what's everyone working on right now?
I've just gotten the basics of IPsec down and now working on the NHRP part of DMVPN. I find it to be a very interesting piece of technology, perhaps the most interesting thing I've studied so far. Seeing the development from crypto map based ipsec to gre+ipsec to VTI to DMVPN is just plain cool. A small piece of networking history in a way that you don't see when studying the routing protocols since the old ones are dead and buried.
Comments
And you could reminisce with RIPv1 and IGRP if you really want to venture down memory lane
Do you have a tentative date for your written and lab? I've read most of your posts on your website and you have got some very strong knowledge
Not really as there are too many areas where I have no clue like multicast, QoS, security, services, and probably things I haven't even thought about. I might know around 50% of the material, with a heavy focus on L2, IGP and BGP which makes sense since I studied those in CCNP (I started CCNP in September last year). I've tried to follow Brian McGahan's advice on becoming strong at the the "core" topics first. At least I think it was him. I am excited about starting on those peripheral topics though, especially QoS and multicast.
I guess I could take the written in like 6 months or something if I studied the remaining topics, but I've pretty much decided to not do the written until the lab as I don't really see the point, and I don't want to be another one of those people who take the written but never the lab. In my mind, if someone is ready for the lab they should be able to effortlessly do the written without special preparation. Perhaps that's delusional, who knows. Then there's the cost of the lab itself. There's no way I could pay for it anyway so I don't really feel any urgency. A good thing is that I have really low expectations since I don't even work in networking; I don't have peers that I need to beat in terms of credentials and prestige. Just getting through all the books and the INE material, and actually learning the material would be a huge victory for me.
Most of all I want to actually work in networking but it's not really working out it seems, which isn't terribly surprising since my resume is kind of weird. In a sense, this forum and my blog are my resume now, but it's hard to get someone who is hiring (and who has the background to understand it) to sit down and read it.
I only have about 6 weeks now before I start my new contract for the next year or so which isn't anything Cisco related and is more on the security side of things (Juniper firewalls, Gigamon taps, etc) so I've scheduled my exam for the week break I have between my current contract and my old one. I'm just working on "minor" topics for the next week or so (PPPoE, MLP, netflow, syslog, etc) before I start full scale mock labs for the next month. Should be interesting
The CCDE live online is next week - I'll be making sure to catch that as I am considering this exam too and I think I'll probably learn a few things that'll ultimately be useful for CCIE anyways.
What materials are you using for DMVPN?
Configuration guides from Cisco.