For all of those who are on the CCIE-SP track and waiting for materials from INE...

Brian's answer of waiting until a May bootcamp is effectively a statement of they haven't developed any material at all.

It's a shame Narbik is in the god damn dark ages with how he delivers his content. At this point, people within the community need to get with the usual suspects that have passed the SPv4 written/lab and create the content themselves.

Ultimately, the community should self-organize and create the necessary content for each track and make it available for free. The disparate blogs and other freely available content contains more than enough to bootstrap a decent effort for the major tracks.

Of course, none of this will get you a refund for content that you paid for that went undelivered.

d4nz1g

Nick Russo was selling his own CCIE SPV4 content...check that later, might be useful.

joelsfood

He still is, and it's well worth the price. Building a home lab to match his labs is not bad price wise either. I would suggest getting his book and some gear and don't wait on INE if you're attempting SP. Get the INE stuff whenever it shows up, but don't hold out for it.

JoJoCal19

I don't know why folks who paid but are still waiting on material from INE haven't just filed suit. I'm no lawyer but I'd be surprised if this hasn't run afoul of US commerce laws.

For anyone interested: https://leanpub.com/ccie-spv4-comp-guide

Nick's book is absolutely fantastic.

Brian did respond in the reddit thread and put a link to the INE GIT (https://github.com/Internetworkexpert/INE-VIRL) where he has 2 labs and 2 tshoot labs available under the CCIE.SPv4.Bootcamp folder.

He also made mention of no planned addition of resources to the existing workbook/ATC videos until the June time-frame.

d4nz1g

Many folks i know used VIRL to practice for the SP exam, and honestly...after one CCIE you should need no Brian to teach how things work.

Also, the current blueprint only covers 2 MVPN profiles. Do it before they include the other 25 ahahaha

d4nz1g wrote: »

Many folks i know used VIRL to practice for the SP exam, and honestly...after one CCIE you should need no Brian to teach how things work.

Also, the current blueprint only covers 2 MVPN profiles. Do it before they include the other 25 ahahaha

lets hit on a few key topics:

1. VIRL has limitations in the "V" images especially with IOS-XRv. the VIRL team does not develop any "V" images as we have come to find out. this means any promises they made over the past two years are moot.
2. VIRL no longer sells a >20 node license, this means for some of the labs Brian has put out i will need to use packet, a service that will cost me money per HOUR. What am i supposed to do with the remaining ~1300 tokens i have in my INE account that were purchased to be used with the SP track materials?
3. while i can run VIRL with the CCIE-SP base topo (10 CSRv and 4 XRv) at home not everyone can.
4. the price to purchase real equipment is out of the question.
5. many blueprint topics for the lab are covered by NO ONE at 100% thoroughly.

Take in all of these reasons and hence you have why ~10 people have passed the lab in the past two years. But this is neither here nor there. This is more about the fact that many of us (repeat customers) purchased the materials in v3 (myself), couldnt find the time to take/pass the v3 lab and were stuck while being strung along with INE saying "soon", "a few more months" or "after the next bootcamp".

So keep this in mind once you get past the R&S track/DC track and go to spend your money out of pocket on a less popular track. unless of course "after one CCIE you should need no Brian to teach how things work." smdh.

d4nz1g

oh my, your case is completely different from what was on my mind. if you have already spent money on that, i can't argue about that, you deserve to have access to the content. that's it.
yes, there are many options out there (virl, xrv) but none of them gives you 100% compared to real gear.

i apologize for writing nonsense cr*# prior to understanding what that was about

needed that one, going to start labbing it up

sea_turtle wrote: »

lets hit on a few key topics:
4. the price to purchase real equipment is out of the question.
5. many blueprint topics for the lab are covered by NO ONE at 100% thoroughly.

Take in all of these reasons and hence you have why ~10 people have passed the lab in the past two years.

This is what concerns me with the CCIE-SP track overall. What is the point of the cost of development and maintenance towards the track itself, if the barrier to entry isn't cost-effective (read: well supported)?

I understand the wireless track, where most of it seems to be an internal hiring apparatus for Cisco (kind of like the CCIE in general has been in the past). I believe the changes from SPv3 to SPv4 to be generally good in terms of better representing service provider network day-to-day, but what good is that if the hardware is cost-prohibitive and more importantly the training material is fragmented at-best?

