CCIE Thread: The right time.

Today, I passed TSHOOT and I am officially a CCNP:R&S. I should be satisfied with this and try to find a job to get more experience before attempting CCIE:R&S. Unfortunately, I have an addiction to challenges. I am constantly hungry for more knowledge and I feel obligated to push my studies towards CCIE.

As some of you may know, I left the military 2 months ago and started studying towards CCNP. I was a network administrator/engineer for around 3 years at my brigade and the SME for classified networks for around a year. In the military, I didn’t have any certifications as it made no difference for job advancement. The only thing that made me gain the respect of my peers was being knowledgeable and good at my job. Even today, I believe that a certification is just a piece of paper and it’s only real benefit is the knowledge you acquire through the journey to get it. This is why I want to pursue the CCIE certification; for the knowledge not the number.

I’ve read a lot of threads on peoples CCIE journeys and I’ve seen some succeed and a lot fail. It seems that the main reason most people fail or give up their CCIE studies is because of constant interruption by life, family or work. I have an opportunity to pursue the CCIE certification without any interruptions from these variables and I can’t say that, in the future, the right conditions for success will ever present themselves again. For this reason, this is the right time for me to start the journey. This is my CCIE thread.
Follow me at www.routingnull0.com

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Zartanasaurus

I just looked over your plan. I see you listed "Doc CD selected topics" as part of your Phase I plan. That's good. There are a few topics that are very lightly touched on (if at all) in the Official Cert Guide that I would definitely recommend you not overlook. They will come out as part of the Boson practice tests, but it's helpful to study it before you get there. I'd definitely read the guides on EEM, RMON and OER.

FloOz

Really nice study plan you made there. Congrats again on CCNP and good luck on your CCIE studies.

carterw65

Having a plan is a great start to the goal. Good luck on your studies, I will be following your progress.

You are right about the ones who didn't make it. Life gets in the way. It happens to the best of us.

Master Of Puppets

Looks like a solid plan! Good luck on the journey, keep us posted.

instant000

I really like your aggressive schedule.

Make sure to keep us updated on your progress!

Ismaeljrp

Awesome commitment. Wish you the best of luck.

Dieg0M

It's been a week now since I started studying for CCIE. I'm half way through Routing TCP/IP vol I and finished going over most of the IGP's. Also, I'm almost done building my CCIE lab. I've been writing a couple of blogs at www.routingnull0.com on the topics I have covered so far. All the support is greatly appreciated and any input is more than welcomed.

Routerronin

I didnt know that Canada had a military. Good luck with your studies.

Dieg0M

Another week has passed. The complexity of the technologies I'm going through and the amount of hours I'm spending studying is starting to wear me down. I'm slowing down the amounts of hours I'm studying and working on getting a part-time job as a network consultant to get my head out of these books and to avoid empty spaces in my resume. A lot of you might understand what "Studying Full Time for CCIE" means but an HR person probably won't understand how someone can be studying without being registered to a school.
I wrote reviews for OSPF, EIGRP and RIP on my blog and I'm finishing up BGP. I'll start Multicast, MPLS and QoS after that because I'm tired of reviewing topics I've already been through in CCNA- CCNP.

Dieg0M

Almost a month has passed now and I have finished reviewing/studying for all the IGP/EGP's and moving to MPLS, Multicast networks, QoS and some other advanced technologies. I will finish strong by reading some more core technologies later.
I had a technical phone interview recently and I'll share the questions asked once they let me know their decision. Also, I have been offered several other job opportunities and might start working for one of them to get more experience in a large international production network. In a big company, I'll have access to high end routers and some 6500's to practice on.
I'm kinda tired of reading so much, I might start labbing soon as I feel I learn faster in hands-on situations. Also, I think I might reduce my blogs to twice a week as it is starting to be very time consuming even for a small articles.

instant000

Routerronin wrote: »

I didnt know that Canada had a military.

Hahahahaha.

If I could rep you, I would.

On a more serious topic, I really like Diego's blog, and wish that I made orderly notes like that to track my studies.

RouteMyPacket

What is a "CCIE Candidate"? CCENT, CCNA, CCNP? You're an NP so wear it proudly and drop the CCENT/CCNA..sheesh!

Ok, now that I have set you straight there. I'd do my best to land a job that will allow you to use what skills you have now and push you further all coupled with your IE studies. I've learned (the hard way) that certification is not a sprint, it's a marathon. Set a series of goals along the way that lead to your IE lab.

