CCIP here I come...

Well after quite awhile planning out my attack on the CCIE, and with life hitting me with tons of stuff outside work I have decided to pickoff a few low hanging fruit first !P So MPLS first, then BGP/QoS. Hopefully that will get me back into the swing of studying and I can do the CCIE written afterwards.

I am looking to read MPLS Fundamentals, then MPLS & VPN Architectures vol I & II.

Anybody else out there studying for this?

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nel

Good luck man!

Sometime in the future i think i will study it. Do you work in a service provider environment or are you using it mainly as prep for the IE attempt?

liquid6

I am using it mainly for IE prep, although I am planning on setting up a seperate VRF for voice and our SAN traffic so the MPLS knowledge should be useful...

Cheers,
liquid

tmlerdal

I went at it with the same approach as you did. For CCIE prep, but now I'm diverting over to CCVP since we are soon getting Cisco Voice rolled out at work.

What I used:
QoS Exam Cert Guide by Wendell Odom
Internet Routing Architectures by Sam Halabi
and MPLS Fundamentals
Cisco's Website
Some hands on

Had a few other resources from work. I think the QoS test was by far the easiest one I've taken todate. But, I had lots of QoS practice at work with things going on, so it was nice everything was fresh in my head. I ended up doing the BGP/MPLS composite exam, mainly because from past experiences taking exams, I think the composites are a little better way to go. Granted, have to know a lot more material, but for me there is some comfort in taking only one test with 60-70 questions vs, two tests of 60-70 questions.

Good luck.

liquid6

tmlerdal - Yeah I was wondering on whether to tackle the composite or not, the single test is very appealing.

Maybe I'll make the call after I read some more of the books on MPLS.

cheers,
liquid

APA

Good choice

I'm studying for the BGP exam at the moment... decided to take the BGP and MPLS exams seperately as I really like to focus on one topic at a time...I feel I absorb more that way.. instead of trying to cram both BGP and MPLS together...

Taking the time to learn things can only be beneficial right?

I agree with tmerdal that the QoS exam is probably the easiest exam I've sat to date..... although I have had extensive exposure to QoS so that helped a great deal.

See you more often in the CCIP forums

mikej412

liquid6 wrote: »

So MPLS first, then BGP/QoS.

I'd suggest BGP first.... then MPLS,

Or maybe QoS first to get the easiest exam of the 3 out of the way.

liquid6

mikej412 - any reason for bgp before mpls??

tmlerdal

I felt with mpls there was some carry over from BGP. Was nice to have the background of BGP before tackeling MPLS.

liquid6

I think I'm going to stick with MPLS, something completely new will be nice. I have been reading through MPLS Fundamentals and going through the IE SP Vol I labs which has been great. As always, actually doing the configurations is much better than just reading about them!

I was pulling my hair out trying to getting one lab working when i realized that I had left off mpls ip on one interface...