CCNP Routing and Switching TSHOOT 300-135 Official Cert Guide (2015)
Introduction
Professional certifications have been an important part of the computing industry for many years and will continue to become more important. Many reasons exist for these certifications, but the most popularly cited reason is that of credibility. All other considerations held equal, the certified employee/consultant/job candidate is considered more valuable than one who is not.
Goals and Methods
The most important and somewhat obvious goal of this book is to help you pass the 300-135 Troubleshooting and Maintaining Cisco IP Networks (TSHOOT) exam. In fact, if the primary objective of this book were different, the book’s title would be misleading; however, the methods used in this book to help you pass the TSHOOT exam are designed to also make you much more knowledgeable about how to do your job. Although this book and the accompanying CD-ROM have many exam preparation tasks and example test questions, the method in which they are used is not to simply make you memorize as many questions and answers as you possibly can.
The methodology of this book helps you discover the exam topics about which you need more review, fully understand and remember exam topic details, and prove to yourself that you have retained your knowledge of those topics. So, this book helps you pass not by memorization, but by helping you truly learn and understand the topics. The TSHOOT exam is typically your final journey in pursuit of the CCNP Routing and Switching certification, and the knowledge contained within is vitally important to consider yourself a truly skilled routing and switching expert or specialist. This book would do you a disservice if it did not attempt to help you learn the material. To that end, the book can help you pass the TSHOOT exam by using the following methods:
Covering the exam topics and helping you discover which exam topics you have not mastered
Providing explanations and information to fill in your knowledge gaps
Supplying multiple troubleshooting case studies with diagrams and diagnostic output that enhance your ability to resolve trouble tickets presented in the exam environment, in addition to real-world troubleshooting issues you might encounter
Providing practice exercises on exam topics, presented in each chapter and on the enclosed CD-ROM
Who Should Read This Book?
This book is not designed to be a general networking topics book, although it can be used for that purpose. This book is intended to tremendously increase your chances of passing the Cisco TSHOOT exam. Although other objectives can be achieved from using this book, the book is written with one goal in mind: to help you pass the exam. If you want to pass the exam, this book is for you.
Strategies for Exam Preparation
The strategy you use to prepare for the TSHOOT exam might differ slightly from strategies used by other readers, mainly based on the skills, knowledge, and experience you have already obtained. For example, if you have attended a TSHOOT course, you might take a different approach than someone who learned troubleshooting through on-the-job training. Regardless of the strategy you use or the background you have, this book is designed to help you gain the knowledge you need about the issues that can arise with different routing and switching technologies and get you to the point where you can apply that knowledge and pass the exam.
Cisco Certifications and Exams
Cisco offers four levels of routing and switching certification, each with an increasing level of proficiency: Entry, Associate, Professional, and Expert. These are commonly known by their acronyms CCENT (Cisco Certified Entry Networking Technician), CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) Routing and Switching, CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional) Routing and Switching, and CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert) Routing and Switching.
For the CCNP Routing and Switching certification, you must pass exams on a series of CCNP topics, including the SWITCH, ROUTE, and TSHOOT exams. For most exams, Cisco does not publish the scores needed for passing. You need to take the exam to find that out for yourself.
To see the most current requirements for the CCNP Routing and Switching certification, go to Cisco.com and click Training and Events. There you can find out other exam details such as exam topics and how to register for an exam.
How This Book Is Organized
Although this book can be read cover to cover, it is designed to be flexible and enable you to easily move between chapters to cover only the material that you need more work with. The chapters can be covered in any order, although some chapters are related and build upon each other. If you do intend to read them all, the order in the book is an excellent sequence to use.
Each core chapter covers a subset of the topics on the CCNP TSHOOT exam. The chapters are organized into parts, covering the following topics:
Chapter 1, “Introduction to Troubleshooting and Network Maintenance:” This chapter discusses the importance of having a structured troubleshooting approach and a solid network maintenance plan. It identifies many popular models, structures, and tasks that should be considered by all organizations. However, as you will see, there is no “one-stop shop for all your needs” when it comes to troubleshooting and network maintenance. It is more of an art that you will master over time.
Chapter 2, “Troubleshooting and Maintenance Tools:” This chapter introduces you to a sampling of Cisco IOS tools and features designed for network maintenance and troubleshooting. The tools include ping, Telnet, traceroute, NetFlow, SNMP, SPAN, RSPAN, and CDP.
Chapter 3, “Troubleshooting Device Performance:” This chapter discusses common reasons for high CPU and memory utilization on routers and switches in addition to how you can recognize them. You will examine interface statistics, as they can be an initial indication of some type of issue. You will also review the different types of packet switching modes on routers and multilayer switches.
