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

jamesp1983

I've been moving right along. I did have to push my lab back because I found out that my new job has us working a lot of OT in December/January so I pushed back to February. My wife is due on or around 10/3 so the end of this year is going to be interesting. I've started putting in more study hours so that I can be more comfortable by the time the baby arrives. I was hoping to see 1000 hours by end of December, but I don't think that's going to happen. I'm thinking 1000 hours by the middle of January is realistic.

jamesp1983

Useful thread on preventing route redistribution loops:

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/thread/41807

Forsaken_GA

jamesp1983 wrote: »

Useful thread on preventing route redistribution loops:

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/thread/41807

One thing to keep in mind - in the lab, it's not enough to solve the routing loop issues potentially introduced by redistribution, Cisco expects you to also maintain optimal routing post redistribution. They clarified this during the CCIE talk at Cisco Live this year.

Edit: Alot of his stuff is common sense as well. I don't like using formulas as guidelines, I approach each redistribution scenario as a unique problem. Generally speaking, the best way to avoid routing loops and inefficient routing is to make sure the router doing the redistribution never prefers the redistributed prefixes over where it learned the routes from originally, and you'll be fine. Mutual redistribution between two routers in the same routing domain are almost always going to require route tagging to solve safely. For everything else, I usually find myself either increasing the distance for external OSPF or decreasing the distance for RIP

jamesp1983

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate any CCIE related advice anyone has to offer.

jamesp1983

Has anyone else spent much time with TCL? I like the idea of using procedures to reuse ping scripts because it seems like an efficient use of time.

jamesp1983

I just wrapped up Week 22: VOL3 Lab 7+8, so on to:

Week 23: VOL4 Labs 1+2

This will be the last step before Mock Lab 1.
I'm hoping to finish these troubleshooting labs quickly so that I can go back and review some topics I'm weak on before Mock Lab 1.

Week 24: Mock Lab 1

jamesp1983

My current plan is to do at least 4 hours of labbing a day so that I will hit 1000 hours by around 1/1/2013. I've been watching ATC at night after I finish my 4 hours to clarify some of the topics that have been giving me grief. I also printed out the INE CCIE Expanded Blueprint (16 pages long) and I plan to take an inventory of my strengths and weaknesses this evening.

Forsaken_GA

jamesp1983 wrote: »

I'm hoping to finish these troubleshooting labs quickly so that I can go back and review some topics I'm weak on before Mock Lab 1.

Week 24: Mock Lab 1

Fair warning - right now, you can't schedule Mock Labs through INE, and they have no ETA as to when it will be fixed. Which pisses me off, because I was planning to take Mock 3 tonight/tomorrow morning. If they don't have it fixed by next week (which is when I'm assuming you're planning to take Mock 1), just move on to Lab 11 (which is actually pretty damn hard) instead and take the Mock the following week, again assuming they have it fixed.

Now, with that being said, Mock 1 isn't hard. I scored a 72, and I actually would have passed except I made two bone headed mistakes - the last question is a 4 point QoS question that I nailed, except for a mistyped IP address during classification. I also made a bone-headed mistake on another 3 point question that cascaded down and caused me to miss three other questions, costing me 3, 3, and 2 points respectively.

I was feeling pretty good after Mock 1, then Lab 11 kicked my ass hehe

jamesp1983

How about if you already scheduled the mock lab? I scheduled it awhile back...

Forsaken_GA

jamesp1983 wrote: »

How about if you already scheduled the mock lab? I scheduled it awhile back...

That I don't know about, as I don't schedule them until the week I'm going to take them. If the web page indicates you're still good to go you probably are, just be wary of possible issues. Things haven't exactly been reliable since they debuted the new rack rental system

jamesp1983

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

That I don't know about, as I don't schedule them until the week I'm going to take them. If the web page indicates you're still good to go you probably are, just be wary of possible issues. Things haven't exactly been reliable since they debuted the new rack rental system

Okay, thanks for the warning! I am going to check with INE.

jamesp1983

Forsaken, they actually canceled my session and refunded my tokens indicating that they couldn’t migrate my booking to their new system. I contacted my sales rep as well as support to see what's going on and inquired about when we can expect to be able to book again.

RouteMyPacket

Go..Go..Go...get that CCIE!

