Road to CCIE

Here goes, I have started my CCIE RS journey last year. Passed my written exam last January 2016, have 18 months to take my first attempt, which hopefully (really praying) would be my only attempt. I plan to take my lab exam January 2017 or around first or second week of Feb 2017.

I am currently going through the INE lab workbooks. Just like the others before me who have passed and received their much deserved number, I plan to use this thread to get support, motivation, advise and track my journey.

All I can say the road to CCIE I would compare it to going to the gym for the first time, the first few days sometimes weeks would suck as you try to digest topics, you won't notice anything different with yourself but as time passes by you'll just noticed that tshooting has improved specially at work. So maybe I am at the point I am passed the vomiting and passing out stage of this journey and just hammer my way through the work book.

I have other certs, Brocade Certified Network Engineer (BCNE), Brocade Certified vRouter Engineer (BCvRE), VMWare Certified Assoc-DCV. CCNP R&S and CCDP. So I guess its just logical to just go ahead and go for the top cert.

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Last week was able to go through all DMVPN INE labs, i think at that point it was muscle memory that helped me get through all that configs. It also helps that there's a project that I am currently doing at work related to 4G and DMVPN. I am probably getting atleast 2 hours of nightly study.

I am getting into that habit that whatever happens I just need to get some study time though it can be a disadvantage sometimes just like last night. A few of my mates when out to do some go-karting. Got home around 10pm, I felt bad not being able to do some study so I had to watch atleast a couple of Videos as I am starting on deep dives on QoS, ended up sleeping at almost 2-3am and now have a huge headache and struggling to study throughout the day.

That was a INE QoS marathon, some of it I have already seen during my written studies and its a good refresher going into the lab studies. Now that the vids are out of the way (which I feel I will go back to them for review in the future leading to the exam), I can now focus on the labs. I have asked work for a 5-day leave just so I can finish everything on the advance tech labs (well that's the goal) then I can proceed to the full-labs.

My boss said they are currently in talks with Cisco, as we plan to acquire their hyperconvergence platform. He said he'll see if he can get a deal to get me into a RS bootcamp, it maybe a long shot but it will be amazing if that does happen. Good night world. will rest and will continue this crazy study tomorrow.

Hello, welcome to the shop floor of CCIE study. You will do well here if you are consistent. Little and often is great. Any support any of us can offer, then please ask. There are a number of us all going for the number (or have them).

Thanks. I totally agree. I've read your journey and it is truly inspiring.

I will definitely need all the support that I can get from this forum and will not hesitate to ask.

Today's another day, another day of hard labbin.

Have just gone through INEs QoS section vids and labs, some of the explanation in the lab book is a bit hazy that sometimes I would have to google or youtube to get a better explanation. So far the shortest section I've gone through, finished in just a few days.

About to start Multicast this week. I can feel the back of my neck sweating as I write Multicast

Starting on multicast labs, its not as bad as I expected...so far. re-starting off the basics and labbing with PIM Dense.

I was listening to a podcast of routergods about CCIE preps and there's nightly study lab group where they share their screens and you can ask the guys to have a look at your labbing and they can give you advise or they can tell if you are ready. Wasn't able to get the URL or more information about it.

I am going for a weeks leave next week and was thinking of jumping into this study group. Anyone is a member of that group and can tell me more information how I can join in?

I just discovered something at work earlier. So I work with ASR1000 as part of our core and I was doing a config for a customer wherein as per their request would like to filter a certain subnet to be received by their CE. Since there are other tails terminating on the same VRF and router, I decided to do a peer-group. I decided to use a prefix-list/route-map to filter out the advertised prefix but later on for simplicity i decided to use a distribute list.

Upon application of the config, I noticed that when neighbors are in a peer-group I can't apply a route-map filtering and distribute list per neighbor unless i give each neigh its own peer-group. I originally thought that peer-groups where there to group attributes ie remote-as, activate, maximum prefix etc. So to make my filter-list work I had to remove them from a peer-group and it worked.

Man I am struggling with multicast while watching INE adv vids. I had to resort to re-reading what was on cisco's website as I find them more palatable. Its either than or I am just changing my learnig strategy. My week AL starts today so I am expecting to hammer out a couple of labs since I won't be thinking of work for an entire week....hopefully.

There is a great book on multicast written by Beau Williams, the best resource I've ever seen in this topic.

It is kinda old, but his explanations on mroute states and tree concepts are the most reliable ive found so far

delanajero wrote: »

I just discovered something at work earlier. So I work with ASR1000 as part of our core and I was doing a config for a customer wherein as per their request would like to filter a certain subnet to be received by their CE. Since there are other tails terminating on the same VRF and router, I decided to do a peer-group. I decided to use a prefix-list/route-map to filter out the advertised prefix but later on for simplicity i decided to use a distribute list.

Upon application of the config, I noticed that when neighbors are in a peer-group I can't apply a route-map filtering and distribute list per neighbor unless i give each neigh its own peer-group. I originally thought that peer-groups where there to group attributes ie remote-as, activate, maximum prefix etc. So to make my filter-list work I had to remove them from a peer-group and it worked.

I ran into this before.

From Cisco:

Peer groups have these requirements:

All members of a peer group must share identical outbound announcement policies (such as distribute-list, filter-list, and route-map), except for default-originate, which is handled on a per-peer basis even for peer group members.

You can customize the inbound update policy for any member of a peer group.

Thanks guys they are really helpful.

It just occurred to me, what would be the use case of an IP over IP tunnel, why would you use that over a GRE considering it can only tunnel ipv4?

delanajero wrote: »

It just occurred to me, what would be the use case of an IP over IP tunnel, why would you use that over a GRE considering it can only tunnel ipv4?

