Hello friends! My name is Nick and I am Rene's new site assistant. I wanted to share some helpful CCIE Lab tips that I learned over the past months. I have been following this rules as I continue my pursuit for CCIE R&S and they have help me hone my skills significantly.

1. Read "Your CCIE Lab Success Strategy" by Dean Bahizad and Vivek Thwari. This book contains no technical information but tells you pretty much everything else. It is a very realistic, motivation read about two adult men with full-time jobs and families who were fully committed to their own (and eachothers) CCIE journeys. Cost is about 30 USD. I highly recommend this book. I will summarize a few points from this book in the article as well.
   
   
2. Before doing any lab, read the whole lab first. Understand the big picture and come up with a strategy. For example, if you are forced to use OSPF with a point-to-multipoint frame relay interface with no broadcast DLCIs ... you should be thinking about which OSPF network types will work in this situation, even though OSPF configuration isn't until later. If you find out that all EIGRP neighborships must have authenticated routing updates, you should configure this initially to avoid having to backtrack.
   
   
3. Buy a small binder, graph paper, and a pack of colored pencils. This is your CCIE Study Binder and should remain on your person at all times during study sessions. Before beginning your lab (and after reading it, of course), draw a few pictures of your network so you know what's happening. Use different colors for different protocols or technologies. Sometimes it helps to have multiple diagrams for each technology to avoid clutter. For example, one diagram can label all interfaces, IP addresses, and subnet masks. Another can detail IGPs, FHRPs, and points of redistribution. Another can detail BGP and the specific peerings that are permitted. Another for LAN switching, another for frame relay, etc.
   
   

Earlier this week I published the topology for CCNP TSHOOT built in GNS3 but for some reason the attachments didn't work so I had to move the article, you can find it right here.

It's a good idea to spend some time looking at this topology and its configuration. See why things are working and the way they were designed. I'll be uploading different labs with troubleshooting tickets later for you.

I have plenty labs on MPLS on GNS3Vault that will help you learn but to help you a little more i'll let you know in which order you should do them. Before you start learning MPLS make sure you have a strong knowledge on BGP. MPLS relies heavily on BGP so upgrade your knowledge if you have to. There are plenty of BGP labs for you here.

Having said that...time for MPLS!

If you are new to MPLS start with the VRF Lite lab which will teach you the fundamentals. A VRF is for routing what a VLAN is for switching.

Once you understand VRFs you can check out the MPLS LDP lab which introduces you to tag switching.

Next stop will be to simulate an ISP MPLS Backbone with customers connected to it using different routing protocols:

- Basic MPLS VPN (EIGRP)
- MPLS VPN PE CE using RIP lab
- MPLS VPN PE CE using OSPF & Sham Link lab

Once you finish those labs you can try my MPLS VPN Advanced lab which teaches you how to configure an ISP MPLS Backbone with multiple customers running different routing protocols and offering them services like central servers and Internet. The VIDEO is 2 hours and 50 minutes so it's quite a large lab!

Those labs will teach you all the skills you need to get going with MPLS.

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment!

If you are studying for your CCNP after getting your CCNA you'll probably see BGP for the first time. In this article i'll explain to you why we use BGP. If you are unsure what BGP is or how it works i'd suggest to read my BGP for Beginners article first.

You probably have an idea of how BGP works, how to configure it but you are unsure why you should use it. We'll walk through a number of scenarios and look at the advantages.

 I'm writing this article for everyone that is new to BGP. Perhaps you have passed your CCNA and have learned about all the IGP's like OSPF, RIP and EIGRP but you still don't know anything about BGP. Before we start talking about BGP, there's something you need to keep in mind...

Forget everything you know about OSPF (link-state) or EIGRP/RIP (distance vector) routing protocols because BGP is totally different and called a “path vector” routing protocol. Now don't feel frustrated ;) We'll have a look and see what BGP is all about! You are probably familiar using EIGRP or OSPF since these are IGP (Interior gateway protocols) and you are using them on your own network.