Second round

thadizzy

Since I'm new to the forum I might aswell introduce myself.


With an already passed CCIE in the baggage you might think I'm satified.. you couldn't be more wrong!
After passing the last last year in April I spent the summer picking what my next track would be. After getting a new job working entierly with Cisco Wireless the choise got simple.
However CCIE Wireless is an extremely far more demanding track than CCIE R&S was due to the lack of study material. Cisco made a well needed update to the programme in the autumn to V2 which pushes the version of the software and features up to the current standard. A well needed update since the old track had fallen behind way more than healthy.


The interest for CCIE Wireless is still extremely small, there still are 0 certified people in Europe and about 50 overseas where the vast majority works for Cisco. I like this, CCIE R&S is a great foundation but there are so many out there. I like being abit more unique



The study plan is as following,


* IPexpert Blended Learning Solution (BLS) Self-Study Bundle Wireless 2.0 - Bought it, but the material itself is not finished. First products expected to start dropping in around April.
This will be my base material for studying. What scares me is that I bought the CCNP Wireless material which the same author created and I was far from happy with it. Hopefully it was a more rushed out product while they take their time on this one.


* Fastlane's CCIE Wireless V2.0 Workbook / Lab Package (CCIEW-WBP1)
Will purchase this and go through it some slow week in the summer. Expecting this material to have huge overlaps with the IPexpert material but thats fine..


* Fastlane's CCIE Wireless V2.0 Lab Bootcamp (CCIEWL)
This is high on the wanted list but this course is extremely difficult to attend because it rarely happends. I might try to team up with former Wireless colleges and current wireless colleges to try and get this course lauched in Sweden. Main reason to do this bootcamp at all is because it is handled by Jerome Henry, a legend in the CCIE Wireless business. If posible I'll try to schedule this bootcamp as close to the real lab as posible but in reality I think that will be extremely difficult.


* One more before the first scheduled lab I'm intending to send the wife and baby on holiday to her parents for a month to get some hardcore studytime. She already agreed to this, haven't I got the best wife



Looking at the history the CCIE Wireless lab is not just about wireless. A huge aspect of the lab is regarding wired technologies (focus on QoS and Multicast) and CCIE Wireless candidates usually lack this knowledge.
Having a CCIE in R&S is a huge benefit because of this.


Like I said I work with a fairly large wireless installation which really helps me. To make things even more benefitial my collegue at work is a Cisco wireless instructor and a huge knowledge source. So things are truely in favour this time
On the downside time is extremely limited having my first baby girl born in Dec 2011. However started looking into the sparse material that exists today, and after going through a few books on the CCIE level I rate my knowledge on the subject
fairly high. Theorywise I feel myself at 75% with a few holes. And since I work/troubleshoot a huge environment on a daily basis it really helps my lab experience. I don't see myself needed the same massive kind of time put into this to get a PASS on the lab as I did for the R&S track.

I will not be tracking specific lab-hours because this interleaves with daily work to a high degree.

Essendon

A CCIE: Wireless would be really cool, I aint ever heard of someone holding that moniker. I'll be following your progress with interest, though I cannot provide any advice whatsoever, the motivation I get from reading such threads is immense. Good luck!

reaper81

Cool, a fellow swede Good luck with the wireless.

mikearama

First IE: Wireless in all of Europe?!?! Damn bro, that's outstanding. Keep at it... and good luck.

And hell yes, you have an amazing wife. Mine would shoot me for making that suggestion.

Forsaken_GA

thadizzy wrote: »

With an already passed CCIE in the baggage you might think I'm satified.. you couldn't be more wrong!

Nope, I won't be either. Once I pass the R&S, I'm going to start down the Juniper path, and will likely target JNCIE, but when it comes time to recertify the IE, I won't be happy with just passing the R&S written exam, I plan to start down another IE path. After all, if I need to recertify, might as well keep adding value to my skillset. As that decision will be at least a couple years out, I won't know which IE path I'll pursue after R&S (given my current employer, SP makes the most sense, though personally, I find Storage the most interesting track of the non-R&S ones)

thadizzy

Studying is addictive.. it just sucks reallife comes in the way sometimes.
The storage track will somewhat cease to exist when Cisco extend it to become the CCIE Datacenter (most likely this will be released at Cisco Live 2012 in San Diego). SAN will still be a huge part of the track but I guess not as big as it is now. Got in slight contact with the FiberChannel protocol on the Cisco Nexus 2000/5000 courses, quite an interesting protocol.

