RE: CCIE Wireless OT

- read entire config guide for IOS and for controllers 4.x
- know autonomous stuff in depth, CLI only, you should know what each
command in CLI does
- know controller stuff in depth, get used to the CLI. You should be able to
configure multiple controllers by using notepad and then pasting configs to
all controllers
- you should know about all the options in controller CLI that are not
available in GUI
- you should know how to configure Client and ACS for all types of
authentication (LEAP, EAP-FAST, EAP-TLS, PEAP) and you should be comfortable
with Microsoft CA server to issue certificates
- make sure you know how to operate Cisco Wireless Expert software (cognios)
- Make sure you know all best practices for 7921/7925 phones (cisco has a
guide on their website)

You really don't need to have a lot of controllers, two will be more than
enough (but not one). One of them should be at least 4400 so that you can
practice guest tunneling. So something like 2106 and 4400 would be good. The
cheapest setup would be two 2006 (not even 2106) controllers. 2006 can do
everything 2106 can do, but they can't do guest tunneling. 2006's can be
found for $300 on ebay, while 2106's are in the $1600 range.

Number of APs depends on what kind of room you have. If you can place them
around at 20-30 feet away from each other, then you should settle with
around five APs. You could realistically study with just three APs, but five
would be nice. You will be switching them between Autonomous and LWAPP back
and forth many times. Also, you'll need to get a couple of different rogue
APs. You could use one or two of your five APs as rogues, but I would rather
get separate rogues like a Linksys. I studied with 1130, 1230, two 1240s,
and 1250. You could potentially study with any of them, just keep in mind
that 1230 doesn't support HREAP.

You need to have a Location appliance, but an FYI, I studied for this lab
without ever touching Location appliance. My first time exposure to it was
in the lab. I couldn't find a way to get a location appliance image to run
on a vm. Couple of folks told me it was possible, but anyone have yet to
show me how it's done.

You should have two or three PCs/laptops with a wired LAN access and WiFi
cards. Get a Cisco ABG PCI (PC) or CardBus (Laptop) adapter. You will need
to place these test machines in different places close to specific APs so
that you know which APs they'll connect to first. It will help you practice
scenarios in a controlled manner. You will access them via VNC or RDP
through the wired connection and then test wireless. Windows by default will
use wired interface with better metric for the default gateway.

You will need to have 7921 or 7925 phone. 7920 is obsolete. You will be able
to test a lot of scenarios with a 7921/7925 phone, especially roaming stuff.
This is where it's important to place APs far enough from each other so that
you can walk from AP to AP to test various roaming scenarios using a phone.
I spent more time testing with a phone than a laptop.

Regarding switches, I believe you just need a couple of switches to practice
with. Each switch should be connected to a separate Wired interface on a
test PC for sniffing traffic in Wireshark. I strongly recommend finding a
Wired NIC that has true support for Dot1Q tags so that you can see them in
Wireshark. I would connect half APs and controllers to one switch and the
other half to the other switch.

One of your test PCs should be running Windows 2003 Standard with ACS, DHCP
server, Microsoft CA, and WCS.

You will test your client machines with Cisco ADU and Cisco CSSC.

If you can get a hold of Cisco's Spectrum Expert, that's great, I studied
without it. Just make sure to go through its PDFs.

Finally, last but not least, you need the wireless sniffer adapter. I can't
imagine passing this lab without this nifty tool.

http://www.cacetech.com/products/airpcap_classic.html (issues running on
Vista/Win7, use XP)

B/G with capture only is enough, you don't need A/B/G/N. It's $198.

I also got this thingy http://www.metageek.net/. It helped me visualize RF a
little better.

About a month after I bought these two, they released a product that can do
both: http://www.metageek.net/products/airpcap
Verify that they actually do both, I didn't buy this one.

Regards,

Roman Rodichev
6xCCIE #7927 (R&S, Security, Voice, Storage, Service Provider, Wireless)
Instructor, Content Developer
ieMentor Corporation http://www.iementor.com
Y!M: roman7927

-----Original Message-----
From: nobody_at_groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody_at_groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of JoJo
JoJo
Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 4:44 PM
To: ccielab_at_groupstudy.com
Subject: CCIE Wireless OT

Experts,

I'm starting the CCIE Wireless track and I was wondering your
recommendations
for a Wireless CCIE Lab. I'm not new to Wireless but I will start from the
bottom up CCNA+Wireless, CCNP Wireless, Wireless Written then lab and I want
to maximized my investment.

Thanks

JoJo
Received on Sat Oct 31 2009 - 02:08:53 ART