use whatever configuration data exists in CUCM.

If however, a logout profile gets set (as shown below), the phone will display that profile upon an EM logout.

This is exceptionally confusing when the profile that was just logged out happens to also be the logout profile!

Obviously this was a misconfiguration on my part. Instead of just checking the box to enable Extension Mobility, I also specified a user profile. This lead to several minutes (a good half hour) of me troubleshooting a problem that inevitably had no problem at all.

Thanks for reading and hopefully you got some enjoyment laughing at my screw-up.

-J

 

CCIE Collaboration Lab: My Return Trip

If you follow this blog regularly (it says a lot about you, but that is for a different post) you know that last year, 2016, I took my first crack at the CCIE Collaboration practical lab exam. I took it in RTP (North Carolina) and it royally kicked my ass.

It is now nearly 12 months later and I am preparing for my second attempt. This year I have built my own lab instead of renting rack space from INE (who I believe I still owe money to from last year, but so far they haven’t come to collect). I am taking the exam on April 25 in RTP once again and while I am going to give it my very best shot, I am taking it because I honestly have no desire to attempt the written again and if I wait more than 12 months to attempt the lab my current written will be invalidated.

I’ll probably have more posts as the weeks draw closer, but the most important thing to note so far is that it is getting cheaper to purchase your own lab hardware. With Cisco coming out with the 44xx and 43xx ISR G3 routers the 29xx ISR G2 routers, which are still the hardware of choice for the current lab iteration, have become cheaper in the secondary market. I’m not saying that building a lab is cheap, by any means, but at least more folks now have that option. In my case,  my lab contains the following…

  1. 3825 – PSTN/BB Router. This is running CME for PSTN emulation. I am running PRIs to all 3 of the site routers; T1 PRIs the US sites and an E1 to the international site, I am using fractional PRIs to save on DSP resources.
  2. Dell Server 72GB Ram, Dual Xeon, SSD USB Drives (new addition) – This started life as a very weird CS-24TY but has now been revamped and runs all of my lab VMs easily.
  3. 2921 for HQ (2) PVDM-3 16 DSPs (this is actually enough for homogeneous video conferencing).
  4. 2821 for Site-B PVDM-2 64 DSP (good for voice only) (Generally Site-B is H.323 and possibly CUBE, a 2821 will run 15.1.x code which is not perfect but is close enough for that location). If I am asked switch/conference video at Site-B, I am S.O.L.
  5. 2811 for Site-C (CME)… I actually just ordered a 2911 and ISM-SRE-300 module to replace the 2811 as there are some serious differences between 15.1.x CME and 15.2.x and later CME i.e. CME 9/10.5/etc. I have a CUE module in the 2811 but I made the decision to spend money and get something closer to actual.
  6. 9971 phones as required (cheap enough used) and 7962 phones instead of 7965s as the differences between the two SCCP options are not that great and it saves some money.

In the back-end of the lab I also have a 3750 switch that I am using as a layer 3 WAN cloud instead of Frame Relay (which only matters in the QoS sections) and a 2960G PoE switch which I am using for phone power. I know the syntax is different but I cannot yet justify spending money or effort to aquire PoE  EHWICs.

I also have another Dell Server which hosts my “production” 11.5 CRS infrastructure which I can use for BB SIP calls as needed.

My setup is not perfect but perfect honestly costs to much. The fact that I can come down to my basement and practice whenever I want without having to reserve pricey rack space makes my setup perfect for me.

How about you? Do you have a lab? What are you running? Any suggestions? Comments? Questions? Leave them below!

-Justin

 

 

UCCX Series: Managing Your Audio Prompts

As long as there have been contact centers utilizing UCCX, there have been audio prompts. As an engineer, you know them because you have probably had to help create them, remaster them so that they actually work or even in a pinch record them yourself. We all have at least one number that we can call and hear our own voice welcoming callers to a bank, bakery or auto repair shop. Prompts are a necessary evil, but why are they so evil? Why didn’t Cisco give us a recording application? Why did they point us to the horrible “Media Master” interface in Unity/ Unity Connection as our default option?  While I cannot answer those questions, I can provide a better solution.

A Prompt Management Application…

Think about it, we have everything we need. UCCX provides annunciation, menu infrastructure and the ability to build/record files right out of the box. We have everything we need, we just need to put it together.

While the purpose of this blog is not to give, but rather to inspire, there are places online where you can find prompt management applications that others have written. I’ll show you the ins and outs of mine in the hopes that perhaps you’ll want to build your own.

