Hands-on Cisco IOS XE lab walkthroughs. Each lab ships with a real CML topology, configs you can paste, and verified show output. Articles tagged Labs cover the full CCNA 200-301 blueprint across Network Fundamentals, Network Access, IP Connectivity, IP Services, and Security Fundamentals.
Dampening penalises a prefix for flapping and refuses to use it even after it recovers. Captured live on CML with IOS XE 17.18.2: penalty 2818 from three flaps, the prefix held at *d while an identical prefix from the same neighbor stays best, plus the advertisement-interval gotcha that makes...
ORF pushes your inbound prefix filter to your BGP neighbor so unwanted routes never leave their router. Shown working on Cisco IOS XE with real CML output, including the commands the receiving router uses to see the filter you sent it.
BGP conditional advertisement withholds a prefix until a condition you define is no longer true. Walk through advertise-map, exist-map, and non-exist-map on Cisco IOS XE to keep a backup path truly idle.
SSO, NSF, and graceful restart work together so a supervisor failure or software upgrade barely ripples traffic. This CCNP-depth article explains the division of labor between them, with an honest note on what the lab can show.
A flat policy cannot say shape everything to 20 Mbps and give voice priority inside that 20. Hierarchical QoS nests one policy in another: a shaping parent and queueing children, built on Cisco IOS XE after the shaping vs policing groundwork.
Tail drop causes global synchronization exactly when the network is busiest. WRED fixes it by dropping packets early, deliberately, and at random. This guide explains why that works and how to configure it.
Build the full LLQ and CBWFQ queueing policy on Cisco IOS XE, then congest a real link to prove the priority class stays protected. Voice goes first, always, and everything else shares what is left fairly.
RESTCONF exposes the same YANG models as NETCONF over ordinary HTTPS: GET to read, PATCH to modify, PUT to replace, DELETE to remove. If you can use curl or Python requests, you can drive a Catalyst 8000v with it.
NETCONF replaces screen-scraping with structured XML over SSH against YANG models. This walkthrough drives Cisco IOS XE with ncclient from a real Linux automation host, from first hello to config change.
EEM runs on the router itself, watching for events and acting on them with no external server to depend on. This article builds three EEM applets on Cisco IOS XE for config automation, troubleshooting, and data collection, and fires all three for real.
VXLAN stretches Layer 2 across a routed network by wrapping Ethernet frames in UDP. This deep dive takes the encapsulation apart to the byte level with a real crafted-and-decoded packet, covering VNIs and VTEPs.
An IP address is both identity and location, and that overload breaks mobility. LISP splits the two into separate namespaces. This post explains the protocol and proves it on a real IOS XE lab, from first dropped packet to clean flow.