Mackenzae's Upward Climb to CCIE

Hey All -

I've mostly been a silent follower but I decided I'd post a thread here as well along with all of the other recent crazy folks that want to start this journey as well. Hopefully I can get a good way if not finished with this before there are kids in my life as that's not a too far distant possibility.

My Current Reading List -

1. CCIE R&Sv5 OCG Vol 1 & 2
2. Routing TCP/IP Vol1 (2nd Ed.)
3. Internet Routing Architectures

I've pretty much read through both most of this material and currently on finishing up Volume 2 of the OCG.

I guess a couple of questions I have for the rest of the community at this point -

1. Is it worth it to buy the current Routing TCP/IP Volume 2 book (from 2000) or wait for the new one slated in August? Or should i just buy both?

2. Do others find it helpful to do related labs to the material to help solidify before the written?

3. Have others had success using CSR1000 VMs and physical switches for labbing?

-Mackenzae

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Comments

fredrikjj

mackenzae wrote: »

1. Is it worth it to buy the current Routing TCP/IP Volume 2 book (from 2000) or wait for the new one slated in August? Or should i just buy both?

I think it's too old unless you already know what stuff is irrelevant and can skip those sections. The BGP chapters are probably still 100% valid though so if you want to focus on that it's still good, but you would obviously need to supplement with other sources to cover modern features. The multicast chapters are said to be good, but looking at the table of contents it seems to contain legacy protocols like DVMRP, CBT, MOSPF.

OfWolfAndMan

I would get a more current feature set of the routing stuff. Here's a recommendation:

http://www.amazon.com/Routing-Cisco-IOS-Understanding-Implementing/dp/1587144239/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428013667&sr=8-1&keywords=ip+routing+on+cisco+ios+ios+xe+and+ios+xr

There is a couple mistakes in it I've discovered so far, but it is very detailed in its explanations and configuration examples.

mackenzae

OfWolfAndMan wrote: »

I would get a more current feature set of the routing stuff. Here's a recommendation:

IP Routing on Cisco IOS, IOS XE, and IOS XR: An Essential Guide to Understanding and Implementing IP Routing Protocols (Networking Technology): Brad Edgeworth, Aaron Foss, Ramiro Garza Rios: 9781587144233: Amazon.com: Books

There is a couple mistakes in it I've discovered so far, but it is very detailed in its explanations and configuration examples.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll take a look at this.

AwesomeGarrett

How would you rate it vs Routing TCP/IP volumes?

gorebrush

Ah wow so many people coming onboard lately.

I love it. Welcome to the officers mess.

You'll soon learn that three books isn't enough... Or read my new novel "How I learned to stop worrying and love the DocCD"

mackenzae

gorebrush wrote: »

Ah wow so many people coming onboard lately.

I love it. Welcome to the officers mess.

You'll soon learn that three books isn't enough... Or read my new novel "How I learned to stop worrying and love the DocCD"

Yes,
I've quickly realized that so far :P but I guess i'm trying to take it in small chunks at a time. To be honest I'm on of those guys that normally tries to swallow everything at once but this i can tell I won't be able to do it in that manner lol.

I actually am curious if there are any decent tips to try and remember all of this material as I read it. I'm definitely one of those people who have to re-read things as I tend to just start "reading words". I've had some suggestions of re-writing chapters / taking notes which helps some but I can tell this will be one of those things i will probably have to go back and re-read books until I've absorbed this material.

lrb

Best of luck! Read my first thread "Passed v5 written..." to see what materials I used to prep for the lab if you are interested too.

OfWolfAndMan

AwesomeGarrett wrote: »

How would you rate it vs Routing TCP/IP volumes?

I would say there is some detail that is omitted in the newer book that was in the older book, but very little. It's a lot of modern stuff, especially pertaining to v5 i.e. EIGRP named instances and wide metrics, TTL security, newer MP-BGP extensions, inclusion of bidirectional PIM and SSM (Even the old Multicast book didn't have that), and even a few things I had no awareness of like OSPF prefix suppression and ispf.

mackenzae

Here's another question for the community - I'm trying to study on VRF lite and the OCG barely touches on it for both in MPLS and and non MPLS. Whats a good source to expand on this topic? I do have the MPLS fundamentals book but I was hoping to try and learn the basis of VRF before adding the MPLS concepts on top of it if possible.

mackenzae

I know its been awhile since I posted here. I have still have been reading just trying to figure out my attack plan in terms of labbing / practicing. I just purchased some parts to build a home lab which will hopefully be here sometime this week. Will put some nice pictures up once i get it built

Intel Xeon 3.5Ghz E3-1241V3
Lian Li Case PC-V354B RT
Supermicro Motherboard uATX DDR3 1600 LGA 1150 MBD-X10SLH-F-O
PSU ENERMAX | ERX430AWT 430W
480GB Intel SSD
16GB Sandisk flashdrive (to run ESXi)
32GB of Kingston Memory
Intel Xeon 3.5Ghz E3-1241V3
2 3560 24port TS switches (still looking on a good deal for 2 more)

mackenzae

I wanted to share a couple of shots of my lab server. I completed physically building this guy in about 1 1/2 hours. Got 2 24 port 3750 TS switches. So far i built 3 CSR routers and configured them for ssh access. Hoping to get the INE workbook here shortly to start labbing.

ccie-build.jpg

ccie-build2.jpg