Jahsoul vs CCIE: Official TE Blog

jahsoul

Since I made it official in this thread

http://www.techexams.net/forums/ccie/58320-just-thought.html

I will go ahead and make an official TE blog about my attempt at the CCIE. A little back ground information about me:

Started officially working in IT 5 months ago; starting out as a level 1 help desk tech, moving up to level 2 in 3 months and picked up a few certs along the way. The most important one that I obtained was the CCNA. Now I work as a Network Support Tech at an awesome company but financially, I still have a lot of catching up to do because I gave up a lot to work in this field. I'm not going to stop learning and growing in this field because of financial issue so I began to think. By the time I can afford to take the CCNP, will I want to spend the $600 or should I shoot for the CCIE. After praying about it, discussing it with my wife, and talking to a few people, I chose the latter. This will be an uphill battle because I still have to master CCNP level topics because I even think about moving to expert level. My plan of attack for the written is 20.5 hours of studying a week (10.5 reading and 10 labbing). The books I plan on reading for the written portion are:

*SWITCH Foundations
*Routing TCP/IP Vol 1 and 2
*CCIE Official Exam Guide

The labs that I will be using concurrent with reading those first 4 books will be the ROUTE, SWITCH, and TSHOOT labs, IE Workbook 3 & 4 and any other labs anybody wanna hook a brotha up with on here. lmbo. (hopefully I can get my employer to pick up Foundation 2.0. I heard it was the truth)
After successfully getting through the written portion, I will continue using those lab books while reading:

*QoS exam guide
*Definitive MPLS Network Designs
*Cisco Field Manuals (Router and Switch)
*Developing IP Multicast Networks
*BGP Design and Implementation

I'm always open to suggestions, so if it is something that should be added, removed, or whatever, I'm all ears.

Joey

CCIEWANNABE

looks like you got a good plan in front of you. I wish you the best of luck with your studies! When you start to feel burnt out on it all, and trust me you will eventually, just take a break from it for a few days. It really does make a difference.

Bl8ckr0uter

What are you using for lab equipment?

jahsoul

I think that we have a lab based of the Cisco specifications but I am actually going to email the guys at the office for specifics and I will let yall know what they have.

chmorin

Good luck. You have a long journey ahead of you. Enjoy it!

jahsoul

Got up a little later than I wanted to today but I'm still going to devote 4-5 hours of studying today. I'm going to finish outlining chapter 1 and start chapter 2 in the SWITCH foundation book. Then look at my Auburn Tigers whoop up on South Carolina...

earweed

Good luck with this endeavor.
You have time to watch football? lmbo My wife's an Auburn fan but I'll keep her anyway. I might watch Bama play today if the game's more interesting than the game last week.

jahsoul

I have plenty of time to look at it. I'm not going to be running 8 hour study days. Because I'm not in a rush, I can balance everything out. So I have 20.5 hours a week devoted to studying. 20.5 x 52 weeks still equals a lot of studying..lol. And your wife is awesome..WDE!!! Yall don't have the "House Divided" tag do it? lol

earweed

jahsoul wrote: »

I have plenty of time to look at it. I'm not going to be running 8 hour study days. Because I'm not in a rush, I can balance everything out. So I have 20.5 hours a week devoted to studying. 20.5 x 52 weeks still equals a lot of studying..lol. And your wife is awesome..WDE!!! Yall don't have the "House Divided" tag do it? lol

We have the tag but it's not on the car though because the Auburn side is on the drivers side and I wont have myself associated with that. It's on the entertainment center where it divides my stuff (National and SEC championship memorabilia) and her side. lol

Sepiraph

I was half-hoping that the TE in your title would refer to Traffic Engineering.

jahsoul

Didn't get much done today. A lil quick reading but nothing too serious. Will hit it hard tomorrow, Lord willin.

jahsoul

Work has me adding a lot of old laptops to the network so I have all day to study while setting these up. I guess that's a good part of studying for the CCIE at this point of my career.

jahsoul

CertWorld | IT Community Empowered

This is where I'm blogging also.

Come check it out, read, comment, tell all of your friends, rinse, and repeat!

jahsoul

Studying has been real slow and steady. I'm taking my time on each topic and using examples hand in hand with reading. I'm making good progress. I'm just ready for next month.

Routing TCP/IP vol 1 is what I plan on reading next month. And I plan on seeing if we have CBTNuggets for the CCIE written and make MP3s out of them so I can listen to them while working, and then come home and read.

Bl8ckr0uter

jahsoul wrote: »

Routing TCP/IP vol 1 is what I plan on reading next month. And I plan on seeing if we have CBTNuggets for the CCIE written and make MP3s out of them so I can listen to them while working, and then come home and read.

Good progress

I have that book sitting on my desk and I haven't even cracked it. Maybe reading this will light the fire under my ass to get it done lol.

Turgon

jahsoul wrote: »

Studying has been real slow and steady. I'm taking my time on each topic and using examples hand in hand with reading. I'm making good progress. I'm just ready for next month.

Routing TCP/IP vol 1 is what I plan on reading next month. And I plan on seeing if we have CBTNuggets for the CCIE written and make MP3s out of them so I can listen to them while working, and then come home and read.

You're doing fine. Unless you have one of those jobs with lots of slacktime you just have to keep chipping away at the studies as time allows. The first year is the worst so have a good one on the study front. It all builds from there!

jahsoul

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

Good progress

I have that book sitting on my desk and I haven't even cracked it. Maybe reading this will light the fire under my ass to get it done lol.

