Cool Command 3: show ip ospf database database-summary

’show ip ospf database’ is one of those commands that every CCIE candidate needs to know how to use as it can show you a ton of very good OSPF information.  There are a ton of options for this command:

r2#show ip ospf database ?
  adv-router        Advertising Router link states
  asbr-summary      ASBR summary link states
  database-summary  Summary of database
  external          External link states
  network           Network link states
  nssa-external     NSSA External link states
  opaque-area       Opaque Area link states
  opaque-as         Opaque AS link states
  opaque-link       Opaque Link-Local link states
  router            Router link states
  self-originate    Self-originated link states
  summary           Network summary link states
  |                 Output modifiers
  <cr>

I can’t believe that I’ve gotten this far and never used the “database-summary” option for this command. 

database-summary
 (Optional) Displays how many of each type of LSA for each area there are in the database, and the total.

Here’s the output of the command for an OSPF process with area 0 and three non-zero areas (note the difference in the LSA types in Area 0 versus the non-zero areas):

r1#show ip ospf database database-summary

            OSPF Router with ID (1.1.1.1) (Process ID 100)

Area 0 database summary
  LSA Type      Count    Delete   Maxage
  Router        2        0        0      
  Network       1        0        0      
  Summary Net   6        0        0      
  Summary ASBR  0        0        0      
  Type-7 Ext    0        0        0      
    Prefixes redistributed in Type-7  0
  Opaque Link   0        0        0      
  Opaque Area   0        0        0      
  Subtotal      9        0        0      

Area 100 database summary
  LSA Type      Count    Delete   Maxage
  Router        1        0        0      
  Network       0        0        0      
  Summary Net   8        0        0      
  Summary ASBR  0        0        0      
  Type-7 Ext    0        0        0      
    Prefixes redistributed in Type-7  0
  Opaque Link   0        0        0      
  Opaque Area   0        0        0      
  Subtotal      9        0        0      

Area 101 database summary
  LSA Type      Count    Delete   Maxage
  Router        1        0        0      
  Network       0        0        0      
  Summary Net   8        0        0      
  Summary ASBR  0        0        0      
  Type-7 Ext    0        0        0      
    Prefixes redistributed in Type-7  0
  Opaque Link   0        0        0      
  Opaque Area   0        0        0      
  Subtotal      9        0        0      

Area 102 database summary
  LSA Type      Count    Delete   Maxage
  Router        1        0        0      
  Network       0        0        0      
  Summary Net   8        0        0      
  Summary ASBR  0        0        0      
  Type-7 Ext    0        0        0      
    Prefixes redistributed in Type-7  0
  Opaque Link   0        0        0      
  Opaque Area   0        0        0      
  Subtotal      9        0        0      

Process 100 database summary
  LSA Type      Count    Delete   Maxage
  Router        5        0        0      
  Network       1        0        0      
  Summary Net   30       0        0      
  Summary ASBR  0        0        0      
  Type-7 Ext    0        0        0      
  Opaque Link   0        0        0      
  Opaque Area   0        0        0      
  Type-5 Ext    0        0        0      
      Prefixes redistributed in Type-5  0
  Opaque AS     0        0        0      
  Total         36       0        0

As you can see this command shows a count of each type of LSA for each OSPF area (per process if you’re running multiple processes).  You can limit the output to a specific area (or process) with a grep command:

Show just the database-summary for area 0:

r2#show ip ospf database database-summary | sec Area 0
Area 0 database summary
  LSA Type      Count    Delete   Maxage
  Router        2        0        0      
  Network       1        0        0      
  Summary Net   6        0        0      
  Summary ASBR  0        0        0      
  Type-7 Ext    0        0        0      
    Prefixes redistributed in Type-7  0
  Opaque Link   0        0        0      
  Opaque Area   0        0        0      
  Subtotal      9        0        0 

Show just the database-summary for Process 100:

r2#show ip ospf database database-summary | sec Process 100
Process 100 database summary
  LSA Type      Count    Delete   Maxage
  Router        5        0        0      
  Network       1        0        0      
  Summary Net   30       0        0      
  Summary ASBR  0        0        0      
  Type-7 Ext    0        0        0      
  Opaque Link   0        0        0      
  Opaque Area   0        0        0      
  Type-5 Ext    0        0        0      
      Prefixes redistributed in Type-5  0
  Opaque AS     0        0        0      
  Total         36       0        0

14 November – CCIE Quickies

Packetlife – File under the already overflowing category of stuff I didn’t know: An RJ45 is not really an RJ45

CCIE Journey – Sometimes the CCIE gods conspire against you. 

