Passed v5 written - my thoughts

PsychoFin

Gotta hurry up with those SPv3 boot camps before they change to v4

gorebrush

Yeah NAT might be just one subsection, but have you considered situations such as NAT and DMVPN? I've not covered this yet but I believe there are one or two out there that are not sure about it.

Alex90

lrb wrote: »

Yep you get your number straight away - 45527! It's a frantic heart-in-mouth moment between the time when you get your email titled "score report" (which really has nothing in it) to when you actually see the result in the CCIE login.

That's really cool mate I hope to one day have this same feeling! I suppose it's hard to say but, on average how many hours of study were you putting in per week and over what period of time? Did you attand a bootcamp or anything as well?

Kelkin

Congrats! Definitely got me more motivated

Lucas21

gorebrush wrote: »

Yeah NAT might be just one subsection, but have you considered situations such as NAT and DMVPN? I've not covered this yet but I believe there are one or two out there that are not sure about it.

Sure NAT and DMVPN and NAT with other protocols. But he was hammering NAT from every angle for weeks it seemed

lrb

Lucas21 wrote: »

There was one thing that I wanted to ask you for a little while now but didn't want to disrupt your study process. It is that you seemed to cover NAT above and beyond what seems necessary. I looked at the blueprint - both official and expanded INE - and NAT is just one subsection.

Thanks mate NAT was one area where I believed I could get a real wildcard question in the lab and I wanted to make sure I could pretty much do everything there was to do with NAT. In particular, I found information on NAT/DMVPN topologies (spoke behind NAT, spoke to spoke with one/both behind NAT, hub behind NAT) harder to come by, and none of the major vendors covered it in much/any detail so I decided to hammer it pretty hard. If you chuck IPsec in the mix too then you have to worry about NAT-T, whether to use tunnel or transport, the keys matching the DMVPN NBMAs, etc. I literally have about 19 differnet homemade labs with NAT and DMVPN so I will compile them into a nicer format and put them up here in the next few weeks.

PsychoFin wrote: »

Gotta hurry up with those SPv3 boot camps before they change to v4

Haha well Narbik offered a massive discount on his Facebook page for the v3 SP bootcamp and it works for me because I can just join the webex to watch it (albeit it starts about 3AM for me in Australia). Plus the topics on the v4 interest me a lot, especially LISP and EVPN.

Alex90 wrote: »

That's really cool mate I hope to one day have this same feeling! I suppose it's hard to say but, on average how many hours of study were you putting in per week and over what period of time? Did you attand a bootcamp or anything as well?

I would say most nights were about 3-4 hours. Some were more, some were less, mainly depending on how I was feeling. I knew that it was better to ease off sometimes than try to force a big study session. I could usually tell about 20 minutes into a session whether it was going to work or not. The weekends I would aim for about 5 or 6 hours per day too. I started studying in about March maybe I can't remember exactly. I attended Narbik's 10-day bootcamp in May which added probably another 100+ hours. If you can, definately look at attending a bootcamp!

Kelkin wrote: »

Congrats! Definitely got me more motivated

Thanks mate, I hope to see a thread on here one day for you too!

Lucas21 wrote: »

Sure NAT and DMVPN and NAT with other protocols. But he was hammering NAT from every angle for weeks it seemed

Just a sucker for punishment! Nothing makes you contemplate a new career path than a really really hard NAT problem

Lucas21

Makes lots of sense covering NAT thoroughly. I'm sure in your case you felt you'd covered pretty much everything well enough. So you were maybe looking to add complexity as well as cover all bases.

atorven

Congrats dude!

gorebrush

Lucas21 wrote: »

Sure NAT and DMVPN and NAT with other protocols. But he was hammering NAT from every angle for weeks it seemed

Haha yes he was.

atorven

Silly question but does that apply to all the topics on the blue print as well, knowing everything from every possible angle?

joelsfood

Atorven, it's really a good idea, as while you may not be required to configure every possible variation, knowing the topic as thoroughly as possible is going to make it that much easier to troubleshoot (because of yoru range of knowledge on the subject)

More importantly, congratulations man! Great rundown on the test too (without breaking NDA, of course. )

jamesp1983

Congrats! You deserve it. Enjoy the number.

RouteMyPacket

Wow, congrats! You are the man! Now, it will be "I'm not happy with one, I want another IE" ha

lrb

Thanks for the kind words guys

atorven wrote: »

Silly question but does that apply to all the topics on the blue print as well, knowing everything from every possible angle?