If you got time for it, I say do it.lol
I have flipped through it. From what I saw, it goes from 0-60 really quick (from associate to expert level material) so that is a reason I've decided to read this instead of ROUTE Foundations.

jahsoul

Turgon wrote: »

You're doing fine. Unless you have one of those jobs with lots of slacktime you just have to keep chipping away at the studies as time allows. The first year is the worst so have a good one on the study front. It all builds from there!

My job actually has a lot of slacktime and I work alone. I figured, I usually don't talk to anybody anyway, so I might as well make use of my time while configuring switches, adding computers to the domain, and my day to day stuff.

This first month has been crazy. Hopefully, things begin to even out after book 6 or 7 and a lot more labbing. That's the only thing I hate that I've really limited at. I can run Dynamips all day for routing but focusing on switching with sims suck. I sent an email to one of the guys that they say handles the lab at work and he hasn't gotten back with me so I will try to make due for the time being.

jahsoul

Ran into my first bump in the road with the sim. They can't change a port path cost... . Hopefully, I hear something from work about using the lab because I know next month is going to be rough.

Quick question for anyone who reads this? I might have just browsed through this when I was doing my CCNA or it might be just because I've never encountered it but what is the significance for lowering the cost path for a specific vlan on a switchport? I understand changing the cost of the specific port but the vlan has got me baffled? I just used the word baffle so you know it got me messed up...lol

Bl8ckr0uter

Maybe this will help:

Understanding and Configuring Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) on Catalyst Switches - Cisco Systems

And congrats on CCNA Security

jahsoul

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

Maybe this will help:

Understanding and Configuring Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) on Catalyst Switches - Cisco Systems

And congrats on CCNA Security

Thanks (for the congrats and link)

I figured this out

Each VLAN must have its own root bridge because each VLAN is a separate broadcast domain. The roots for the different VLANs can all reside in a single switch or in various switches.

when I kept reading yesterday. I was under the assumption that the root bridge is automatically the root bridge for all the vlans but it went into detail about having maximum control over the path.

jahsoul

Terminating Cat5, looking for a 3550, creating a .net file, and typing this at the same time..lol

jahsoul

I am going to try something to help me out with studying. I am going to try to do CBT type videos giving an overview of the technology and labbing and put them up on CertWorld but I wanted to get the topics from the people who reads this thread. It would be greatly appreciate if yall could give a brother a hand in this. Thanks in advanced!

Joey

jahsoul

I've gotten my makeshift lab complete (I call it that because it is as unorthodox as you can get but I have this calm about it so I'm sticking with it), so I'm reading and listening to MP3s and CBTs during the week, and devoting the weekend to labbing (4-8 hrs). Things are going smoothly..

CCIEWANNABE

good luck man, keep up the good work. Its always motivating to see others grinding through it!

jahsoul

CCIEWANNABE wrote: »

good luck man, keep up the good work. Its always motivating to see others grinding through it!

Thanks man. Same to you!

I ran into a small stumbling block this weekend. Apparently, the quad port NICs that I own (Znyx) gives me an error when I attempt to set the MTU to anything greater than 1500, which sucks because 6 of my ports are set to be trunk ports. I found a patch for the Tulip driver online but I can honestly say that I don't know how to apply the patch. So I have to continue searching for a solution or buy new NICs, which I don't think that I can do now. Ah well, I guess that leaves more time for reading and listening to these mp3's for the time being.

*making theoretical lemonade*

jahsoul

Bought 2 of the bad boys Tuesday

ADAPTEC ANA-64044 32/64bit 4port NIC 10/100Mbps PCI NEW - eBay (item 220689279434 end time Nov-27-10 14:45:49 PST)

so everything (Lord willing) will be straight with the lab.

The past 2 days, I've been focusing on STP, Etherchannel, and multilayer switching. Listening to these mp3s are really helping and giving more understanding when I go back and read. These earbuds are killing my ears so I'm about to walk around with the headphones I have hooked up to the MPC 1000. lol. Come home and study for a lil bit before heading out to church.

Bl8ckr0uter

jahsoul wrote: »

Bought 2 of the bad boys Tuesday

ADAPTEC ANA-64044 32/64bit 4port NIC 10/100Mbps PCI NEW - eBay (item 220689279434 end time Nov-27-10 14:45:49 PST)

How are those things holding up for you?

jahsoul

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

How are those things holding up for you?

I don't know yet but these are equivalent to the popular 62044; the only difference is this one run at 66Mhz on a 64 bit PCI bus instead of 33Mhz but I only have 32 bit slots so it doesn't matter either way to me.

Some people were saying that they couldn't do any dot1q exercises on their Linux box but I honestly don't think that they raised the MTU on the port. By default, each port is set to 1500 MTU and trying to do a trunking exercise won't work because of the added 4 bit tag. So they go blaming the card instead of setting their interface. I might be wrong but I'm just saying..lol

jahsoul

Spent most of the day trying to set this lab up and everything is working great. Still planning on spending most of the week in the books/mp3 and the weekends for labbing. Welp, I'm about to cook this steak and lay down..

jahsoul

Today in the battle of Man vs CatOS, CatOS won. *sigh*

Trying to configure that 2948G-L3 took me out. This is really my first time trying to get indepth with a switch running catos and it showed. lol. I will have to looked up somethings regarding CatOS..