IPexpert Blog – Jared Scrivener makes a good argument for making the Service Provider track your second CCIE track (if you’ve done the R&S and you’re fucking insane motivated enough to want to do another track).

CCIE Buzz – Some doofus posted An Overview of the Cisco CCIE Certification 

Internetwork Expert: New CCIE 2.0 Program Goes Live

IE has introduced its new CCIE 2.0 program, which it first mentioned two weeks ago.  Go read the entire post over on IE’s blog.  Here are some of the highlights of the new program:

1) Incremental/Constant Workbook and CoD Revisions

The goal of this new model is to ensure that you, the candidate, not only have access to the newest material on the market, but you don’t have to wait months – or even years – between product updates. To facilitate this, online products are still delivered in PDF and streaming video formats as they have been in the past, but are now constantly being incrementally updated.

2) Student Assessment and Grading Engine and Dynamic Poly-Labs.

SAGE is a new dynamic assessment testing (lab?) product.  Poly-Labs are dynamically generated mock labs.  The Poly-Lab lab tasks are chosen from a pool of tasks based on your strengths and weaknesses.  This means that each Poly-Lab will be different for different candidates.

What’s really revolutionary and exciting for us about SAGE is that its much more than just a “grading engine”. The goal instead was to create a tool where the candidate could come in and say “I’m at point X” in my preparation. SAGE then generates a custom assessment for the candidate, similar in principle to today’s static “mock labs”, and tests to see if that’s actually where they are. Based on the results SAGETM says either “yes you are at point X, you should now proceed to Y” or “no you’re not really at X, you need to go back and focus on A, B, and C.” The great thing about this is that as the candidate continues through their preparation, new mock labs, or Poly-Labs as we call them, are adaptively generated based on previous performance. In other words if they kept falling short in QoS or Multicast, SAGE keeps hitting them over and over there. On the other hand if they’re very solid in Frame Relay, SAGE puts that on the back burner a bit so they can focus more on their weak areas.

3) Open Lecture Series and CCIE R&S Lab Meet-Ups

This is the most exciting part of the new CCIE 2.0 to me.  There will be a number of online lectures each week as well as lab breakdowns.  Both are recorded so that they are available for viewing afterwards for candidates who cannot attend.

The Open Lecture Series, in short, is basically an online class that never ends. There are multiple sessions scheduled each week on pre-defined topics, and candidates can drop into a class session whenever they want. This way if you’re working on OSPF and you see that next Friday there’s a session on OSPF, you can drop in and see what’s going on and ask questions. Also with this we’ve added a feature called Open Instructor Time, which is basically like how a professor’s office hours work in a traditional university setting. During the Open Instructor Time candidates can stop into the online classroom and discuss whatever topics or lab scenarios they have questions on. In both cases the sessions are available in Class-on-Demand format after each session is over.

The next addition, the Lab Meet-Ups, is where students get together with the instructor through the online classroom to configure, troubleshoot, and talk about a specific full-scale lab scenario. Like the Open Lecture Series, the Lab Meet-Ups run every week, and students can ask questions in real-time to the instructors and get an immediate response. These sessions are great for when it’s hard to figure out “why” one solution was chosen over another, and also to see how we the instructors would approach the lab scenario if it was the actual CCIE Lab Exam.

