From: anthony.sequeira@thomson.com
Date: Fri Jan 12 2007 - 12:27:42 ART
" Again it may be one for the
Proctor, or it may be clearer on the day...."
Yeah - the task should make things very clear - and you are right - the
proctor is there for help with clarity. Even though they might claim at
the start that the questions contain all the information you need - they
will indeed help with interpretation if your approach is right. I will
be sure to compose a post soon about how to approach proctors in the
best way possible.
I remember a funny story from my Lab attempts that might help you.
I really started to build a nice rapport with one of the Proctors at the
RTP facility. We shared some common personal interests, and - what the
hell - I visited the guy about every 30 days. That is more than I see my
own mum.
Well anyways, I was always obsessed and freaked out about the default
VLANs during Layer 2 configurations. You know the ones I am talking
about I am sure:
1002 fddi-default
1003 token-ring-default
1004 fddinet-default
1005 trnet-default
One afternoon in July my Proctor simply could not take it any more....
"Anthony! " he exclaimed "Will you PLEASE stop overthinking this stuff!
Relax and do what the question says - if you meet that requirement your
done!"
You see what happens is this I think - if you fail the exam, or you have
peers that have failed it, you often start thinking that it was "tricks"
that got you. For example - "I restricted the VLANs - and I must have
forgotten the default VLANs - that must have got me!"
I term this issue that candidates have as "seeing Ghosts in the
Machine".
Often times these thoughts are just not accurate. You probably failed
the exam because you misinterpreted tasks entirely. Or your broke
earlier configurations with your later ones. Or you had typos. Or you
did not have time to finish all tasks and those missed points got you.
Or.....I think you get the idea.
I look forward to seeing more of your posts on the Group Colm!
Anthony J. Sequeira
#15626
-----Original Message-----
From: Colm O'Leary [mailto:Colm.O'Leary@anpost.ie]
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 4:31 AM
To: Sequeira, Anthony (NETg); ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: RE: MST & RSTP
Anthony,
Thanks for your input. I guess on the day it will be clear, what
exactly will be required. I am just curious if there are any unknown
gotcha's associated with enabling MST. For example, MST 0 which all
unmapped vlans will belong to, should vlan 1 be removed from this
instance and mapped to a defined instance. Again it may be one for the
Proctor, or it may be clearer on the day....
Colm
-----Original Message-----
From: anthony.sequeira@thomson.com [mailto:anthony.sequeira@thomson.com]
Sent: 11 January 2007 17:51
To: Colm O'Leary; ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: RE: MST & RSTP
You make some awesome points here about MST - in order to really get it
fine tuned and experience the best in convergence - you should use
PortFast on edge ports where appropriate and you should use Full Duplex
P2P between your switches.
With that said - remember - the Lab Exam is not about best practices. In
fact, the network they have you build can be looked at as a total design
disaster in most cases.
A perfect example is Virtual Links with OSPF - often times the Lab Exam
writer seems to think those are the best things since sliced bread!
While "over configuring" is sometimes no problem to make sure you get
points - in the case you describe I think you are going too far.
If I am asked to configure MST and that is it - I am not going to bother
hunting down all of the ports where PortFast would be appropriate unless
I am explicitly asked to do so.
Remember also that they need to construct an exam that is easily
gradable. That means the grading script is looking for pretty simple
config blocks or for the existence of routes, etc.
I certainly hope this post helps you....
Anthony J. Sequeira
#15626
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Colm O'Leary
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 7:18 AM
To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: MST & RSTP
Group,
When you enable MST in a switched environment, by default Rapid
Spanning Tree is implemented. The port roles defined by RSTP [Edge, P2P]
are defined by if portfast is enabled on ports connecting to end
devices or if they are set to full-duplex mode. If in an MST
configuration, you do not explicity configure switchports connected to
end devices in the portfast state, will the stability of the STP
topology be compromised, or will it just increase the STP convergence
time?
The logic to my question is that if you are presented with an MST
configuration in the lab, and you are not explictily asked to configure
the ports either in portfast or in full duplex, should you configure the
interconnects between switches to full duplex and the port connected to
end devices to portfast. I know that the connections between switches
should be set to full-duplex as a matter of best practice, but setting
portfast?
Also if another feature, such as enabling BPDUGUARD globally, which is
directly linked to ports that have portfast enabled, could cause
confusion.
If anyone has any comments on this I would welcome any input.
Regards,
Colm
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