Some major major dedication you have, you'll have the official title soon.

jamesp1983

Thanks! I hope so. Its been quite a journey.

jamesp1983

I just finished
Week 23: VOL4 Labs 1+2

I'm thinking I'm going to go check out workbooks 9-14 (skipping WBI Section 10 QoS until week 25) in Vol I while I'm waiting for INE to figure out their mock lab scheduling issues. I am ahead of schedule now since my mock was originally scheduled for 9/8 anyway.

I'll be on to the following once INE gets this all sorted out:
Week 24: Mock Lab 1

Week 25: VOL1 QoS
Week 26: VOL1 QoS
Week 27: VOL1 QoS
Week 28: VOL1 QoS

Forsaken_GA

jamesp1983 wrote: »

Forsaken, they actually canceled my session and refunded my tokens indicating that they couldn’t migrate my booking to their new system. I contacted my sales rep as well as support to see what's going on and inquired about when we can expect to be able to book again.

Yeah, there are reports of all kinds of issues. I'm absolutely mystified at the way they're handling this. I understand things break, but not able to give an ETA or even tell me what's going on? And unable to rollback to the old version in the meantime? Bad, bad planning, bad, bad implementation, and it makes me seriously consider whether or not I made a mistake in my choice of vendors.

jamesp1983

I'm not pleased with INE right now, but I am using the time to review.

I'm on WBI 9.25 and moving right along. I put in 11 hours since the weekend and I'm planning on putting in 5 more hours tonight. Good luck all.

jamesp1983

I completed all of WBI Sec 9-IPv6. I found this WB to have a lot of bugs towards the end. INE seemed to miss a few required steps for multicast to function that I found listed on ieoc.com forums. I'm now going through WBI Sec 11. This section will take me a little bit of time since I haven't gone though it yet. INE's mock lab scheduler was up for a brief moment this morning and I was able to schedule my mock lab I for Sunday, 9/9, 12-9pm. I had 9/8 before the migration, but someone else already had that booked.

jamesp1983

I just had to deliver my first design for a large network at my new employer. It went really well. The other sr engineers "grilled the new guy", but I was able to hold my own and the design was approved. I feel a lot better since I completed this step and look forward to the next project.

jamesp1983

Moving through the security section of WBI still. This has been an extremely helpful section and I wish I could have done it earlier.

jamesp1983

Still can't schedule a mock lab on INE so continuing through the WBI sections that I skipped.

I also have to learn CentOS for my new job. We use it for a few features so I spun up a VM and have been playing with it.

Yesterday was my mother's birthday so I didnt get in quite as much lab time as I would have liked, but I'll make it up. It was nice relaxing with the family.

jamesp1983

I wrote an email to INE support and sales trying to get an ETA. This is ridiculous.

I am almost done WBI Sec 11-Security. use-bia is a handy feature to overcome a headache with HSRP and port security.

I'm on 11.38 Flexibile Packet Matching.

jamesp1983

Be careful of the verifications on WBI 11.39 ZBF. They are not correct and you have to tweak some settings and change where you're trying to connect from/to.

jamesp1983

INE Mock Labs are back up.

I have Mock Lab 1 scheduled for tomorrow. I'm a little nervous, but I'm trying to look at it simply as a learning tool.

Mrock4

You'll be alright. It'll be a good gauge of where you're at, whether that means you need more work, or not. I'm looking forward to a mock lab, though I'm thinking I won't be ready to take one for at least 2 more months. Let us know how yours goes!

jamesp1983

Thanks! I'm just trying to think of it as another step towards passing the CCIE. I'm excited, but nervous at the same time. I will definitely let you guys know how it goes. It starts tomorrow at 12pm.

I just wrapped up WBI, sec 11- Security. A lot of it was review, but there were a few new features like IOS IPS and Zone Based IOS transparent firewall. On to Section 12-System Management.

jamesp1983

Well, that appt was a waste of time. It seems as if INE is still having issues with the mock labs that they haven't resolved. Long story short, I now have to try to reschedule my mock for another weekend.

Mrock4

That sucks. All the anticipation for nothing!

spiderjericho

Sorry to hear. There's always next week. Just gives you more practice.

jamesp1983

Mrock4 wrote: »

That sucks. All the anticipation for nothing!

I wasn't pleased. Oh well, next week.