bermovick

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Nope, I won't be either. Once I pass the R&S, I'm going to start down the Juniper path, and will likely target JNCIE, but when it comes time to recertify the IE, I won't be happy with just passing the R&S written exam, I plan to start down another IE path. After all, if I need to recertify, might as well keep adding value to my skillset. As that decision will be at least a couple years out, I won't know which IE path I'll pursue after R&S (given my current employer, SP makes the most sense, though personally, I find Storage the most interesting track of the non-R&S ones)

I couldn't agree more (although my poison will be the security track most likely)

thadizzy

Big step forward today. Got confirmation that the Fastlane Wireless CCIE lab workshop will be happening in Europe this autumn.. it have only been arranged one time before in Europe, thats how rare this occasion is
Made it happend by gathering people for the bootcamp myself and managed to get 4 on the interest list (that is their boss agreed to pay for it lol) .. and 4 is the magic number to get a course going..

Seems we're at least 3 working on our CCIE Wireless in Sweden after all.

MrBrian

Wow, awesome stuff. I too was shocked with what you said.. No CCIE: Wireless people in Europe!? That's insane. Wish I was in your position to be a pioneer of sorts going down a new certification path. How many are there total? Anyways, good luck to you on that, and please keep posting to the forum! I'll be interested in following your progress.

thadizzy

Was discussing with my boss about buying a full lab for CCIE studies and future demo purposes for customers.. and he agreed to let me buy it.
Cisco is releasing their CUWN 7.0 NFR kit in 2-3 weeks time which allows you to get a virtual NCS and MSE for a little as $150.
That is a massive change from before since the MSE only existed as a physical appliance server which costed a fortune.

All NFR/partner software comes as VMware images, got no platform to host it on but got an okay to buy a server for the ESXi hosting aswell. My boss is the best

Just need some way of getting a powerful enough server capable of hosting ISE/NCS/MSE/ACS 5.2 virtual appliances since this lab will be running at my place. My wife is not gonna enjoy having a fullblown server here, need to find a quiet one..

Looks like I got myself a lab!

PsychoFin

Hi there!

Awesome to see a fellow Scandi (Uppsala ) attempt some Wireless stuff! I'm busy with the CWNP track myself, and might start on the CCNP: Wireless once I've taken a few more of the CWNP vendor neutral ones.

WLAN is awesome, only problem is lack of material (CCNP) and equipment is too expensive!

Cheers,
Fin

thadizzy

Schematic logical picture of my homelab.



This topology is designed to fit the 12p switch and allows you to do anything except wired guest networking. Need 5508 controllers for that which would mean a massive jump in the price range. Not worth it for me.

If anybody building a similar lab setup and is curious about components I'll happily share what I've used, feel free to send me a PM.

thadizzy

Made tons of progress since last post. Finished IPexpert volume 1 material, waiting for volume 2 to be released.
Got hold of Fastlanes workbook and I've booked racktime whole week 32 (24/7) and will go over the material.

All in all I feel good about this and the progress I'm making.

Planning to go for my first lab attempt this autumn instead of in the spring if the bootcamp in September goes well.
So all in all I got two fulltime weeks (one dedicated racktime week 24/7) and one bootcamp coming up.

Right now it feels I got good odds to beat the lab at the first shot but its usually never that easy..

This whole study process is for sure alot easier this time.

Some interesting stats Cisco reveiled on Cisco Live in San Diego. At 2nd of April 2012 the total number of CCIEs worldwide:

Total of Routing and Switching CCIEs: 22,601
Total of Security CCIEs: 3,615
Total of Service Provider CCIEs: 2,525
Total of Voice CCIEs: 1,895
Total of Storage Networking CCIEs: 183
Total of Wireless CCIEs: 39

That were even fewer than I expected for the wireless track, looks like a good path to go!

ipSpace

Wow, that is great. I am dealing with some wireless at work (WLC 5500 and 4400 & a WCS of course).

I am following your thread, keep at it (i know you will, you're a CCIE already :P )

Best of luck!

thadizzy

Went to Fastlane's CCIE preparation bootcamp this week and it was quite an eye opener for me.
I'm really fast when it comes to configuration, but this lab is something extreme.
Finished off the bootcamp with an 8 hour mocklab which is what I wanted most out of this bootcamp.
It went so so, mostly got annoyed I did not have the time to verify any configuration but the instructor said that can be expected from the real lab as well. You barely have the time to do it once, and you better get it correct.. no time to try out all configuration that it acctually works.

