2011 CCIE Candidate Objectives

We are into the fat of October already. November offers a full but short month. December two weeks before social and family commitments suck up the study time.

Essentially 9-10 weeks tops left for most people in 2011. What are your study goals in the remainder of 2011 so you can rest over Christmas and come into the new year strong to defeat the lab in 2012? We must study hard between now and New Year to make it. A good number of threads on TE going well for CCIE. The next 9 weeks are critical so momentum is not lost. It's all about preparing for 2012! Do it now, or lose next year! Fight. Win. But be sure to keep performing at work and at home meanwhile

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Bl8ckr0uter

Good luck to all of our CCIE hopefuls

Anyone know how big a jump it is from CCNP:S to CCIE:S? Just curious...

Turgon

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

Good luck to all of our CCIE hopefuls

Anyone know how big a jump it is from CCNP:S to CCIE:S? Just curious...

Very large. It's the special forces cert and with good reason. Time to study is the key and regularly! 9 passes in my 5 years on TE amongst the regulars. Probably 2000 CISSPs in that time. CCNP of all flavours you can pass with relatively little lab time. Any IE requires 1000 hours of lab time more or less. Sorts the men out from the boys. Stop playing WoW.

shodown

I"m almost done with a few job related cert's I had to get. It took a lot of time to do them the right way, I hope to be done with another exam by the end of the month and I can ride out 2011 back on finishing up strong and be 70 percent ready to take the written.

Turgon

shodown wrote: »

I"m almost done with a few job related cert's I had to get. It took a lot of time to do them the right way, I hope to be done with another exam by the end of the month and I can ride out 2011 back on finishing up strong and be 70 percent ready to take the written.

Glad to hear it. I have followed your progress and Im pleased you are contining on. You are clearly capable but as so often happens you got swamped to *do* the work while people in your organisation have lots of time on their hands in the office to prepare for the IE.

shodown

I had to do some nexus training and some other specialization certs. Glad its over if you don't hurry up and test after the class its a long road to pass when you don't get any experience with it.

Bl8ckr0uter

Turgon wrote: »

Very large. It's the special forces cert and with good reason. Time to study is the key and regularly! 9 passes in my 5 years on TE amongst the regulars. Probably 2000 CISSPs in that time. CCNP of all flavours you can pass with relatively little lab time. Any IE requires 1000 hours of lab time more or less. Sorts the men out from the boys. Stop playing WoW.

I was just curious. I have the chance to work with something like 20 ASAs (all models and such) at a soon to be cisco partner (when I go kill the cisco sales expert---yuck

). For a wanna be infosec pro, I was just curious about the ROI.

down77

shodown wrote: »

I had to do some nexus training and some other specialization certs. Glad its over if you don't hurry up and test after the class its a long road to pass when you don't get any experience with it.

Makes 2 of us on the Datacenter/Nexus specialization requirements... along with a deep dive into storage fabrics in general. I had to get DCSNS (Storage Design) and IASNS (Advanced Storage Implementation) material out of the way which had slowed some of the QoS and Composite progress. I had to use the PEC offerings for this since the courses were out of the question due to travel commitments. I will say that designing/troubleshooting Cisco SAN fabrics helps to reinforce a lot of Layer 2 concepts that we take for granted!

I'll throw my hat in the ring for at least a CCIE R&S Written attempt in the near future. I'll probably start on INE Vol 1 after finishing the composite, along with finishing the require technology and theory tomes to round out gaps in knowledge.

Bl8ckr0uter: the CSE exams aren't too bad. Try the CXFS exam where the available material is horrible and the exam itself was a pain. The one benefit of taking the CCIE Written is that it renews the partner specializations without the need for a retake on that one!

Turgon

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

I was just curious. I have the chance to work with something like 20 ASAs (all models and such) at a soon to be cisco partner (when I go kill the cisco sales expert---yuck ). For a wanna be infosec pro, I was just curious about the ROI.

It wouldn't hurt. Ahriakin are resident Security CCIE could advise you Im sure.

Kelkin

shodown wrote: »

I had to do some nexus training and some other specialization certs. Glad its over if you don't hurry up and test after the class its a long road to pass when you don't get any experience with it.