Chapter 4, “Troubleshooting Layer 2 Trunks, VTP, and VLANs:” This chapter begins by reviewing Layer 2 switch operations and builds from there with discussions on how to troubleshoot issues relating to trunks, VTP, and VLANs. You will also discover how important the information in the MAC address table can be while troubleshooting.
Chapter 5, “Troubleshooting STP and Layer 2 EtherChannel:” This chapter reviews the operation of STP and focuses on troubleshooting STP topology issues such as root bridge selection, root port selection, designated port selection, and finally, the blocked port. You will also examine how to troubleshoot STP features such as PortFast, BPDU Guard, BPDU Filter, Root Guard, Loop Guard, and UDLD. In addition, this chapter reviews how you can combine multiple physical Layer 2 switchports into a logical EtherChannel bundle and how you can troubleshoot issues related to them.
Chapter 6, “Troubleshooting Inter-VLAN Routing and Layer 3 EtherChannels:” This chapter focuses on how you can troubleshoot issues related to different inter-VLAN routing implementations (router-on-a-trunk/stick and SVIs), issues related to routed ports, and issues related to Layer 3 EtherChannels.
Chapter 7, “Troubleshooting Switch Security Features:” This chapter is dedicated to troubleshooting issues related to security features that can be implemented on switches. This includes port security, DHCP snooping, dynamic ARP inspection, IP Source Guard, protected ports, PVLANs, and VACLs. Most of the issues you will experience with these features are configuration based. Therefore, you will focus on the configuration requirements for troubleshooting purposes.
Chapter 8, “Troubleshooting First-Hop Redundancy Protocols:” This chapter discusses the issues that might arise when implementing FHRPs such as HSRP, VRRP, and GLBP. It identifies various elements that could cause these FHRPs not to function as expected and that should be considered while you are troubleshooting. It also provides a collection of commands you can use to successfully troubleshoot issues related to each FHRP.
Chapter 9, “Troubleshooting IPv4 Addressing and Addressing Technologies:” This chapter begins by reviewing IPv4 addressing and how you can identify if addressing is the issue. This is extremely important as you do not want to waste your time troubleshooting a service or feature when the issue is related to the device having an inappropriate IPv4 address, subnet mask, or default gateway. The chapter then covers issues and troubleshooting tasks related to DHCPv4 and NAT.
Chapter 10, “Troubleshooting IPv6 Addressing and Addressing Technologies:” This chapter covers how an IPv6-enabled device determines whether the destination is local or remote. You will also learn how MAC addresses are determined for known IPv6 address, and you will explore the various options for address assignment such as SLAAC and DHCPv6, and what to look for while troubleshooting IPv6-related issues.
Chapter 11, “Troubleshooting IPv4 and IPv6 ACLs and Prefix Lists:” This chapter covers the ins and outs of ACLs and prefix lists. You will learn the way they are processed, how they are read, and how you can identify issues related to them. In addition, this chapter explains how you can use ACLs for traffic filtering and how a prefix list can be used for route filtering.
Chapter 12, “Troubleshooting Basic IPv4/IPv6 Routing and GRE Tunnels:” This chapter covers the packet-delivery process and the various commands that enable you to troubleshoot issues related to the process. You will learn how a router chooses which sources of routing information are more believable so that only the best routes are in the routing table. You will also learn how to recognize and troubleshoot issues related to static routing and GRE tunnels.
Chapter 13, “Troubleshooting RIPv2 and RIPng:” This chapter focuses on the issues that you may have to troubleshoot in a RIPv2 and RIPng domain. This includes how you would recognize the issues based on the presented symptoms and the commands you would use to successfully verify the reason why the issue exists.
Chapter 14, “Troubleshooting EIGRP:” This chapter covers troubleshooting of both EIGRP for IPv4 and EIGRP for IPv6. It breaks out the troubleshooting discussions into two different parts: troubleshooting neighbor adjacencies and troubleshooting missing routes. It also covers the troubleshooting of various issues that are not directly related to neighborships or routes that might arise with EIGRP. To wrap up the chapter, named EIGRP troubleshooting is covered.
Chapter 15, “Troubleshooting OSPF:” This chapter covers troubleshooting of both OSPFv2 and OSPFv3. It breaks out the troubleshooting discussions into two different parts: troubleshooting neighbor adjacencies and troubleshooting missing routes. It also covers the troubleshooting of various issues that are not directly related to neighborships or routes that might arise with OSPF. To wrap up the chapter, OSPFv3 address family troubleshooting is covered.
Chapter 16, “Troubleshooting Route Maps and Policy-Based Routing:” This chapter begins by examining route maps. It gives you the opportunity to review how route maps are read and the commands that you can use to verify a route map’s configuration. The rest of the chapter is dedicated to PBR, which allows you to override the router’s default routing behavior. Therefore, you will discover what could cause PBR not to behave as expected and how you can troubleshoot it.
