1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

Turgon

Looked over the whole lab and made some notes. While waiting for my next online lab session Im practicing configuration drills on the home rack.

Turgon

IPexpert Lab 'I'.

Switching section completed.

Turgon

Lab 'I' WAN configuration complete. Bringing us to 350 hours logged on racks. Will complete the lab in the morning. Need to earn a living now.

Turgon

Recabled home rack this evening to assist with final IPexpert labs. Hope to get lab I done tomorrow.

Turgon

6AM. An early start and an opportunity to finish the lab before work begins.

GT-Rob

I dont know about you, but I can never pull myself to study/lab before work. Even if I am up early enough to, I still just rather take some fruit loops to the couch and watch saved by the bell reruns.

The key is to get some lab time in at work. Open a couple Putty sessions and it looks like I am working

Paul Boz

GT-Rob wrote:

I dont know about you, but I can never pull myself to study/lab before work. Even if I am up early enough to, I still just rather take some fruit loops to the couch and watch saved by the bell reruns.

The key is to get some lab time in at work. Open a couple Putty sessions and it looks like I am working

My strategy for studying before work is to burn my audio lectures to CD and listen to them on the commute. That and having an ample supply of cisco books in the bathroom

dynamik

GT-Rob wrote:

The key is to get some lab time in at work. Open a couple Putty sessions and it looks like I am working

That's like me with the VMs I used for my MCSE

Keep up the great work Turgon. You're quite an inspiration.

Turgon

Thanks for the wishes.

7am. Lab 'I' DONE.

Lab 'J' up next. Given that this is graded at a complexity of 8 I don't think it will be a barrel of laughs and no doubt time consuming to complete over multiple sessions. My work affords me little or no time to do any lab prep 9 - 5 so I expect early mornings, evenings and weekends to be rather busy while I try and complete the remaining Multiprotocol labs in the IPexpert end to end track. I will be pleased to have covered this vendor track end to end. From what I have seen more people jump around vendor tracks rather than complete a whole program. Im glad I stuck Ipexpert out. At the same time during the last year I have done some labs from books by Doyle, Solie and Duggan. I think some people buy a lot of vendor material as a comfort thing. They chop and change and never really get very far. It's just too much material and becomes unworkable often leading to rushed work and lost learning opportunities.

Just completing one vendor track properly end to end takes ages.... but it's the best way to go so far as I can tell. Once completed then try something else.

Once IPexpert is through it's another vendor to polish things off and help clarify some points.

I will work on IEWB workbook II and some mock exams. I still have much to do. The elapsed time required to get to where I need to be for my first lab attempt is difficult to quantify given time constraints on the work and home front but I think I'm pushing it now to be ready before my written expires beginning of November. I should have a better feel by the end of August. I don't wish to be left with too much preparation ahead of me and only September and October available to cover the remainder of what I need to work on before my lab exam. So I may need to just update the written. I would rather not though. Then again, I would rather do that and pass the lab exam in January than rush to make a written expiry deadline and deny myself a couple of crucial extra months on the racks which might make all the difference. Having come this far I do not want to spoil things by cramming. I have got a lot done since I assembled the home rack in April last year after clearing the written, doing my first old practice lab rescued from my dusty 2003 CCIE prep notebooks on 12th May 2007. All my labs are recorded by date on a chart on the wall. Oh yeah and my son was born last September and he's increasingly keeping us busy!

Let's see how everything goes.

Paul Boz

Just out of curiosity, how frequently (or at all) do you do full all-day (8+ hours) labs? I know you said time doesn't afford much time for studying during the day but what about weekends?

Turgon

Hello Paul,

I very rarely do an 8 hour stint on a lab. If the lab is technically an 8 hour lab I try to get it spread over several sessions during a week. Once I get into late August I expect to be doing full day sessions at the weekend. By then I should have everything coming together and things flowing nicely. If I was to do 8 hour labs at the moment I wouldn't get through them in the allotted time. Im starting to work on speed now by doing sections in a certain timeframe but a whole lab in 8 hours isn't really doable just yet. It will be two months down the line though.