Not a silly question at all! I would say you definitely don't have to know the configuration of every protocol or technologies more obscure features off the top of your head but if you have labbed it once or twice you will at least know when to use that obscure solution to solve a problem.

OSPF Sham links are a good example. I know what they do, what problem they solve, how to use them, when to use them, but I don't remember the exact configuration off the top of my head. What I do know however is where to find it in the Cisco documentation

Essendon

HUGE congrats to ya mate on a job really well done!! Are you a Sydneysider mate, just curious.

lrb

Ess, I'm actually from Canberra but many people I know outside of Australia don't actually know where Canberra is so it's just easier to say Sydney most times Are you a Bombers fan?

Essendon

I quite like Canberra, bit sleepy and too cold though! Yeah I am a fan, used to be a diehard too but the doping scandal and that douche called James something has done me head in. You into the game too?

lrb

Haha yeah Canberra is a bit like that. I moved here from Brisbane about 5 and a half years ago so the culture is very different but I definitely won't be here forever! I don't follow the AFL massively anymore but I do quietly support Freo

fredrikjj

fredrikjj wrote: »

I have a good feeling about this!

Told you so!

silver145

So how have you celebrated so far?

also hands down what was the best revision material based on the experience, narbicks WB or INE, or a close split?

lrb

Celebrated with some drinks in the city the night I found out Felt pretty nice to relax and not have anything on the back of my mind for a change!

Best material? I prefer Narbik's WB (Foundation, Advanced, Advanced TS) out of all. In my opinion if you are comfortable with all of the material in his workbooks and his bootcamp then you are a good shot at passing the lab. The INE ones do however fill in a few gaps and they have mock labs as well so if you can afford it I would try to flip the bill for both (or get work to pay for it!).

reaper81

lrb wrote: »

PASS!

Congratulations! And welcome to the club

Dieg0M

Congrats man!

lrb

Thanks again for the kind words everyone! I've decided to sit the CCIE SPv4 written when it comes out on May 22 next year so that gives me plenty of time to get lots of reading and labbing in. I'll start another thread when I get back from holidays next week with what books and equipment I intend to use and probably start the CCIE clock at 0 hours.

Have a good week of study everyone

gorebrush

Yes I think I will be doing the same thing, and hopefully will fly out to Belgium for CCIE#2 before the end of 2015.

2 CCIE's in a year? I'm up for it.

lrb

Awesome man! Hopefully 2015 will be a good year for both of us Just looking over the SP blueprint now it's pretty evident that a lot our R&S knowledge will carry over to the SP, especially OSPF, LDP, BGP, and multicast. Obviously the SP goes into BGP and MPLS in a lot more detail but it's know like we have to start again as, for example, I would have to if I did the Collaboration track.

bharvey92

Congrats mate, going from your post you certainly deserve it. Hard works pays off!

gorebrush

lrb wrote: »

Awesome man! Hopefully 2015 will be a good year for both of us Just looking over the SP blueprint now it's pretty evident that a lot our R&S knowledge will carry over to the SP, especially OSPF, LDP, BGP, and multicast. Obviously the SP goes into BGP and MPLS in a lot more detail but it's know like we have to start again as, for example, I would have to if I did the Collaboration track.

I have to admit, it's the high amount of crossover that's appealing to get that 2nd out the blocks quickly.. I vaguely remember IS-IS too - I did the "old" CCNP, though I've never touched it since, so I am bound to be a bit rusty on that one

I'll probably go for the v3 written before the end of May then head for Belgium towards Q4.

lrb

I've sorted through most of my notes in Evernote on DMVPN and compiled a small workbook of TS scenarios for DMVPN. I've created a page on wordpress (ignore the typical title of blog) to distribute it for anyone who is interested. I see a few people have got their lab dates soon so I wanted to get something out quickly that may help these guys in their preparation.

Link: DMVPN Troubleshooting Scenarios | Internetworking blog by CCIE #45527

For anyone who uses it, please let me know if there is any typos or mistakes in the initial configs (i.e. wrong hostname, interface does not have a "no shut", etc; obviously don't let me know if it was an obvious omission to create a TS scenario ) and I will update it for the benefit of others.

The workbook is in PDF and the initial configs are unfortunately in Word (WP doesn't allow me to update text files or zips).

I will add more TS scenarios for DMVPN when I find some more time. Enjoy!

gorebrush

Oooo! Very nice, I will give these a go at some point and let you know.