My CCIE Journey Has Officially Begun.

Turgon

jimmypizzle83 wrote: »

I'm really enjoying the fact that my CCIE studies have already helped me in my day to day work. I am gaining a deeper level of understanding of the "whys" and my config speeds are improving. I've learned a lot of ways to become more efficient in my navigation of the IOS as well. This is shaping up to be an extremely beneficial experience already.

Very true. Imagine how much more you will feel about that when you have put in over 900 lab hours like myself. I find the studies have really helped me professionally the last four years.

jamesp1983

Turgon wrote: »

Very true. Imagine how much more you will feel about that when you have put in over 900 lab hours like myself. I find the studies have really helped me professionally the last four years.

What would you say has been the biggest benefit of all that time spent labbing?

Turgon

jimmypizzle83 wrote: »

What would you say has been the biggest benefit of all that time spent labbing?

There are lots. I dont work in operations anymore so Im not cranking out scheduled changes at the command line these days, so the workbook exercises have really helped me remain sharp as an engineer. I learned a lot of good process if you like, by doing so much configuration so Im comfortable when working with a device. But I think the most important thing is putting the theory into some sort of context and finding that overtime some things come naturally and instinctively. You start to look at and work with config a lot more intuitively, even new stuff.

But you gotta get there first. 900 hours.

jamesp1983

Turgon wrote: »

There are lots. I dont work in operations anymore so Im not cranking out scheduled changes at the command line these days, so the workbook exercises have really helped me remain sharp as an engineer. I learned a lot of good process if you like, by doing so much configuration so Im comfortable when working with a device. But I think the most important thing is putting the theory into some sort of context and finding that overtime some things come naturally and instinctively. You start to look at and work with config a lot more intuitively, even new stuff.

But you gotta get there first. 900 hours.

900 hours seems so far away. Putting the theory into some sort of context is what I'm most excited for. These workbooks are a huge help in clarifying the why's and the how's.

jamesp1983

I read for about 3 hours last night. I was on a roll, but then decided 12:30am is time to call it a night. BGP is a huge topic. I wonder if it is as big on the exam as the Cert Guide says it is. The notebooks are getting pretty thick now. I have 1 notebook for reading, 1 for videos, and 1 for labbing and they are all growing rapidly.

reaper81

BGP is big but is my favourite protocol. There is just so much stuff you can do with it. It is also one of the protocols that are very common to use so having skills in it is very benificial.

Just recently I had a BGP gig for a new customer because another customer of ours had said that I was good at using BGP. It was just 4h work but the money was good

Turgon

jimmypizzle83 wrote: »

900 hours seems so far away. Putting the theory into some sort of context is what I'm most excited for. These workbooks are a huge help in clarifying the why's and the how's.

Unless you can lab for 2/3 hour sessions most weekdays, and 4 - 6 hour sessions Saturday and Sunday..it is a long way away indeed. Do the maths and face reality. If it will take you a long time to get there..that's fine so long as you keep going!

jamesp1983

Turgon wrote: »

Unless you can lab for 2/3 hour sessions most weekdays, and 4 - 6 hour sessions Saturday and Sunday..it is a long way away indeed. Do the maths and face reality. If it will take you a long time to get there..that's fine so long as you keep going!

i think buying my own lab equipment is going to be necessary at this point. it will take me 3 years to get to that mark with rack rentals due to having to schedule time around the provider's availability...

jamesp1983

I can't quite put my finger on it, but for some reason BGP has been clarifying so many other advanced routing concepts for me. I guess because the explanations are pretty straight forward.

reaper81

Nice. When you get to the part of MPLS VPN you will need to know both IGP and BGP to understand how the traffic is flowing. MPLS is fun

jamesp1983

reaper81 wrote: »

Nice. When you get to the part of MPLS VPN you will need to know both IGP and BGP to understand how the traffic is flowing. MPLS is fun

Do you think actually labbing these topics or reading about them makes the predictability of the protocols clearer? I feel like its both.

TesseracT

Yeah I'm the same. both works for me. I actually find I remember it better if I lab it up first and get a general idea of what's going on and then my spongey brain seems to absorb more of the details in when I start reading.

For MPLS I definately went straight to labbing, the books just get confusing without having the basics down first. I started with 'A Small MPLS Tutorial' without knowing anything about MPLS and by the end of it had MPLS VPNs working like a charm. Check it out here:

http://www.rasyid.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/mpls_tut.pdf

jamesp1983

TesseracT wrote: »

Yeah I'm the same. both works for me. I actually find I remember it better if I lab it up first and get a general idea of what's going on and then my spongey brain seems to absorb more of the details in when I start reading.