CCIE Routing & Switching Open Lecture Series

CCIE Routing & Switching Lab Meet-Ups info here

The bad news?  These new offerings will run either $1,499 or $999 (for access to the recorded versions only) each.  Brian Dennis did mention that these new offerings will be free to those who currently own an end-to-end subscription as part of IE’s Investment Protection plan.  Unfortunately I do not own the end-to-end product.  I bought my materials à la carte.  I don’t think that I can justify dropping another $2,000 – $3,000 at this point in my preparation.  Maybe the Open Lecture Series will be offered to current subscribers of the Advanced Technology CoD (to which I have a subscription) and the Lab Meet-Ups to current subscribers of the Lab Breakdown Series?  IE’s page does show that their Tiered and Value packages are part of CCIE 2.0 so maybe that will be the case.

Anyhoo…IE will be hosting another online seminar today (11 am PST) to discuss the new CCIE 2.0 program in more detail.  You can register here.

NetworkWorld: CCIE Buzz Blog Launched

I’ve been really busy the last few days. I will return to (semi) regular blogging tomorrow. In the meantime allow me to pimp out a new CCIE blog:

Welcome to the CCIE Buzz blog, written by CCIE candidates, CCIE Pursuit, CCIE Talk and CCIE Journey. You may know them through their own blogs; now you can read them on Network World in one single blog (and you can go to their their own respective blogs to read more of their CCIE tips, tricks and musings).

CCIE Buzz blog is here.

The CCIE Buzzers are engineers like you who will be sharing their CCIE journeys with you. CCIE Pursuit will post information about each stage of pursuing the CCIE; CCIE Talk will discuss how to get started with the CCIE; and CCIE Journey will discuss CCIE technical topics.
 
We hope you will enjoy the blog. We’d also love to hear your CCIE journeys as well, so please use this platform to chew the fat with your peers.
 
Please join me in welcoming the CCIE Buzzers.
 
Linda Leung
Cisco Subnet Editor

Each Monday I’ll be posting an entry covering the steps to becoming a CCIE.  My first two posts are here and here.  CCIE Talk’s first post is here.  CCIE Journey – who must have naked pictures of someone over at NetworkWorld – will be posting on Fridays.

07 November – CCIE Quickies

IPexpert Blog - IPexpert’s Wayne Lawson does a great job of taking us behind the Cisco curtain and disecting the new Cisco 360 CCIE training program.

TechRepublic  - 10 dumb things IT pros do that can mess up their networks  While most of these are not specific to networking per se, there are some good issues brought up. #3 is the bane of my existence.

Cisco IOS Hints and Tricks - While we’re all aware of the dwindling number IPv4 addresses, there is another finite pool of resources that does not get nearly as much attention: BGP Autonomous System numbers.  Ivan Pepelnjak addresses this issue and what the industry is doing to fix it.

Question Of The Day: 05 November, 2008

“Yesterday’s” QoD:

Your co-worker has been tasked with limiting the amount of traffic inbound on interface fa0/0 from a device with the MAC address of 11-11-22-22-33-33 to 5Mbits/second.  Your boss has just informed him that there is more than 20Mbits/second inbound on that port from the device with that MAC address.  He turns to you and asks you to look at his configuration:

interface FastEthernet0/0
rate-limit input access-group 100 5000000 2500 2500 conform-action transmit exceed-action drop
!
access-list rate-limit 100 1111.2222.3333

Why are you receiving significantly more than 5Mbps inbound on interface f0/0 from the device with the MAC address of 1111.2222.3333?

Answer: Rate-limit command is wrong.  Should use ‘access-group rate-limit 100′ to reference rate-limit access-list 100, not ‘access-group 100′.

Congratulations to Brandon Bennett for absolutely nailing this one.

This is one of those technologies where you can make a simple mistake in the lab and never know that you made a mistake.  When you configure the rate-limit command you have the option of referring to an access-list OR a rate-limit access-list.  In order to refer to the rate-limit access-list you need to ensure that you use ‘access-group rate-limit’.  In our example we have inadvertently referenced access-list 100 – which does not exist:

interface FastEthernet0/0
rate-limit input access-group 100 5000000 2500 2500 conform-action transmit exceed-action drop
!
access-list rate-limit 100 1111.2222.3333

