My CCIE Journey Has Officially Begun.

jamesp1983

I have decided that it is time to pursue the first goal I had when I entered IT, the CCIE. I know its going to be an EXTREME challenge, but I'm just pushing forward and trying to stay confident. I'm going to use this thread for tracking my progress throughout my CCIE journey. I purchased the INE Ultimate bundle last week and have been studying and labbing ever since. I'm still trying to figure out what the right balance of lab vs study is at this point, but I'm just reviewing all of the ATVOD material now (over 80 hours), to refresh myself. I'm open for any suggestions on how I should balance lab vs study time. I've been running Dynamips and working with my home switches while watching the videos as a way to get more hands on. I passed BCMSN, BSCI, and ISCW back in 2008, and wrapped up ONT in August of 2010. I have been working with the equipment at my job so that has kept me fresh on a lot of the info, but I'm still studying like I'm just starting out. I research topics in the videos that I don't really remember and that seems to be really helping. I will keep this updated as a motivator and also as a way to keep track of all that I have studied when it comes time for my final review. It feels great to finally get started on this path. My wife and I worked out a schedule and I'm going to try to hit 30-36 hours a week.

My resources:
-INE Virtual Lab
-The INE workbooks
-INE Written VOD
-Routing TCP/IP, vol I.
-Home lab (a few routers and some 3550s.)
-Cisco LAN Switching by Ken Clark
-Routing and Switching, Time of Convergence?
-My CCNP Library.
-Dynamips
-Cisco.com
-INE ATVOD 4.5

Should I buy Odom's exam guide? I think the Boson Exsim for CCIE will be the next addition.

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Comments

N2IT

James good luck man! Not much of a networkologist

but I can still cheer you on!

BTW that was a Don Kingism.

jamesp1983

N2IT wrote: »

James good luck man! Not much of a networkologist but I can still cheer you on!

BTW that was a Don Kingism.

Thanks man! I appreciate it. I need all the support I can get.

jamesp1983

It's been a lot of fun getting this lab set up. I am at a point now where I can really get started. All of the equipment is racked and cabled, minus the 2511 which hasn't arrived yet. Anyone interested in a 2509?

jamesp1983

The 2511 arrived last night and I immediately racked it. It look a little while to get it set up, but now I have wireless access to my full lab. I want to make it accessible from my job so I'll have to make some firewall changes tonight. It looks as if INE changed the format of their workbooks. It doesn't look like all of the sections are in one workbook anymore.

filkenjitsu

You inspire me my friend!

TesseracT

Looks like you're doing well! I've just moved house so am on a bit of a hiatus until everything goes back to normal. Hope to be posting more soon

jamesp1983

TesseracT wrote: »

Looks like you're doing well! I've just moved house so am on a bit of a hiatus until everything goes back to normal. Hope to be posting more soon

I'm starting to pick up steam now since I got my lab together. Nice. Enjoy the new place and I hope to see you posting soon.

jamesp1983

filkenjitsu wrote: »

You inspire me my friend!

Are you going to do your CCIE? I'll answer any questions that you have. I'm about 9-10 months out from taking my lab, but I have a pretty good idea of what my schedule will be.

jamesp1983

I've decided that I'm going to make my 1st lab attempt around 12/2012 or 1/2013. I want to take my time and complete WBI to really nail down the fundamentals then start moving through WBII. I need to give access to my lab remotely so that I can do it from work. I have some buy-in at my job so it will be fine. I did about 3 hours of labbing last night, and got through about 10 sections. I took my time and really tried to get a feel for what various tweaks would due to my config. Towards the end I was really feeling comfortable and gaining some momentum. I had some difficulty with bad cables, but took care of that and kept going. I have a feeling of not wanting to do anything after work, but lab so I have to convince myself to get back to the gym after about a 1.5 month long hiatus. I took the initial month off to lock down any tough topics so that I'd feel confident that I'd pass the written.

Getting the most out of CCIE R&S Workbooks VOL1 and VOL2
How to pass the CCIE R&S with INE's 4.0 Training Program

jamesp1983

Got in a good 3 hours of labbing last night and covered about 8 sections. I picked up a wireless keyboard and mouse so my workstation is pretty comfortable now. I find that drawing out the various scenarios helps a lot with visualization. I'm hoping to knock out WB I Section 1 over tonight and tomorrow. Getting to the gym for the first time in 1.5 months felt good and relaxed my nerves a bit as well.

jamesp1983

I just completed my first 8 hour session. I didn't get as far as I wanted to, but I didn't want to keep going being as tired as I am. I feel like I wouldn't retain much at this point.

filkenjitsu

jamesp1983 wrote: »

Are you going to do your CCIE? I'll answer any questions that you have. I'm about 9-10 months out from taking my lab, but I have a pretty good idea of what my schedule will be.