IP-in-IP can do IPv6 in the Cisco world at least. The only I could think of to use it would be if you have an ancient router that doesn't support GRE.

just checking in for today. I think I will set multicast on the side for now, still not feeling it. I think I will go do the other routing labs just to gain my confidence back. I have been hearing that the CCIE lab exam it will bring out your weaknesses and I am a little disappointed with myself that i am already seeing that now.

Don't feel too bad if you run into a topic you aren't feeling. Especially one like Multicast. I've never run into it in production (aside from the use of the multicast groups in routing protocols of course) but there are only a few scenarios you'll see it in use, I.e. video delivery, trading etc.

Also, and this goes for everyone really - don't discount "old" books - some of the older books are still the definitive resources for some topics - especially Multicast because it's mostly unchanged over the years.

gorebrush wrote: »

Don't feel too bad if you run into a topic you aren't feeling. Especially one like Multicast. I've never run into it in production (aside from the use of the multicast groups in routing protocols of course) but there are only a few scenarios you'll see it in use, I.e. video delivery, trading etc.

Also, and this goes for everyone really - don't discount "old" books - some of the older books are still the definitive resources for some topics - especially Multicast because it's mostly unchanged over the years.

Thanks. you are correct multicast hasn't changed Auto-RP, PIM, Bootsrap etc they haven't changed and all these books would still apply.

It is nice to get a break off work and just focus on study without minimum distractions.

Just checking in. Today I am revisiting the INE BGP labs. its one of the massive lab section in the entire workbook. I am not going as fast as I want to today but whatever, I can't go anywhere anyway as the car is in the shop. Thinking of getting rid of it as its becoming really expensive to maintain.

So far so good for the BGP labs though its still a long way to go. I think I need to work on communities.

Woke up early today at 4:30am and started labbing. INE lab for BGP-Router ID. So in the BGP path selection, if you reach a point where the choice is the router-id, the lower the better. So how come in the lab, 2 routers were configured with lo1 interfaces of 1.2.3.4/32 and by manually configuring a router id of 6.6.6.6, it was chosen as the better path.

What did I miss there? 6.6.6.6 couldn't be lower than 1.2.3.4.

Checking in or more like checking out for today. 12 hours of labbing, covered a lot of BGP topics but only able to finish half of the INE labs for that topic. I am looking at my calendar countdown. looking at 29wks 4 days 11 hours (depending when you'll get to read this)...hoping to get through a massive chuck of all adv tech labs this week but with how I am going, if I force myself its inevitable I am going to burn myself out.

How time flies, this week is almost over and majority of it was just going through BGP. I was hoping to get through the entire thing within 1.5 days. I caught a glimpse of the narbik workbooks from a friend, is it just me or the Narbik workbooks topology looks simpler than INE's. I am beginning to read around that INE's workbooks gives you way more than what is required of the exam. Well being a CCIE does expect you to be an expert in whatever track you choose to take.

Checking in today, after i am trying to get completely understand bgp conditional route-injection . There's just so many components to it. Layers of prefix-lists, route-maps and other new commands like match ip route-source included in the exist-map statement...fun times.

back at work after a week of just focus studying. its was a weird feeling going back to work, gotten used to the routine of waking up and hitting the labs, today I got to work and started checking emails. Get to tshoot a customer's network on an MPLS network with their main office running on dual-vrf lites pretty weird set up but it works for them.

Checkin in and another evening of labs, was planning to do something work related, been working on a project involving using 4G to tunnel back customer to their MPLS network via DMVPN but the Cisco 819 adaptor that was given to me by a colleague was the wrong one so that would have to wait and go the bat labs robin!!!

Checking in, didn't feel like studying last night. After my shift I work I just went out to do some late night grocery and immediately went to bed. Let us just say its just one of those emotional moments I don't feel like doing anything and feeling deprived thinking i should be doing something for myself.

Tonight I am back on the saddle, doing something lite like NAT and capping the evening off with some VODs from INE.

Checkin in, looking at my calendar countdown I have 28 weeks into my first attempt. I still haven't book my exam as Feb 13 2017 isn't available yet in my cisco tracker. Would it be wise to just book it now and just start moving the date every week until I get the date that I wanted?

Checkin in, its been a huge work week involving late night dc work, cutovers, and cliff hanger agg midnight reboots. Anyway im back and going through convergence optimization.

Hit with a manflu, i have been feeling it since the start of the week was hoping it wouldn't go full on but it did

Its been a weird winter season here in Queensland,Australia. Can't tell if winter is over and spring wanted to start way early screwing up with our system. This also means not working and just bed ridden probably for the rest of the week. bummer.

Study hard guys, continue to push on. we're all almost there.

After drowning myself with good amount of meds, sleep and a break from studying. I think I am 70% recovered...i think. Got myself working on some work project, finally did some final testing on a 4G solution I have been working on for months now. Too many distractions, not to mention CCIE lab prep.

will continue to work on IPv6 stuff. Really hoping I could finish re-watching all the INE VODS tonight and will proceed with the labs again. I can't wait to go on the full scale labs.

Back at work after a week of surviving a flu. I tried out for the first time the INE rack rental. I was reserving those tokens once I get to do the full scale labs since my virtual equipment won't be able to handle 20 devices. So I tried it out, booked an hour to do the switching labs and was able to cover a lot.

I noticed I got through a number of INE switching labs in that 1 hour, not sure if its a good indicator that my switching skills are ok or my brain is just telling me to hurry up as I only booked an hour of lab

My only complain is the latency, maybe due to the fact that I maybe access devices half around the world but atleast I get access to the full lab.

Little and often my friend, little and often.

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