Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to CCIE
I have finally started preparing to study for my CCIE. I've been reading through the exam topics, trying to psyche myself up. I downloaded the exam topics matrix from Cisco's website, which contains some valuable resources for study aids. I'm creating my own spreadsheet based on that, with a couple dozen books and their page numbers referencing the exam topics. I have a few books already and will be ordering more soon enough. I found, at a steal, CCIE Practical Studies Volume 2 and Cisco LAN Switching for $12 combined, plus free shipping. I already have the CCIE Routing & Switching OCG, Volume 1. I need hard copies of books. I can't just use PDFs. I like to print RFCs, or website articles, that help explain topics better. I plan on using many sticky notes with references to other pages in other books. If I spend a couple hundred dollars in used books along the way, I consider that worth it. Besides books I have training videos, workbooks, and so on. The most important resource will be the hardest to manage - time.
The first topic is:
1.1.a Describe basic software architecture differences between IOS and IOS XE
The OCG only goes three pages deep into that topic, which I knew wouldn't really be enough. I checked the matrix downloaded from Cisco's website and they referenced a book called IP Routing on Cisco IOS, IOS XE, and IOS XR. I assumed it was the typical Cisco Press book which was quite a few years old and would only be best used for foundational information. I was wrong. The copyright is 2015 and it's 1200 pages full of excellent and valuable information using those IOSes. The first chapter goes into the basics of the three aforementioned operating systems. I think using that plus some random web articles I printed up, I should have enough to cover the first topic.
The first topic is:
1.1.a Describe basic software architecture differences between IOS and IOS XE
- 1.1.a Control plane and Forwarding plane
- 1.1.a [ii] Impact to troubleshooting and performances
- 1.1.a [iii] Excluding specific platform's architecture
The OCG only goes three pages deep into that topic, which I knew wouldn't really be enough. I checked the matrix downloaded from Cisco's website and they referenced a book called IP Routing on Cisco IOS, IOS XE, and IOS XR. I assumed it was the typical Cisco Press book which was quite a few years old and would only be best used for foundational information. I was wrong. The copyright is 2015 and it's 1200 pages full of excellent and valuable information using those IOSes. The first chapter goes into the basics of the three aforementioned operating systems. I think using that plus some random web articles I printed up, I should have enough to cover the first topic.