1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

Turgon

reaper81 wrote: »

You seem to have found some time lately to get some progress in your studies. Keep going and you might have a good shot at the lab in 2012. No racks for me tonight, will do some other studying. Have a double session coming up tomorrow.

Its difficult for me, but Im trying to do something everyday now, even if it's just for an hour. I just need to be careful of attempting big study sessions on a regular basis because I would never keep it up as it would impact my job responsibilities. Work is pretty toxic right now in terms of demands on my time. I need 100% there at the moment and pretty nuked by the time work is done and we got the kids fed, washed and off to bed.

Turgon

Preparing for a presentation of engineering options to Cisco later today. Hope to get a couple of hours of racktime in on QoS study on the side.

jamesp1983

Turgon wrote: »

Preparing for a presentation of engineering options to Cisco later today. Hope to get a couple of hours of racktime in on QoS study on the side.

What exactly are you covering? make me jealous ha

Turgon

jimmypizzle83 wrote: »

What exactly are you covering? make me jealous ha

Something that could cost us millions if it goes wrong. I should put in a pay claim.

jamesp1983

Turgon wrote: »

Something that could cost us millions if it goes wrong. I should put in a pay claim.

good luck! I'm sure it'll go smoothly.

Turgon

jimmypizzle83 wrote: »

good luck! I'm sure it'll go smoothly.

I put the options to Cisco. They made a recommendation. It was the same as mine.

Turgon

Not for the first time I paid good money for a 5.5 hour rack session and only got 30 minutes in on works time. Just too busy with streams of work I really needed to attend to. When you are a lead technical architect someday you will understand

But it's all good. I logged on and made a start. Work went well too. Clearly I dont need to clatter through every config in my notes. A bit of patience and observation and a few configs teach me what doing many would do, so I can spare myself a lot of inane typing with the patient approach. I shall try again tomorrow.

Turgon

More pottering on a single router today in between meetings. Price of a whole rack session reduced to about 1 hour of config time. The price you have to pay. QoS configs make more sense to me now though. Take your time. I hope to get access to a lab router at work with good IOS for this sort of work. Cheaper!

jamesp1983

Turgon wrote: »

More pottering on a single router today in between meetings. Price of a whole rack session reduced to about 1 hour of config time. The price you have to pay. QoS configs make more sense to me now though. Take your time. I hope to get access to a lab router at work with good IOS for this sort of work. Cheaper!

Ouch, only an hour? You are certainly dedicated.

Turgon

A busy weekend with lots to do on the homefront. But I have managed to keep up with some more QoS note reading and a bit of config the last few days. So quite pleasing. Will update my log a bit later.

jamesp1983

Turgon wrote: »

A busy weekend with lots to do on the homefront. But I have managed to keep up with some more QoS note reading and a bit of config the last few days. So quite pleasing. Will update my log a bit later.

I'm glad to hear this. What part of QoS are you focused on currently?

Turgon

jamesp1983 wrote: »

I'm glad to hear this. What part of QoS are you focused on currently?

Pretty much all of it really. It's far too much information to process in one sitting but with a legacy of studying behind me I have managed to make enough sense of the 30 pages of INE Vol II QoS configs to be able to move on to another topic. Im evaluating tonight my next study topics and approach.

Turgon

Ok so the technology studies go well. That is the line of attack for the next few months..technologies, technologies, technologies. Let's talk about what that means in the context of my available time to study.

1. On works time. Availability is fair but often poor. A 5.5 hour rack session provides me no more than a couple of hours configuration time and often less than that. Further, the quality can vary as my attention is diverted to work coming in.

Best use. 'Striped' labs taking on a single topic in a single Vol II lab. Reload the rack and do the same topic on the next lab. I have undertaken this approach in the past and it worked quite well. Objective should be to clear a topic in a single lab inside an hour. You need to do much better than that in the real lab but it's a starting point. Ten topics in the actual lab, 5 hours to configure.

Worst use. Taking on a whole Vol II lab. Pointless, not enough quality time to stick at the tasks with things to do at work. Will have to leave and return. Inefficient. Waste of rack tokens. Will put me under pressure at work.

2. On private time. Limited availability after 8:30 pm during a working week. A little more at weekends.

Best use. Reading my notes and striped labs either Saturday or Sunday, not both.

Worst use. Taking on a whole Vol II lab. Pointless, not enough quality time to stick at the tasks with important things to do at home and with the family. Will have to leave and return. Inefficient. Waste of rack tokens. Will put the family under pressure at home. Risk of tension. Risk of lack of R&R before another important week ahead at work. All bad.

So that's the landscape. I aim to lab every other day. This should account for the destroyer days when I simply need all day at my desk to stay afloat at work. Similarly will prevent me getting jaded with the rack sessions.

Now the topics...

Im pushing routing and switching back. While rusty Im relatively strong on these topics and when I return to them I should go well fairly quickly. I understand routing and switching, I forgot a good deal of particular mechanics. It will all come back with practice. The killers are the 'post core' topics. Of these, MPLS, Multicast, IPv6, QoS are of the most concern. So lets get labs 11 - 20 done in Vol II for all these topics. Pick lab 20, load config, do the multicast stuff, reload config, do lab 19, do it's multicast config..

