SP Verification Notes
One of the keystones to success in the SP Lab Exam is verification. Now this is obviously key to all tracks but is particularly complex in SP.
With the RS exam there are 4 ways to verify connectivity – ping, traceroute, routing table lookup and TCL Scripting [extended version of ping] where we put together a TCL Script using the foreach functionality – specify the various IP ranges used during the exam and execute the perl script on the routers. It has been covered in various other posts so here’s a link to NMC’s[or Cisco's] TCL document -> http://www.netmasterclass.net/site/articles/CISCO%20IOS%20TCL%20and%20RCMD%20testing%20and%20troubleshooting%20scripting.pdf
Note that for the for the 3550’s, they do not support TCL rather use macro’s so in config mode type…
macro name ICMP
do ping 18.1.1.1
do ping 18.2.2.2
do ping 18.3.3.3
do ping 18.4.4.4
@
However we use the address-family concept in SP and as a result this technique is only valid for L2 & L3 addresses not associated with address-families. As a result we need to place various appendages to our verification commands. Concentrating on the MPLS VPN world we use…
“show ip bgp vpn all summary” command to check the MP-BGP establishment status
“show ip vrf detail” command to verify the import and export route targets.
“ping vrf <vrf> <ip address> source <source ip>” to ping ip addresses not in standard routing table
“sh ip bgp vpn all summary”
Lists all of the MP-BGP and CE peers.
“sh ip bgp vpn all”
Lists all of the VPN prefixes advertised and received by the router.
“sh ip bgp vpn vrf <vrf> summary”
Similar to the first command, but for a specific VRF.
“sh ip bgp vpn vrf <vrf>”
Lists all of the VPN prefixes received in a specific VRF.
“sh ip bgp vpn vrf <vrf> labels”
Lists labels for the VPN prefixes in a VRF.
“sh mpls forwarding”
Shows all LFIB entries (VPN, non-VPN, TE, and so on).
“sh mpls forwarding | inc <prefix>”
Shows whether the prefix is present in the LFIB or not.
“sh mpls forwarding vrf <vrf> <prefix>”
Shows LFIB lookup based on a VPN prefix.
“sh mpls forwarding label <label>”
Shows LFIB lookup based on an incoming label.
This also extends to Multicast wher you need to amend the commands such as sh ip pim vrf <vrf> int, etc.
As you can see the verification in the MPLS VPN portion of the lab will require a good deal of time and hence perhaps why Cisco perform so much pre-config on this exam.
Verification can not be emphasized enough, but due to the shear load of tasks in the SP lab, I would caution against over verification. Therefore it is important to select the most efficient means of verification.
For the past 3 weeks I had been typing these commands for a few hundred times, they even appeared in my dreams. LoL. Thanks for the checklist Stephen.
I have a doubt Of ISIS multiarea
say i have router forming L1 relationship
router physical interface uses a net address 49.0011.0000.0000.0001.00
and loopback uses differnet net address say 49.1111.0000.0000.0001.00
same on other router both physiacl and loopback using differnt net address
while L1 relationship formed my loopbacks are in L2 area
as I am using multiarea i cant use redistribution
(redistribute isis ip level 2 into level 1 )
its written in isis multiarea DOC
so can u provide me the alternate how to get l2 routes without using redistribution
A CCNP can configure.
A CCIE will verify.