Excerpts

Introduction My first motivation for writing this book was to serve the needs of CCNP instructors and students in the Cisco Networking Academy. For the past four years, I (David) have had the privilege of serving on the National Advisory Council for the Cisco Networking Academy, representing four-year colleges and universities. Also on that Council are a number of two-year community colleges. Inevitably at Council meetings, we would discuss both CCNP curricula and labs. As I spoke with a number of my CCNP instructor peers, a common theme emerged. Instructors felt that the labs needed to be rewritten to be more comprehensive. Labs in the past have lacked complexity. When I realized that I was rewriting the Academy CCNP labs, and that my peers were rewriting the same labs, the thought occurred to me that perhaps an engineering school like RPI was up to the task of writing these labs in a way that would better serve the needs of the community. It is not that the previous labs were inappropriate. Rather I think it is that the Cisco Networking Academy has grown up. Having just celebrated its tenth birthday, the Academy is ready for bigger challenges. I hope that these labs will fill that role. My second motivation for writing these labs was to help network professionals who are trying to upgrade their skill set to the CCNP level. As a former hiring manager at a Tier 1 ISP, I have a strong sense of what industry is looking for when it hires someone with CCNP credentials. A number of hiring managers from Fortune 500 companies contact me each year about hiring my students. I know the level of expertise they expect from a CCNP. These labs reflect the convictions those managers have shared with me. My third motivation for writing these labs was to see how much of a challenge a university undergraduate could rise to if the student were asked to do a big job. My coauthors, Josh Moorhouse and Ross Wolfson, were both undergraduates when they authored these labs. I gave them a huge task and they responded with skill and grace. I firmly believe that we frequently do not ask enough of our students. If we ask for greatness, sometimes we will get it. If we settle for the normal, we are more assured of success, but we may miss the opportunity to see our students soar to heights undreamed of. Whether an instructor or student, I hope that your technical knowledge will soar to new heights with these labs. Goals and Methods The most important goal of this book is to help you master the technologies necessary to configure quality of service in a production network. After all, what is the point of getting certified and getting that dream job or promotion, if you cannot perform after you are there. While it is impossible to simulate a network of hundreds of routers, we have added loopback interfaces to simulate additional networks and to increase complexity. A secondary goal of this book is to help people pass the ONT certification exam. For two years, I was on the CCNP Assessment authoring team. After all those years of complaining, "What were they thinking when they put that question on the exam?" suddenly the questions I was writing were the subject of someone else's complaint. I know how important it is both to students and network professionals to pass certifications. Frequently prestige, promotion, and money are all at stake. While all the core configurations on the certification exam are covered in this book, no static document like a book can keep up with the dynamic way in which the certification exam is constantly being upgraded. Who Should Read This Book Cisco Networking Academy instructors and students who want a written copy of the electronic labs will find this book of great use. In addition to all the official labs that are part of the Academy curriculum, additional Challenge and Troubleshooting labs have been added to test your mastery. Network professionals, either in formal classes or studying alone, will also find great value in this book. What You Need to Configure the Labs These labs were written on four Cisco 2811 routers using the following IOS image: c2800nm-advipservicesk9-mz.124-10.bin. You should be able to configure the labs on any Cisco router that is using a 12.4 advanced IP services image of the IOS. Classes and individuals using older Cisco devices or less robust versions of IOS will find that many commands are not supported. Academy students have access to the Pagent traffic generation software that is used extensively throughout these labs. Pagent is an internal Cisco tool that is used to test multimillion-dollar networks before they are deployed. Network professionals doing these labs should use their favorite search engine to find an alternative traffic generation tool. While it is possible to do the labs without testing them with traffic generation, your learning will increase dramatically by being able to see the effects of what you are configuring. How This Book Is Organized Those preparing for the ONT certification exam should work through this book from cover to cover. Network professionals needing help or a refresher on a particular topic can skip right to the area in which they need assistance. The chapters cover the following topics: Chapter 1, "Describing Campus Network Requirements": Knowing how expensive equipment is, we have tried to keep costs down by using only four routers. The challenge of trying to simulate a large network with this much equipment is that we had to create some pretty complex logical scenarios. This chapter lays out the physical and logical topologies that are used throughout the rest of the book. Chapter 2, "Cisco VoIP Implementations": Softphones, or software-based phones that can be run on a laptop, are increasingly popular, especially with people engaged in business travel. In this chapter, you learn to install and configure Cisco IP Communicator. This lab uses the newest version of Cisco Unified Call Manager Express at the time of this writing (CME 4.0(2)). This was tested using Cisco IOS Software Release 12.4(9)T1 running on a Cisco 2800 series router. The IP Voice image is required in order to be able to manipulate codecs. Chapter 3, "Introduction to IP QoS": Imagine a network where the traffic involved in downloading a large digital movie was given the same priority as a phone call. The call would be constantly interrupted. Voice packets must be prioritized over data traffic. This is the purpose of quality of service. The same network that routes voice, data, and multimedia must also be secure. In this chapter, we use Security Device Manager (SDM) to configure basic QoS. Chapter 4, "DiffServ QoS Model": Depending on time and expertise, many network engineers are going to rely on tools like SDM, AutoQoS, and NBAR to configure QoS. However, intermediate-level engineers are going to want to understand and/or tweak the configurations that are automatically generated. This chapter gives you a good start on understanding the complex and diverse world of QoS options. Chapter 5, "AutoQoS": AutoQoS is an IOS feature that observes traffic patterns on an interface through Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR) and generates appropriate class-based QoS policies based on observed traffic patterns. This chapter shows you how to set this up. Chapter 6, "Wireless Scalability": Unlike in the previous version of the CCNP curriculum, Cisco has not prescribed any order in which the courses must be taken. Students who have already taken the BCMSN course can skip or quickly review the first three wireless labs. Those who have not already taken the BCMSN course will need to work through all five labs. Chapter 7, "Case Study": With very little direction, students are asked to set up QoS on both LAN and WAN links. The ability to successfully complete this lab indicates a significant mastery of the ONT concepts and configurations. NETLAB+® Compatibility NDG has worked closely with the Cisco Networking Academy CCNP lab team to develop ONT labs that are compatible with the installed base of NETLAB AE router pods. For current information on labs compatible with NETLAB+® go to http://www.netdevgroup.com/ae/labs.htm . (c) Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved. Excerpted from CCNP Optimizing Converged Cisco Networks (ONT 642-845) Lab Portfolio by David Kotfila, Joshua Moorhouse, Ross Wolfson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.