New guy going for CCIE

Turgon

reaper81 wrote: »

Done for the night. 3.5h of EIGRP labs. Got about halfway through all the Vol1 EIGRP labs. Most stuff is very familiar of course but it is easy to forget details like how to calculate metric for unequal cost loadbalancing.

Thats an important one for EIGRP. Variance and the use of delay.

reaper81

Had a good flow tonight. Finished the rest of the EIGRP labs in 2h. Went very well. Don't think I need to look much more at EIGRP before lab day. Taking an early night to be rested for tomorrow.

Turgon

reaper81 wrote: »

Had a good flow tonight. Finished the rest of the EIGRP labs in 2h. Went very well. Don't think I need to look much more at EIGRP before lab day. Taking an early night to be rested for tomorrow.

Get rest. Dont forget neighbor statements with EIGRP and EIGRP stub and leak maps. Your progress is good and what it takes to be a CCIE.

reaper81

Studies have been a bit rough lately. Its tough studying when you are starting to see the finish line. Also I have been very tired lately. Work is taking a lot of energy right now. Did some OSPF yesterday but Dynamips decided to act up on me. I could not ping between some interfaces even though if I debugged ICMP I could clearly see the requests and replies and OSPF and CDP was working over the link so clearly it was working at some level... Has anyone seen that before? Maybe a memory issue? Even tried restarting devices and restarting GNS3 etc.

Turgon

reaper81 wrote: »

Studies have been a bit rough lately. Its tough studying when you are starting to see the finish line. Also I have been very tired lately. Work is taking a lot of energy right now. Did some OSPF yesterday but Dynamips decided to act up on me. I could not ping between some interfaces even though if I debugged ICMP I could clearly see the requests and replies and OSPF and CDP was working over the link so clearly it was working at some level... Has anyone seen that before? Maybe a memory issue? Even tried restarting devices and restarting GNS3 etc.

Could be memory. Try it on the racks. Know what you mean about work and energy. Studies are just impossible right now.

jason_lunde

Hows it going man? Seems like your still plugging away. I remember being at that point where you are (with the finish line in sight). I remember getting bored looking at all the R/S stuff and started wondering about the other tracks and how cool that information seemed. It was then I knew I was probably ready for the lab (and this was fortunate as it was already booked). You'll kill it man, you know the stuff, you just have to go perform steadily for 8hrs now and you will have what you've been working so hard for.

reaper81

Thanks Jason,

Great to hear from you. To be honest I have had a bit of a rough patch. Work is demanding and had some things at home with my family that needed attention, nothing bad, just needed to be there for my fiancee. Also I have been a bit tired of all the studying but I know that I need just that final push now. Maybe I won't make it the first time but then I will come back hard for the 2nd try.

I have a rack booked for sunday and from now I am going to give it a final push and we will see what happens on lab day. Hopefully things will get open up at work soon and my boss is positive of giving me some study time on the dollar but right now I am 100% booked as a consultant.

Turgon

A challenging time Daniel but you will push through.

reaper81

Pretty decent session. Learned some interesting stuff on OSPF P2MP. Hellos will be unicast as reply when multicast is received. Can see some interesting stuff when running FR with broadcast in one direction only Also learned what OSPF immediate hello is. Also I broke 700 hours so I'm hoping next week will be a good week.

reaper81

3 hours of solid OSPF labbing in the books. Got cut one hour short due to wintertime. I have now done roughly 600 study sessions totaling to 707 hours which should show all candidates that it's not about only doing marathon sessions. Regularity is the key. Hoping to finish off OSPF this week so I can move forward in Vol1.

Turgon

reaper81 wrote: »

3 hours of solid OSPF labbing in the books. Got cut one hour short due to wintertime. I have now done roughly 600 study sessions totaling to 707 hours which should show all candidates that it's not about only doing marathon sessions. Regularity is the key. Hoping to finish off OSPF this week so I can move forward in Vol1.

I would go further. You have managed to amass 472 lab hours in one callender year, about half my total across 5 years of parttime study! Tremendous effort and what is required to pass the lab exam with almost daily labbing.

reaper81

Finished off OSPF tonight. I have now done all the Vol1 labs for OSPF. Focusing on Vol1 right now but will do one Vol2 lab this week as well. I should know almost everything about OSPF by now, sure I might forget a feature or two but I will remember them when I see them again and know where to look in the documentation.

