Introduction:
Hey all, so what have I been focusing my efforts on this journey? Well, I have skipped straight to some juicy routing protocol goodness. OSPF to be precise. I wanted to do something a bit out of what I normally do which is switching and VLANs etc.
Study has included:
Reading Material
Chapter 8,9,10 - ENCOR 350-401 Official Cert Guide.
I also read the OSPF chapters from the CCNP ROUTE Official Cert Guide. This goes into way more detail than the new CORE Enterprise goes into as it covers all the different OSPF Area types. I think this is reserved for ENARSI? But it doesn't hurt to know a little more.
I also found some awesome Cheat Sheets that do a good job of condensing all the basic information.
Handy to erase the details print out and fill from memory to solidify the points home. Doesn't look so scary now?
There's also another set of 5 with more color and pretty graphics if that's more your thing. Example below:
https://networkwalks.com/networkwalks-summary-cheatsheets/
Labs
On the labbing and practicing scene, I have built the topology from the cert guide and have been examining the neighbor relationships in a Broadcast network. messing with default settings, priority values and RIDs etc.
Most of this is coming back to me. So a few more labs and I think I'll have most of the CORE basics down.
As for video courses I have completed OSPF sections from Ben Pipers Pluralsight course. He makes it look so damn easy :D. Most of my OneNote has come from here. screenshots below:
OneNote Scribbles
Pluralsight Video Course - Ben Piper
Here's a handful of some of the labs in the video course.
That's pretty much a wrap for OSPF, I will circle back around and do some practice setups with the Pluralsight topology.
Cisco U - WTF?!
On a side note, I got excited when Cisco announced CiscoU. I thought this might be their attempt at doing what Microsoft has done with Microsoft Learn. LOL, how wrong was I? Most of the good stuff is behind a ludicrous paywall. $6000 Per User Per Year!?....(Do people pay for this?) be realistic, surely it's in Cisco's best interest that network engineers do your equipment justice and knows the ins and outs without being ripped off? C'mon! But to be honest I should have expected nothing less.
Oh well, rant over.
Happy studying till next time!