I believe the further Cisco goes down the path of not providing cost-effective and solid CCIE tracks, the less worth they truly are outside of the context of an internal Cisco sales engineer ; heck even then I know that groups inside NEMs have to account for the hardware they utilize cost-wise.

rtid wrote: »

This is what concerns me with the CCIE-SP track overall. What is the point of the cost of development and maintenance towards the track itself, if the barrier to entry isn't cost-effective (read: well supported)?

I understand the wireless track, where most of it seems to be an internal hiring apparatus for Cisco (kind of like the CCIE in general has been in the past). I believe the changes from SPv3 to SPv4 to be generally good in terms of better representing service provider network day-to-day, but what good is that if the hardware is cost-prohibitive and more importantly the training material is fragmented at-best?

I believe the further Cisco goes down the path of not providing cost-effective and solid CCIE tracks, the less worth they truly are outside of the context of an internal Cisco sales engineer ; heck even then I know that groups inside NEMs have to account for the hardware they utilize cost-wise.

I could not agree with you more, it appears if you are getting anything from Cisco related to R&S you are fine no matter the level and likely will always be fine as this is their bread and butter. the second you decide you would like to learn something else as it applies to your job or an interest you have you find yourself on a very bumpy road where materials may exist but have a shelf life where the track is updated (all to frequently as of late) or materials just outright do not exist.

nothing upsets me more than when i go to get a quote for a 9922 with rsp2/sfc2/100g cards, Cisco comes back within minutes (assumed licking their lips) BUT with just the mention of CCIE-SP materials to them to better utilize IOS-XR they vanish. the silence is deafening. The second Juniper/Ciena/Nokia/etc pull their hands out of their asses and decide to build decent training materials and a way to virtualize (similar to VIRL) is the second Cisco will start to lose more ground in the SP arena.

Fadakartel

sea_turtle wrote: »

I could not agree with you more, it appears if you are getting anything from Cisco related to R&S you are fine no matter the level and likely will always be fine as this is their bread and butter. the second you decide you would like to learn something else as it applies to your job or an interest you have you find yourself on a very bumpy road where materials may exist but have a shelf life where the track is updated (all to frequently as of late) or materials just outright do not exist.

nothing upsets me more than when i go to get a quote for a 9922 with rsp2/sfc2/100g cards, Cisco comes back within minutes (assumed licking their lips) BUT with just the mention of CCIE-SP materials to them to better utilize IOS-XR they vanish. the silence is deafening. The second Juniper/Ciena/Nokia/etc pull their hands out of their asses and decide to build decent training materials and a way to virtualize (similar to VIRL) is the second Cisco will start to lose more ground in the SP arena.

I agree with you entirely in my country 2 out of the 4 major ISP`s switched out Cisco to Juniper.

This has me rethinking my decision to go with CCIE in SP, especially since the CCIE SP has so little stuff to go by when it comes to materials. sigh maybe I should just do CCNP SP as INE has the materials for it and broaden my skills with security.

CCNP SP and JNCIS-Security should be a good combination for an ISP

lrb

Hi guys, I passed the SPv4 lab last year so I can fully sympathise with people studying for this track and the lack of material out there for it. Nick Russo and I largely followed the same path to passing the lab: use the Cisco documentation, develop your own labs with VIRL/GNS3/etc, experiment with the nerd knobs, watch the packet captures, watch the debugs, etc. Other than Nick's material (which came out about a month after I passed), this is realistically the only way to go.

