David's CCIE: R+S Thread

gorebrush

Fired up the lab this evening, got pretty much all the way through the switching section of the v5 workbook with no issues.

Even did some DHCP server pools out to a VM which is on my ESX server. Not bad given that I didn't even bother looking at the instructions for a DHCP server and I got it working. Very pleased with myself. I have a Kali VM as well which has some tools I can... test with as well as Wireshark of course.

Few hours here was just a warm up - but I think I'm pretty much 90% done with Switching with a few things I'll have to go over again at some other point. I can feel my pace coming alive again now after a few slow weeks due to circumstances very much outside of my control.

Let's keep it rolling. Going to start going through some more INE videos now to round off my night shift now.

gorebrush

7 hours more video - now revisted all the EIGRP section of the INE ATC v5.
Light labbing of RIP/EIGRP to get me started again in the practical side of things.

Wanting to get that labbing counter to 300 as soon as is possible now.

Will lab everything in RIP/EIGRP next few days to get my speed/practice up.

I love the named mode in EIGRP, so so much more intuitive.

Still some filtering techniques I need to practice, but that is all it is now is practice - theory I think I have a very solid grounding of.

Speed needs to be picked up, 6 months left, but I think I'm on well on the way now.

lrb

Named mode EIGRP is awesome, especially having the af-interface default configuration where you can configure a default authenticaiton for all links running EIGRP.

gorebrush

Totally - one of my favourite parts is the relocation of all the interface level stuff into the relevant af- bits.

silver145

Hey pal, the new ccie route and switch v5.0 is available on safari books, they also currently doing a 10 day free trial which is how I am reading it currently.

gorebrush

Nice, I've not got the v5 books yet.

Good shout! I'm still plugging away, albeit slowly - had a lot going on personally but I'm getting there now. 5 1/2 months remaining so knuckling down now. Fairly solid on all the basics, just need to up my practice hours but it'll come. Got practically all of January off work so can do final push then as long as I get the practice up now. Have got until November to decide (i.e. pay for the lab) but dubious about putting it off any longer as I'll need to do the written again past Feb 19th, so going to plan to stick with the 6th Feb '15.

How are you getting on?

silver145

Hey pal!

no problem, things are going well on my end, ramping up as i have a week course in November (basically each day = 1 full lab + tshoot).

Whats your routine these days? Interested to know because as of a couple of weeks ago i started a health kick, gym + monitored food daily and i feel a million times more productive revision wise, try to get an hour read before work, hour or two at work and as much as possible in the evenings hands on

davidspirovalentine

Keep up the good work!!!

My lab is scheduled for the early June... Going for the INEv5 boot camp in Melbourne Australia in March/April.

Stay hungry for knowledge!!!

gorebrush

Thanks for the encouragement! It's going well still, 650 hours read/video and 300 labbing now. Long way left to go, but all the basics are well laid down now. I can see a lot more work on OSPF coming on all the cornercase stuff with DMVPN. There are a LOT of rules to remember! Going to start revising MPLS again tonight.

gorebrush

The hours are clocking up slowly. Time itself is ticking by a bit more quickly. The pressure is slowly mounting, but I am keeping my head.

I've thrown my hours onto the clock but I haven't updated this thread in some time. A month, in fact. The last month has been very, very slow in terms of the number of hours I have put into this journey. Not as many as I should or would like to be putting in at this point, but life is taking its toll on my CCIE effort.

Pressure at work is getting silly - I've effectively been manning a 2 man team by myself for the last 18 months and the strain of this is getting to me at times. But never mind, I must keep plugging on.

If any of you are feeling lost during your journey, then my top tip : - stand back. Evaluate where you are at, create a plan to go forward. If you don't have a plan, then you can't follow it. I like having a plan, but at times, life makes you deviate. Prepare to be flexible. Prepare to adapt. Any true expert will need to do this.