Note that your matching extended ACL 100 – NOT the rate-limit access list of 100

r1(config-if)#do sh int fa0/0 rate-limit
FastEthernet0/0
Input
matches: access-group 100
params:  5000000 bps, 2500 limit, 2500 extended limit
conformed 0 packets, 0 bytes; action: transmit
exceeded 0 packets, 0 bytes; action: drop
last packet: 2757436ms ago, current burst: 0 bytes
last cleared 00:00:45 ago, conformed 0 bps, exceeded 0 bps

Should be:

r1(config-if)#do sh int fa0/0 rate-limit
FastEthernet0/0
Input
matches: access-group rate-limit 100
params:  5000000 bps, 2500 limit, 2500 extended limit
conformed 0 packets, 0 bytes; action: transmit
exceeded 0 packets, 0 bytes; action: drop
last packet: 2557168ms ago, current burst: 0 bytes
last cleared 00:01:43 ago, conformed 0 bps, exceeded 0 bps

Since there is no ACL 100, no traffic is matched and rate-limiting is not active.  In real life you may become aware of this by someone screaming at you, but in the lab you could easily overlook this.

IPexpert: End-of-the-Year Price Drops

The $999 Blended Learning Solution is back…for a couple of months anyways.  IPexpert has announced that they are slashing prices for Routing and Switching, Voice, Service Provider, and Security tracks.  The BLS is now $999 (even less if you are a Cisco employee). 

IPexpert has also slashed the cost of a single rack rental session (7.75 hours) from $35 to $20 (cheaper if you book more sessions).

NetMasterClass: Cisco 360 Roadmap Published

It’s election day in the US today.  I took the day off from work (not a national holiday here) and am off to the polls in a few minutes.  I have some rack time booked after that.  So today will be filled with civic duty and CCIE studies.    I’ll bring back the question of the day tomorrow.  Props to nemith for absolutely nailing the answer to the last QoD.

—

NetMasterClass has a page up on their site with more details about the new Cisco 360 CCIE training.  They have posted a roadmap for that program.  The program runs 26 weeks (6 months) and is split up into 3 distinct phases.  The roadmap lists the learning objectives and activities for each phase.  If you’re interested in participating in the 360 program, then definitely go take a look at the information that NetMasterClass has posted.

Cisco Announces Mobile CCIE Lab

I know I’m late to the blogging party on this one, but after a couple weeks of vendor fights and the unveiling of the Cisco 360 program I didn’t want to forget about a very good idea that Cisco has recently implemented: the mobile CCIE lab.

Cisco is expanding its capacity for delivering the CCIE Routing and Switching lab exam through the CCIE mobile lab initiative to offer more convenient testing to those pursuing CCIE certification. Using CCIE mobile test labs, Cisco will offer more candidates the ability to take the exam in their local country, increasing convenience and reducing the wait time and expense associated with testing outside their home country. The initiative will begin with the CCIE Routing and Switching exam and expand to include other certification exams in the future.

This is great news for candidates who live far from one of the ten CCIE lab exam locations.  This will cut travel costs as well as red tape (visas, passports, etc) for a lot of candidates.  Not only is this a great idea but it shows that Cisco is starting to support their desire to increase the number of CCIEs worldwide.

You can check this page for the scheduled as well as planned locations.  Sadly, Minnesota not on the list.  :-)  Right now you need to contact your “theatre Business Development Manager” to schedule a mobile exam, but according to the Cisco CCIE teleconference you should be able to book mobile labs through the standard CCIE booking website starting early in 2009.

The only other possible downside is that I’ve heard that the cost for the mobile lab seems to be US$2,000 rather than the current US$1,400 cost.  So this really only becomes a good deal if your travel costs would be more than $600.  Still this is a great idea.  Kudos to Cisco.

Networking Can Be A Dirty Job

I was mucking about in a Content Switch today trying to verify a “sticky” setting.  Since I have the mind of a 14 year-old boy I couldn’t help but giggle at my choices:

CSS1# sh sticky-?
  sticky-stats        Show sticky connection statistics
  sticky-table        Show sticky information

While “show sticky-stats” is fun to say, my favorite command is:

CSS1# sh sticky-table all-sticky

Ewww!