Sounds like we are going down similar paths..

Bl8ckr0uter

I've talked to him. This may be way too premature but IF I can get the CCNP:S done by Feb/March, I may try to take the written next year, just for kicks lol like August or so (when I get out of school). I think it should be doable. I just wonder if I have enough experience to even think about CCIE lol. That hasn't stopped me before

jamesp1983

I hope to have the written passed by December '11 at the absolute latest. I will purchase my remaining lab equipment once I pass the written. I should have a complete lab by mid-January (thanks to the extra income due to the new job). I need 1 more switch, and 5 routers. My plan is to ramp up my studies and push hard until December '12 on all of the INE workbooks. I'd also like to sit a Narbik bootcamp some time in 2012. I'd like to get the lab passed by the end of next year.

Turgon

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

I've talked to him. This may be way too premature but IF I can get the CCNP:S done by Feb/March, I may try to take the written next year, just for kicks lol like August or so (when I get out of school). I think it should be doable. I just wonder if I have enough experience to even think about CCIE lol. That hasn't stopped me before

Why not have a go. Some people with little or no experience have become IE's and that doesn't apply to yourself. The CCIE and experience is a funny one. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it's a hinderance! I shouldn't let lack of experience in some areas guide your decision as any CCIE track requires a candidate to learn lots of new applications of mechanisms and new mechanisms. What should guide you is if you think you can dedicate the time to studying the track. But if you dont find the time to get through it, the process does teach you a few things along the way!

Bl8ckr0uter

Damn Turgon, I can hear the Rocky theme now lol.

At any rate, I just took a look at the objectives and it would seem to me (and this is from a noobs perspective) that someone who did a decent amount of extra studying during the CCNP:S (and possibly at least read the CCNP books and other Routing/Switching books) could pass the CCIE:S written without too much extra effort. The scope for the security seems "smaller" but that probably means more in depth. Some of the books on the suggested reading list, I already own. Someone, it would seem, are extremely dated. I'll need to see how I feel after CCNP:S (and linux+ for school). It would be really cool to graduate with an AAS in Network Engineering and be well on my way to a CCIE!

It seems like it would be hard but when I read this I feel like I could do it: http://www.techexams.net/forums/ccie/36057-ccie-sec-lab-diary-how-make-ahriakins-brain-implode.html

This is something stupid that I am worried about (but I'll throw it out there). I don't want to get tunnel vision and have problems doing anything else (besides Cisco). I like Security, period and I know Cisco Security != InfoSec. So I would just need to make sure I study alternatives and so on.

Turgon

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

Damn Turgon, I can hear the Rocky theme now lol.

At any rate, I just took a look at the objectives and it would seem to me (and this is from a noobs perspective) that someone who did a decent amount of extra studying during the CCNP:S (and possibly at least read the CCNP books and other Routing/Switching books) could pass the CCIE:S written without too much extra effort. The scope for the security seems "smaller" but that probably means more in depth. Some of the books on the suggested reading list, I already own. Someone, it would seem, are extremely dated. I'll need to see how I feel after CCNP:S (and linux+ for school). It would be really cool to graduate with an AAS in Network Engineering and be well on my way to a CCIE!

It seems like it would be hard but when I read this I feel like I could do it: http://www.techexams.net/forums/ccie/36057-ccie-sec-lab-diary-how-make-ahriakins-brain-implode.html

This is something stupid that I am worried about (but I'll throw it out there). I don't want to get tunnel vision and have problems doing anything else (besides Cisco). I like Security, period and I know Cisco Security != InfoSec. So I would just need to make sure I study alternatives and so on.

Have a crack at it. Back in 2001 I took the CCIE written test and passed first time out. Beyond that my lab preparations stalled. But I can say that preparing for the written and passing it back then was a great confidence booster when my career was still relatively young. You can't lose really.

