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Advanced Switching/Routing Configuration and Management (ETH 405)

Prerequisites

To fully benefit from this course you should have attended the Basic Switch/Router Configuration and Management (ETH 103) course. It is also recommended that you have previous exposure to switching and routing issues in a Brocade environment. You should possess: a working knowledge of the listed technologies and the following personal hardware during the week of attendance:

Working Knowledge Of

  • Spanning Tree Protocol 802.1d
  • Inter-domain routing protocols (RIP, OSPF, static routes)
  • Exterior-domain routing protocols (BGP)
  • FNCNE level knowledge or equivalent of Layer 2 switching and Layer 3 IP routing
  • Brocade command line interface (CLI)

We strongly recommend that students bring their own PC to act as the console during labs. Recommended personal hardware includes:

  • Laptop Personal Computer with W95 or higher
  • Ethernet NIC card
  • CD Drive
  • Serial Interface

Course Content

The ETH 405 course is an in-depth study of layer 2 and layer 3 features of Brocade switches and routers including advanced technologies such as Spanning Tree, OSPF, and BGP. It covers network design, system configuration and troubleshooting using the Brocade switches and routers.

Course Objectives

After completing this course, the student will be able to:

  • Implement advanced designs and configurations in Layer 2 and 3 Data Networks
  • Implement advanced STP, OSPF and BGP features on Brocade Switches / Routers
  • Tune the Brocade Layer 2 network for fast STP failover
  • Design and configure multi-homed networks with BGP attributes and scale IBGP with route relectors
  • Interconnect Brocade Switch Routers based on a network design
  • Troubleshoot the in class design implementations using the CLI show commands

Course Outline

Spanning Tree

Review of 802.1D Spanning Tree Protocol
Describe the Purpose of 802.1 D Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
Describe STP Device Titles and the roles they play in defining an Active Path to the Root Bridge
Describe the Device Title Election Process
Describe the two types of Bridge Protocol Data Units
Describe the five STP port states
Describe an STP recovery from a Topology Change
Predict how Spanning Tree will converge on a given network topology
Root Bridge Election & Path Cost
List the Spanning Tree Defaults for Brocade Hardware
Define Spanning Tree Bridge and Port Parameters
Record STP parameters of a network, and predict the Root Bridge Election
Change STP parameters so that a different Root Bridge is elected based on your design
Change STP timers so that a spanning tree is resolved more quickly
Record the topology change history
Spanning Tree Applications
Describe the Hierarchal Model for Enterprise Switching
List Brocade Spanning Tree Features and where they are applicable
Rapid Spanning Tree 802.1W- Draft 3
Shorten the STP convergence time by applying Rapid Spanning Tree
Verify that the convergence (failover) time is shortened
Record the (failback) time
Describe why failover and failback times are different
Adjust the Forward-Delay to shorten the 802.1W failback time
Choose which ports can benefit from Draft 3 of 802.1 W
Single Instance Spanning Tree
Simplify Spanning Tree environments by reducing the topology to one STP instance
Describe how CPU resources are conserved with one STP instance compared to many STP instances
Implement conversions to Single Instance Spanning Tree and back to Per VLAN without causing network disruption
Per VLAN Spanning Tree
Load-balance the traffic of two VLANs across two uplinks
Verify that traffic from either active link will failover to the other active link
Implement Rapid Spanning Tree in the PerVLAN application and have rapid failover between the active links
Determine which switches will provide 802.1w Draft 3 failover depending on the VLAN uplink being broken
Per VLAN Group Spanning Tree
Describe a Topology Group as a general tool for organizing layer 2 paths
Reduce CPU usage and maintain uplink load balancing by grouping several VLANS under two STP instances
Verify that all VLAN member traffic from either active link will failover to the other active link
Implement Rapid Spanning Tree in a Per VLAN Group STP application and have rapid failover between the active links
Verify that implementing Per VLAN Group Spanning tree has not compromised Rapid STP failover time
VRRPe in a Spanning Tree Environment
Test the advantages of two different layer 2 designs that implement VRRPe in a network core
Describe how a Backup Router becomes Master through non-reception of Hello packets
Configure 2 VRIDs and verify both L2 and L3 failover between them
Observe the effect of VRRPe hello packet interruption and delay