Prompt Record 1

After the Start, Accept (if you don’t know why these two are important a UCCX basics course is probably your first best bet) we set a temporary path in the memory for our new prompts (shown above, click to enlarge), just because you record a prompt does not mean you have to save it. This application bases prompt save names off of 4 digit numbers. Friendly names for prompts are great but not all that useful from a telephone keypad. After defining that temporary path I ask my callers for a PIN, this is a simple authentication step that UCCX has built into its arsenal of objects. If you want to get more secure, you can base the authentication on a User ID and password from the UCCX user list but I don’t have a need for that here. TIP: If you make the PIN a parameter in your configuration, you’ll be able to change it easily from the application page in UCCX.

Once a successful PIN is entered, I give my caller two choices; record a new prompt or listen to an existing prompt. To me, this is a big deal. There are some applications that only allow the caller to record a prompt, that is fine, but for me the ability for the caller to listen to an existing prompt before changing it makes the application much more powerful.

Prompt Record 2

The image above (click to enlarge) shows the listen section of the application. If you store your prompts in the default paths i.e. en_US or whatever language you need this is very simple and straight forward. If you store prompts in multiple hierarchical folder locations you’ll have to call those locations out in your script. As you can see, this works with a formula that takes the prompt name (number) entered by the caller and adds .wav to the name.

Recording prompts take a bit more programming but as you’ll see below it is relatively straight forward (click to enlarge).

Prompt Record 3

If the caller wants to record a prompt, the first thing that this application does is ask them to record it. You could ask for a file name first but technical order of operations is to create and then save so this way makes more sense. Once the caller records their prompt, the application allows them to replay, re-record, give up and go to the main menu or save the prompt. If they choose to replay (the importance of that temp directory from before) we replay the temporary prompt from memory. If they choose to save, that is where the magic happens.

Prompt Record 4

As you can see above (click to enlarge), the save function of the application utilizes several different parts. First, we ask the caller for a prompt name (number). Besides being practical from a telephone keypad, the prompt numbering method allows you to take a list of prompts and number them for your vocal talent. As they go through and record and save, they are creating a script that can be referenced weeks, months and years down the road as verbiage from the prompts has to change. Once the prompt name (number) is entered we play a confirmation and ask the caller to confirm the save. If confirmed, we write the prompt in the prompt directory (default or specified) and the action is complete. To make the saving of the prompt possible, we do have to give the application administrative rights. What this means is that we have to reference an administrator username and password in the script. TIP: Create an administrator user and password that is exclusively used by your script, do not use your primary admin user.

The last screen shot that I want to share is the variable list from the prompt management application (shown below, click to enlarge). I’ve blocked out usernames and passwords but you get the idea. You can see all of the prompts you need for the prompt management application, this gets into the philosophical discussion of which came first; the prompt or the prompt recording application.

Prompt Record 5

Once your script is complete, you simply create a UCCX application and build a trigger.

While it takes some work to build initially, you then have an application that you can deploy on all of your UCCX builds in the future. It is a quick and easy way to give your customers or stakeholders value-add or at the very least impress someone and I promise it will make your life easier as you administer these systems going forward.

Thanks for reading, if you have questions post them below and we’ll have a discussion.

-Justin

Cisco’s Virtual CUBE & Modern IOS Toll Fraud Security

Good Morning Web World!

I found myself with a little bit of time this morning and I thought I’d share a bit of my latest tinkering.

Those of you that have followed this blog for a while may remember my first post where I talked about pointing a CUBE through an ASA out to my ITSP, Flowroute. That post is located here for your reading pleasure.

While the software/hardware has changed with my setup the idea is basically the same. I still have a CUCM system (now 11.x) running with a phone (I’ve felt like being different lately so currently I’m using a retro 7985G as my endpoint (G in this case does not mean Gigabit)). I also have a firewall, a Cisco 5506-X (it was time for an upgrade from the 5505) and I do still have a CUBE. My previous CUBE was a 3825 and it worked wonderfully but the 3825 has long since outlived its relevance in today’s enterprise environments. In my stack of possibilities I also have a 2921 and while it is still a very powerful and valid router, it just seems too easy.

Simple and straight forward is great but only until you’ve done simple and straight forward, then it becomes time to mix it up.

To that end, my replacement CUBE is virtual. Yes, I said virtual. If you follow Cisco and their products, you may already know about the Cloud Services Router, the CSR1000V. The CSR1000V is a virtual router that runs on a VMWare ESXi host. It runs IOS XE though there is some Linux/Unix on the backend that makes it tick.

