Oct29 2009 - Finished chapter 9

Finally finished chapter 9. I can concentrate on Call Manager and Unity features now.
BTW, the remaining chapters pretty much concentrate on CM and Unity features which my home lab is more than adequate.

Oct18 - Working on chapter 6

I 've been spending an average of 1 - 2 hours per day on the lab. Finally completed upto chapter 6 today.
Also, been reading up on dial-plan and the relationship between partition , calling search space , route list , route group ,  route pattern and how they fit into phone/device and line.

On the home lab setup, ever since I started to connect CIPC into BR1 router, dynamip started to freeze. I am using x-lite SIP phones in the same vlan as the HQ phones now. That worked out OK for me.
I don't think it matters wherever you place the phone , as long as you understand the Call Manager dial-plan and how the pieces fit together.
Next week , going to start on Call Manager and Unity Connection integration. Should be interesting.

Voice lab module 1 & 2 completed via GNS and vmware

Gotten a new quad-core PC with 8 gig of memory.
I am very glad that I purchased this PC. It made my study much easier and faster.
Well worth the $$ spent.

I spent the last 2 days putting the topology and virtual phones together with CallManager and finally got it working.

The routers topology as seen using GNS3

The router consoles using wintab

The SIP and SCCP phones

And finally the CallManager

Taking a break from studying - check out the 2009 SI models

More Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:
Bodypainting |
All Models |
Video Collection

CCIE voice lab modules and objectives

I will be going thru these lab modules and mark them with BLUE color when I am done.
My home lab setup should carry me thru 70% of these modules
Emphasis should be placed on " Implement and Troubleshoot"

CCIE VOICE Lab Exam Objectives:

Basic Campus Design - home lab - completed 9/7/09

• DHCP, TFTP
• Catalyst voice and data VLAN configuration
• Catalyst VTP configuration

Call Manager and Call Manager Express Configuration - home lab - completed 9/22/09

• Phone registration - SCCP , SIP endpoints
  
• Phone configuration - SCCP, SIP endpoints - cme sip is giving me lots of grief
  

Voice Gateway and Signaling - can't simulate with GNS, will just enter GW info into CUCM

• Analog and digital voice protocols:  T1, E1, PRI, CAS, R2
• VoIP protocols: H323, MGCP, SCCP, SIP, RAS, IP/IP GW/CUBE
  

Call Routing - home lab

• CCM route patterns (@ wildcard not tested)
• CCM route preference and redundancy
• IOS dial peers
• Digit manipulation and translation

Call Admission Control - home lab

• Location-based
• RAS-based

High Availability Features - home lab

• SRST
• AAR

Media Resource Management -some part can't be simulated with GNS, i.e. hw conf, xcoder, mtp ...

• Conference bridge software and hardware
• Transcoder
• MTP
• MOH

QoS Considerations - home lab

• L2/L3 classifications and policing
• Queuing mechanisms
• LFI
• Catalyst switch QoS

Unified Messaging - home lab

• Unity voicemail integration
• Unity administration

CRS/IPCC Express Application - home lab

• Default script configuration and integration
• Custom script configuration and integration

Call Manager Voice Applications - home lab

• Any native applications to Call Manager, examples are extension mobility, attendant console, IPMA

Supplementary Services - home lab

Directory Services and Integration - home lab

• 
  

  CUPS , CUPC

  
  
  
  
  
  

How to connect GNS3 virtual routers to local PC NICs - windows

My GNS3 topology:

To verify connectivity between CUCM and the virtual routers running under GNS3, I must first verify that the vitual routers can access the PC NICs. To do this , I followed these steps:

1. create new network connection, use "add hardware" menu on the Control Panel to do this
2.  let the add hardware wizard runs its course
3. click on Yes , i have connected the hardware
4. scroll to the bottom of the list and choose "add a new hardware device"
5. install the hardware manually
6. select Network Adaptor
7. select Microsoft and choose MS Loopback Adaptor and finish installation
   
8. under "Network Connections" , a new icon is created besides the usual Wireless NC, Local Area Connection, VMware NA and so forth
9. rename this Loopback - GNS3
10. configure the PC loopback interface with an IP address : 10.1.2.254 / 24
11. on the GNS3 installation directory, run "Network device list.cmd"
12. the output will look like this:

Network adapters on this machine:

NIO_gen_eth:\Device\NPF_{E2A157C9-021A-4FB1-86BF-34ED8C2310E1}
 Name      : VMware Network Adapter VMnet1
 Desciption: VMware Virtual Ethernet Adapter

NIO_gen_eth:\Device\NPF_{C7EF6659-191D-451B-801F-0AC64C7E1FDF}
 Name      : VMware Network Adapter VMnet8
 Desciption: VMware Virtual Ethernet Adapter

NIO_gen_eth:\Device\NPF_{0688B198-50D9-41C8-958B-4CB935DF609C}
 Name      : Local Area Connection
 Desciption: Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Driver

NIO_gen_eth:\Device\NPF_{FD2911D5-CAC7-4382-813B-4E4997876429}
 Name      : Loopbaack - GNS3
 Desciption: MS LoopBack Driver

NIO_gen_eth:\Device\NPF_{2818775B-F831-4CF4-B07E-9B6276B2A397}
 Name      : Wireless Network Connection 2
 Desciption: Belkin Wireless G USB

Use as follows:
  F0/0 = NIO_gen_eth:\Device\NPF_{...}
Press any key to continue . . .

1. edit the xxxx.net file , in my case, I saved the topology file into test1.net
2. as illustrated in the topolgy, the HQ router is connecting to the CO cloud via a switch
3. edit the switch config as follow:   
4.     [[ETHSW SW0]]
           1 = access 1
           2 = access 1 NIO_gen_eth:\Device\NPF_{FD2911D5-CAC7-4382-813B-4E4997876429}
5. switch port 1 is connected to HQ router
6. switch port 2 is connected to PC loopback interface NIO which device # you 'd get from "Network device list.cmd"
7. start GNS3 and load all the routers configs
8. the PC should be able to ping the routers in the topology now

E:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>ipconfig
Windows IP Configuration
Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection 2:
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.112
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
Ethernet adapter VMware Network Adapter VMnet8:
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.238.1
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
Ethernet adapter VMware Network Adapter VMnet1:
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.193.1
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
Ethernet adapter Loopbaack - GNS3:
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.1.2.254
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.1.2.1
Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
E:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>ping 10.1.2.1
Pinging 10.1.2.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 10.1.2.1: bytes=32 time=98ms TTL=255
Reply from 10.1.2.1: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=255
Reply from 10.1.2.1: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=255
Reply from 10.1.2.1: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=255
Ping statistics for 10.1.2.1:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 28ms, Maximum = 98ms, Average = 49ms
E:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>

GNS3 on WXP is such a memory hog, took 2.5Gig memory on winXP with 4 routers running OSPF

I had 4 routers running 3745 images with 4T and 16ESW modules; they have OSPF running so all the routers were able to ping each other fine. On my WXP laptop , virtual memory was running at 2.5 Gig making things really crawling. I also had wintabber running to place all the router consoles into tabs which kinda tidied up the workspace.
I was pretty sure I had all the idlepc , ghostios and sparsemem enabled, so not sure why winXP is such a memory hog.