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Followers,
I’m pleased to announce a Proctor Labs (online vRack rental) weekend special (offer ends Sunday at midnight – EST): Save 50% on 100-session bundles at Proctor Labs – which includes the new V3 Security & V3 Voice vRacks! Use the coupon (on checkout) code: WKNDSPCL at the following URLs:
Happy Studying!
There’s been a lot of conversations and much consternation about the verbal portion of the CCIE lab that has been added to the R&S track. To borrow from Shakespeare I think that this is much ado about nothing. As we prepare for a CCIE the motivation is to become experts in the industry – to stand out from the throng of network engineers worldwide. Part of that preparation was a lot of theoretical study for the written exam and a fair bit of rack time to prepare for the lab exam. Theory plus application equals expertise.
So here’s my question for today: what’s the worst thing that could happen to the CCIE program?
My answer is: people who cheat still passing thus detracting from the certification’s value.
Almost every IT industry certification has been compromised due to the nature of multiple choice exams and the natural human desire to pass by the easiest possible method. The CCIE is one of the few that has remained valuable due to the requirement to sit through a challenging lab and thus prove your skills. Even that process is now in jeopardy, hence Cisco’s new requirement to validate theoretical knowledge during the open-ended questions at the beginning of the lab.
My advice to people studying for the lab is: don’t panic and don’t change your study method. Our students are still passing due to proper preparation and dedication. When they read the books on the required reading list (see my post So Much Information Part One for a list of books to read) and study for the lab with high quality preparation materials the open ended questions are dismissed (as they should be) as easy and not worth thinking about.
I want each and every one of you to go away and think about this: most CCIE’s who I’ve spoken to describe the CCIE as the greatest intellectual accomplishment of their lifetime. In that context, is having to answer a few basic questions to safeguard that accomplishment really something worth worrying about?
Study hard, do labs and we’ll see you with your number sometime soon.
Cheers,
Jared
Your friends at IPexpert recognize that these are difficult economic times for so many of you. We have heard from CCIE hopefuls around the world that all say that their training budgets have tightened and travel budgets have been cut.
We understand that, although the economy has weakened, your CCIE goals remain strong… and we want to help you push forward.
Today, we are beginning to roll out “Stimulus Pricing” which will include significant discounts on IPexpert’s world-class training you need to succeed. Already, you can see all-time-low registration fees available for the popular Boot Camp courses that IPexpert is known for – courses that have helped more CCIEs pass the CCIE lab exam than any other training company in the world! Now is the time to take advantage of this special ILT pricing – and continue to push forward with your CCIE certification quest. Distinguishing yourself amongst your peers – and earning your CCIE certification is what will keep your career afloat through these challenging economic times!
To be sure you learn about additional special offers and promotions in a timely manner, be sure you are following IPexpert at the following locations:
Thanks, as always, for the opportunity to be a part of your success. We do appreciate the privilege and look forward to seeing you in class!
I’ll get straight to the point- VPIM is a horrible question for a CCIE-V candidate to see for the very first time in your lab. It takes a while to test, it’s a little tricky to troubleshoot and it NEVER works first time unless the Gods are with you (or you’ve read this article- fingers crossed).
For those of you who have put in the hard yards beforehand then it’s OK- the points are achievable in a small amount of time. Lets discuss how…
Before I get started, the assumption being made throughout this post is that the Voice Connectors have been installed and the Active Directory Schema has been extended. Both of these steps are required for VPIM Networking. The Unity box will be the DNS server for both Unity and Unity Express (CUE).
I’m going to use DNS to resolve the name for the Unity location- I will need to create a host record and MX record. For CUE, I will not use DNS for resolution. Instead, the IP Address of the CUE module will be used.
In this example the domain for Unity is “voip.lab” and the hostname is “Unity-lab”. The IP Address of Unity is 10.27.200.22.
When I define the Unity location I have specified the domain name. When I add the location for the CUE module I have used the IP Address of CUE. The screenshots below show the creation of a primary location in Unity (Dial ID = 212) and a VPIM delivery location for CUE
(Dial ID =
331).
Note that in the primary location we allow blind addressing. Blind addressing allows Unity to address messages without knowing CUE subscribers’ mailbox numbers. When defining the delivery location for CUE, the CUE module IP Address is speficied.
The next step is to add the primary and delivery location on the CUE module. This time the Primary Location is Dial ID 331 and the Delivery Location is the Unity Dial ID 212.
The domain name of Unity should be specified when defining the Unity location and, like on the Unity box, the CUE module IP address must be used when defining the CUE location. Note that you can only assign a primary location after creating a location- this is slightly awkward and something to watch out for. The third screenshot above shows both locations added and the local location being defined as Location “331″. Don’t forget it!