On a technical level I did good, but in the stress I misunderstood alot of questions, this is something I need to work on.
Checked the lab schedule in Brussels and there is barely any bookings for the autumn.

Will go over the lab more deeply and then decide if I'm ready for my first attempt, then I might do it in just a few weeks time.

All in all, learning the technologies is only halfway for this track.. the stress moment is much more extreme for this track than for the R&S lab, I'm not a fan of this. On my pass day for the R&S I did the whole configuration section in 3h, and had 1h to go over all configuration and verify it.
That is something I just can dream of on the wireless lab :-/

thadizzy

First lab scheduled for Jan-04-2013..
Feels abit late but thats the joy of having small children in the house

RouteMyPacket

Talk about inspirational, most people dream of being a loan CCIE let alone a dual CCIE. I'm thinking you're greedy. hehehe

I'll follow your progress as I am interested to hear your thoughts on the Wireless track. Personally i'm shooting for Security but as mentioned above I have NEVER run into a CCIE Wireless, only R&S and Voice have I worked around.

Major props to you.

thadizzy

3,5 weeks to go until 4th of Jan - its getting close.
Have had a small break since the October bootcamp (at least no hardcore studying since then, just smaller sessions).
I've made a schedule for myself where I basicly go over all available studymaterial for the third time.
I'm about halfway through the technology specific material and so far it feels great. No obvious areas I lack knowledge in, just a small details here and there which is OK.

To make my life abit more difficuly, I had planned to do IPexpert's fullscale labs now in Dec (only 4 available, but 4 is better than none) but proctorlabs will not have their CCIE Wireless v2.0 lab ready until Q1 2013. So basicly there is no matching toplogy that fits the labs.. this is very frustrating. I'll try to do the labs in my own rack but this is really not the same thing. What can you do.

Everything still looks fine and I think I will be as ready as I ever will be the 4th of Jan for the first lab attempt.

The biggest difficulty with the lab will be to puzzle the lab itself together in terms of WHERE to apply configuration etc. Without being able to do fullscale labbing in a proper way its not very easy to practise this. Alot of tricks for the CCIE Wireless exam comes down to wording and configure things the way THEY want it.

thadizzy

Off to the airport, heading to Brussel and the lab.
Brought the Fastlane books which I will go over in the evening..

Ivanjam

@thadizzy - good luck, Sir! We are all rooting for you!

jamesp1983

thadizzy wrote: »

Off to the airport, heading to Brussel and the lab.
Brought the Fastlane books which I will go over in the evening..

Good luck! You got this!

Danielh22185

Good luck to you on this. I too will follow your progress. Wireless has always interested me and I plan on doing a specialization path like this at a later time as well.

shodown

Good Luck

MrBrian

Good luck!

Zartanasaurus

Based on the timezone differential he should be at Cisco right now about to start.

Ivanjam

*Fingers crossed* - it's good to see our own TE guys up there with the best in the world!

Ahriakin

Best of luck, come back with your shield or on it

jamesp1983

I hope it went well.

thadizzy

Back home now, still no mail from cisco with the result.. very uncommon to do this track so might take the told up to 48h to get the result.

The lab felt extremely good, I finished the lab with 3h to go, spent 2h going it all over again and then left 1h early.
Managed to do all tasks, nothing I did not know how to solve and all according to the requirements.

But this is a lab which still could fail, but I give myself good odds..
Very excited now for the result.

sides14

Nice going and best of luck.

Do you feel that experiencing the time management constraints in the CCIE R&S were beneficial lessons in the CCIE wireless track? Just curious if your nerves are a little more calm after you already experienced the storm in the past.

thadizzy

Hard to tell, I never had much problems with the time management. I've always done the labs the wrong way, pretty much do the tasks in the order they come. Sometimes this approach means you'll redo some things, but for me thats OK.
Never had issues with time for either of the tracks except the first attempt for R&S, but then I got it handed to me because I simply wasn't ready really. On the other 3 labs I've done I always managed to finish the lab with about 2-3h to go, which leaves 2h-3h for verifying (which I never fully used, I always left 1h-1.5h early).

But I'm really fast at doing CLI configuration, for both tracks - most likely alot quicker than the average candidate.

If you come well prepared the tasks are really simple, and you can rush through the lab really quickly. It is when you're not sure how to do things the clock starts ticking really fast....