It's my time: Mrock's CCIE thread

Mrock4

Tonight is a general review. Went over netflow, NTP, SNMP, and now PIM SSM. Going to play with PIM SSM-Maps, then finish the evening with some full lab scenarios.

Mrock4

In the zone this evening. Finished PIM SSM quite easily (including SSM-Maps and such), then moved onto an area I have very little experience with- MPLS QOS. To practice, I created a large MPLS VPN between two customers, and configured MPLS QOS from scratch. Feeling pretty good.

Mrock4

Back at it this evening. Went through more MPLS QOS labs (kind of unstructured) and feel pretty good with MPLS QOS I think. Going to build a lab now with various tasks (pretty much all my worst areas and technologies I'm not familiar with). Thinking about taking my second TS lab next week.

jamesp1983

Mrock4 wrote: »

Out of habit (for work) I'm hooked on using "show ip int br | excl una" to capture all active IP addresses on a box. I actually use it all the time to check interface statuses..just to filter out the non-L3 interfaces and quickly check to make sure relevant L3 interfaces are up/up.

I use the "show ip int br | excl una" command constantly, as well as other variations. Those filters are extremely convenient.

I only use the "sh ip alias" for building my TCL scripts because the output is really convenient for a block copy. It was a tip from one of the Brians from INE.

From Putty: "We now support rectangular-block selection, triggered by holding Alt while you drag the mouse. (You can also configure rectangular selection to be the default and Alt-drag to be conventional line-by-line selection.) "

You're doing really well. Great work.

NetworkVeteran

I tried to repeat the same results, but using ZBF and dynamic ACLs. No go! I ran into an issue because the inbound ACL is processed before the inspect/CBAC engine. Finished PIM SSM quite easily (including SSM-Maps and such)

I'm mostly following along in awe of how far one must go to be ready for the CCIE. I have touched all these technologies before, but it's mighty impressive seeing them so easily assembled and debugged! Like the "| exc" tip, as well.

Mrock4

jamesp1983 wrote: »

It was a tip from one of the Brians from INE.

They brought that up at our bootcamp too- but that was literally the ONE thing that I said "I think I'll stick to my way" out of habit- I can certainly see the use for it though. I REALLY liked Dave Smith's tip on troubleshooting. He suggested running something like this on ANY relevant devices for a ticket (note, RELEVANT, not every device!):

sh run | i zone|access-list|access-group|control-plane|event|kron

I modified it a bit for switches:

sh run | i snooping|filter|default|bpdufilter|guard|access-group|control-plane

Of course there's some slight tweaks that could be done (things added/removed, etc) but I think those two commands would go a far way towards getting a snapshot of a device to ensure it's not the cause of any issues. I've decided I'll have those typed up, and paste them where appropriate- so HOPEFULLY out of my 10 minutes I'm allocating per ticket, it'll only take maybe 20 seconds to paste that into all devices and see any possible issues. If there aren't any, that doesn't mean I'm any closer to solving it, but it does mean I've eliminated a lot of possibilities, so that's good!

Thanks for the words of encouragement. I'm trying. I've heard a lot of people say they reached a point where they were tired of studying, and I'm OK right now- but I've certainly gone through that, and had I not already had a lab date, I probably would have quit by now.

Mrock4

NetworkVeteran wrote: »

I'm mostly following along in awe of how far one must go to be ready for the CCIE. I have touched all these technologies before, but it's mighty impressive seeing them so easily assembled and debugged! Like the "| exc" tip, as well.

Glad you got some usefulness out of my thread man! You're doing well too. You'll be alright. I'm not sure where we match up with regards to experience, but my past experience has helped a LOT with studying- some topics I haven't "studied" at all because I've worked with them a lot. I'm sure once you start labbing you'll find the same thing.

Truth be told, I'd be the first to admit I am under-prepared for the CCIE, but the lab date is in stone, so I have to make it! I've reached an awkward calm...possibly the calm before the storm- where I'm not really stressing over the exam too much. There are a couple of outcomes with regards to my lab:

Outcome #1: I fail. I take a couple of days to evaluate where I went wrong and what I need to improve on, then hit the lab again (and book a new date ASAP). Not exactly an ideal outcome, but not the end of the world. I think back to my CCNA. I failed it the first time, but passed the second. I was a MUCH better engineer by the time I passed my CCNA, as opposed to my first attempt.

Outcome #2: I pass.