At present - today, I've written an excel spreadsheet with ALL the items featured in INE WB1. Each sheet is a topic, i.e. LAN Switching, IP Routing, RIP, etc etc. Under each individual spreadsheet then - every line item is a task. I've got a rating for that task, i.e the Keith Barker 1-5 rating of yourself and then a notes column where I either put the commands in or a brief description.

Today alone, I've rated myself entirely on the first three sections, and completed most of those exercises on the command line. Out of 14 full blown sections of configuration I don't think that is too bad - but other days on other sections will take longer. OSPF and BGP are like 50-60 tasks on their own. They will take time.

Time is something that I have in what I call a "sufficient" amount at the moment. 4 months or thereabouts. I figure I can get in another 900 hours of pure labbing, but this is based on the assumption that I am putting in 10 hours a day, every day, where possible, including days in work, days off work, even some of christmas. Worst case scenario, i.e. where I am not able to put in another keystroke whilst I am at work (and this is getting more and more common now with the workload only increasing) then the worst case is 600 hours.

However, 600 or 900 hours - it all depends on my motivation and how bad I want this to happen. If you don't want it bad enough, if you aren't prepared enough, if you haven't put in all the hours at the command line, or reading articles or books, or whatever it is you are wanting to do - if you haven't put in the hard slog, no matter WHAT the challenges you may face, no matter WHAT complications hit you on the way - then you won't get anywhere.

Life is difficult, yes, but achieving your dreams is surely worth the struggle. I'm still currently going through one of my biggest personal traumas in life, and I'm still managing to put hours in study, I still manage to go to work and kick vast amounts of butt. It isn't easy, but hey, anyone who is great didn't get there by sitting on their behind and doing nothing and waiting for someone else to do it for them.

Also, watch this: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aAA9-edO3I and I defy anyone to fail to feel inspired after they listen to it.

So many good motivational lines in this, even if you are CCIE studying, or anything else - it doesn't matter.

Anyway, back to my plan. We are now in the middle of October, and I am now going through the workbook seriously - I am feeling confident. I have laid out my schedule and I am slowly getting through it. I am hoping to be done with all of it by the end of November, at a rating 5 all the way through. So far I'm averaging 4.4 on the sections I've done. I'm fairly happy with this.

So, December and January - full scale practice, practice, practice.

Whose with me?

lrb

Nice words mate, all the best with your preparations coming up to your big day.

gorebrush wrote: »

Whose with me?

My lab is next month so I guess that makes me!

gorebrush

Next month? Holy shiz, good luck!

lrb

How's your studies going mate?

gorebrush

Slowly but surely. I am very pleased at this point I have a very good theoretical coverage. I can describe pretty much 90% of all of the features across the entire syllabus, at least I think so!

I have started doing the practical side, and going back and forth to the ATC videos as I see fit. This is my goal for November is to brush up on the "unsure" areas, and then full on lab/practice will come in December and January. I feel like I am in good shape at the moment, actually. There is so much to remember, but it seems to come quite natural now. I've even found myself sparking up my physical lab for other minor jobs for networking around my house and most commands are just there at my fingertips - As an example I wanted to try a spare router that I had but didn't want to throw a spanner into my production network, so fired up a VM, threw it onto a port with a new VLAN and off I went. It was just easy and shows that I had learned something

Also, I had a firmware upgrade to do on my VDSL modem so same theory - stuck it in a VLAN on it's own and connected in a VM.

I know that is quite minor, but at this point I am very happy with my switching skills. I think I've pretty much got Layer 2 down.

My main big weak area at this point is BGP - I just need to go over the theory again. There is a lot of it, and the same with some of the more obscure OSPF features, and path selection rules. RIP and EIGRP are down. Multicast is an interesting beast because I've never used it in production, ever, but I quite like it. I get all the theory, I just need to practice it all.

QoS, again, understand it but that is another weak-ish area in terms of implementation. I was used to all the hardware specific implementation of it on the 3550 a few years ago but luckily I don't need to use that. It's a lot simpler than what it was in v4, and if I am honest I am grateful for that.