For MPLS I definately went straight to labbing, the books just get confusing without having the basics down first. I started with 'A Small MPLS Tutorial' without knowing anything about MPLS and by the end of it had MPLS VPNs working like a charm. Check it out here:

http://www.rasyid.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/mpls_tut.pdf

You inspired me to go read a bunch of Cisco docs on MPLS and BGP yesterday at work. Interesting material. That link was helpful as well.

jamesp1983

I had a late start on my lab last night which was probably a bad idea seeing that I had to be up at 5:45am today for some virtualization cutovers/network testing. I covered a lot of ground yesterday especially once I figured out why frame wasn't working in dynamips. I should be able to really start moving now through these labs so I'm really excited about that. These labs have really helped me understand some concepts I have had issues with over the years. They also help the concepts/configs stick.

reaper81

Keep going Jimmy. I love the learning this adventure has brought me so far. Most people are too lazy to do anything more than their dayjob requires. Knowledge is power

jamesp1983

aragoen_celtdra wrote: »

Please, keep us posted on what your prefernce ends up being in terms of rack rental experience. This is something I would need to start looking into in the near future.

I like INE's labs due to the integrated config backups/restores. That is pretty convenient, but the availability and time slots at Gigavelocity are tough to beat. I bought 2 additional 3550s so I have 3 total. I think I can probably get away with running Dynamips and the 3550s for the time being. The wife and I discussed taking out a small loan (around $2500) and seeing what equipment I can pick up for that. I think the payoff would be worth the small loan. Also, the only debt I have is a car payment, mortgage, and student loan. I don't have any credit cards anymore.

jamesp1983

reaper81 wrote: »

Keep going Jimmy. I love the learning this adventure has brought me so far. Most people are too lazy to do anything more than their dayjob requires. Knowledge is power

Thanks man. I guess some people are just more motivated and others are happy where they are in their lives. My wife can't understand me sometimes because I have to keep learning or else I feel lost. I still have hobbies (working out, cars, gaming, etc (although, CCIE prep has reduced a lot my other activities), but like the rest of you, I have a yearning for knowledge and bettering my family's position. I'd like my wife to be able to stay home when/if we have a child so I have to start busting my butt.

jamesp1983

Labbed last night once we got home from the beach. (session was around 6pm - 1am with interruptions) I got about 5 hours of actual labbing done. I ran over my time slot on Gigavelocity, but used Dynamips to continue working. I say 5 hours because I ate while I was labbing, plus I was researching some material as I was labbing it. I didn't want to call it a night without solving the issue because I felt like I was so close to the answer. I got hung up on one lab for 3 hours last night. I learned something new so I was glad I didn't just move on without figuring out why it wasn't working correctly. My troubleshooting process certainly benefited from the time spent working on the issue. My advice, pay very close attention to the instructions in the labs. I'm trying to get closer in labs to where I am in reading, but I don't want to rush either.

TesseracT

jimmypizzle83 wrote: »

Labbed last night once we got home from the beach. (session was around 6pm - 1am with interruptions) I got about 5 hours of actual labbing done. I ran over my time slot on Gigavelocity, but used Dynamips to continue working. I say 5 hours because I ate while I was labbing, plus I was researching some material as I was labbing it. I didn't want to call it a night without solving the issue because I felt like I was so close to the answer. I got hung up on one lab for 3 hours last night. I learned something new so I was glad I didn't just move on without figuring out why it wasn't working correctly. My troubleshooting process certainly benefited from the time spent working on the issue. My advice, pay very close attention to the instructions in the labs. I'm trying to get closer in labs to where I am in reading, but I don't want to rush either.

What was the issue and how did you troubleshoot/solve it? Always interested to hear these sorts of stories. Myself I only did around 3 hours of study this week. A new girl and getting my motorbike license has sucked up all my available study time.

jamesp1983

It was a silly bridging over frame-relay issue. I looked at my configs, but they looked completely fine (wrong! one major cmd missing). I started troubleshooting by extracting the key players from the topology then doing divide and conquer. (CCIE Exam Guide). I was doing small reconfigs at each hop in the topology and seeing what had connectivity to what. I had connectivity between all equipment, but traffic from switch 1 couldnt make it to BB2 over the frame relay bridge between r2 and r5. It was a face palm moment once I caught it. Again, pay very close attention to the instructions.