This is an example of how one of my study nights would go:

1. Build a basic inter-AS option B topology with single ASBRs
2. Make one ASBR an XRv router
3. Make both ASBRs XRv routers
4. Change one IGP from IS-IS to OSPF
5. Change the number of ASBRs to 2 in one AS and 1 in another
6. Change the number of ASBRs to 2 in each AS
7. Use MPLS-TE in one AS
8. Use Autotunnels instead of statically built ones
9. Use RIP as the PE-CE protocol
10. Use EIGRP as another PE-CE protocol
11. Use OSPF as another PE-CE protocol
12. Throw a sham link in there
13. Use IIH authentication in the AS running IS-IS
14. Now use LSP authentication in the AS running IS-IS
15. etc

The INE material for SPv4 is largely average and mainly covers IAS/CSC and basic L3VPN. The one book I did read cover to cover, which was excellent, was this:

MPLS in the SDN Era - O'Reilly Media

Remember that the only section that uses output from real hardware is the DIAG section (as mentioned by Liz Cacic in a webinar or a post on CLN). I'm not trying to downplay the importance of having time on real gear, but it is possible to pass the exam without having hundreds of hours on an ASR9K while you are preparing for the exam.

HTH

lrb

rtid wrote: »

It's a shame Narbik is in the god damn dark ages with how he delivers his content.

Before I took the lab I pinged Janet about one of the scheduled bootcamps and they could never get the numbers to make the bootcamps run.

lrb wrote: »

Before I took the lab I pinged Janet about one of the scheduled bootcamps and they could never get the numbers to make the bootcamps run.

thanks for your responses, i had picked up that book a few weeks ago per a few people over in /r/ccie talking about it being very useful.

my plan is take a lab attempt around may-june, pass/fail go from there.

lrb wrote: »

Before I took the lab I pinged Janet about one of the scheduled bootcamps and they could never get the numbers to make the bootcamps run.

I guess I should clarify what I meant by my comment:

1. Narbik's bootcamps aren't available in an on-demand format, that I've ever seen (though Micronics has had a "Coming Soon" disclaimer regarding it for a long while now). Customers would pay for this, as it is more convenient to consume content ad-hoc than attend a bootcamp in-person. Going to the trouble to present online bootcamps via WebEx, but not have an on-demand version mystifies me.

2. Narbik delivers documents that require LockLizard, which is a more harmful hurdle to the paying customer than someone who is trying to **** him out of his content. Case in point, INE moved away from this software a long time ago. Many digital retailers simply use watermarking and copyright law to discourage these activities.

3. Narbik has not updated his content in terms of removing serial interfaces, default commands in the IOS that is specific to the certification, etc.

#2, and #3 are hurdles (some minor) that I've dealt with on my end, but I can't do much of anything about #1.

Narbik, good content and good guy; I only wish he'd do some much needed modernization renovation in regards to what I've said above.

Iristheangel

#1 and #2 - Probably more to do with people stealing content. He's not ever going to be doing CCIE material for on-demand. That stuff gets stolen quickly and while not everyone can afford an in-person bootcamp, at least that's not being pirated and stealing customers (at the moment). The Webex ones might get stolen at some point but if that happened, I suspect you'll see Narbik move away from remote bootcamps which would suck for the rest of us but he and his family has to eat.

#3 - Serial interfaces are most certainly still part of the lab.

To all,

The reason I don't have online classes for R&S is because as Iristheangel mentioned it will be shared on every freaking site known to mankind. The same reason goes for LockLizard. We are a Cisco Learning Partner and we have to do what Cisco does to their authorized materials to keep them as secure as possible, in some cases that is not enough either. But hey, anything is better than nothing. It's like not locking your front door.

My contents are very much updated, almost every month we have some students pass, to be honest I don't make a big deal like some vendors do because I don't like to take credit for all the hard work that a given student had to go through to get his numbers, it is just NOT fair. But Just a FYI, serial interfaces, PPP are still part of the lab and I will have it in my books as long as Cisco has them in the blueprint. Students that use CSR1000vs hate that because these routers don’t have serial interfaces. But within a month we will come up with our own version of emulators that is a combination of CSR1000vs and IOSv, that way you will have access to whatever you like.

As far as CCIE SP goes, we have by far the BEST boot camp out there; Please compare it to any other vendor, anywhere. This is our outline:
https://micronicstraining.com/event/service-provider-zero-to-hero/

We don't focus on the blueprint only, we cover the blueprint but we have added a lot more so our students will not only pass the lab but they will get to know what's real in an SP environment. Our instructors have designed, worked, troubleshot, and consulted for Service Providers almost all over the world, so it is easier for them to answer questions.