The IPsec/DMVPN sections I am fairly happy with because I do a lot of VPN troubleshooting in my day job so that's fairly useful.

The only other big topic is MPLS and while I absolutely love the theory, again I just need more CLI time. IPv6, the same, just need to practice it.

In all honesty, there isn't one area that makes me throw a complete "wtf" at this point, and at 1,100 hours into the journey I think that is a good place to be. I have 96 (or is it 97) days left until my lab date, and I've got a month off work before that date. I've already burned 50% of my annual leave for next year, but I don't mind so much about that.

Knowing what I know now about my approach in general, I have been very happy. I think concentrating on the theory before letting loose on the command line was a wiser idea because coming round to the workbook tasks has been easier. Some items do make me wonder - but at this stage I just need to brush up on those pieces.

I guess I wish I'd been a bit more efficient at studying at work and outside of work given my work routine (4x12 hour shifts and 4xdays off) but life and other stuff has happened along the way which has taken the odd knock to the routine here and there. It is inevitable in this game. I figure I have about 900 hours I can study in between now and lab day if I am 100% efficient. It's not going to happen, but at 50% that's 450 hours + 1100 = 1550 hours so I think that is enough time as long as my studying is efficient and I am hitting the right areas.

As I say, if anyone else is thinking about this journey - my key takeaway would be to learn to walk before you can run and take the time out to really get it nailed theory wise before getting on the CLI. I've got CSR's and IOU to practice and I can access my lab anywhere 24x7 which is useful.

As for this week? Well I am in the middle of my first real break from work in all of 2014, I'm back in work on Thursday night after 2 weeks. I feel a bit drained and frazzled at the moment but I've got a few nights away from home with the wife to recharge a little bit before heading back into the books/CLI the end of the week. It has been a very tough 18 months!

How are you getting on? Isn't your lab imminent?

EDIT: 6th January 2010 I made the first post to this thread, so beginning to end, just over 5 years assuming I pass this in Feb. I am actually quietly confident. If I do succeed first time round, I'll probably go and knock Service Provider on the head too - a lot of it seems to be an extension to R&S and I did IS-IS back in the days of BSCI

xnx

Good luck, I am struggling to even get ready for CCNP route by the deadline... 2/3 of the CCNP seems easy enough but CCNP route seems quite difficult.

gorebrush

Ah man, Route is a nice exam, though I did BSCI, like 2009.

Anything you are stuck with in particular?

xnx

Nothing particular really - there seems to be quite a bit of BGP to learn even though it's not weighted that high on the syllabus.

I work better in the winter (long evenings) so hopefully I'll get up to speed by next month, as ambitious as that is.

gorebrush

Had my e-mail confirming my payment, date, lab location etc... All set now! Just need to go and pass the thing...

JoJoCal19

Good luck gorebrush. If you don't mind sharing, do you have family commitments outside of work? I'm always interested in hearing how folks with families manage their schedules when pursuing difficult certs.

gorebrush

Well, there is only me and my wife at home, and as I work shifts I get a good balance between work, study, downtime.

downwithbgp

gorebrush, I spent about 10 hours reading this thread and it's been incredibly uplifting. You and Rebecca are amazing, you're an example for all of us. In fact, I had so much coffee and reading, that I feel determined to start my own CCIE journey thread and keep it active even if I have to do it for a decade.
Thank you for sharing your journey with us! Best of luck in February!

gorebrush

Wow, you read the whole thing? I'm impressed

And you must have registered to post too!

I'm glad that my journey is of some use to people. I've still got some way to and arguably the toughest few months are upon me

I think when I am done I will read it through again...

gorebrush

Popping another 15 hours onto the timer. I've been motoring the last few days but today I've done nothing. Still, a few hours left of it though so there is still time to get something done. Back to work tomorrow as I've been off pretty much for the last fortnight. Final bit of annual leave until Christmas, I'm off for another fortnight, and then I am off practically the whole of January in preparation for the lab.

gorebrush

Did a bit of DMVPN theory tonight whilst at work and also created an MPLS L3 VPN network from scratch, 1 P router, 3 PE's and two customer sites connected to each.