I've learned so much through this process already, that if I were to quit tomorrow, I still think it'd be worth it from a career perspective. I can't do that though, because I'm the type who will dwell on failure/quitting. So, 2013 I have to pass.

Mrock4

Covered a lot tonight. Covered more MPLS QOS, and then went into some deep OSPF labs to stay sharp there (as I've spent a lot of my focus lately on non-core topics). Finished up circling back around to some NTP labs. I've been trying to slip IP services topics in wherever possible so I don't get totally thrown by the IP services section in the lab as I know that happens to a lot of people.

I also think before my next full practice lab I am going to squeeze some dedicated security labs in- not one topic in particular, but I'll probably build a network and implement every security control I can think of- verify each one, and see how they interact together, etc. I'm going to be really busy with work until next Thursday, so I'm thinking next Friday I'll schedule a full practice lab. In the meantime I'm obviously labbing- generally 4-6 hours a day, but it's mostly ad-hoc labs I've thrown together with lots of "What if" scenarios in there. I've also been taking tasks directly from full labs and solving those independently, which helps a lot.

As of now I'd gauge my readiness as follows:

-IGP's 9/10 (pretty good overall, but just need to ensure I don't miss little features and pay attention to detail)
-BGP 8.5/10 (again, pretty good, just need to review some of the misc features. Also things like table-maps, and attribute-maps and such. Should be able to bump this up to a 9 at least by the lab date)
-QOS 7/10 (Working on it!)
-Multicast 8/10 (Improved a lot here, was previously about a 3/10!)
-IP services 6.5/10 (Feel confident on setting all the protocols up, but the random little unknown features can trip you up)
-Security 9/10
-IPV6 8.5/10

Bear in mind, in my mind "10" doesn't equal knowing EVERYTHING about that area, it's just where I'd like to be for my first attempt. HOPEFULLY I can get most of these closer to 10's in the next 30 days.

Mrock4

Just booked my flight/hotel/rental for my date with destiny in RTP!

vinbuck

Sweet...at what point before the exam are you going to stop studying and begin mental prep / destress? Most lab candidates seem to knock off anywhere from 24-48 hours before.

carterw65

Oh boy, exciting! When is the big day? You probably mentioned that already.

Mrock4

vinbuck wrote: »

Sweet...at what point before the exam are you going to stop studying and begin mental prep / destress? Most lab candidates seem to knock off anywhere from 24-48 hours before.

For me, I'm thinking 24 hours before the exam. My flight has me arriving in RTP at 1pm on Sunday, so I'm planning that entire day (Sunday) to be relaxing, watching a movie, and MAYBE some light labbing/review, but that's about it.

Mrock4

carterw65 wrote: »

Oh boy, exciting! When is the big day? You probably mentioned that already.

August 26th (a Monday) is the big day.

Mrock4

Not to add any pressure, but my bosses boss called me last night, and asked if it was OK if he gave me a 20% raise for passing the CCIE (once I pass, of course).

Mrock4

Today is an off day, spent it with the family so far, but going to sneak in about 1 1/2 hours in of labbing. Tomorrow I'll be back at it all day.

carterw65

Mrock4 wrote: »

Not to add any pressure, but my bosses boss called me last night, and asked if it was OK if he gave me a 20% raise for passing the CCIE (once I pass, of course).

Wow, nice. He knows the value then and doesn't want to loose you to another company.

spiderjericho

Mrock4 wrote: »

Not to add any pressure, but my bosses boss called me last night, and asked if it was OK if he gave me a 20% raise for passing the CCIE (once I pass, of course).

That's great. Good luck with obtaining that number. And I wouldn't look at it as pressure but an incentive.

jamesp1983

Mrock4 wrote: »

Not to add any pressure, but my bosses boss called me last night, and asked if it was OK if he gave me a 20% raise for passing the CCIE (once I pass, of course).

Nice man. You got this.

powmia

Mrock4 wrote: »

August 26th (a Monday) is the big day.

What worked for my lab: A month out means it's time to hit the config guides heavily. I spent my last two weeks reading the entire 3560 config guide (except for the clustering section). I wouldn't have passed if I didn't. The two weeks before that, were all of the routing, qos, and security config guides for 12.4T. In the hotel the day before my lab, I spent all day on the config guides, but not reading the content. Only going through every config guide for 12.4T and the 3560, and seeing what topics were in each guide. You don't have time in the lab to search for anything... you need to know exactly where everything is. If you know a technology's theory, the master index won't help you if you don't know the base command. So, the last thing you want to be doing in the lab is looking through the sidebar of each config guide under the network management, system management, and the routing guides, not knowing where the object tracking section was... because it was in the ip application services config guide. My two cents.

