CCIE Advice

silver145

Hi all, i have started the track of CCIE! After reading pretty much all of Ninja's blog and a few others i thought this would be a good place to ask for advice!

i am aspiring to take my CCIE written first (of course) so lots of reading etc. I have just purchased a subscription with INE (mainly for the videos at this point to mix in with the reading) and the workbooks for later,

What order of learning would be recommended, books/video's wise? E.G i dont want to dive into QOS first thing then regret it the next day etc.

Any input is welcome and thanks in advanced!

spiderjericho

Reaper, Rakem, Zartan, Ahriakin and a few others haven't responded yet. But I'm sure you could follow the INE recommended reading list or the gargantuan Cisco Recommended Reading List.

There's also Rohan's Routing Bits text book, which is supposed to be a good encyclopedia/reference.

silver145

Hi Spider, thanks for the reply! Any "logical" order i should be attacking these books or is it a dive in and see what works best approach?

spiderjericho

You can try to follow this:

Recommended CCIE Books | INE

Then maybe read the Certification Kit, Routing Bits (Routing-Bits | Filling the Gaps) and do Boson tests. Obviously, INE has several video series. It's really up to how comfortable you are with the material. Obviously, I'm not a CCIE (and won't start the journey until next year).

Again, I'd really wait for input from one of the actual CCIEs because their advice is a lot better than mine. We also have quite a few people who are preparing to take the lab exam (James, MROCK, etc).

I wish you luck and will definitely follow your journey if you decide to begin a thread.

silver145

Excellent, appreciate the links and will await to see what the other guys say!

Whats the reason you are starting the IE next year may i ask?

reaper81

Hi silver!

There's basically two approaches for the written. Either prepare for the written separately or start preparing for the lab from the beginning and pass the written as a step in preparing for the lab.

I did the written first by focusing on that. I prepared for roughly 6 months for it by doing lots of reading. I think you can wait with videos until you are preparing for the lab. Some books you should read at least in part:

[FONT=Verdana, BitStream vera Sans, Helvetica, sans-serif]Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, BitStream vera Sans, Helvetica, sans-serif]TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1: The Protocols[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, BitStream vera Sans, Helvetica, sans-serif]Internetworking with TCP/IP Vol.1: Principles, Protocols, and Architecture (4th Edition)[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, BitStream vera Sans, Helvetica, sans-serif]CCIE Routing and Switching Certification Guide (4th Edition)[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, BitStream vera Sans, Helvetica, sans-serif]Routing TCP/IP, Volume 1 (2nd Edition)[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, BitStream vera Sans, Helvetica, sans-serif]Routing TCP/IP, Volume II (CCIE Professional Development)[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, BitStream vera Sans, Helvetica, sans-serif]Developing IP Multicast Networks, Volume I[/FONT]

These are all great books and I think it's important to have a solid foundation to stand on. The most important ones are the cert guide and Routing TCP/IP. To prepare for the written test I also used the test engine from Boson. I found it to be similar in difficulty to the real thing and the explanations in the answers were good.

Good luck!

silver145

Thanks for the reply there reaper, Yeah i do not have much "implementation" experience so i am reading like crazy to get the foundation in place, i have read a few of the above books but i will make sure to give the others a read too, taking advantage of my safari account! i find the videos useful as "memory refreshers" or when i get tired of reading i can manage another hour or two of videos and re-go over in my head what i had actually just read.

I appreciate the reply!

spiderjericho

silver145 wrote: »

Whats the reason you are starting the IE next year may i ask?

If you look in the WGU Student experience thread, I posted about my last year. But between trying to finish my degree at WGU, dealing with parenthood and being in the military, I'm a little burnt out to commit to the 8 month to year+ CCIE journey.

In the mean time, I can pursue a few other lighter certs like CCNP Security, CISM and Linux+/LPIC1 (and possibly ITIL Expert).

They will be releasing version 5 in the fall, so I don't have to stress about trying to meet a dead line. The only thing I may sacrifice is my free test vouchers. I know a lady at Cisco who is willing to throw vouchers my way due to my family situation. Hopefully, she remains there for the next 2 years.

rakem

All the advice in this thread is pretty good. INE stuff is invaluable so use that as much as possible, their forums are also quite good.

The only thing I would do differently is to do the lab exam closer to the written.
I waited around 14 months to sit the lab after I passed the written.

If I was to do it again (and I might do another one soon) I would study for both the written and lab at the same time, and sit the lab within 1 or two months of the written.

But this all depends on your previous knowledge and learnings...

silver145

Much appreciated, just trying to decide which step to approach them both with now!

gorebrush

I've been pondering this point of sitting them both closer together - it makes perfect sense.

You get 18 months to sit the lab (and pass) after taking the written. Why waste 12 months waiting to study for the lab when you could take the written, go kill the lab 2 months later - if one were to fail the lab on their first attempt, they'd still have 16 months to resit. I think the real danger of leaving it too long is that you'd end up taking the written again - it wouldn't be difficult, ultimately you'd be forking out for another written exam.

However, the flip side of this though - v5 is coming soon... if you left the written exam till later then you'd need to get the v5 topics in there as well. Although, this would be irrelevant and moaning about the v5 change - in my opinion -does not an expert make. We all know v5 is coming at some stage, and I've read a few opinions on this - the bottom line is....... Routing and Switching is going to be Routing and Switching. 80% will remain the same.

Having thought about this a bit longer, I do think I may well put my written attempt back. I won't cancel it - just move it back till like December. That to me does sound like a better idea. If it changes to v5 in the meantime, well I'll just suck it up.

Mrock4

I might even venture to suggest that v5 will be 90%+ the same. More devices, perhaps all virtual, but essentially the same, with some improvements perhaps (ie: we get PfR 3.0 on IOS 15 as opposed to the horrible pre-3.0 PfR code on 12.4T). On the downside, EEM in IOS 15 is much more advanced, so that opens the doors up for some really interesting EEM tasks.

silver145

Excellent points, i am not too worried about the written as when i take the CCIE the version 5 changes would have already taken place (aiming to have this within 18months) give or take depending on the effort i can put in. So most likely by this point it will be the new version! at least then i will be safe in knowing that the version will not change for a few years haha!

aragoen_celtdra

Good luck on your quest. I'll be following your journey as you and I are about in the same time frame.