I am on the road to earning my Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco Certs, I think one day I will go for my CCIE unless I can make a good amount of money with just the CCIP, CCNP: Service Provider Operations, and CCDP.

jamesp1983

filkenjitsu wrote: »

I am on the road to earning my Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco Certs, I think one day I will go for my CCIE unless I can make a good amount of money with just the CCIP, CCNP: Service Provider Operations, and CCDP.

Oh okay. Good luck with all of those certs!

jamesp1983

I logged about 14 hours of lab time this past weekend (Saturday/Sunday). I wrapped up WB I Section 1 and got about half way through Section 2. I had to replace some bad dte/dce cables so that slowed me down. Everything is looking good now so I will be able to pick right back up tonight and keep moving. I started a Word doc for all of my config notes as I move along so hopefully that will be helpful for finalizing my studies before the lab. My wife and I worked out a time frame for me to go and take a Narbik bootcamp as well as my lab. We are expecting our baby in early October so I'm hoping to knock out a bootcamp and my lab by early December of this year. I'm going to start trying to get some study time at work in hopes that I can log a lot of hours by then. I'm hoping to be at least through workbooks I, II, and most of III by November. I have 1200 tokens with INE so I'll get some mocks in as well. I am hoping to be able to do 6 hours on Tues/Th, 4 hours M/W/F, and then 16 on the weekends. That'll be 40 hours a week/160 hours a month. I should see around 1000 hours by mid September if I can stay at that pace. I'm hoping to be able to get around 3 hours a day at work so that should help.

jamesp1983

I have about 5 scenarios left to do in the Frame Relay section. I did some twice to make sure I understood them. Are any of you guys that are using INE.com's Workbooks following this plan for WBI?:

Bridging & Switching: 1.1-1.15
Frame-Relay: 2.1-2.8
IP Routing: 3.1-3.11
RIP: 4.1-4.11
EIGRP: 5.1-5.10
OSPF: 6.1-6.14
BGP: 7.1-7.12
IPv6: 9.1-9.9
Multicast: 8.1-8.10
MPLS VPN: 14.1-14.7

I want to make sure I understand everything, but I'm also fearful that I'll forgot a lot since each section takes so long to complete end-to-end. INE's suggestion hits all of the core technologies then goes into WBII and then at some point you can come back and hit the rest of the material.

Forsaken_GA

jamesp1983 wrote: »

I have about 5 scenarios left to do in the Frame Relay section. I did some twice to make sure I understood them. Are any of you guys that are using INE.com's Workbooks following this plan for WBI?:

Bridging & Switching: 1.1-1.15
Frame-Relay: 2.1-2.8
IP Routing: 3.1-3.11
RIP: 4.1-4.11
EIGRP: 5.1-5.10
OSPF: 6.1-6.14
BGP: 7.1-7.12
IPv6: 9.1-9.9
Multicast: 8.1-8.10
MPLS VPN: 14.1-14.7

I want to make sure I understand everything, but I'm also fearful that I'll forgot a lot since each section takes so long to complete end-to-end. INE's suggestion hits all of the core technologies then goes into WBII and then at some point you can come back and hit the rest of the material.

I'm following it, and the holidays forced me into about a month off, and I didn't feel comfortable with my retention, so I went back and did all the labs in that section again, took me about 2 weeks, and I retained more than I thought.

You need to have a good core understanding of the technologies, but you don't need to know them cold. After you've worked the plan and completed all of them, keep going, and get into the full scale WB2 labs as soon as you're done with that section. Don't hold off on moving to WB2 because you're afraid you don't know the WB1 stuff as well as you'd like.

While working WB2 labs, first thing you should do is sit down and look at each task and understand what technology they're asking for. Lab 1 and 2 will hit you with stuff you did not cover in the WB1 scenarios. This is ok. The solutions guide on WB2 has a section at the end of each lab that tells which WB1 labs are referenced in that WB2 lab scenario. Look that over, and if you don't feel comfortable doing the lab, review the WB1 scenarios that are in the WB2 lab beforehand, and watch the relevant ATC videos. The key part to working the INE plan is understanding that you're supposed to use WB1 and WB2 in tandem, not sequentially.

My pattern is that I load up the full scale lab and I try it first thing, if I run into something I don't know, I use the Cisco documentation during the full scale lab to try and figure it out. If I can't get it, I move on, and review it when going over the solutions. If I don't get a complete understanding from the WB2 solution breakdown, then I go do the WB1 volume labs that are dealing with the tech I'm having problems with. On the final day of the week, I repeat the full scale lab again, to see how well I've learned from my mistakes. Then I move on to the next weeks lab.