Security is a beast but I have decided to push that further out along with the cherry pick subjects of systems management and ip services because I think they will study well together so to speak. I see me taking those on after brushing up the core and before my troubleshooting practice and written recert in the final run in sometime in 2012.

Four months left this year. 20 weeks? Objective - MPLS/Multicast/IPv6/QoS. All done across INE Vol II labs 11 - 20. Also read the INE Vol II lab 1 - 10 notes I made on all these subjects. Going further, get stuck into the fat of the switching and routing practice before year end. For that I can 'stripe' the switching questions across labs 11 - 20. I can build out various routing scenarios on my home rack that I will be constructing again one weekend soon. Read my Vol II lab 1 -10 notes for routing and switching.

Before year end, read up on security, system management, ip services from my Vol II lab 1-10 notes. Then take a mock exam before Christmas and the stuffing in term of the mark (not the turkey) that will come with it on the chin. It's a baseline score I will need to improve upon in the new year. I will know at that point if the CCIE remains a viable prospect for me in terms of what I have to juggle. If so, press on with the revision on security, system management, ip services and dedicated troubleshooting practice. Take another mock exam. Study for written exam, pass and schedule lab for summer 2012.

If the mock at Christmas is really poor, give it up and concentrate on the career and family life. Two areas where I am needed, my responsibilities are increasing and where I am successful.

Turgon

An early start before work. Running a rack session and working through the multicast sections of Vol II labs 20 - 11. Going well with just a few routers and no need for end to end connectivity for what amounts to a refresher course for myself.

Turgon

INE Vol II Labs 20,19,18 - The Multicast questions.

Went well this morning. I shall make some notes of the salent points and proceed later today. The process works.

Turgon

Good plan to do the rack sessions early before the day gets busy. It did yesterday and the whole day was destroyed with urgent design work. A session today planned to get through the multicast scenarios in INE Vol II labs. Ipv6 and MPLS will be the next topics.

I need to make a trip to get my rack out of storage, it will be useful for the routing topics. For switching Im hopeful I can get my hands on a few 3550's. Failing that more rack time as I work through the lab sections on the topic.

Turgon

Took the 11am rack session but the day was way too intense at work to use it. Money down the drain. It happens. On a more positive note it's the weekend.

reaper81

Turgon wrote: »

Took the 11am rack session but the day was way too intense at work to use it. Money down the drain. It happens. On a more positive note it's the weekend.

I've had these sessions as well, it does happen. You have picked up the pace lately though which is great. Keep going man

Turgon

heheh..thanks. Yes I think it's going rather well. I dont think having a CCIE will enhance my salary prospects any as I already have *the* job and outearn many of them in the UK, but it would be nice to get it finished when I have time! Friday night, making sense of my day with a few drinks, formulating how to help a network designer at work who is dispondent because a deadline can't be reached, listening to my wife playing Russian folk music.

Turgon

Postscript..to all those guys busy in the real world who just didn't have the time to stick at the CCIE due to lack of employer support, demands at home after work or just work demands..I salute you. As should the training companies who accepted your hard earned money for racktime and workbooks you never had time to use. Im sure your career went just fine without the IE if you are still in employment. Of course it's a choice so dont feel bitter. Hopefully you learned something along the way you could leverage in work (it wont be fragment sizes in Frame Relay FRTS that's for sure)

Turgon

A busy day with the family. The kids are in bed now so starting to look at those INE Vol II labs again. Specifically the multicast questions.

Turgon

A busy morning indoors. Just done fitting curtain poles. Now watching kids while my wife tidies up. If the weather improves Mrs T has lots of jobs for me in the garden. Studies on hold!

Turgon

Up early doing INE Vol II labs before work begins. Multicast exercises across labs 15 -11. That's what it takes.

This is astradyne..

Ultravox - Astradyne - YouTube

Turgon

Well I got through the INE Vol II labs 20 - 11 for multicast. A lot to take in there. I will pick up on the note taking of the configs for this topic later. After that, MPLS labs 20 -11. Ipv6 comes later as less relevent to my work.

Turgon

Another busy but productive day at work. A new network designer to brief tomorrow. Time to get the kids washed and tucked up in bed then multicast note taking this evening. A new topic to start labbing in the AM before work starts; MPLS, labs 11 - 20 in INE Vol II.

Turgon

Finishing writing up the Multicast configs for labs 11-20 this morning followed by a 11AM labslot to work MPLS labs 11 onwards if I can get it scheduled..

jamesp1983

Turgon wrote: »

Another busy but productive day at work. A new network designer to brief tomorrow. Time to get the kids washed and tucked up in bed then multicast note taking this evening. A new topic to start labbing in the AM before work starts; MPLS, labs 11 - 20 in INE Vol II.

It sounds like the company you work for is doing well. Are there many networking jobs in the UK?

Turgon

Same as anywhere else really. Too much work on today so that rack session is just sitting there idle. More money

jamesp1983

Turgon wrote: »

Same as anywhere else really. Too much work on today so that rack session is just sitting there idle. More money

My wife is from Swadlincote. We were there about 3 months ago. I didn't want to leave.

Turgon

A spot of note taking from INE Vol II labs 11 - 20 for MPLS this morning but wayyyy too busy at work to use the rack session I scheduled. More money down the drain again. Work went well though and that's what pays the bills..