Declaring CCIE in 2010

I've got one more exam towards the CCNP and then its on to the CCIE R&S. Where is the best place to start, what are the best books/material to get? What lab equipment should I absolutely have? Thanks for the help in advance.

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Turgon

SysAdmin4066 wrote: »

I've got one more exam towards the CCNP and then its on to the CCIE R&S. Where is the best place to start, what are the best books/material to get? What lab equipment should I absolutely have? Thanks for the help in advance.

Welcome to the officers mess cadet

The resources are well documented and I will come on to that in a moment. Firstly I would like to help you set your expectations. The CCIE lab exam has now changed and after 50 days nobody in the world has passed it so far as I hear.

To clear this exam inside a year you would need to be putting in at a minimum 3 hours of configuration time almost every single day. With work, family and general life this isn't possible for many candidates. You will have to assess for yourself just how much time you have available before you commit. But it's not just time, it's energy. If you need lots of energy for things outside of your lab prep you will find it gets sapped by lab prep which affects things outside of lab prep as well as affecting your studies as well. Im not telling you to take it easy, but please just think about how aggressive your study schedule can realistically be. A lot of people underestimate this and go at guns blazing only to fold well inside the first six months and in worst cases damage has been done to perfomance at work, relationships and sometimes general health. If this is you then do what I did and go for the long term. It's taken me a long time to get to this point but I will have my day in court next year. I did contracting which offers little or no study time. Talk to your employer and see what buy in you can get to have them allow you to study a bit on works time. If you work shifts in a NOC use any slacktime to study instead of tossing it off playing WoW.

Always check with your supervisior before you start doing any lengthy study to make sure they are ok with that. You dont want to get busted after doing labs for six months. Connections are logged on networks and that could get you fired.

Concentrate on the written exam first. The written is a tough exam and difficult to prepare for. What you will have to learn about RIP (for example) will far exceed what your learned for CCNP. Learn the written well or forget any prospect of the passing the lab.

Pass the written then start lab prep. For that, 4 months to well over a year (depending how much daily time you have for study) covering the protocols on the blueprint only. Expect to spend hundreds of hours labbing technologies and reading.

Once that is done, take a vendor workbook and get through the multiprotocol labs. This will take months and you may not understand a lot of it. Just complete them. Then try them all again a second time. Do not switch workbooks. Suck it up and complete it.

Final run in rework all the protocols concentrating on the things you suck on. Get a lot of troubleshooting practice in. Try some mock exams.

Then do the lab exam. Expect to spend 500 - 1500 hours doing configuration work and 500+ hours reading. If no life < 1 year. If life > 1 year. Our first child was born five months into my lab prep so things have had to be sane on the studyfront!

Final thing, put up a 1st attempt thread similar to what I did on the boards. It keeps you honest and breaks up the monotony. While I certainly enjoy what I do, anyone who *really* gets excited about doing so much of this stuff needs medical help IMHO.

Good luck!

SysAdmin4066

Awesome explanation Turgon, I have been following your first attempt thread and it is awesome. My wife is actually starting law school in January, so the family aspect of things at least will not slip only because of me lol. She has her water to carry for at least the next 3 years of school, then the BAR, so I'll get some slack there. I easily have 3 hours a day, with a combination of before work, after work, and during work. I'm a perm emp with a gov agency, union at that. So while the pay is now what it was as a lead consultant at a firm, I do enjoy a lot of freedom and a crazy amount of flexibility with union protection. As long as my work gets done, which here it's usually feast or famine, with the season now being feast, but still not more than 40 hours a week, then i'm good. I look forward to joining the ranks of the hopeful candidates. I've always wanted to achieve this certification and just never really thought I could. But as i've grown over the years, I figured now is the time. I have a pretty cush job, I make enough money to bankroll this myself and not really feel it too much, and I'll have the time to do it. 3 hours is great on the weekdays and I can easily get 8 - 10 hours on weekend days. I work an adjusted schedule, so I am off every friday, which helps even more. I plan on having this completed within 1 year to 18 months. I will start a thread for sure. I may even start one now as technically I am studying with an eye towards the CCIE, just via the NP track for now.

Turgon

SysAdmin4066 wrote: »

Awesome explanation Turgon, I have been following your first attempt thread and it is awesome. My wife is actually starting law school in January, so the family aspect of things at least will not slip only because of me lol. She has her water to carry for at least the next 3 years of school, then the BAR, so I'll get some slack there. I easily have 3 hours a day, with a combination of before work, after work, and during work. I'm a perm emp with a gov agency, union at that. So while the pay is now what it was as a lead consultant at a firm, I do enjoy a lot of freedom and a crazy amount of flexibility with union protection. As long as my work gets done, which here it's usually feast or famine, with the season now being feast, but still not more than 40 hours a week, then i'm good. I look forward to joining the ranks of the hopeful candidates. I've always wanted to achieve this certification and just never really thought I could. But as i've grown over the years, I figured now is the time. I have a pretty cush job, I make enough money to bankroll this myself and not really feel it too much, and I'll have the time to do it. 3 hours is great on the weekdays and I can easily get 8 - 10 hours on weekend days. I work an adjusted schedule, so I am off every friday, which helps even more. I plan on having this completed within 1 year to 18 months. I will start a thread for sure. I may even start one now as technically I am studying with an eye towards the CCIE, just via the NP track for now.

You have a lot going for you there, more than I had for sure. Get as much done on workstime as you can but be careful not to burn out. Your first task is to prepare for and pass the written which may take you months. As for your private life, that always takes a hit with something like this. Your wife is starting school which means she will have less free time to hang out and do stuff around the place. You will have to put in there to make up. At the same time she may well get stressed with her studies so watch out for that, particularly as you disappear up your ass with your own studies. So while it all looks promising, just keep one eye on what is going on around you and relax your studies accordingly to help your partner when it is needed and ideally before it is *really* needed because you could be at this for 2 years or more. On that note I need to tidy the living room of toys before my son has his bath.

SysAdmin4066

Words of wisdom from the master. Yeah, we're both pretty young, 27 and 28 respectively. She wanted to wait till after we had our first child to start law school and now that my daughter is a little over 1, now is the time. I will be helping with baths, alternating feeding time, the usual stuff. I can get the bulk of my study time in at work and on weekend for labs so I'm not worried about the time stuff. We'll probably designate a time per week or per month to get away and no study or school. I've gone as far as I want to go with school, so this is pretty much the pinnacle for me till something new comes out from MS or Cisco. I might start more with the security track for Cisco, but this is the top of the road for me. Thanks for all of your encouragement, we'll definitely talk throughout this process.

SysAdmin4066

Where are you checking to see if someone has passed the v4 lab?