When you start doing the WB2 labs, you will make stupid mistakes. You will fail to completely read the task and understand what they're asking for, or you'll forget to do portions of the task entirely. You will make changes later in the lab that break something earlier in the lab that you forgot to account for.

It's ok. It's part of the process, and it's intended to make those kinds of mistakes during this portion of prep. Just make sure to learn from those mistakes.

The key thing is to always keep moving, don't get hung up on one particular thing. If you're having problems with one particular thing that you just can't quite get, then post to GroupStudy, post here, post to INE's IEOC forums. Someone will probably be able to explain it to you. The more you get hung up on one particular thing, the more ground you'll lose overall. During the actual lab, you may have to make choices to purposely not do some tasks, especially those that are corner case and don't involve core configuration that other portions of the lab may rely on. So it's ok during the real thing if you maybe can't quite figure out how to do an EEM configuration, you can make the choice to leave that until the last thing and come back to it if you have time.

You absolutely positively do not need to know *everything*. Somethings you just need to know where to find it in the documentation, and then move on to more important things. And if worse comes to worse, you do have some points you can give up if you need to, the important thing is to make sure you don't give up easy points to stupid mistakes.

jamesp1983

Thanks so much! I'm just trying to work out my schedule now and your post was extremely helpful. It makes sense to do them in tandem. I just want to make sure I'm using my time as intelligently as possible.

jamesp1983

I didn't get any lab time in on Tuesday night due to maintenance at work. I had to upgrade the IOS on a switch that has been up for 2 years. It didn't come back after the reload (completely failed, no power) so the night went on a lot longer than planned. We are deploying VoIP at a remote site and I was doing a ton of config for that last night so I was only able to get in 3 hours. I've set up a mini topology in GNS3 so that I can get some labbing in at work. I'm on section 3 of WB I now so I'm moving along.

Mrock4

Keep up the good work James. I'm shooting for a lab date around the same timeframe as you. I am aiming for early December this year, but if that doesn't pan out, I'm looking at February (knowing the holidays will hamper my prep a little). Hopefully a year from now we're both successful!

jamesp1983

Mrock4 wrote: »

Keep up the good work James. I'm shooting for a lab date around the same timeframe as you. I am aiming for early December this year, but if that doesn't pan out, I'm looking at February (knowing the holidays will hamper my prep a little). Hopefully a year from now we're both successful!

Thanks. You too! I've really appreciated a lot of your blog posts. Good luck to both of us!

jamesp1983

I'm moving right along. I'm on the EIGRP section of WBI (section 5). I moved through RIP pretty quickly and I'm about 3 scenarios into EIGRP. I'm hoping to be through BGP by the end of the week. At this pace I should be out of WBI by the end of next week. I have about 26 pages of lab notes in addition to about 200-250 pages from the Written. I've been going over my Anymemo flash cards for the written in an attempt to keep the written knowledge fresh. The labbing is really helping to drive home some of the topics that I was a bit fuzzy on.

jamesp1983

I wrapped up EIGRP. I began section 6, OSPF.

jamesp1983

Common Student Questions

I like the suggestion about using a legal pad to write out a topology and then write out the config to go with it.

jamesp1983

I labbed for about 3 hours last night and watched 2 OSPF ATVoDs. Those videos are really helpful especially if you watch them in tandem with your labbing. This morning we heard that baby's heartbeat for the first time and it was truly amazing. This is our first child so we're really nervous, but excited.

jamesp1983

I got in another 3 hours tonight. I got up to 6.13 in the OSPF section of WBI. There is a lot to absorb in these OSPF scenarios. I started labbing 3/8 so I'm averaging around 3.75 hours a day (I don't count the 65 hours of labbing I did for written prep). I need to pick up the pace if I want to meet my deadline, but work has certainly been getting in the way.

jamesp1983

I wrapped up the ospf section and got the lab prepped for bgp. Ospf was very interesting.

jamesp1983

I labbed for around 7 hours yesterday. That was my longest session by far. I was able to get to 7.8 Large Scale iBGP Route Reflection. I did the lab, but I like to do the walk throughs in the explanations as well. That's what really drives it home for me.

I'm wondering when I should start trying some of WBII. When did those of you doing the INE workbooks attempt WBII labs?

Forsaken_GA

jamesp1983 wrote: »

I wrapped up the ospf section and got the lab prepped for bgp. Ospf was very interesting.

If you found the OSPF section interesting, you'll be visiting it again hehe

jamesp1983

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

If you found the OSPF section interesting, you'll be visiting it again hehe

You are correct. I'm thinking 2 or 3 passes through that section.

jamesp1983

I got about 14 hours of labbing in over this weekend. I wrapped up OSPF and BGP. I had some weird output from 7.12 (iBGP Synchronization) so I'm going to redo it. Labbing really helps drive home the material from the Written prep.