Relating the Exam Topics to a Typical Network Engineer’s Job ccnp training in delhi india

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The need to plan, and the need to document those plans, increases as the size of the organization

increases. Even if only one person at a company cares about the router and

switch infrastructure, that engineer probably does not want to be writing configurations

at 2 a.m. Sunday morning when the change window begins. So, even in a small IT shop,

some planning occurs when the engineer creates the configurations in a text editor before

the weekend change window. When the staff grows to 3 to 4 people, particularly when

some of those people work different shifts, the need to document the design, implementation,

and verification/operational procedures becomes more important.

For perspective, this section examines a medium- to large-sized company, along with

some of the planning tasks done in the real world—the same kinds of tasks listed as part

of the CCNP Exam Topics.

A Fictitious Company and Networking Staff

Imagine if you will a medium to large company, one large enough to have several network

engineers on staff. For the sake of discussion, this company has roughly 50,000 employees,

with 1000 smallish remote sites, four large sites with at least 2000 employees on each

large campus, and maybe a smattering of other sites with 500 or so employees. Of course,

the company has a few data centers, has plans for a companywide IP telephony deployment,

is adding video over IP, already has the usual security needs, and has a growing teleworker

community, several network connections to partner companies, and Internet

connections. Oh yeah, and there’s always the growing need for smart buildings to reduce

energy consumption, all hooked into the IP network.

With a company of this size, the job roles for this fictitious company includes IT customer

support (Help Desk, manned 24x7), an operations team that covers most hours of the day,

network engineering, and a design team.

Next, consider the various roles in the network and the type of work done by the people

in those roles:

■

statement from a customer down to a specific issue, for example, that a user’s device

is not pingable.

Help desk personnel may perform diagnosis of network health, taking a general problem

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calls from the Help Desk and monitoring the network proactively. The operations

staff also often implements changes on behalf of the engineering team during offshift

hours.

Operations staff may be the second level of support for problems, both reacting to

■

typically focuses on project work, including the detailed planning for new configurations

to support new sites, new network features, and new sites in the network.

The network engineering team may be the third level of support for problems but

■

operations and engineering teams, instead focusing on gathering requirements from

internal and external customers, translating those requirements into a network design,

The network designers may actually log in to the network devices far less than the

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Chapter 1: Planning Tasks for the CCNP Exams 7

and even doing proof-of-concept testing—but leaving the details of how to deploy

the design for all required sites to the network engineering team.

The number of individuals in each role varies in different organizations, of course. Maybe

only a single network designer and single network engineer are required, with maybe 2 to

3 people as network operations specialists—not enough for 24x7 coverage with a specialist,

but close. The Help Desk position may simply require most people to have the same

fundamental networking skill set, depending on the size of the shop. On the other end of

the scale, in the largest companies, the engineering staff might include several departments

of network engineers.

The Design Step

Next, consider the basic workflow when a new network project happens, new sites are

added, or any noticeable change occurs. The network designer begins the process by determining

the requirements and creating a plan. That plan typically lists the following:

■

The requirements for the project

■

The sites affected

■

Sample configurations

■

Results from proof-of-concept testing

■

Dependencies and assumptions

■

Many other items might be included as well.

After creating the design document, the network designer often uses a peer review process

to refine and confirm the design. The designer cannot simply work in a vacuum, define the

design, and then toss the design document to network engineering to be deployed. In

smaller shops, a peer review may simply be 2 to 3 people standing around a dry erase

board discussing the project. In larger shops, the design peer review probably requires a

thorough written document be distributed before the meeting, with attendance from network

engineering, operations, and the Help Desk, and with formal sign-off required.

Business requirements, financials, and management commitments

Implementation Planning Step

The next step in the life of the project occurs when a network engineer takes the approved

design document from the design team and begins planning the implementation of the

project. To do this task, the network engineer must interpret the examples and general

cases described in the design document and develop a very specific implementation plan

that lists all significant tasks and actions by each group and on each device. The design

document, for instance, may show example cases of typical branch offices—a typical

one-router branch, a typical two-router larger branch, a typical district (medium-sized)

site, and so on. The network engineer must then determine what must be done on every

device to implement the project and document those details in an implementation plan.

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8 CCNP ROUTE 642-902 Official Certification Guide

For example, imagine this fictitious company plans to deploy IP telephony to the 1000 remote

sites. The design document lists the following requirements:

■

in the design doc).

Switches with Power over Ethernet (PoE) at each remote office (switch models listed

■

second VLAN/subnet.

The convention of placing all phones at a site in one VLAN/subnet and all PCs in a

■

VLAN trunking between the switch and the 1 or 2 routers at each remote site.

■

Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST).

A particular version and feature set of router IOS on the remote site routers to support

■

both routes from a remote site back into the network core are in the routing

table at the same time.

The design document certainly contains more details than the preceding list, but the list

gives you an idea of the starting point when the network engineer first work on his implementation

plan by reviewing the design document.

