Alternate study material?

Ah Yul Brynner. Here you are in the role of your life. How many fucking times did you dance with that lady? Countless I expect. I bet the late King would help me pass the test if he could.

Network Summarization - not so hard.

While I'm sure it gets more complex than this, the Network Summarization on the CCDA test it looks like all you are asked is to summarize a fairly simple set of ip's. Let say you're given this list and asked to summarize it.
192.168.168.0
192.168.169.0
192.168.170.0
192.168.171.0
192.168.172.0
192.168.173.0
192.168.173.0
192.168.174.0
192.168.175.0

First you convert the non-similar octet of the smallest IP and the largest IP to decimal.
192.168.168.0 becomes 192.168.1010100.0
192.168.175.0 becomes 192.168.10101111.0
Now compare the binary numbers from left to right. The commonality is "10101" (the first 5) and the difference is the last 3. Well spank my ass and call me Charlie, the IP address that represents this network can be found by taking the common bits and adding zeros on the end. Thus: 192.168.10101000.0 becomes 192.168.168.0. The subnet mask is found by taking the last 3 bits 11111111.11111111.11111000.00000000 = /21
So the IP summarization of the range of IP's from above is 192.168.168.0/21

Source: http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=174107&seqNum=3&rl=1

Cisco Blog

http://www.ciscoblog.com/

Netflow wtf?

NetFlow is an open but proprietary network protocol developed by Cisco Systems to run on Cisco IOS-enabled equipment for collecting IP traffic information. With it you can measure traffic for billing or bill-back purposes. NetFlow works by placing the packet inspection burden on the router or switch itself, eliminating the need for a probe or an agent
http://www.netmon.ca/resources/articles/2007_03_Cisco_Netflow.htm

Netmon is software that can be used to interperate netflow data.

640-863 IPv6 questions

There are a few IPv6 questions on the test. Here's some of my notes.

An IPv6 address is 16 octets (wow)
Successive 0’s are represented with :: so 0.0.0.0 can be ::
Leading zeros are compressed.
Loopback 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.1
”Unspecified address” can be represented by 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0 or ::

Check this out for more reading http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_IPv6AddressandAddressNotationandPrefixRepresentati.htm
(warning, shitty colour scheme may make you a little ill)

Doug Kenline's blog

http://layer1transport.blogspot.com/
Here's a guy who's miles ahead of me in his Cisco path. Read his section on Networking for Kids.

If I had a kid I'd tell him to forget about the Public Fool System and start digging in to his networking books. Get good enough at it to get himself a job in it and keep on studying from there.

Hierarchial Model

Hierarchial design is a critical exam component. When I find a diagram I like I'll post it. Memorize the Cisco Enterprise Archiecture Model. It's actually pretty cool.

There's 4 modules.
Enterprise Campus
Enterprise Edge
Service Provider (SP) Edge
and Remote Module.

In the Enterprise Campus module you'll find Cisco's favorite hierarhial design. ie. Core-> Distribution-> Access. It starts at the top with the Server farm and data center. That's where file servers, DNS servers, email and application servers and, oh yes, Cisco CallManager servers.

Under that is the campus core. The core has wicked fast switching equipment. This is the backbone. QoS implemented here. Redundance, high availability, and speed, are the orders of the day.

Under that is the Distribution Layer. Policies are enforced here. Redundancy and load balancing ar ehere. QoS also lives here. Media translation between protocols (if necessary) is here. Security filtering is here too. Why is all this shit here instead of the Core? The core is left to do things fast, and isn't burdened with extra jobs.

Connected to the distribution layer is the Access Layer. Remember these points. QoS lives here (surprise). Port security, broadcast supression, and high availability live here too.

In other words, workstations connect to the Access layer that connects to Distribution, that connects to the Core, which connects to Servers.