I don't know why by MPLS makes me very warm and fuzzy, despite it probably being one of the most trickiest things to configure because of all the component parts involved. The one gotcha to remember for the lab exam (though it may actually be EASIER in the exam) is being careful with the BGP AS numbers and EIGRP AS numbers. I used one-too-many AS 1's here and there and it caught out my redistribution.

However once I'd figured that out it was pretty easy to figure that I'd been a bit dumb about it

Anyway, fairly happy with my progress. Tonight I'm going to go back over the DMVPN theory and will lab that up, and I think I'm getting close to starting to lab things up in full topologies. QoS is a definite area for review as is Multicast but these are not core features. I need to lab up BGP fully again too but shouldn't be a problem.

Got some books to be reading as well in the background but again, not too concerned.

Still very happy with my overall approach so far, I can pretty much describe any feature in detail and know roughly where to look it up and, as a result of the labbing I have done, I can pretty much do all of Switching, RIP, EIGRP and OSPF and a fair chunk of most other topics without needing to look up the config in the DocCD. More and more practice will only mean that Is hould be able to thrash through full topologies fairly quickly. It seems I have a very good memory for commands.

I'm also learning that understanding how the protocols work really help with troubleshooting - i.e. knowing that OSPF is link state and the rules that go with that will affect the troubleshooting when compared to the steps takenw ith EIGRP for example.

I need good hard graft between now and Feb 6th and I think I will be OK.

gorebrush

Another few hours today. DMVPN and IPsec.

Going to finish off IPsec theory tomorrow morning then lab the two together. DMVPN is a very, very nice technology.

gorebrush

Another good bunch of hours studying today. IPsec crypto maps are a pain in the proverbial.

But, VTI is much easier and with DMVPN is not too difficult. I wasted a load of time trying to configure crypto maps because: -

I made a bunch of mistakes configuring the peer addresses.

I was getting errors trying to negotiate the tunnels because I think I was mixing the transform sets. That was my bad.

Still, would rather make those mistakes now and be aware of the pitfalls. I will practice again.

I did a load of BGP workbook stuff as well - will continue on with this tomorrow.

lrb

Good work mate, keep up the momentum!

gorebrush

Just hoping I'll have done enough by February. I can describe most features, but to be honest I've not even finished the whole INE v5 workbook yet, I've concentrated on sponging up the theory. My memory of the commands is not bad at all though, I can recall vast amount already. Practice, practice practice is what I need. Got all the INE labs to try and the Cisco 360 workbooks too. I just hope I will have done enough. A month off in January will help. Got the next few days and next month to really hammer home the command line.

gorebrush

So another 8 hours to add to the clock today. Started going over QoS theory again and started labbing up the BGP examples in the workbook. Feeling fairly comfortable but a LOT of work to do on BGP. Not too worried... yet...

My typing skills are slowly getting better too - practicing hammering out a million neighbor statements helps get the accuracy up. Though my keyboard that has absolutely no labels on it (the keyset is completely blank) does make things a bit more interesting but a bit frustrating at times. It's a Filco Majestouch Cherry MX Blue. It is bliss to type on.

Anyway, more QoS tomorrow at work then work Saturday. Praying for a quiet day.

xnx

gorebrush wrote: »

Another good bunch of hours studying today. IPsec crypto maps are a pain in the proverbial.

But, VTI is much easier and with DMVPN is not too difficult. I wasted a load of time trying to configure crypto maps because: -

I made a bunch of mistakes configuring the peer addresses.

I was getting errors trying to negotiate the tunnels because I think I was mixing the transform sets. That was my bad.

Still, would rather make those mistakes now and be aware of the pitfalls. I will practice again.

I did a load of BGP workbook stuff as well - will continue on with this tomorrow.

I've started learning Crypto-Maps for CCNP, they're pretty confusing haha