CCNP,CCIE Enterprise: ENCOR 350-401 Training Part-1/2

Explore Cisco’s CCNP Enterprise pathway with the ENCOR 350-401 core exam and one concentration, totaling two exams to earn the certification. Learn exam formats, prerequisites, and the track consolidation.

Learn to install and configure eve-ng on windows, compare it with Gns3, choose editions, meet requirements, and build labs using routers, switches, and linux images.

Explore how a Cisco router acts as a gateway linking networks, builds routing tables, controls broadcast domains, and supports ACLs, segmentation, and firewall functionality.

Understand how Cisco switches connect same-network devices, support layer 2 and layer 3 roles, run iOS or NX-OS, and include Catalyst, Nexus, modular, and stackable hardware.

Explore mac addresses and mac address tables, including 48-bit hexadecimal hardware addresses, how layer 2 switches learn addresses, and aging, dynamic vs static entries, and cam table concepts.

Explore process switching, fast switching, and Cisco Express Forwarding (CEF) and how FIB, RIB, ARP, and agency tables are implemented in hardware to speed packet forwarding without CPU involvement.

Demonstrate how process switching, fast switching, and Cisco express forwarding (CEF) forward packets using hardware tables (FIB) and software tables (RIB), with lab tests on three routers.

Explore redundancy and high availability, introducing first hop redundancy protocols (HSRP, VRRP, GLBP) and how virtual IPs and MACs enable active/standby gateways for connectivity to the outside world.

Configure and verify hsrp on Cisco routers, establishing a virtual gateway IP, group number ten, preemption, md5 authentication, and interface tracking for automatic failover.

Configure and verify load sharing with HSRP by creating two groups and assigning two virtual IPs, then enable preemption to switch between active and standby routers as needed.

Identify why HSRP can become active active and diagnose issues such as multicast hello blocking, authentication mismatches, and misconfigurations that disrupt failover.

Explore VRRP virtual router redundancy protocol as an open standard alternative to HSRP, configuring virtual IP, virtual MAC, master and backup roles, and rapid convergence with load sharing.

Explore how IEEE 802.1Q trunking uses VLAN tags to distinguish and carry traffic across switches, and how to configure and verify dot1Q encapsulation on trunk interfaces.

Learn the concept and configurations of dynamic trunking protocol on Cisco switches, including dynamic auto and desirable modes, static trunks, no negotiation, and VLAN hopping considerations.

Explore configuring and verifying dynamic trunking with DTP across a multi-switch lab, testing desirable, auto, trunk, and static trunk settings, and negotiating trunk status with dot1q encapsulation.

Demonstrates VLAN hopping attack through dynamic trunk negotiation (DTP) and provides a mitigation lab by configuring all ports as access, disabling negotiation, and using static trunking when required.

Explain etherchannel (link aggregation) by combining up to eight physical links into a single port channel, boosting bandwidth, availability, and load sharing in layer 2 or 3.

Configure and verify lacp-based etherchannel to combine interfaces into a single port channel, using 802.3ad, with identical speed, duplex, and vlan, and one side active while the other is passive.

Configure etherchannel with LACP between a Cisco switch and Windows Server using NIC teaming for two interfaces, with trunked ports; applicable to Windows Server 2012–2019 and Linux.

Configure and verify port aggregation with PAgP on Cisco switches, noting its proprietary nature, ensuring identical speed, duplex, and mode, with one side set to desirable and the other auto.

Configure and verify etherchannel statically, bypassing lcp/pagp, when cross-vendor or server issues occur; set a channel group with mode on to establish a working etherchannel.

Configure layer 3 etherchannel by converting interfaces to routed mode with no switchport, group them into port channels, and assign IP addresses to the port-channel, then verify with ping.

Explore how etherchannel load balancing uses a hash algorithm to distribute traffic across links—layer 2 or layer 3—based on destination MAC, source MAC, or IP addresses, not always equally.

Troubleshoot etherchannel bundles by diagnosing misconfigurations such as mismatched interface types (layer 2 vs layer 3) and inconsistent trunk settings, then align and validate them with proper shutdown practices.

The spanning-tree etherchannel guard misconfiguration command runs by default and reports etherchannel misconfigurations. Disable with no spanning-tree etherchannel misconfiguration guard and verify status via show spanning tree summary.

span, remote span, and air span enable capturing and redirecting traffic for troubleshooting, performance analysis, utilization monitoring, and security, including forwarding to IDS/IPS or firewall and voip capture.

Configure and verify local span on a switch to copy traffic from a source port to a destination port, enabling an analyzer such as Wireshark for traffic monitoring.

Configure remote span by creating a dedicated remote span vlan and trunk links between switches, then set a monitor session from the source interface to the remote vlan.

Learn how to configure erspan encapsulated remote span on select Cisco devices, including CSR routers and Catalyst switches, with monitor stations, session IDs, and traffic capture to a network analyzer.

Spanning tree protocol prevents layer 2 loops by blocking redundant links, electing a root bridge by priority and MAC address, and exchanging BPDU messages across VLANs.

Explore spanning tree protocol and rapid spanning tree concepts, root bridge and root port, port roles (designated, alternate) and states (listening, learning, forwarding, blocking), bpdu types and topology change notification.