Breaking the labs into managable chunks has worked best for me so far, affording me time to reflect on what Im doing rather than trying to beat the clock at this stage. My two - four hour sessions are pretty intense and that's about all the time I have for any one session at this time. Weekends Im pretty tied up on the home front helping with family and household things but I get about 8 hours in spread out over a good weekend.

I expect to be making a dint in lab 'J' over the course of this weekend on the homerack. This is an 8 hour lab.

GT-Rob

I think that is a good way to approach it. Maybe do like 4+4hr sessions, or 3+3+3hr ones over a couple of days.


It really is tough to find the time, especially when you are doing online rack rentals. At the same time, its nice to be able to just grab the end of a session, and jump on. I think you are using IPexperts rentals correct? Not sure if its the same, but I have been using IEs, and they have 4 slots a day (5.5hr slots). However, I usually book them when they are half over so they are cheap, and I use the time more effectively (5.5hrs is hard to fill non-stop!)


Just got to power through! Let everyone know that next month is ass-kicking time

Turgon

GT-Rob wrote:

I think that is a good way to approach it. Maybe do like 4+4hr sessions, or 3+3+3hr ones over a couple of days.


It really is tough to find the time, especially when you are doing online rack rentals. At the same time, its nice to be able to just grab the end of a session, and jump on. I think you are using IPexperts rentals correct? Not sure if its the same, but I have been using IEs, and they have 4 slots a day (5.5hr slots). However, I usually book them when they are half over so they are cheap, and I use the time more effectively (5.5hrs is hard to fill non-stop!)


Just got to power through! Let everyone know that next month is ass-kicking time

I use proctorlabs for Ipexpert and the homerack when possible. IE racks are not wired for the Ipexpert topology but I will be using them later on when I return to the IE workbook vol II materials.

Turgon

Sunday 9 am. Time to fire up the home rack and set about lab 'J'. A family outing yesterday and a busy week at work ahead so gotta stay on track.

Turgon

Spent all morning on the home rack building out lab 'J'. Got switching, WAN and IGPs done. Halting the session now and will continue with the rest starting with BGP in the next session. Time to go shopping now and prepare for family visitors later this afternoon.

Turgon

6:30 AM. Back on with lab 'J'.

Paul Boz

6.30am.. UK?

Turgon

Paul Boz wrote:

6.30am.. UK?

That's right!

BGP and Multicastig sections done.

Paul Boz

Turgon wrote:

That's right!

BGP and Multicastig sections done.

How are your BGP preparations coming? Given the sheer complexity of the protocol I was sort of surprised at how straightforward the IE and IPExpert books are with regards to the technology. I suppose the really juicy stuff is reserved for the CCIE Service Provider?

For me, multicast is shaping up to be the proverbial thorn in the lion's paw for me. It's just not a technology that I enjoy that much so studying it is pretty dry.

Turgon

Paul Boz wrote:

Turgon wrote:

That's right!

BGP and Multicastig sections done.

How are your BGP preparations coming? Given the sheer complexity of the protocol I was sort of surprised at how straightforward the IE and IPExpert books are with regards to the technology. I suppose the really juicy stuff is reserved for the CCIE Service Provider?

For me, multicast is shaping up to be the proverbial thorn in the lion's paw for me. It's just not a technology that I enjoy that much so studying it is pretty dry.

Things seem straightforward but the devil is in the details. Make sure you understand what you are being asked to do and how to manipulate attributes of routes, communities etc. Make sure your peerings come up, and if they dont sort it out, missing IGP routes, ebgp-multihop etc. One of the biggest problems is making sure your L2/L3 life is good before you do the BGP sections. You need to be fast at understanding requirements, configuring the right thing and handy at verification to get any bugs out. There isn't a lot of time for troubleshooting on lab day so be methodical.