ESXI Virtual CUBE

Virtual CUBE Show Commands

 

 

When I first heard that it was possible to turn a CSR1000V into a CUBE, I was skeptical. As I have worked through the configurations and witnessed it work, I must say I am impressed.  The configuration is the same as with any other IOS XE router with exception of the interface naming conventions. There are three (3) Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and they are named Gigabit Ethernet 1, Gigabit Ethernet 2 and Gigabit Ethernet 3.  The configuration in ESXi is shown below.

CSR1000V Interfaces Config

In my case, I created three (3) separate interfaces on my vSwitch and pointed them at three (3) separate VLANs in my infrastructure. You could bond/Port Channel these interfaces if you wanted too but you will still be limited by the throughput of your host’s uplink(s).

A few important things to note…

  • When you deploy the OVA file in ESXi you are given a choice of multiple router “sizes” i.e. memory and processor. I am using the smallest size which is one vCPU and 4GB of vRAM. Some of the larger installations require an additional license.
  • Keep in mind that I am testing this configuration in a controlled lab environment. I am not sure of scalability and if you read Cisco’s CUBE configuration guide, located here, you’ll see that the virtual CUBE does have several restrictions that may make it impractical for some organizations.
  • The CSR1000V is a fully license-dependent platform. Once the demo runs out the router runs, but only with throttled performance. If you intend to deploy this solution, you will have to purchase licensing.
  • In my previous post, my 3825 CUBE was running 12.4 IOS which did not include Toll Fraud Prevention, starting in 15.x and moving through IOS XE you need to be mindful of TFP and what it means when you are trying to make/receive calls on a Cisco H.323 or SIP Gateway.

Let’s talk for a moment on Toll Fraud Prevention. As stated above, all modern IOS and IOS XE versions include Toll Fraud Prevention mechanisms and if you use a router, physical or virtual, for voice you need to be aware of them.

Voice Service Config

 

 

If you look at the configuration snippet above, you’ll see that in the voice service configuration there is a trusted IP Address list. That list contains the IPs of my ITSP and my CUCM. If I remove those IPs from the list, calls fail. If you are linking your CUBE or gateway to multiple CUCMs or other systems you’ll want to have those IPs in that list as well. What this list does is let the good/known IPs in to complete transactions/calls on the gateway/CUBE and keeps the unknown/bad IPs out to prevent them from placing calls on the system. IP addresses that are part of dial peers will be added to the list automatically but will not show up in the configuration.  If you’ve ever set up an IP PBX on internet, you know that Toll Fraud is a real and serious threat. If you don’t want or need this feature you can turn it off by entering “no ip address trusted authenticate” in your voice service configuration. This is not a recommended configuration but in your environment the TFP mechanisms may do more harm than good.

Thanks for reading, I hope this has been informative.

-Justin

When Good VTP Goes Bad

Just a quickie tonight folks…

I am expanding my network and relocating my servers and other “noisy” hardware to my basement. The cooling value of the dry subterranean environment is great but in all honesty I’m trying to keep my better half happy and my office is not a great place for network gear and servers apparently.

With this relocation I am expanding my switching infrastructure from my core 3560G to include a 2960G as well. The addition of this switch gives me the opportunity to play with VTP or the VLAN Trunking Protocol.

VTP is a Layer 2 protocol that allows you to configure all of your VLANs on the “server” and then feed them down to the “clients”. VTP is a proprietary Cisco protocol and for large, diverse networks it may not be the best option but for me it works, at least it was supposed to.

I say supposed to, because I configured it, using version 2 and nothing happened. Below are my configurations…

CORE-3560G-01(config-vlan)#do show vtp status
VTP Version capable             : 1 to 3
VTP version running             : 2
VTP Domain Name                 : SPRNET
VTP Pruning Mode                : Disabled
VTP Traps Generation            : Disabled
Device ID                       : 000a.b8d3.0400
Configuration last modified by 10.10.0.254 at 8-22-16 01:52:57
Local updater ID is 10.10.0.254 on interface Vl1 (lowest numbered VLAN interface found)
Preferred interface name is gig0/49

Feature VLAN:
--------------
VTP Operating Mode                : Server
Maximum VLANs supported locally   : 1005
Number of existing VLANs          : 23
Configuration Revision            : 0
MD5 digest                        : 0x85 0x94 0x36 0x46 0xC1 0xCE 0xE0 0xD0          
                                    0x87 0x0A 0xF2 0xD4 0x24 0xD0 0xF8 0xD2
BASEMENT-2960G-01#show vtp sta
VTP Version capable             : 1 to 3
VTP version running             : 2
VTP Domain Name                 : SPRNET
VTP Pruning Mode                : Disabled
VTP Traps Generation            : Disabled
Device ID                       : 0017.594c.b180
Configuration last modified by 10.10.0.244 at 3-15-93 06:29:46