Turgon

jimmypizzle83 wrote: »

It was a silly bridging over frame-relay issue. I looked at my configs, but they looked completely fine (wrong! one major cmd missing). I started troubleshooting by extracting the key players from the topology then doing divide and conquer. (CCIE Exam Guide). I was doing small reconfigs at each hop in the topology and seeing what had connectivity to what. I had connectivity between all equipment, but traffic from switch 1 couldnt make it to BB2 over the frame relay bridge between r2 and r5. It was a face palm moment once I caught it. Again, pay very close attention to the instructions.

Nice one. This is where the hundreds of hours working the examples in the lab books will help you. You will be introduced to ways of connecting things like frame relay, such as the bridge that you wouldn't normally read up on.

jamesp1983

Turgon wrote: »

Nice one. This is where the hundreds of hours working the examples in the lab books will help you. You will be introduced to ways of connecting things like frame relay, such as the bridge that you wouldn't normally read up on.

I am really enjoying what I've done so far. I certainly have already seen new ways of utilizing certain features and I'm sure there are a lot more to come.

jamesp1983

I did some more labbing last night after attending a crab feast. I could have stayed there all day. I've been taking my time with these labs, taking a lot of notes, and just making sure I fully understanding what I'm doing and why I'm doing it this specific way. There are so many implicit effects of implementing certain commands that you have to keep track of so I always try to take good notes on those in particular. Being out of the switch focused labs means that I can use Dynamips for awhile so that will certainly extend my lab times.

Turgon

jimmypizzle83 wrote: »

I did some more labbing last night after attending a crab feast. I could have stayed there all day. I've been taking my time with these labs, taking a lot of notes, and just making sure I fully understanding what I'm doing and why I'm doing it this specific way. There are so many implicit effects of implementing certain commands that you have to keep track of so I always try to take good notes on those in particular. Being out of the switch focused labs means that I can use Dynamips for awhile so that will certainly extend my lab times.

Cool. Try and get that reading counter over 100 and the lab one over 50 hours then crack open a beer. A long way to go from that point but many CCIE wannabees dont make it even that far. You will deserve a celebration to announce your credibility.

jamesp1983

Turgon wrote: »

Cool. Try and get that reading counter over 100 and the lab one over 50 hours then crack open a beer. A long way to go from that point but many CCIE wannabees dont make it even that far. You will deserve a celebration to announce your credibility.

I'm pushing. Thanks for the encouragement.

jamesp1983

Read about BGP decision process, Path Attribute segments, and how to adjust the segments. for anyone learning about the bgp decision process, try the mnemonic from the exam guide: "n wlla omni". N = NEXT_HOP reachable?, W=weight (higher=better), L=LOCAL_PREF (higher=better), L = locally injected, A = AS_PATH, O=ORIGIN, M=MED, N=Neighbor type, I = IGP metric for reaching next hop.

Turgon

jimmypizzle83 wrote: »

Read about BGP decision process, Path Attribute segments, and how to adjust the segments. for anyone learning about the bgp decision process, try the mnemonic from the exam guide: "n wlla omni". N = NEXT_HOP reachable?, W=weight (higher=better), L=LOCAL_PREF (higher=better), L = locally injected, A = AS_PATH, O=ORIGIN, M=MED, N=Neighbor type, I = IGP metric for reaching next hop.

Now tell us which is better for AS_PATH, Origin, MED, Neighbor and IGP metric, and how to override or play with the decision process. Watch those MEDS, there are variations

jamesp1983

Turgon wrote: »

Now tell us which is better for AS_PATH, Origin, MED, Neighbor and IGP metric, and how to override or play with the decision process. Watch those MEDS, there are variations

AS_PATH=smaller, ORIGIN=i over e, e over ?, MED=smaller, Neighbor type = ebgp over ibgp, igp metric=smaller.

Turgon

jimmypizzle83 wrote: »

AS_PATH=smaller, ORIGIN=i over e, e over ?, MED=smaller, Neighbor type = ebgp over ibgp, igp metric=smaller.

Good stuff although shorter AS_PATH would be more accurate. That was the easy bit, now look into some answers to the rest..


'how to override or play with the decision process. Watch those MEDS, there are variations'

Gambell

I stumbled across this thread (and forum) in last hours of my final exam prep for the CCNP Tshoot exam.

Just wanted to say it's refreshing to see others that are passionate about this certification and bettering themselves.

So yeah, just wanted to say thanks for reminding me that i'm not the only one out there giving up years of my life to gain the illusive CCIE.

I'll probably stick around now that I signed up.

Oh and good luck!!