Hoping I can hit 500 lab hours within 2 weeks.

reaper81

5 hour session tonight. Wasted now, going to bed. Started a Vol2 lab but will have to finish it tomorrow. Takes time when you compare answers to SG and want to learn everything you didn't know already. Will have to try a mock lab soon.

Turgon

Good progress. Take as much time as you want with a Vol II lab so you understand what that solution guide is telling you. Back when I started it took me a week of evening and weekend sessions just to cover one. I may well revisit the whole Vol 1 material again just to read it through once my Vol II notes are completed.

reaper81

Finished off Vol2 lab 14. Monster of a lab, it is rated a 9 on the difficulty scale. Took me 8h total to finish it but that is including checking answers etc. I'm starting to feel that I recognize most of the stuff and I know where to find most of it on the DOCCD. Need to push through more Vol1 material and keep doing a Vol2 every other week. Might be opening up some labtime on the dollar soon but I'm not counting on it.

Turgon

reaper81 wrote: »

Finished off Vol2 lab 14. Monster of a lab, it is rated a 9 on the difficulty scale. Took me 8h total to finish it but that is including checking answers etc. I'm starting to feel that I recognize most of the stuff and I know where to find most of it on the DOCCD. Need to push through more Vol1 material and keep doing a Vol2 every other week. Might be opening up some labtime on the dollar soon but I'm not counting on it.

Every other week for a VolII is good and what Im shooting for soon.

Im hoping to get some dollar labtime next year. It's unlikely I can prepare for the lab without it, my days at work are too busy and Im too tired to study evenings.

reaper81

Getting close to 500 lab hours. Did 3 hours of BGP tonight. BGP is probably my favourite protocol, there is just so much funky stuff you can do with it

reaper81

Made a schedule for what I want to cover before the lab. It consists of finishing Vol1. Doing a lot of Vol2 labs and TS labs. Will be a tough schedule but doable if some time opens up on the job.

reaper81

500 hours preparing for lab reached. Have a date with BGP tonight and tomorrow night and hoping to finish it off on sunday. There is just so much you can do with BGP. Good to have tried most of the scenarios at least once.

Turgon

reaper81 wrote: »

500 hours preparing for lab reached. Have a date with BGP tonight and tomorrow night and hoping to finish it off on sunday. There is just so much you can do with BGP. Good to have tried most of the scenarios at least once.

You are in a good place. Most CCIE candidates give up before 500 hours. Now you have them, you will pass the lab exam somewhere between 500 - 1200 lab hours. But you need that 500 hour foundation! You have it, and crucially you have attained in inside 12 months which means you should clear the lab with less amassed labtime than someone like myself who has taken longer over it.

reaper81

Good session. Lots of BGP done. The BGP dmzlink-bw is kind of a cool feature

reaper81

More BGP done. Added another 3 hours. Hoping to finish off BGP by sunday.

reaper81

Me and my fiancee are having another child It is due for late may or early june. That basically leaves me with 2 good shots at the lab. In a couple of weeks I think some time will open up at my job for some studying, at least that is the plan.

Turgon

reaper81 wrote: »

Me and my fiancee are having another child It is due for late may or early june. That basically leaves me with 2 good shots at the lab. In a couple of weeks I think some time will open up at my job for some studying, at least that is the plan.

Good luck! Im hoping first couple of weeks in December things will settle down at work so I can study. Too much migration work at present.

jamesp1983

Congrats man!

reaper81

Thanks Really hope I succeed before our 2nd one so I can put all my effort into the family.

reaper81

Late night but finished off BGP which was my goal. All 61 labs have been completed. Nearly 5h spent labbing tonight. ORF is a pretty cool feature and not advanced at all to configure.

reaper81

750 hours done since I started studying for the CCIE. I'm hoping to come close to 1000 until the lab and that would mean around 750 lab hours. That should give me a good shot at the lab.

Did some multicast labs today. Multicast is one of the sections I need to improve on. Took it slow to grasp all the concepts and not rush through the labs.

Sirsamon

I love Multicast, QOS i think i am not fully up there on.

reaper81

Did two ASET labs yesterday. First one went very smoothly. Second one was a bit more tricky. The bad thing is that you only get the final configs you don't actually have an explanation why config is as it is.