The lab should be your focus, the written means nothing. Good work on your blog, looks good. What kind of gig are you trying to land, ISP?

Dieg0M

RouteMyPacket wrote: »

What is a "CCIE Candidate"? CCENT, CCNA, CCNP? You're an NP so wear it proudly and drop the CCENT/CCNA..sheesh!

Ok, now that I have set you straight there. I'd do my best to land a job that will allow you to use what skills you have now and push you further all coupled with your IE studies. I've learned (the hard way) that certification is not a sprint, it's a marathon. Set a series of goals along the way that lead to your IE lab.

The lab should be your focus, the written means nothing. Good work on your blog, looks good. What kind of gig are you trying to land, ISP?

Sir, a CCIE candidate is a candidate for CCIE. I acknowledge that I should be proud of being an NP but I'm also proud of my CCENT and CCNA and this is why I wear them. I understand that i'm not a CCIE but I do want people to know what I am going for by quickly looking at my name. As for the mentality of CCIE, I concur it is a marathon and I actually wrote an article on this a couple of weeks back: Hour 52: Pacing yourself | RoutingNull0 - The Network Engineer Path

As for the gigs I am trying to land, I have prospects for part-time contracting jobs as well as full time jobs in large financial and IT institutions. I sent my resume to all ISP's in my area but it seems hard to get through HR without an internal reference. Also, ISP's are more of a Cisco SP Cert path orientation and I am pursuing R&S.

Thanks for your feedback!

RouteMyPacket

ISP = R&S/SP

SP is basically R&S Part Deux...it would be awesome for you to land at an ISP based on your goal

Dieg0M

Quick update: Accepted to do part-time consulting with a private IT firm. I will also use this opportunity to build a bigger network and hopefully get a job in an ISP.

Dieg0M

Accepted full-time job at a very large financial firm (my boss is a former CCIE) and still doing part time consulting. I'll have access to 15.x gear in case CCIE blueprint changes to V5. I scheduled the CCIE written for the 20 december 2013. I'm trying to get the written out of the way to focus on labs. I'm going to New-Jersey next week for training for this new job. I usually get a lot of quality time with the books when I travel.

fredrikjj

Congratulations on getting the job.

FloOz

Congrats on the new job! Goodluck!

Dieg0M

With the CCIEv5 update announcement from INE, I'm really happy I didn't study in detail frame-relay. I don't think I will be ready for the CCIEv4 lab. I will continue studying the core topics and once the official blueprint comes out I'll adapt to it. After the written, I might pick up either CCDA/CCDP, start the SP track or just lab on the technologies I'm sure will be in the V5 Lab.

carterw65

I got a chuckle out of your thread title - The Right Time. I hope it still is with v5.

Dieg0M

New job is taking a lot of my time recently as there is always a learning curve in a new position. I am sneaking 1-3 hours per week nights of studying. They had me fly to NY and be mentored for 2 weeks by a bunch of engineers, some of them CCIE's and most of them CCIE level knowledge. These networks are huge and implement a lot of technologies. There is a lot of redistribution because of an IGP migration they are working on. They also have a bunch of QoS to fix, L3 VPN MPLS, tons of multicast and BGP, multiple side projects involving the security team and they are adding another Data Center to the multiple ones they already have. There is a lot of space for me to learn and grow here. I have good theory and hands-on foundation on these technologies but a ton of practice will definitely help me get my troubleshooting skills faster and help me build speed for the CCIE Lab portion. I have the CCIE Written scheduled for the 20 december and I'll try not to reschedule. Next 2 months are going to be painful, I predict very little sleep.

Iristheangel

Good luck with the new job. I've been keeping track of your progress and it seems like you've been making great strides! Keep it up and keep updating your blog. I love reading since it's teaching me a couple things

Dieg0M

Thank you, I appreciated your encouragements. I have a couple of good blogs coming up.
I am still in N-J and it turns out half of the engineers here are CCIE's. I am getting a lot of insight on what and how I should be studying. Also, we do a lot of PoC and I am learning a lot. There is a lot of good tools available in this network and I don't think the engineers leverage these tools enough. I am going to be working on a lot of projects involving multicast, BGP and MPLS and hopefully get a lot of experience with these technologies. I am currently reading Cisco QOS 2nd edition cover to cover. I'll keep you guys posted and make sure to check out my new blogs, you might learn a thing or two

fredrikjj

I enjoyed your latest blog post, the one about backing up arp tables. Very clever, and something I'll definitely file away for future use.

