Wassim

Building a Juniper olive lab and playing with it is no different than gathering Cisco OS images and stuffing them into GNS3 or eve-ng. This articles describes some of my ramblings. As you know, in order to play with Juniper Junos in a lab, you need to configure instances of Olive. In my home lab, I have configured 6 Juniper Olives to play with. This is an overkill for JNCIA and JNCIS. But I got hooked on this topic for a couple of days. I remember waking up and labbing at 4.20 am building Olives LOL. Maybe my motivation behind that is that I wanted to practice every Junos topic on the exam guide as quickly as possible. So here’s the topology of my first Juniper home lab: Candidate Configuration vs Active configuration in Junos Let’s check show configuration interfaces on the operational mode: We have the same output with “show interfaces” under [edit interfaces] level: Let’s make a little change under interface tap (I added a description ): Now, if we issu...

  The setting: two Catalyst switches. On each one of them I created two VLANs. A trunk between both switches is set up. Scenario: I shutdown the trunk port on side A: No more VLANs are detected on the local trunk port: However, side B’s trunk port is still untouched. And it shows a list of allowed VLANs on the trunk, as if nothing special has happened: Conclusion Even if the trunking seems to be OK on one switch, we should check the trunk on both sides of the switches.

Maybe some folks would know how I prepared for the exam. Here’s what I did: I first read Cisco Student Guides (vol1 and 2). At first, it seemed like learning Chinese. OSPF LSA3,4,5, EIGRP SIA, NSSA, BGP,.. I read each chapter at least twice and took notes. I followed a different reading approach. Instead of reading a book from cover to cover, I made what I call a “topic reading”, i.e. I read all the material related to a specific topic together. I felt a little overwhelmed sometimes when I find myself with the same topic for weeks! But it pays on the long run. I do as many labs as I can per topic. I did all the labs on Chris Bryant’s books, almost all labs from Cisco Lab Portfolio and dozens of mini-labs to understand small mechanisms. sometimes I watch video material after reading books, to break routine and boredom. always jot down questions. any question related to networking, not only to BSCI topics. Last days of preparation: Cisco Exam Guide “Do I know...

I feel that my study time is decreasing. Maybe it’s time to wrap knowledge up, watch CBT Nuggets and have a practice exam. I plan to write the exam on Thursday. Since college I’ve never been a last-night-student type of guy. I’ve always felt mentally blocked two or three days before any exam, especially the night right before it. My college classmates did a wonderful job stressing me out a couple of days before semester exams. They catch exam sheets from previous years and hide them so well like they were precious stones. So I decided to consciously filter out what they say/do. I got this habit, and it persisted with me later in my professional life, whenever I have a certification test to sit for.