Chapter 17, “Troubleshooting Redistribution:” This chapter explores the differences of redistributing into EIGRP, OSPF, RIP, and BGP for both IPv4 and IPv6. You will learn what to look out for while troubleshooting so that you can quickly solve any issues related to redistribution. In addition, you will examine what could occur in environments that have multiple points of redistribution and how you can identify the issues and solve them.
Chapter 18, “Troubleshooting BGP:” This chapter examines the various issues that you may face when trying to establish an IPv4 and IPv6 eBGP and iBGP neighbor adjacency and how you can identify them and troubleshoot them. You will also examine the issues that may arise when exchanging IPv4 and IPv6 eBGP and iBGP routes and how you can recognize them and troubleshoot them successfully. You also need to be very familiar with the decision-making process that BGP uses to be an efficient troubleshooter. Therefore, you will spend time exploring this process in the chapter as well.
Chapter 19, “Troubleshooting Management Protocols and Tools:” This chapter covers the issues you might encounter with management protocols such as NTP, syslog, and SNMP. It also covers the issues that you might encouter with management tools, such as Cisco IOS IP SLA, Object Tracking, SPAN, and RSPAN.
Chapter 20, “Troubleshooting Management Access:” This chapter examines the different reasons why access to the console and vty lines might fail, and how you can identify them. In addition you will explore the issues that may arise when using Cisco IOS AAA authentication.
Chapter 21, “Additional Trouble Tickets:” This chapter is dedicated to showing you an additional ten trouble tickets and the various approaches that you can take to solve the problems that are presented.
Chapter 22, “Final Preparation:” This chapter identifies tools for final exam preparation and helps you develop an effective study plan.
Appendix A, “Answers to the ‘Do I Know This Already?’ Quizzes.:” This appendix has the answers to the “Do I Know This Already” quizzes, and Appendix B, “TSHOOT Exam Updates,” tells you how to find any updates should there be changes to the exam.
Each chapter in the book uses several features to help you make the best use of your time in that chapter. The features are as follows:
Assessment: Each chapter begins with a “Do I Know This Already?” quiz that helps you determine the amount of time you need to spend studying each topic of the chapter. If you intend to read the entire chapter, you can save the quiz for later use. Questions are all multiple-choice, to give a quick assessment of your knowledge.
Foundation Topics: This is the core section of each chapter that explains the protocols, concepts, configuration, and troubleshooting strategies for the topics in the chapter.
Exam Preparation Tasks: At the end of each chapter, this section collects key topics, references to memory table exercises to be completed as memorization practice, key terms to define, and a command reference that summarizes any relevant commands presented in the chapter.
Finally, the companion CD-ROM contains practice CCNP Routing and Switching TSHOOT questions to reinforce your understanding of the book’s concepts. Be aware that the TSHOOT exam will primarily be made up of trouble tickets you need to resolve. Mastery of the topics covered by the CD-based questions, however, will help equip you with the tools needed to effectively troubleshoot the trouble tickets presented on the exam.
The CD also contains the Memory Table exercises and answer keys as well as over 60mins of video walking you through an exam strategy.
CCNP TSHOOT Exam Topics
Carefully consider the exam topics Cisco has posted on its website as you study, particularly for clues to how deeply you should know each topic. Also, you can develop a broader knowledge of the subject matter by reading and studying the topics presented in this book. Remember that it is in your best interest to become proficient in each of the CCNP Routing and Switching subjects. When it is time to use what you have learned, being well rounded counts more than being well tested.
Table I-1 shows the official exam topics for the TSHOOT exam, as posted on Cisco.com. Note that Cisco has occasionally changed exam topics without changing the exam number, so do not be alarmed if small changes in the exam topics occur over time. Also, it is possible to receive questions on the exam that are not related to any of the exam topics listed. Cisco indicates this when you view the exam topics on their website. Therefore, to ensure that you are well prepared for the exam, we have covered the exam topics as well as any additional topics that we considered to be necessary for your success. For example, there is no mention of Layer 2 security, inter-VLAN routing, or FHRPs in the exam objectives. However, we have included chapters dedicated to these to make sure that you are well prepared.
Table I-1 CCNP TSHOOT Exam Topics
Icons Used in This Book
Command Syntax Conventions
The conventions used to present command syntax in this book are the same conventions used in the IOS Command Reference. The Command Reference describes these conventions as follows:
Boldface indicates commands and keywords that are entered literally as shown. In actual configuration examples and output (not general command syntax), boldface indicates commands that are manually input by the user (such as a show command).
Italics indicate arguments for which you supply actual values.
Vertical bars (|) separate alternative, mutually exclusive elements.
Square brackets [ ] indicate optional elements.
Braces { } indicate a required choice.
Braces within brackets [{ }] indicate a required choice within an optional element.