Multicasting is overrated. It's not that difficult to configure. Same goes for QoS. People get phased by these topics because they don't have much experience with them. The same could have been said for DLSW+, ISDN, Voice, IPX/SPX, Decnet, AppleTalk and SRB some years ago.

GT-Rob

"The same could have been said for DLSW+, ISDN, Voice, IPX/SPX, Decnet, AppleTalk and SRB some years ago"


hmm so are you saying that QoS and Multicast are going away too? (I wish)

BGP used to be a fear for me, but the workbooks have reeeeally helped build my confidence with it. I agree 100% with the troubleshooting, as its bound to happen. I find that especially true with BGP, there always seems to be SOMETHING that doesn't come up right, and I have to start looking through. But I guess its good practice for when (not if) I mess something up on the lab lol

Turgon

GT-Rob wrote:

"The same could have been said for DLSW+, ISDN, Voice, IPX/SPX, Decnet, AppleTalk and SRB some years ago"


hmm so are you saying that QoS and Multicast are going away too? (I wish)

BGP used to be a fear for me, but the workbooks have reeeeally helped build my confidence with it. I agree 100% with the troubleshooting, as its bound to happen. I find that especially true with BGP, there always seems to be SOMETHING that doesn't come up right, and I have to start looking through. But I guess its good practice for when (not if) I mess something up on the lab lol

I imagine those topics are staying put for now. It's all practice

Turgon

IPExpert Lab 'J' - DONE

Finished up this lab with the exception of some IPv6 tasks my equipment won't run. No IPv6 at all on R1 and no IPv6 OSPF on the other routers. The solutions make a lot of sense and Ipv6 (although I freely admit I have forgotton some theory) seems to hang together in a way I can understand. If you have IPv6 running over OSPF on frame, expect to have a large config on your serial interfaces with the usual frame-relay maps, and ip ospf priority fun you would expect to find with Ipv4 arrangements.

There are just 7 remaining IPExpert Multiprotocol labs in the v 9.00 workbook to do. At this juncture I have decided to take a brief departure from IPExpert material and start out on the IWEB Vol II workbook labs.

The format is different and will give me an opportunity to refine some of the bulk learning I have done. With IPexpert I only had the solutions, no proctor guide and not even any hints on the multiprotocol labs. This forced me to really pour over those final configs and try and figure out why a config was laid out in a certain way. With IWEB there is lots of commentary in the solutions guides, so Im hoping to get some things cleared up concerning the basics and some of the finer points.

Dinner time with family now then bathtime and bedtime for our 10 month old son. I will then do a couple of hours on the remote racks starting with IWEB Vol II lab no 1.

GT-Rob

Looking forward to your thoughts on IEWB vol II. I have it sitting beside me here ready to start going through them soon.

Turgon

6AM. A busy week at work over. Time to carry on with IWEB Vol II lab 1.

Turgon

Problems seeing lmi from the frame switch on the remote rack. Logged a ticket with support. Will batter in configs for now and see if it lights up later.

shednik

Still going strong after the short break I see, good to see ya keeping it up turgon!!

ITdude

Yea, he is kinda like the Eveready Bunny!

Turgon

IWEB Vol II workbook labs are useful. I think I will aim to get one done a week broken up into two sessions. First session will be switching/IGP/BGP, second session the rest. Expect to review lab, suggest answer, check solution, consider solution explanation and clarify points in my head. Then a session battering out the solution. Solution explanations are wordy but some good things in there to 'work' what I have already covered the last year. Certainly clearing up some of the finer points nicely having a different perspective on things.

Meanwhile, for the moment, a reading week to revisit some theory.

GT-Rob

I think a week per lab is a good pace. Between preparing for it, going through the lab (8-10hrs), going over the solution, and reading up on anything you need to cover, its a good amount of hours each week on its own.

Only downside is it will take quite a while to get through all 20 if you do them.