OSPF

OSPF Adjacency
Describe the OSPF Packet Types
Describe the process of OSPF Neighbor Adjacency
View the states of the adjacency process
Use the OSPF debug commands to troubleshoot adjacency
Describe how Link State costs will effect the route table
Configure Link State costs
Configure MD5 Authentication
OSPF Database
Describe the six different Link State Advertisements LSA's and their uses
Describe the difference between internal and external LSA's
Record the LSA's stored in a router database
Describe the effect that Normal OSPF area boundaries have on LSA migration
Verify this migration in the lab
OSPF Route Summarization
Configure redistribution to allow Multiple Interior routing protocols to coexist in the same network
Describe why route summarization is beneficial to an OSPF network
Recognize when routes should be summarized
Design and configure Intra-Area and Inter-Area Summarization
Configure, monitor and troubleshoot redistribution problems
Administrative Distances
Define an Administrative Distance
Describe the difference between an Administrative Distance and a Metric
Define default Administrative Distances
Modify an Administrative Distance
Blocking External LSA's
List the LSA's types that flood into Normal areas
List the LSA's types that flood into Stub areas
List the LSA's types that flood into Totally Stubby areas
List the LSA's types that flood into Not So Stubby areas (NSSA)
Use the show ip ospf database commands to recognize what areas should be made into a particular type to enhance network performance
Make area type changes and verify reduction of external LSA's in OSPF databases
OSPF Filters
List the filter types and describe their behavior
Design and deploy filters to block route updates and traffic

BGP

BGP Fundamentals
List the BGP message types and describe their purposes
Explain the BGP session states
Describe how BGP operates
Describe how BGP attributes are used as basic routing policy tools
Configure and troubleshoot BGP session startup
Explain why attributes are so important in BGP
Route Filtering and Selection
Describe the Route Exchange and Filtering processes including; IP tables, BGP tables, input and output policies
Describe the two levels and two direction of BGP filtering mechanisms
Implementing BGP Policy Changes
Explain the three ways to implement BGP configuration changes
Explain the caution when using soft-reconfiguration and hard clear
Describe memory considerations when using soft-reconfiguration
List the advantages if using Route Refresh (RFC 2918)
Implement non-disruptive BGP policy changes using Route Refresh
Manipulating Attributes using Route Maps
Explain how each attribute is used to influence route selection or traffic flow
Configure MEDs three ways to introduce inbound traffic
Implement inbound and outbound traffic flow designs using BGP attributes
Design BGP policies based on the knowledge gained configuring attributes
Filtering Prefixes
Configure Access List to filter prefixes one by one
Explain why AS-Path access-list are used in a BGP network
List six common AS-Path regular expressions and describe what route update they will filter
Implement a security design with AS Path access-list
Configure prefix-list to prevent customers from advertising routes with a mask greater than 26 bits
Transit Autonomous Systems
Describe how communities are used to simply route filtering
Explain the RFC-1997 AS:NN community names
Design community based policies to control propagation of the route updates
Implement a transit policy design to control route updates to both customers and other ISPs
Configure route-maps, neighbor statements, set and match command to implement communities
Redundancy
Explain who controls Inbound and Outbound traffic
Describe how BGP is not needed to implement multiple links to one or more Service Providers
List the three common ways to have multiple links to one ISP
Configure BGP routing for customers with multiple links to one or more Service Providers
MultiHomed to ISPs
Explain why and when BGP should be used
Design and configure load sharing for customer's (outbound) traffic and return (inbound) traffic
Describe the load sharing requirements of both a typical internet customer and typical ISP
Configure 3 types of multihome designs
Design and deploy BGP communities for consistent return path selection
BGP Convergence and Route flap Dampening
Explain why route flap dampening is used
Describe what happens when a route flaps
List the operational steps of route flap dampening
Configure route flap dampening
Scaling IBGP
Describe IBGP full mesh limitations
List the guidelines for a table IBGP design
Explain the operation of BGP route reflectors
Describe how BGP confederations work
Implement a route reflector design
Configure peer groups

Who should attend

The Target Audience for this course is as follows:

  • Customers or Resellers who are experienced with Brocade Products
  • Network technicians with installation, configuration, and troubleshooting experience with Brocade Products
  • Network Administrators responsible for implementing and managing small to large enterprise and ISP networks.
  • Network support staff that will act as network device installers and first-line support for a local to global sized business environment.