The same holds true with any of our classes, just look at our Zero-To-Hero Security classes, look at our CCIE DC classes, look at our Zero-To-Hero SP classes, look at our new CCDE classes (BTW, BY FAR THE MOST REAL DESIGN CLASS IN THE WORLD FOR ARCHITECTS) or even our R&S CCIE boot camps.

In my CCIE R&S boot camp we spend one whole day on just OSPF. BTW, I have added a lot more to that lecture, my next class in UK will probably see one and half days of OSPF. I am just mentioning OSPF here but the same goes for every topic that we cover, I constantly change what I cover so my re-takers won't be bored, OK, I don't want to get bored either.

BTW, I am not in dark ages, the reason I use whiteboards is not that it is hard to use Power Point presentation, or sit down and configure everything for you, I use whiteboards because it is by far the most effective way of teaching. It is MUCH harder to whiteboard everything and do what I call Directed Activities. Here is an example of how I teach that class:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM3OI_ZyRuQ&t=922s
Much better than power point isn't it?

Thank you very much for letting me know about some of the issues that you or anyone else has with our products. I am open to a discussion, because if I realize that I am wrong I will change in a heartbeat.

Thank you

Hello Narbik, any particular reason why the zero-to-hero SP bootcamp that was originally supposed to start on feb 25th has been moved to march 18th now? will it be pushed back again? Will you run it more than once a year?

what are your plans for a workbook for SPv4? we spoke briefly last march and at the time you felt the cost to rebuild SP materials was too great and the demand was too low, what changed?

while I do agree that your particular outline does look stronger than the INE bootcamp at the moment I still find both your and INE's materials to be very shallow in alot of area's. As an example where is your QoS (I wont list all the types, etc)?

I am honestly considering taking this class (and I have been for the past two months) but I would have to pay out of pocket. How does a 10 week bootcamp work after completion? can I access the materials post bootcamp? how will your labs be delivered? will I be required to use my own copy of VIRL?

what you are offering is kind of a first of its kind for CCIE bootcamps/study and due to being so starved on materials I want to make sure IF i pull the trigger im getting quality.

sea_turtle,

Yes, the reason was that we didn't have enough students to conduct the class and actually it was my fault. But the March class is definitely a go, so if you are interested please contact Janet at sales@micronicstraining.com and she will register you for that class.

what are your plans for a workbook for SPv4? we spoke briefly last march and at the time you felt the cost to rebuild SP materials was too great and the demand was too low, what changed?

What changed was the demand, all of a sudden we were bombarded with requests and since no one else had the right instructors/workbooks we decided to offer the class.
while I do agree that your particular outline does look stronger than the INE bootcamp at the moment I still find both your and INE's materials to be very shallow in alot of area's. As an example where is your QoS (I wont list all the types, etc)?

VERY good question, at the end of the day you have to cover what's in the blueprint and what is relevant to the CCIE R&S. QoS is NOT what it use to be, in a very good sunny day it is worth 5 points or less, that's if you see QoS at all. In the previous version, I remember that my QoS lecture started first thing in the morning on Thursday with layer 2 QoS, SRR and etc etc etc and we ended that session around 6:00 PM. With emulated environment most of these topics are thing of the past.

I am honestly considering taking this class (and I have been for the past two months) but I would have to pay out of pocket. How does a 10 week bootcamp work after completion? can I access the materials post bootcamp? how will your labs be delivered? will I be required to use my own copy of VIRL?

I am guessing that you are talking about CCIE R&S, if so, every student gets two sets of racks, IOU/IOL and real routers and switches. The materials will be yours and you can access the ones that you get from me for ever, and the ones that you get from Cisco, you can print them and keep them forever. This is what you get when you register:
Upon registration, you will get a PDC version of my CCIE Foundation, this workbook is 870+ pages that prepares you for the boot camp.
Day one, you will get a copy of my "Advanced CCIE R&S", a 2300+pages of workbook with initial config files and diagrams.
Day one, you will get access to two student guides and a lab guide from Cisco and you can print these books, they will be in your web portal.
You will get four fully graded assessments that you will conduct in the class, these labs are VERY VERY nice, you probably haven't seen anything like them, if you have, gr8.
You will also get my "Advanced CCIE Troubleshooting" workbook.
You will also get 10 mock labs with 100 hours of lab time that you can conduct anytime.
BTW, all my workbooks are in full color. I think this should be enough for someone to pass this lab.