Configure and verify spanning tree protocols (STP), including PVST and rapid PVST, adjust root bridge by priority or root primary, and manage port roles and costs.

Learn to configure and verify MST, map VLANs to MST instances, and optimize switch resources with region, name, and revision concepts, using practical commands and verification.

Learn between routed and routing protocols, and how static, default, and dynamic routing use interior and exterior gateway protocols like OSPF, BGP path vector, RIP, and IS-IS to reach networks.

Explore configuring a default route on a Cisco router using next-hop or exit-interface, verify with show ip route, and understand static versus connected routes and administrative distance.

Configure a static network route to reach an entire subnet by using ip route to 192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0 via the next hop. Verify with show ip route.

Configure and verify host routes on Cisco routers to restrict reachability to a single IP using /32 for IPv4 or /128 for IPv6, and distinguish them from network routes.

Configure and verify floating static routes to provide backup paths, using administrative distance to prefer primary routes and enable dynamic and static route coexistence with rip.

Explore the address resolution protocol (arp) and how it translates ip to mac addresses. Understand arp tables, entry lifetimes, static vs dynamic entries, and gratuitous arp.

Demonstrate arp and mac address changes as ip routing packet flow traverses a two-router, two-pc network. Show how default routes enable reachability across gateways while ip addresses stay constant.

Understand how the longest match rule selects the correct exit in routing tables by choosing the longest subnet mask among multiple routes.

Introduces eigrp, a hybrid Cisco routing protocol using a dual diffusing update algorithm, with multicast updates, ipv4/ipv6 support, route summarization, cidr, vlsm, and md5 authentication.

Configure enhanced interior gateway routing protocol between two routers by enforcing the five neighbor conditions—same subnet, non-passive interface, same as, authentication, and k value—and using wildcard or subnet mask networks.

Discover how enhanced interior gateway routing protocol EIGRP calculates its metric using five K-values, with K1 bandwidth and K3 delay, deriving the path cost from interface bandwidth and delay.

EIGRP uses five packet types—hello, update, query, reply, and acknowledgement—to exchange information with neighbors. Hello provides neighbor discovery and a five-second heartbeat; updates, queries/replies, and acknowledgements handle changes and confirmations.

Master EIGRP path selection optimization by adjusting bandwidth and delay, optionally enabling K values beyond K1 and K3, to influence the best path and test equal-cost routes.

Explore the EIGRP terminologies—advertised distance, reported distance, feasible distance, successor, and feasible successor—and see how they shape routing decisions in the topology and routing tables.

Explore how EIGRP summarization works, compare auto versus manual summarization, and learn to configure no auto summary and summary-address to reduce memory, bandwidth, and routing table size while improving stability.

Learn how EIGRP supports equal and unequal load balancing, configure multiple equal-cost paths, and verify traffic distribution via show ip route and the maximum path command.

Learn how eigrp enables unequal cost load balancing by using variance to force multiple, non-equal paths into the routing table, distributing traffic across serial and ethernet links for resilience.

Explore OSPF, a link-state dynamic routing protocol that uses SPF with cost metrics, multicast hello addresses 224005 and 224006, IPv4/IPv6 support, equal-cost load balancing, trigger updates, and ABR-based area design.

Explore OSPF terminologies, including area and backbone (area zero), DR/BDR elections, ABR/SBR, router ID, link state, LSA, LSDB, internal vs non-backbone routers, and the requirement for area zero.

This lecture outlines OSPF's three tables—neighbor, topology, and routing—and shows how to inspect them with commands like show ip route, show ip ospf neighbor, and show ip ospf database.

Understand how OSPF builds neighbor adjacencies through a sequence of states—from down to init, two-way, exstart, exchange, loading, and full—using hello packets, DDR election, and LSDB flooding.

Learn the five OSPF packet types—hello, database description, link state request, link state update, and link state acknowledgment—and how they govern neighbor discovery and database synchronization in IPv4 networks.

OSPF assigns a unique 32-bit router id, from the highest loopback address, or set manually. If unset, it uses the highest loopback, then the highest physical IP for neighbor communication.

Learn OSPF router types, including internal, backbone, area border, and autonomous system boundary routers; see how interfaces and areas define roles.

Explain OSPF route types in routing table: intra-area routes (same area, O), inter-area routes (from another area, OIA), and external routes (E1/E2), plus the default route (O with a star).

Understand how OSPF designates a router (DR) and a backup designated router (BDR) on broadcast networks, using highest priority and router ID as tiebreakers, with non-preemptive election and updates.

Show how OSPF achieves equal-cost load balancing, with four default paths (max 32) and no unequal balancing, then use subinterfaces to create multiple equal paths and verify with trace routes.

Explore how OSPF route summarization works at ABRs and ASBRs, leveraging area zero ranges to reduce routing entries, conserve CPU, bandwidth, and memory, and verify reachability across areas.

Explore how ospf uses path preference to select intra-area, inter-area, external type 1 and 2, and stubby or non-stubby routes across ios versions.

Explore OSPF hello and dead intervals, how broadcast, non-broadcast, and point-to-multipoint networks affect timers, and how decreasing intervals or using bidirectional forwarding detection enable fast convergence.

Explain OSPF network types and how changing network type affects hello and dead timers, neighbor discovery, and DR/BDR behavior across point-to-point, broadcast, non-broadcast, and point-to-multipoint networks.