Feature VLAN:
--------------
VTP Operating Mode                : Client
Maximum VLANs supported locally   : 255
Number of existing VLANs          : 5
Configuration Revision            : 0
MD5 digest                        : 0x7D 0x73 0xB1 0x19 0x35 0xDC 0xE2 0xA8
                                    0x3A 0x07 0xE0 0xBF 0x92 0xFA 0x53 0x2A

As you can see everything looks like it should work. My passwords match and my domain matches but still no joy. After banging my head on my desk to figure this out, I see the below error message at the bottom of my client’s VTP status.

*** MD5 digest checksum mismatch on trunk: Gi0/21 ***

What is this error? What does it mean?

What it means is that the key exchange between the VTP server and client is incorrect and thus no one talks. What it also means is that I am hitting a long running bug. See the Cisco forum post here

If you read that post, you’ll find the fix, but here it is for your reference.

Basically, you need to make your server regenerate its MD5 Checksum value. Once that value is regenerated, VTP messages are exchanged between the server and client(s) and VLAN joy is had by all. To regenerate this value, simply create a new Layer 2 Vlan.  A simple fix for a complex problem. For those of you that want to upgrade code to solve the problem, good luck, Cisco hasn’t fixed this bug in over 20 revisions of IOS software.

I hope this has helped someone, thank you for reading.

-Justin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Revisiting Cisco Jabber SRV Records

From time to time I like to revisit previously discussed topics, today is the day for Cisco Jabber SRV records. Previously I had written a post talking about internal Jabber SRV records and how to configure and use them. That post is located here for your viewing pleasure.

The truth is that internal SRV records, when it comes to Cisco Jabber, are only half of the story. To tell the whole story, you need to have at least a partial understanding (and hopefully a working knowledge) of Cisco’s Collaboration Edge. If you do not, this will be a bit out of context for you, but the theory is easy enough to understand.

So you have an on premise Cisco IM & Presence installation and you have users on your internal network that are using Cisco Jabber. It is a very powerful business tool; instant messaging, screen sharing/control, and desktop video/voice all from one convenient and surprisingly well built application. What happens when your users leave your internal network? Do they VPN? Do they use WebEx? Or perhaps something less IT friendly? What if they could use Cisco Jabber wherever they are, without the hassle of VPN and securely from any device? The truth is, they can!

In comes Collaboration Edge, it goes by a few other names, but this post isn’t about Collaboration Edge…directly, its about a very handy SRV record that sits on your external DNS server(s) to make the Collaboration Edge integration possible. For a 1000ft view, Collaboration Edge includes two appliances, one on the LAN and one on the Internet or DMZ. These two appliances talk together using magic, pixie dust, tiger blood and SSL certificates (those are the ones that really scare me, but that is for a different post). With these two appliances talking, they are also linked to CUCM and voila’ we have extended CUCM’s capabilities to the information super-highway known as the Internet. It’s certainly not that simple, but you get the idea.

We know from my previous post that Cisco Jabber can discover it’s  network services via DNS SRV records. Internally it can discover both CUCM (for directory services and service profiles) and IM&P (for login and instant messaging, etc.). The process for discovering services outside of the network is very similar, but the differences are worth noting.

Cisco Jabber always searches for the same services i.e. SRV records no matter what network it is on. Whether it is on your internal network or just sitting on the Internet i.e. a home network the discovery is the same.

When you put in your Jabber ID (JID) i.e. someone@somewhere.com Jabber queries the following records based on the domain of your JID.

  • Jabber looks for WebEx Connect (Cloud instant messaging services).
  • Jabber looks for Internal SRV records i.e. cuplogin and cisco-uds (as shown below).

_cisco-uds._tcp.example.com

_cuplogin._tcp.example.com

  • If Jabber does not get a response from either of these records it looks for collab-edge which is pointing at the Collaboration Edge – Internet side appliance from earlier (as show below).

 

_collab-edge._tls.example.com

The collab-edge record configuration looks like this…

_collab-edge._tls.example.com   SRV service location:
          priority       = 3
          weight         = 7
          port           = 8443
          svr hostname   = vcse1.example.com

 

Assuming that no other records above the collab-edge record answer, Jabber sends its login request to the device attached to SRV record and logs into internal IM & Presence server as well as CUCM and any other services configured in the service profile.

