CCIE R&S workbooks

aueddonline

I saw a post on here a while ago that mentioned workbooks from a company that were quote 'a bit close for comfort to the lab exam'

I can't remember the name of them? Any ideas?

I'm studying CCNP at the moment but find the cert books just touch the surface of topics, my labs looking ok now so I want to work though some bigger ideas at a slower pace, I use Cisco docs and ccie routing tcp ip which is by far the most useful book I’ve ever picked up but I thought a workbook might be useful to,

keenon

i would suggest Narbik's "soup to nuts" i'm using it prepping for CCIE mock labs, its very slow but very methodical. the labs will hit you with simple stuff but with major twists. I've found myself using commands that i haven't seen before and keeping the cisco site up using the doc cd.

http://www.net-workbooks.com/workbooks.html#souptonuts

MrD

Go w/ K's idea or my personal favorite InternetworkExpert.

darkuser

MrD wrote:

Go w/ K's idea or my personal favorite InternetworkExpert.

ah yes ... another satisfied customer ....

actually im one of their first customers ....
just didnt take the lab yet

Turgon

aueddonline wrote:

I saw a post on here a while ago that mentioned workbooks from a company that were quote 'a bit close for comfort to the lab exam'

I can't remember the name of them? Any ideas?

I'm studying CCNP at the moment but find the cert books just touch the surface of topics, my labs looking ok now so I want to work though some bigger ideas at a slower pace, I use Cisco docs and ccie routing tcp ip which is by far the most useful book I’ve ever picked up but I thought a workbook might be useful to,

Doyle vol 1 and vol 2 provide lots of useful things to configure, ditto Solie vol 1 and 2 and Caslow.

A good approach is to do solid reading for a few months for the written exam to really get the theory down, then do small scale labs for each technology until you have some mastery of them before you try multiprotocol lab scenarios in the vendor workbooks. Once you are doing well on those, try some mock exams. This approach has served CCIE candidates well for years. A lot of candidates these days race ahead into multiprotocol labs and find themselves way over their heads because it's too much information to process and without the fundamentals down pat by doing technology based small scale labs they miss out on the important lessons to be learned in those larger scale practice labs.

Most of the vendors offer technology based labs so I would recommend you do those before throwing things together.

HTH

aueddonline

so when you're studying do you not mix reading and labs?

The problem I've found with this with the NP books is that the theory and the practical stuff is kind of all together.
Maybe using books like doyle as theory books and then leaving all the lab stuff for a practical study guild when all the theory is making sence, could help me make the separation, because I do stop reading a lot because I think I better do this on the lab because I don't know when i'm going to come back to the subject, I think this might waste a lot of time.

Turgon

aueddonline wrote:

so when you're studying do you not mix reading and labs?

The problem I've found with this with the NP books is that the theory and the practical stuff is kind of all together.
Maybe using books like doyle as theory books and then leaving all the lab stuff for a practical study guild when all the theory is making sence, could help me make the separation, because I do stop reading a lot because I think I better do this on the lab because I don't know when i'm going to come back to the subject, I think this might waste a lot of time.

Everyone is different. Personally I do refer to my books and the DocCD while I an working on practcal scenarios on my rack. The cisco press books I use generally use practical examples to illustrate the theory they are covering, so where possible it does make sense to lab up the examples in books like Doyle as you are reading the chapter of interest i.e OSPF. I have found this to be beneficial. Good books like Doyle and Solie provide theory followed by practical examples you should set up.

dtlokee

Don't start doing the full scale labs until you feel you are pretty well prepared. You wouldn't want to use the real CCIE lab to learn, and you should treat the full scale labs the same way (or mock labs). Many vendors have some sort of "technology lab" that you can use but in many cases what's in them is similar to the examples in most books and the documentation.

aueddonline

I read some of the sample chapters of the workbooks and the labs are pretty hardcore, a bit more than I wanted i think I find it hard enoguh to sleep as it is.....

I saved the links for when i need then, the soup and nuts looks like the place to start though.

I think i'll just stick with working on finishing doyle v1 and 2 and then do the same with LAN switching, making up some labs to help get the ideas in my head,

cheers guys back to the NP forum with me