Cisco CCNP and CCIE Study Notes

This is just a note to readers who have been wondering about the silence on the blog for a couple of weeks. As it happens, I decided some time in late April to delay no longer and go for the last of the CCNP exams. So, I scheduled myself for the CIT test in the first week of May and started the final stretch of studying aimed mainly at the exam. While doing the final preparation for the exam I had no time to update the blog. I then took the exam and passed it and got my CCNP after which I just chilled for a while and almost completely forgot about the blog!

Anyway, I am back now studying for the CCIE written exam that I want to take soon. So, I expect that I will be updating the blog as regularly as before while I study for the CCIE written exam. I have been looking around to get an idea of the level of difficulty of the CCIE written exam in comparison with the CCNP exams. I was wondering if the CCIE written was essentially the four CCNP exams put together or if it was something substantially more than that.

The answer the web seems to yield is that it is indeed more advanced that the sum of the four CCNP exams. This is not just because there are some topics like wireless that are not even covered in CCNP but also because even the topics that are covered in CCNP are tested for at a more subtle and advanced level in the CCIE written exam than on the CCNP. That sounds like fun and I am enjoying thinking through more advanced material on IP routing and switching and looking forward to keeping this blog updated and taking the exam soon!

Consider two routers connected back-to-back via their ethernet interfaces. The configs on the two routers is as follows

Router1

interface Ethernet0
 ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0
!
ip route 20.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 10.0.0.2
ip route 30.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 10.0.0.2

Router2

interface Loopback0
 ip address 20.0.0.1 255.255.255.255
 no clns route-cache
!
interface Loopback1
 ip address 30.0.0.1 255.255.255.255
 no clns route-cache
!
interface Ethernet0
 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
 no clns route-cache

Now, assume that a ping is initiated from Router1 to 20.0.0.1 and 30.0.0.1. The pings succeed and "show arp" on Router1 shows

Router1#show arp
Protocol  Address      Age (min)  Hardware Addr   Type   Interface
Internet  10.0.0.2           18   0000.cc00.8400  ARPA   Ethernet0
Internet  10.0.0.1            -   0000.cc00.8300  ARPA   Ethernet0

Your task in this problem is to come up with two different ways in which the config of Router1 can be modified such that if you ping 20.0.0.1 and 30.0.0.1 from Router1, "show arp" on Router1 will show up as

Router1#sh arp
Protocol  Address      Age (min)  Hardware Addr   Type   Interface
Internet  10.0.0.2            0   0000.cc00.8400  ARPA   Ethernet0
Internet  10.0.0.1            -   0000.cc00.8300  ARPA   Ethernet0
Internet  20.0.0.1            0   0000.cc00.8400  ARPA   Ethernet0
Internet  30.0.0.1            1   0000.cc00.8400  ARPA   Ethernet0