A couple of import things to remember when talking about external DNS. First, some well-meaning DNS administrators will put a catch-all in their external DNS configuration so that anything destined for *.somewhere.com goes to their website. This is fine, but it will break your external Jabber connectivity. This break occurs because even though it doesn’t exist cuplogin.somewhere.com will still be caught by the catch-all. Second, collab-edge goes in the external DNS environment only. Just like cisco-uds and cuplogin are only internl, collab-edge is only external. Forgetting or disregarding this will surely make your troubleshooting much more interesting to say the least…

I hope this has been helpful to someone. Cisco Jabber is a power tool and when paired with Collaboration Edge the possibilities are endless. Hopefully some day soon I’ll be able to write a series about Collaboration Edge and its many facets but until then, thanks for reading.

-Justin

The Aftermath of My First CCIE Collaboration Attempt

A few days ago I wrote about attempting my first CCIE Collaboration Lab.

Its the night following my attempt and I’ll be honest, it did not go well. I was confident going in and I was confident for the first 3 or so hours. When we broke for our “speed lunch” I knew I was behind and as the hours,minutes and seconds ticked down in the afternoon I realized without much resistance that I was screwed.

That being said, my expectations were probably not properly metered. It was my first attempt and according to the most “recent” Cisco numbers that I have read, first time passing attempts are not common.

I also think that there are lessons to be learned, even in failure. I’ll list a few of them below.

  1. I was worried, going in, about things like the IOS and UCM Dial Plans, I’m pretty sure I nailed those.
  2. Unity Connection in either form i.e. SCCP or SIP is a relatively mindless process and I think I owned both of those sections as well.
  3. I do not know IOS switch QoS as well as I thought I did, that will have to change.
  4. Cisco Unity Express (CUE) is a bastard in any form and things that I assumed would work because they always have in my practices kicked my ass.
  5. Mobile Voice Access: This little gem was on my lab and none of the studying that I have done covered it in any way shape or form. I implemented it 5 or 6 years ago in a production environment but those brain cells were not present today. I guess I’ll be learning MVA.
  6. I didn’t read or see anything in the lab that honestly had me confused, I did however run out of time. I need to be faster, I must be faster.

Where does this leave me?

It leaves me with no CCIE number, it resets my written countdown clock but my goal is my CCIE number and without that this, even though I learned a lot, was a failure.

Tomorrow morning I’ll hop on a flight and head back to Denver. I’ll continue to study and work towards my goal.

I’ll be back Cisco, I’ll definitely be back.

-Justin

 

 

 

Prepping for My First Crack at the CCIE Collaboration Lab Exam

Well its finally here… On 4/26 I’ll sit for my first crack at the CCIE Collaboration Lab Exam in RTP.

I am excited and nervous but more than anything ready to get in there and do it!

After last week’s final (so far) demise of IP Expert, which I had rack rental tokens with, I was forced to shell out some cash for time on the INE racks. I don’t mind the INE racks but I seriously believe that had they stayed in business, the ProctorLabs (IP Expert rack rentals) would have been much better.

My home lab setup while better than some was not nearly verbose enough to allow to me study and prepare the way I wanted to. I could have probably built something at work to do the job, but I’ve been fortunate enough to have been given this week for nothing but prepping and going into the office just sounded like a bad idea. INE allows for a L2VPN connection to their equipment which allows me to use my own phones and thus get the “touchy feely” prep for the lab as well as the technical practice.

20160422_124014

With regards to the technical practice, I found a supposed lab scrape on a forum (don’t ask I don’t remember which one) and I have materials from when I attended an IP Expert CCIE Collaboration Lab 10 day boot camp last December. The IPs are different but the technology is the same.

As an engineer that’s been working in the Cisco AVVID space for 12+ years now, I’ve developed some bad habits and while it has been painful, I think my lab prep and study have helped me break at least some of them. For those in the same position, my best advice is below…

  1. Read. Don’t assume you know because you’ve seen it all before, just read.
  2. Think on your feet. Because you may have seen it all before (see point 1) you probably can figure out what just about anything the exam throws at you.
  3. Do you play the points vs. finishing game?  No idea. I’ll let you know after 4/26.

I guess I’m not truly sure how long 8 hours is, but I hope I can at least make a decent showing. My confidence right now after a week of prep is high but we’ll see what stepping into the exam room on Tuesday does to me.

Wish me luck!

-Justin