1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

Turgon

Impossible to study today. Too many meetings and technical projects to research/contribute to.

bertieb

Turgon wrote: »

Impossible to study today. Too many meetings and technical projects to research/contribute to.

Even though I'm not doing anything like the CCIE, I'm hearing you there! After a manic day or two in work juggling projects/meetings etc I'm also burned out by the time I get home - I just want some food, a relaxing walk with the dogs, a bath and then some tv (usually something on 'Dave').

Still, the fact you are still thinking CCIE even if you can't get time to dedicate time to it during a day or two shows you are still dead set on getting this done. And my offer of beer made on several occasions is still valid

Turgon

bertieb wrote: »

Even though I'm not doing anything like the CCIE, I'm hearing you there! After a manic day or two in work juggling projects/meetings etc I'm also burned out by the time I get home - I just want some food, a relaxing walk with the dogs, a bath and then some tv (usually something on 'Dave').

Still, the fact you are still thinking CCIE even if you can't get time to dedicate time to it during a day or two shows you are still dead set on getting this done. And my offer of beer made on several occasions is still valid

Very true.

INE Vol II v4.0 Labs no 6 and 7 - QoS - DONE

On general principle I did these tonight. Just an hour on the rack in the evening after work to shake some ring rust off.

Turgon

Up at 5:30 AM. Tough commute. Long day. Home at 9PM. No studies possible today and very fatigued. Just done catching up on my email at work now Im home late.

Should cross the 900 hour mark on Saturday. The next 100 hours will be critical and I must get them amassed quickly. If I can't get 50 lab hours in during September then I think it's probably time to call it quits and just concentrate on my work. More than enough to stretch me there with nationwide major upgrade projects to design. It's going to be hard but without day in day out serious revision time I simply cant bring my lab prep to the boil. Let's see how it goes.

sKGP

Though i'm new here , love your determination and dedication . Good luck with Your preparations . you will be just fine .

Turgon

Thanks man.

Too busy at work today to study. Too tired this evening to study. Tomorrow is WFH so I will get through the QoS sections of labs 8,9 and 10 in INE Vol II. Then it's a break from QoS and starting Saturday the beginning of a deep dive into MPLS in Vol II by doing the MPLS sections in the first 10 labs. Both QoS and MPLS are timely subjects as we have things going on at work so that kind of helps with the studies and with performance on the job.

Multicast and IPv6 get assaulted after the MPLS stint. During all this technology effort I need to keep some reading going across all topics as well as swoop from time to time on a lab to revise switching/IGP and BGP so they dont go stale.

Security/System Manangement and IP Services are all subjects that for me at least, seem to have a familiarity in look and feel so I will put off an attack on those until later in the year. Im fairly confident I can look sharp on those with about 8 weeks effort combined.

So, for the moment, we are coming up to closure on lab practice for QoS and a start on MPLS. I will whizz through all topics for about a week before I take on a mock in November.

Postscript - Spent an hour on the train to London yesterday reading a paper on Frame Relay Traffic Shaping.

Turgon

Ok well my lab hours plans for today have been hijacked as the only lab slot available is one starting at 11pm. No thanks. I have taken the Saturday slot that starts at 5am so given Im usually up around 7am I should get a couple of hours in there before the timer expires and finish up on the first 10 QoS labs. Will do a bit of reading today instead.

Turgon

The Saturday session was abandoned due to bad planning on my part. Been rather busy the whole weekend painting and preparing the bedroom for our boy. Looking good now and a new bed bought, brought home and assembled by yours truly. Off to the shops now then finally a rack slot if any are left.

Turgon

No racktime possible this weekend due to home improvements. Still, my son has a lovely bedroom he likes now.

Time to pick up the pace on the lab studies. Im running a five hour slot during works time and will try and dip into it inbetween meetings. Dividing my attention like this is risky. It can put me under pressure at work and is not condusive to good study, but it's the only way Im going to get some momentum going and get through the necessary labwork. On somedays I might only get an hour in on a 5 hour slot so it's going to be expensive on the remote rack credit front.

September is the lynch pin, my most important study month so we have to get moving. To avoid tail drop in the studies I will work a topic solely one day and in the next session do core technologies. Rinse and repeat across the topics. Let's see how it goes. First to finish the QoS sections in Vol II labs 8,9,10. Then it's MPLS in Vol II labs 1 - 10. The note to myself is not to get stuck on one technology a week. I must sprinkle the studies with some core practice so it doesn't get stale. A bit of reading would be a good idea too. I have a spreadsheet with all the Vol I technologies documented so I will be turning that over during the week.