Zartanasaurus

I just peeked at your blog and noticed you were having multicast issues in GNS3. The problem is the emulation in the Gt96k FE that all of the routers use EXCEPT for the 7200 series. Switch over to the 7200 and all of your problems will be solved. Well except for the fact that NTP causes the 7200s to freeze, but that's minor compared to EIGRP flapping all the time.

Dieg0M

Thanks for the comments to both of you. What is the 7200 IOS version that you would consider the most stable in GNS3? Most of these problems will hopefully be resolved with the new GNS3 coming out.

Zartanasaurus

I ran 12.4 15T9 with no stability issues. The only minor caveats are these:

The interface numbers don't line up the same as they will in the INE books (except R3). Not a big deal, I wrote a powershell script to convert them.
If your preloaded config contains subinterfaces, you have to no shut the man interface even if that was part of the config. With INE, that's going to be R6 when doing WBI material, so you just get used to no shutting that interface at the beginning.
NTP config will lock your routers up after about 15-30 seconds and make them unusable.

When I compared those issues to the issue of always having problems with multicast (a big part of your studies) I went with the 7200 and never looked back. I did use 3725s for the BB routers though.

carterw65

Z - would you mind sharing your PS script and the particulars of using it? I am not well learned on scripting myself. My gear is a little different than INEs so I have to change interfaces each time as well.

Will GNS3 run IOS 15? Not sure about the new one coming out either.

Zartanasaurus

I just poked around on my PC and I don't see that script anywhere. It wasn't anything fancy, just doing a find and replace for Serial 0/ to Serial 1/ (and maybe 1 or 2 other things I can't remember). It wouldn't take that long to do in notepad if you wanted. That's the other benefit of the 7200s, they run IOS 15.

ETA: I spoke to soon. Found it on the backup of my old OS drive.

#rename INE's txt files to cfg for GNS3
rename-item R1.txt R01.cfg
rename-item R2.txt R02.cfg
rename-item R3.txt R03.cfg
rename-item R4.txt R04.cfg
rename-item R5.txt R05.cfg
rename-item R6.txt R06.cfg

#On routers 1,2,4,5,6 rename the 1st serial intf, save to a temp file, then load that file and rename 2nd serial int and save to the final file
gc r01.cfg | % {$_ -replace "Serial0/0", "Serial1/0"} | set-content r11.cfg
gc r11.cfg | % {$_ -replace "Serial0/1", "Serial1/1"} | set-content R1.cfg


gc r02.cfg | % {$_ -replace "Serial0/0", "Serial1/0"} | set-content r12.cfg
gc r12.cfg | % {$_ -replace "Serial0/1", "Serial1/1"} | set-content R2.cfg


gc r04.cfg | % {$_ -replace "Serial0/0/0", "Serial1/0"} | set-content r14.cfg
gc r14.cfg | % {$_ -replace "Serial0/1/0", "Serial1/1"} | set-content R4.cfg


gc r05.cfg | % {$_ -replace "Serial0/0/0", "Serial1/0"} | set-content r15.cfg
gc r15.cfg | % {$_ -replace "Serial0/1/0", "Serial1/1"} | set-content R5.cfg


gc r06.cfg | % {$_ -replace "Serial0/0/0", "Serial1/0"} | set-content r16.cfg
gc r16.cfg | % {$_ -replace "Serial0/0", "Serial1/0"} | set-content R6.cfg

#remove the temp files
remove-item R01.cfg
remove-item R02.cfg
remove-item R04.cfg
remove-item R05.cfg
remove-item R06.cfg


remove-item R11.cfg
remove-item R12.cfg
remove-item R14.cfg
remove-item R15.cfg
remove-item R16.cfg

Dieg0M

I've been studying a lot of QoS recently and I find it ridiculous that we barely touch QoS up to CCIE level. I got 25 days to go until CCIE Written and I don't know if I will be ready. After QoS, I got to brush up on MPLS and NAT and I should be done. I feel that I might be ready but it will be a close one. I've been doing a ton of overtime at work that kept me from studying my regular hours. Hopefully things will calm down during Christmas time and I'll get more study time in.