My friend, if you pull the trigger, you will get a pure lecture that conveys the theory from IOSes perspective. Throughout the entire class you will NOT see one second of Power point, everything is going to be on the whiteboard, BTW, the "?" works on my whiteboard.

Please watch the video that I referenced, because this is exactly what you will see when you attend my class.

The last thing I like to add is hey, INE must be gr8, if they were not gr8 they would be out of business long time ago. I don't have access to their material nor the time to see what they offer. But any boot camp, any lab you conduct you will learn something.

thank you again for taking time to respond.

1. i am talking about the SP track only, how will the 10 week format work? will i get access to the sessions post bootcamp to review? i believe you have confirmed to me that while the bootcamp is underway i will get access to the recorded sessions and labs?
2. what will the workbook that is included in the bootcamp have? can i just purchase the workbook as the bootcamp is rather expensive?
3. how will you deliver the SP labs during the bootcamp? will i need my own copy of VIRL during the bootcamp or will you have racks setup to practice with?
4. QoS is still a very large part of the SP lab blueprint as it appears in both section 1 (30% points) and 3 (21%points) not saying there will be a TON of QoS but know that it is in two separate locations in the blueprint:

SPv4 Blueprint:

1.6 Quality of Service (QoS)
- 1.6.a Describe, implement, and troubleshoot classification and marking
- 1.6.b Describe, implement, and troubleshoot congestion management and scheduling, for example, policing, shaping, and queuing
- 1.6.c Describe, implement, and troubleshoot congestion avoidance
- 1.6.d Describe, implement, and troubleshoot MPLS QoS models (MAM, RDM, Pipe, Short Pipe, and Uniform)
- 1.6.e Describe, implement, and troubleshoot MPLS TE QoS (CBTS, PBTS, and DS-TE)
3.3 Quality of Service (QoS)
- 3.3.a Describe, implement, and troubleshoot classification and marking
- 3.3.b Describe, implement, and troubleshoot congestion management and scheduling, for example, policing, shaping, and queuing
- 3.3.c Describe, implement, and troubleshoot congestion avoidance

Lastly what is going on over at INE is neither here or there, i have used their products in the past for my R&S IE. But as of today many of us have given them an interest free loan in/around 2015 for the SP materials/tokens and have not gotten what we paid for yet. The collapse of IPExpert allowed every CCIE vendor to be lazy by reducing competition for any track that is not R&S. (and maybe DC)

Narbik,

Thanks for your response, and others who have responded to what I've said.

First things first, I clarified my comment because I felt that by saying you were in the dark ages in regards to content delivery was ambiguous. To add further clarity, it's not an attack on you, your teaching style or your content ; my experience with the material has been overwhelmingly positive. If this was not the case, I wouldn't have essentially endorsed the notion of myself and others desire to pay for it in an on-demand capacity.

What I am saying is that both the DRM and the inability to stream your content on-demand is a step below your competitor when it comes to convenience and pace. The DRM has caused issues for me, but like most issues surrounding yourself and INE, I work around them. From what you've said, you're somewhat hamstrung by your relationship with Cisco and I can appreciate that.

I don't think we need to beat the serial interface thing to death, I'm aware that it's still on the lab in a reduced fashion. Suffice to say you've touched on the heart of the matter which is the choice of virtualized platforms available ; reducing this to the dullest roar possible is a convenience factor. Nonetheless, I've worked around this and standardized what is needed to consume both your content and INE's in this regard.

Thanks again for responding.

