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
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
Follow my CCDE journey at www.routingnull0.com
Comments
IPSec VPN Design 44%
Mastering VMWare vSphere 5 42.8%
You are right about the ones who didn't make it. Life gets in the way. It happens to the best of us.
Make sure to keep us updated on your progress!
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lewislampkin (Please connect: Just say you're from TechExams.Net!)
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.
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.
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.
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lewislampkin (Please connect: Just say you're from TechExams.Net!)
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?
Think of the 2:00 a.m. test—if you were awakened in the
middle of the night because of a network problem and had to figure out the
traffic flows in your network while you were half asleep, could you do it?
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!
SP is basically R&S Part Deux...it would be awesome for you to land at an ISP based on your goal
Think of the 2:00 a.m. test—if you were awakened in the
middle of the night because of a network problem and had to figure out the
traffic flows in your network while you were half asleep, could you do it?
Blog: www.network-node.com
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
IPSec VPN Design 44%
Mastering VMWare vSphere 5 42.8%
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.
IPSec VPN Design 44%
Mastering VMWare vSphere 5 42.8%
Will GNS3 run IOS 15? Not sure about the new one coming out either.
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.cfgIPSec VPN Design 44%
Mastering VMWare vSphere 5 42.8%