CCIE Written - How deep do you go?

bradnz

I'm sitting the written tomorrow morning. I started studying about March this year for it. Decided I would pace myself and read every book on the recommended list from INE, plus a few others. Took notes the whole way through. Ive learned a lot thats for sure, but I have been doing the Pearson Vue practise test the last few days (they come with the CCIE written VOL1 and VOL2), and wow, how much I still don't know really really surprised me. I don't know if those practise exams are an accurate gauge though of the actual exam - perhaps they are harder. Even worse would be if they were easier. I seriously didn't do that well on them, even though I feel like I'm ready - if that even makes sense. So annoying. Whats worse is that I feel I'm over the written study and want to start to get into the labbing side of things for the Lab exam. Thats way more interesting

Anyway, I have started at the beginning, studying through CCNA then through CCNP R/S and whilst I got mid 800s for those exams, I would appreciate your thoughts on the level of difficulty of the CCIE written as compared to those? I have heard that if you did ok in the CCNP then this is basically good prep for the CCIE written. The level of depth always got to me as to how deep into the technology should you go. Should you memorise the fact that the first 8 bits of such and such equal to so and so, and if the first bit is this then that means that. Does that make sense? Point being there is an aweful lot of bits and octets in all blueprint topics. Do you need to remember them all?

Anyway that my nervous rant before tomorrow. Thoughts appreciated.

gorebrush

Having sat the practice exam in August 2013 and now being 8 weeks out from the lab - I'd say that I did things a bit back to front. If I'd started labbing earlier and just sat the written "on the way" then the written exam would have been an absolute piece of cake (Note: It's not a "difficult" exam - it's challenging because it's got such a massive variation of content thrown at you all at once) but you've taken loads more time than I did - I passed the written after about 4 months solid study, but I've been a CCNP since 2010 and CCNA since 2008.

Without breaking NDA too much, I didn't get any simulation questions in the written and I quite liked that about it. I don't think you need to know absolute nitty-gritty elements as bit levels - but you should have an understanding.

Think of the written as one giant CCNP exam with anything on the blueprint being absolute fair game for questioning on.

Good luck today.