Glad to see you make it Here Narbik

Sea_turtle,

Sorry my friend I thought you were asking for R&S. BTW, sorry for the late reply, I was talking a class.
1. Yes, with all of our online classes, the students will have access to the recorded session for couple of weeks.
2. We will add as many labs as we possibly can, and it will be in PDC format. None of our CCIE workbooks from here on will be sold, the only possible way to get them is to attend a class. We will be writing a “Foundation” book for every track and that book will be sold but not the CCIE workbooks. As far as pricing, I think our boot camps are less expensive than most if not all the other vendors. You must be referring to our Zero-To-Hero class, this class runs for 10 Saturdays or 10 days, $2799 is NOT bad at all, there are many authorized vendors that sell their CCNA R&S for more than that.
3. My first choice when it comes to racks is to have the students have their own racks, this way the students can access and do labs any time they want and at no cost. We are working on that as we speak.
4. The QoS sections that you mentioned can be added to the curriculum that is no big deal, but where else do you see weaknesses? If by looking at the outline you see a lot of weaknesses, then, this is not the class for you, may be you are too advanced for this class.
5. To be honest with you, I wouldn’t have a clue, I saw Brian for the first time in last Cisco Live when he was dressed in cloud style, that’s it. What do you mean you guys gave them an interest free loan? You mean they didn’t do what they promised?

Let me know if you have more questions. Have a nice day

Rtid,

I never saw it as an attack my friend, no need for that, but thanks for clarifying it.
In the old days DRM was a pain, but nowadays you can load the workbooks on your iPhone, iPad with no problems at all.
The reason we chose DRMs is because you spend months and months and months to write a book and an idiot shares it on one of these stupid sites and all your hard work goes to nothing.
I don’t know why a vendor would give you or sell you the pdf version of their workbook, honestly, think about it, unless it is used for marketing purposes or the actual workbook is not worth much at all. They must know that their product is being shared. If I don’t protect what I have, may be what I have is not worth protecting.
As far as virtualization goes, I want my students to get the best and the best solution is not what I see out there, so far what others use is funny and silly. Once we come up with our solution you will see what I am talking about.

Thank you my friend and have a gr8 day.

Hey Keenon,

How are you my friend? Must feel great having the numbers.

@narbik

i'm good myself. Started back working on my own sp learning labs getting prepped for a run at this one next

Narbik Kocharians wrote: »

Sea_turtle,

Sorry my friend I thought you were asking for R&S. BTW, sorry for the late reply, I was talking a class.
1. Yes, with all of our online classes, the students will have access to the recorded session for couple of weeks.
2. We will add as many labs as we possibly can, and it will be in PDC format. None of our CCIE workbooks from here on will be sold, the only possible way to get them is to attend a class. We will be writing a “Foundation” book for every track and that book will be sold but not the CCIE workbooks. As far as pricing, I think our boot camps are less expensive than most if not all the other vendors. You must be referring to our Zero-To-Hero class, this class runs for 10 Saturdays or 10 days, $2799 is NOT bad at all, there are many authorized vendors that sell their CCNA R&S for more than that.
3. My first choice when it comes to racks is to have the students have their own racks, this way the students can access and do labs any time they want and at no cost. We are working on that as we speak.
4. The QoS sections that you mentioned can be added to the curriculum that is no big deal, but where else do you see weaknesses? If by looking at the outline you see a lot of weaknesses, then, this is not the class for you, may be you are too advanced for this class.
5. To be honest with you, I wouldn’t have a clue, I saw Brian for the first time in last Cisco Live when he was dressed in cloud style, that’s it. What do you mean you guys gave them an interest free loan? You mean they didn’t do what they promised?

Let me know if you have more questions. Have a nice day

a few further questions:

3. while i do have a VIRL server at home that i use today for study, will your labs be built so that i will get a virl topo file and it will work with the 20 nodes or less version? not to mention the fact that the max i can run at the moment is 10 csr1000v and 4 xrv images. have these things been considered?
4. maybe, but your other class also shows a similar outline, same with INE's. my feeling here is that both you and Brian did not look at the full blueprint when you setup your bootcamp outlines. for all bootcamps yes QoS needs to be added as once you move past Diffserv tunneling into DS-TE you enter into something that most have never seen in a production SP network.
5. many of us paid for the INE SP materials (most of us are repeat customers) in the 2015 time frame and have been waiting for delivery of completed materials for almost 2 years now. that is what is meant by an interest free loan.

@sea_turtle

have you tried unl/eve? the only limitation is the resources on your desktop/server you are running this on. i'm able to run the 10/4 without issues with room to spare

system specs are
64gb ram
24 cpu
1T hdd

i'm running the appliance with 32 gb ram/12 cpu in vm workstation