Ahriakin

Be warned, the Written exam (at least for the security side) has very little to do with the lab, it's mainly generic theory. Good knowledge mostly in it's own right but tbh it's not a very good metric for whether you are ready for the lab or not. I agree with Turgon though, try it anyway. Nobody does it with full confidence they already have the skill/experience and it'll be a pushover, anyone with a chance of passing has to respect the beast

. If you aren't ready you will know as you progress. The wealth of training material out there means you will have more information and more lab sims than you will have time so you can knock yourself out testing your skills along the way....and you'll pick up a ton of better practices, efficiencies and knowledge as you go - and that is key, remember you are primarily studying the technology and 'just' practicing it's implementation, do not approach it as just doing what is necessary to pass or it will essentially be worthless.

Turgon

Ahriakin wrote: »

Be warned, the Written exam (at least for the security side) has very little to do with the lab, it's mainly generic theory. Good knowledge mostly in it's own right but tbh it's not a very good metric for whether you are ready for the lab or not. I agree with Turgon though, try it anyway. Nobody does it with full confidence they already have the skill/experience and it'll be a pushover, anyone with a chance of passing has to respect the beast . If you aren't ready you will know as you progress. The wealth of training material out there means you will have more information and more lab sims than you will have time so you can knock yourself out testing your skills along the way....and you'll pick up a ton of better practices, efficiencies and knowledge as you go - and that is key, remember you are primarily studying the technology and 'just' practicing it's implementation, do not approach it as just doing what is necessary to pass or it will essentially be worthless.

I think that's really important what you said there. I find the CCIE lab prep to be something of a craftsman journey as opposed to a race to get qualified and unless you do it all again for a second IE, it's unlikely that an individual will go through such a journey again in their career. So it's, at least for me, a real learning opportunity and a long term one. Many of the things I have worked over the last few years on the track have been invaluable to my work in the field in design meetings as well as implementation and troubleshooting. It's a great opportunity to learn how things really work. Once there then you need to put the consistant time in to be able to build a lot of things mostly right first time to meet requirements in a tight timeframe.

Bl8ckr0uter

Ok. I am game.

rakem

I will have passed the written in the next few weeks.
Will begin lab study in 2012. Whether I actually sit the lab is another question - my new job is totally juniper based so i may attempt their *IE certs.

However i plan to continue study for no other reason than self improvement.

jamesp1983

rakem wrote: »

I will have passed the written in the next few weeks.
Will begin lab study in 2012. Whether I actually sit the lab is another question - my new job is totally juniper based so i may attempt their *IE certs.

However i plan to continue study for no other reason than self improvement.

good luck with the written! I am hoping to do the same in the next few weeks.

stuh84

I'm aiming to get the Written done by the end of the year. I kind of feel like I've been studying all year for it as the CCIP I did half as preparation for the CCIE and half as I didn't want to start the CCIE properly until my financial situation was stable enough to put the amount of cash down I would need to for resources, labbing materials and so forth.

While my reading hours says 12 at the moment, honestly I'm probably many times over that with BGP, MPLS and QoS.

Besides work, my only real commitment is music, so I don't have dependent family (i.e. children or a wife/girlfriend) to look after or anything like that. This suits my approach of wanting the written done by the end of the year, as I can study whenever I have the time available, which is quite often short of anything exploding at work.

As for practical goals? Complete the R&S Certification Guide by the end of this month at the absolute latest, start going through the Routing TCP/IP books to fill in any gaps in my knowledge, take some practice tests along the way, and have a crack at the exam before it gets to the end of December. My birthday is 4 days before Christmas, so I'd be looking at taking the test earlier than this, probably around mid December I hope at latest.

gbadman

stuh84 wrote: »

As for practical goals? Complete the R&S Certification Guide by the end of this month at the absolute latest, start going through the Routing TCP/IP books to fill in any gaps in my knowledge, take some practice tests along the way, and have a crack at the exam before it gets to the end of December. My birthday is 4 days before Christmas, so I'd be looking at taking the test earlier than this, probably around mid December I hope at latest.

How old are you going to be? Is it a round number?;) I know the feeling. I hope to have my number by my 30th birthday. 2.5 years to do it. So little time! I'm still struggling to get through the CCIP.

stuh84

I'm 26, coming up 27. I am looking at the same, I want to have this done by the time I'm 30, although thats an aim rather than a requirement for me.