After a thorough review of the design, the network engineer then develops an implementation

plan that includes items like the following:

More aggressive tuning of EIGRP to improve convergence time, particularly by ensuring

■

(for PoE support) and which do not

A list of all remote offices, with notations of which require a switch hardware upgrade

■

Total numbers of switches to be ordered, prices, and delivery schedules

■

phone VLAN/subnet and PC VLAN/subnet

A table that lists the specific VLAN and subnet numbers used at each site for the

■

DHCP servers configurations for dynamic assignment

The IP address ranges from each remote site subnet that needs to be added to the

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trunking or the required IOS, including pricing and delivery schedules

A list of the remote site routers that require a router hardware upgrade to support either

■

memory upgrade to support the needed IOS

A list of remote site routers that do not require a replacement router but do require a

■

switch, SRST, and EIGRP convergence tuning

Annotated sample configurations for typical sites, including VLAN trunking to the

■

that will be configured as part of the project

The preceding list represents the types of items that would be documented in the implementation

plan for this project. The list is certainly not exhaustive but represents a smattering

of what might end up in such a plan.

The implementation plan probably has many informal reviews as the network engineer

works through the plan. Additionally, larger shops often have a peer review after the plan

A reference to the location of the switch and router configuration for every device

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Chapter 1: Planning Tasks for the CCNP Exams 9

is more fully developed, with network designers, operations, and fellow network engineers

typically included in the review.

Verification Planning Step

The design step tells us “this is what we want to accomplish,” whereas the implementation

planning step tells us “this is exactly what we will do, and when, to accomplish this design.”

With that in mind, the verification plan tells whoever will actually perform the actions

to implement a project how to answer this question:

“Did the actions we took per the implementation plan work?”

The verification plan is used with the actual implementation of the changes in the network.

The larger the network, the less likely that the network engineer does any of the implementation

work, instead planning the implementation. More often than not, the

operations staff follows the implementation plan, or more specific instructions for each individual

change window, taking the appropriate actions (copying in configurations, for instance).

The engineer that implements the changes then uses the verification plan to

determine if the changes met the requirements.

The most important part of the verification plan, at least for being ready to pass the CCNP

exams, identifies what commands confirm whether each key design point was implemented

correctly. For example, the section “Implementation Planning Step” earlier in this

chapter briefly describes a project to deploy IP telephony to all remote sites. For that same

project, the following list describes some of the actions listed in the verification plan:

■

brief

the IP addresses match the planning chart in IP address repository.

After copy/pasting a remote site’s new router configuration, use the show ip interfacecommand, confirm an up/up state on the two subinterfaces of Fa0/0, and confirm

■

exist for each Data Center subnet. See “Data Center Subnet Reference” in the IP address

repository.

For each remote site router, use the show ip route command to confirm two routes

■

find neighbors listed as stub routers. For the routers configured in tonight’s change

window, compare this output to the Stub Router planning table in the implementation

plan, and confirm that the correct remote site routers have been configured as

EIGRP stubs.

Fromthe WANedge routers, use the show ip eigrp neighbors detail command, and

Note:

just represents the idea that an implementation plan would include some reference to the

location of all subnet/address reference information.

The important part of the verification plan lists the specific commands used, at what point

in the implementation process, and what output should be seen. In practice, this plan

should also include samples of output, spelling out what should be seen when correct, and

what output would tell the operations staff that the change did not work correctly.

The “IP address repository” mentioned in the list does not exist in this chapter; it

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10 CCNP ROUTE 642-902 Official Certification Guide

Documenting the Results of the Implementation

Continuing the story of the typical but fictitious company, when a set of changes is attempted

during a change window, some documentation must be changed based on the results.

If a different final configuration is used, the implementation documents must be

changed.

Note:

Topics refer to the task of documenting the results of the implementation and verification.

This particular step is mentioned mainly because several CCNP ROUTE Exam

Summary of the Role of Network Engineer

The CCNP certification focuses on skills required to do the job of network engineer as

generally described in this chapter. For perspective, then, consider the following list,

which compares and contrasts some of the expectations for CCNP network engineers by

interpreting the CCNP ROUTE Exam Topics:

■

Does not create the design document

■

that impact the eventual implementation, and confirming the portions of the design

that appear complete and valid

Does participate in design peer reviews, finding oversights, asking further questions

■

Does not deploy the configurations off-shift

■

those configurations in the implementation plan so that others can add the configuration

to various devices

Does plan and document the specific configurations for each device, documenting

■

engineers, finding omissions, caveats, and problems

Does participate in peer reviews of the implementation plans written by fellow network

■

Does not verify that the changes worked as planned when implemented off-shift

■

planned when implemented off-shift

Does create the verification plan that others use to verify that the changes worked as

■

Now that you’ve had a chance to think generally about the role of the network engineer,

the next section brings the discussion back around to the CCNP ROUTE exam, and how

you should prepare for the exam.Does perform peer reviews of other engineers’ verification plans