You should have your cli/notepad speed up by now, so I wouldn't kill yourself doing 8 hour practice labs too often. One or two a week to keep the fingers loose.

Mrock4

Thanks guys!

powmia- thanks for the tip. I've been really heavy in the docs throughout my studies, but I think it'd definitely be a good idea to read through the 3560 guide (I'm a little more unfamiliar with some sections there).

My plan for the next 30 days is to primarily focus on TS labs and get more comfortable there. I can troubleshoot most issues, but troubleshooting them within 10 minutes or less is tough. I've improved a lot, since my TS practice involves 1) INE TS labs, and 2) Building/breaking topologies. A CCIE I really look up to actually gave me this advice- when he pretty much said "just play with stuff..you'll learn more that way" so I've adopted that mentality, and it's really helped, so I'm not too dependent on a workbook. I use the workbooks primarily to gauge where I'm at.

Sunday session has begun! Had another CCIE buddy remote into my rack and insert some faults in a topology I had built, and it was really good practice- he inserted several faults and they were a little tricky to resolve (ie: changing the MPLS LDP source, not advertising PE labels, etc). Good practice.

Mrock4

Didn't post last night, but got a lot of great studying in. Did a full TS lab (INE) and actually passed, but I was just a tiny bit over the time limit. I flew through most tickets but got caught by one which I was stumped on for about 20 minutes..and turned out to be something really simple (I want to say it was a misconfigured IP on an interface, or something like that). All in all I did well, though. I definitely feel like I've strengthened my TS skills through practice/work, so hopefully it serves me well for the exam.

Mrock4

Got about 5 hours in last night. Today will probably be a lighter study day as I'm traveling (driving, unfortunately..I generally study on planes and in airports).

Mrock4

Today was a scheduled light day, but I got some labbing in regardless. I also plotted out my next 20 days until my lab attempt, listing what lab/topic I'll be attacking that day. Most of the time between now and my attempt will be troubleshooting various technologies, with a few full labs thrown in, and a tiny bit of misc stuff (like consciously thinking about my lab strategy, time management, and ensuring I remember my TCL script syntax, etc)

Also, call me crazy, but I ordered the same keyboard I'm told is used in the lab, so I can get used to it during my full practice labs.

carterw65

Sounds like a good plan. Keep it up, perseverance will pay off!

Mrock4

Working on a full lab today. Got through all L2/IGP/BGP/IPv6 in 3 hours. Not bad, but I am shooting for closer to 2 hours so I have plenty of time to get through the non-core topics. I think I'm on-par to actually finish this lab early, though. Back to the lab!

blueberries

Just curious, do you lab in gns3 or in the physical realm with big black boxes? Where do you get the lab scenarios from?

Mrock4

I lab in GNS3 and on my physical rack. Occasionally I use rack rentals too, as I travel about 75% of the time for work. I use INE scenarios primarily for the config/TS sections, and I do a great deal of what I call unstructured labbing- where I'll build a large network (via GNS3), and configure all sorts of topics (usually the ones I'm worst at). I believe in the power of play- so I spend a lot of time breaking things and trying to learn that way.

Mrock4

Did another INE TS lab. Finished in 1 hr 56 minutes- cutting it WAY too close! I did pass, though, I completed 9/10 tickets, but only passed 8/10 as I made a dumb mistake on one. Ironically the only ticket I skipped seemed really easy but I just couldn't get it to work, so I moved on.

Mrock4

Brain is officially fried for today. Tomorrow is an off day (every Sunday is a non-study day for me, and I generally do about 4-6 hours on Saturdays). Should be able to squeeze in about 40 hours of study each week until my exam as long as work isn't too crazy. I've decided to scale back my full labs a bit and focus more on TS, as I need to speed up a lot. My goal is to average about 6 minutes per ticket, and I'm at about 10 minutes now. If I stuck with 10 minutes per ticket I'd be OK, but the problem is you inevitably run into that ticket that takes longer than 10 minutes, and I'd like to plan for that. Obviously if I go too much over 10 minutes I'll have to move on, but I want to attempt as many tickets as I can just in case.

blueberries

Can you telnet me some of your discipline, bruh? At least let me download it from a torrents site. I'm still trying to figure out MPLS and got about ten pages read today.