I did manage to get about 1 hour of MPLS theory reading in this week. First by revisiting Odom's book and then by looking over some of the INE Vol 1 labs for the subject.

Turgon

An anti-climax. My meetings overran and I never got to use my five hour slot. More wasted $$$. No slots free for this evening on the schedule either. Bummer. Will do some reading instead.

gorebrush

I'd really cringe at losing money like that.

I can appreciate what you meant now about "having the time to study"

chmorin

Turgon wrote: »

Up at 5:30 AM. Tough commute. Long day. Home at 9PM. No studies possible today and very fatigued. Just done catching up on my email at work now Im home late.

Should cross the 900 hour mark on Saturday. The next 100 hours will be critical and I must get them amassed quickly. If I can't get 50 lab hours in during September then I think it's probably time to call it quits and just concentrate on my work. More than enough to stretch me there with nationwide major upgrade projects to design. It's going to be hard but without day in day out serious revision time I simply cant bring my lab prep to the boil. Let's see how it goes.

Way to rough of an environment man that is insane! Good luck though.

Turgon

gorebrush wrote: »

I'd really cringe at losing money like that.

I can appreciate what you meant now about "having the time to study"

Yeah it's a pain and it happens quite often. A number of meetings popped up just today that overlapped with the scheduled racktime. Too many things requiring time to get a run at the labwork. Still, I have now looked over the Q and A for the QoS sections of labs 8,9 and 10. Time to look over the MPLS sections of labs 1 - 10 now.

My next rack session could be tomorrow evening after work and the commute and when the youngster is in bed, so that's about 9pm. It can be difficult to get up for a lab slot though at the end of a long day. Im in the office on Wednesday and I just dont feel comfortable doing labs in that environment. There's no buy in for certification there. WFH day's I feel better about doing it 9-5 but there just wasn't enough time today.

Turgon

Too many network design meetings (amongst others) at work destroyed any hope of getting any studying done. Home feeling tired again. Once the youngster is asleep I will do a couple of hours on the racks after 9pm (if there are slots) or do some reading. Busy day ahead in the office tomorrow and an evil Friday where I simply must put the hours in to complete an outstanding piece of work.

Turgon

Managed a brief refresh of MPLS reading last night before hitting the sack.

Turgon

Intense day of technical meetings at work. All attempts to study on works time completely destroyed. Tommorow I have some work related QoS configs to look over so something. Also VRRP limitation fix on checkpoint to work through.

Turgon

Flat out with work today. All chances of studying destroyed.

Turgon

full weekend with family visiting. Great time, studies hopeless.

Turgon

Two hours of QoS design at work recorded as two hour reading on the study trek. It's relevent so that takes me to 467 hours reading.

Man it's full on at work, meetings, meetings, meetings with stuff to do inbetween meetings to prepare for meetings and problems to solve. Love it but no disconnect time and frazzled when I get home.

So for the moment it's CCIE hobbiest rather than CCIE candidate. September study plans savaged by work and an airport run at the Weekend planned! Im taking a week off in October so that should help me reconnect. I will do some lab hours Friday or at some point over the weekend. Sunday probably.

Turgon

hellish day. Study opportunities destroyed.

Turgon

Another full on work day. 5 meetings. Intense and tiring. Objectives met or progressing. Study plans destroyed.

Turgon

Just back from a round trip airport run to London to drop off a visitor. Tonight working over some critical network migration plans for my job. Sunday preparing for a company wide presentation on Tuesday. Study plans for the weekend totally annihilated.

Turgon

Monday. Flat out with design work, configurations and meetings. Study opportunities destroyed.

Turgon

Tuesday. Flat out with design work, configurations and meetings. Study opportunities destroyed.

Turgon

Major POP outage day. Studies destroyed.

gorebrush

Chin up Turg, that's a bad run of days we're all behind you!

Turgon

gorebrush wrote: »

Chin up Turg, that's a bad run of days we're all behind you!

Still at it since 9am. On a call for card swap and big reconverge

gorebrush

Bloody hell

Bl8ckr0uter

Have you thought about using dynamps on a powerful laptop or something so you can stop losing your $$$ in rack time? At this point in the game, you probably don't need to actually work on real cisco gear anymore---unless you are studying more than R/S.

Good luck on getting back on track!

Turgon

knwminus wrote: »

Have you thought about using dynamps on a powerful laptop or something so you can stop losing your $$$ in rack time? At this point in the game, you probably don't need to actually work on real cisco gear anymore---unless you are studying more than R/S.

Good luck on getting back on track!

Its just an overall lack of any study time at present that is the killer.

2AM. Work done for today.