Make sure the DNS server in both cases (Unity and CUE) is the Unity server. You don’t need to reload, but it won’t hurt anything if you are one of those overly paranoid people. :-)
It’s a good idea to set up tracing on CUE (unless you want to starting tracing on Unity, in which case – best of luck to you!). Session into the CUE module and disable all tracing before you begin to set up the trace- the default on CUE is to enable tracing for almost everything and this would make it impossible to use the trace in a meaningful way. Then we turn tracing for VPIM networking- see below:
cue> trace networking vpim receive cue> trace networking vpim send
The best way to view your VPIM messages is shown below:
cue> sh trace buffer tail
Now send a message from phone with mailbox at Unity to the phone with mailbox at CUE. To do this, log into your Voicemail account, press “2″ and press “##” to dial by extension. Dial the Location for CUE and then the mailbox at the CUE location you wish to send a message- so for example “3313003″. Press “#” about 3 more times, record your message and keep pressing “#” until the annoying lady tells you the message has been sent.
Look at your Trace buffer on CUE… you should see the following snippet:
3288 02/13 09:34:57.220 netw vpim 3 VPIM: To: <2001@voip.lab> 3288 02/13 09:34:57.223 netw vpim 3 VPIM: From: cme cmethree<3003@10.27.202.2>
Again- you must make sure that the text on the right hand side of the “@” matches what has been defined in Unity and that there is a mailbox for extn 2001 in Unity.
As a shortcut for sending messages from Unity to CUE, you could simply add a VPIM subscriber. This would mean that your users at the Unity site would not need to specify the Location ID of the CUE site.
… giving you more features that is! (Seriously – ask my wife if you think that statement isn’t true. She often asks me if I even have the ability to separate work from home life. Many props to Sarah for giving me up almost altogether these last two weeks!)
Well – we thought long and hard about it (well maybe not that long :)) and decided we hadn’t given you enough features long ago in our last ProctorLabs vRack upgrade. So we decided since it had been so long, we decided we that we just had to give you a few more. A few of these are nice if you just want to practice with these technologies and will most certainly be used in later labs of ours. One of these is a must have that honestly, I am not sure how we (or you) lived without until now.
We have always given you the ability to change your PSTN BR2 E1 from E1-PRI to E1-R2 CAS or back from E1-R2 CAS to E1-PRI with these buttons pictured:
But now we are giving you two new functions regarding the PSTN simulator (router): The ability to change your PSTN HQ T1 from T1-PRI to T1-CAS with FGD or back from T1-CAS to T1-PRI with these buttons pictured:
And also the ability to change your PSTN BR1 T1 from T1-PRI to T1-CAS with FGD-EANA or back from T1-CAS to T1-PRI with these buttons pictured:
And finally, saving the best for last, we are giving you the ability to throw your vRack’s BR1 site (and all of it’s devices/functions) into SRST mode. This might sound simple, and in the real lab you might simply shut down your BR1 Serial link and all would be grand. However, in our vRacks, your BR1 Serial link connects your BR1 router back to your HQ router and then back to your EzVPN (hardware or software) IP Phones, and so you can’t really just shut it down or else those phones can’t connect to the BR1 router and register in SCCP (or SIP now:)) to the Call-Manager-Fallback a.k.a. SRST. You also have the challenge that if the lab you are working on happens to have you configure the BR1 router as a MGCP gateway, or even if it has you register DSPs in the BR1 router using SCCP to the UCMs, that those devices need to “stop talking” to the UCMs in order to do any sort of fallback (such as MGCP Fallback to H323 mode thus releasing a PRI or CAS trunk).
So what we have done is create a simple button to do all of this on your vRack web UI. Here it is:
One thing to note: All of these functions are only available for the new Voice v3 blueprint’d vRacks.
Now if you are one who has your own hardware, you of course can do all of this manually yourself in your own lab. However I do have to say to any of you considering whether to rent a vRack for your Voice studies or build your own rack, I remember back to when I was studying for my Voice exam, and had my own lab, and honestly how much time I wasted (no seriously – wasted) trying to not only get my lab setup in the first place, but then deal daily with getting servers reset, re-building PSTN files, dialplans, etc, etc, and how if I had something like the vRacks and the incredibly simple interface and between session automatic revert and extensive error checking logic that we offer at ProctorLabs, how much more time I would have had for actual studies that mattered. Oh well – I didn’t – but you do! Capitalize on it!
Also to note – on my last post regarding the vRack updates, in the comments section, one person asked about if a few new features were possible mainly regarding localizing PL rack rental timezone information based on where you are (or preferences chosen in your account settings) and also about if the “Load Lab Configs” function could give the ability to you to choose with a checkbox which devices to load or not to load on a given Initial or Final config. Well the simple answer to his question – I wanted to be a rather public one – and that is that ALL of this functionality and more is on the horizon. We haven’t even come close to showing you all of the Spades up our sleeve and ready to show the Straight Flush we have once the River card is played. (sorry couldn’t resist the Hold ‘Em reference) So be a little patient with us – we are continuing to develop in the background – I can assure you!
Cheers and Happy Labbing!
-Mark
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