Fredrik's CCNP thread

Two years of work experience, mostly switching, and I passed the CCNA three months ago. I'm currently unemployed so I have plenty of time to study. I'm three weeks into my Route studies, with the FLG and GNS3 being the main tools. Target is mid December. So far I've done a first pass of EIGRP, OSPF, Redist. and Path Control by reading the FLG and doing the labs in that free Cisco lab manual*. My strength is probably that I pick up how to configure things fairly quickly, but have a harder time memorizing things from books. I also don't mind a 5-6 hour lab session, but I really struggle with reading for that amount of time. So far, the hardest topic has been Route Maps, and the easiest probably EIGRP, but I'm predicting that my actual weak area will end up being IPv6.

I'm currently working on BGP and will use the rest of the week to get to know that protocol before moving on to the next chapter. On a high level it totally makes sense to me but I'm struggling with some of the details.

*This would actually be my first question to the community. Is that book really enough? The EIGRP and OSPF labs feel a bit too easy to me.

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Comments

EdTheLad

They are all on the new ccie

fredrikjj

It's mine!

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fredrikjj

I passed TSHOOT today. Things didn't start out too great, to put it mildly. Before the big simulation with the trouble tickets, I got a few normal multiple choice questions, and judging by the score sheet, I scored exactly 0% on those. Reading the certification guide might have helped because I had to guess on all of them. On the actual tickets I found the ones that were plain routing/switching quite easy, but when IP services and security were involved I became quite dumb and probably answered a few tickets prematurely.

I went through the tickets quite quickly, and in order. If I could take the exam again I would have just aborted if I wasn't 110% sure because I ended up with a ton of time left that I could have spent on the 2-3 tickets that were a problem. On ticket 8 I finally realized that you had to scroll to see all options because I knew EXACTLY what the problem was, but the answers I had available to me were unrelated and made zero sense. It's possible that this is why I failed a few of the early ones.

joetest

grats on the ccnp

fredrikjj

joetest wrote: »

grats on the ccnp

Thanks buddy.

Well done !

Congrats!

congrats!

It's been a week now since I passed and I'm mainly just taking it easy, except for the 2-3 hours a day I spend on Internetworking with TCP/IP. I'm doing the usual read, read again and take notes grind. I'm 25% done, and it's definitely a well written book that's already given me greater insight into certain topics that I only had a very superficial awareness of before. It's not hard to criticize the book if you don't take it for what it is; an introduction to these topics, not a complete reference work.

It's written by an academic, and while certain pages don't seem immediately applicable to the real world, you occasionally get that little nugget that you know will come in handy at some point. The first half of the book overlaps with the CCNA and CCNP, and it's probably a great supplement for those exams. The second half has overviews of certain topics that I'm very interested in like mpls, multicast and IPsec. I plan to read dedicated books on those topics, but easing into it is always good.

Juliusg wrote: »

Congrats!

Danielh22185 wrote: »

congrats!

Thanks!

fredrikjj

I'm forcing myself to be more consistent. I feel like there's an upper bound on the amount of straight studying I can do per day. Resting one day doesn't double the amount of work I can do the day after so the logical thing to do is to study every day. To maximize studying per day, I need to break it up into two blocks with a significant break inbetween. I've also stopped being so hard on myself for not being able to study for hours and hours without breaks like some people. Unless it's lab work, I just can't put in 4-5 hour sessions of reading/writing on a consistent basis. Two sessions à 90-120 minutes is actual realistic though, and it adds up really quickly.

I will also start using digital notes. I believe that notes are extremely important if you want to read say 10 books and implement a spaced repetition scheme for that material. Even if you read quickly, re-reading those 10 books will simply take too long, and you'll sacrifice too much time that would be better spent learning new material. If you don't repeat the material, you'll gradually forget it. If you reduce the number of words to 10-15% of the original texts it becomes feasible to repeat the material regularly. The main issue is that it become challenging to maintain meaning with so few words. Generally speaking though, textbooks are verbose and repetitive.

For the CCNP all my notes were handwritten. You could argue that the act of writing by hand improves retention, etc, and maybe that's true, but I find it too time consuming. It also becomes impractical because you end up with too many notebooks and finding that specific page becomes a hassle. Historically, the main thing handwritten notes had going for them was the ability to freely draw and highlight and so on, but modern note programs seem to have completely solved that problem as long as you have one of those pen/tablet things. OneNote and Evernote seem to be the programs you want for this sort of thing.

Danielh22185

fredrikjj wrote: »

I'm forcing myself to be more consistent. I feel like there's an upper bound on the amount of straight studying I can do per day. Resting one day doesn't double the amount of work I can do the day after so the logical thing to do is to study every day. To maximize studying per day, I need to break it up into two blocks with a significant break inbetween. I've also stopped being so hard on myself for not being able to study for hours and hours without breaks like some people. Unless it's lab work, I just can't put in 4-5 hour sessions of reading/writing on a consistent basis. Two sessions à 90-120 minutes is actual realistic though, and it adds up really quickly.

I will also start using digital notes. I believe that notes are extremely important if you want to read say 10 books and implement a spaced repetition scheme for that material. Even if you read quickly, re-reading those 10 books will simply take too long, and you'll sacrifice too much time that would be better spent learning new material. If you don't repeat the material, you'll gradually forget it. If you reduce the number of words to 10-15% of the original texts it becomes feasible to repeat the material regularly. The main issue is that it become challenging to maintain meaning with so few words. Generally speaking though, textbooks are verbose and repetitive.

For the CCNP all my notes were handwritten. You could argue that the act of writing by hand improves retention, etc, and maybe that's true, but I find it too time consuming. It also becomes impractical because you end up with too many notebooks and finding that specific page becomes a hassle. Historically, the main thing handwritten notes had going for them was the ability to freely draw and highlight and so on, but modern note programs seem to have completely solved that problem as long as you have one of those pen/tablet things. OneNote and Evernote seem to be the programs you want for this sort of thing.

Thanks for the insight on this. I too handwrote ALOT of notes for ROUTE. I found it quite a laborious task hand writing those notes. I like the idea of how it feels as far as a knowledge retention mechanism but I like your heading with actually typing up the notes dedicating more time to consistently refresh the topics based on the notes after reading is completed.

fredrikjj

Daniel, yes that's the thing, you probably do retain the information better if you have handwritten notes, but I just don't think it's worth the time anymore. I already have 6 full sized notesbooks from CCNP and Comer's book, and I don't think it scales to a CCIE level number of books. I also believe that there could be a psychological benefit to compiling information into a single book or repository (inspired by this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book).

I ordered the Wacom Intuos S as my first pen tablet. It seems good enough for my needs and reasonably priced.

Danielh22185

fredrikjj wrote: »

Daniel, yes that's the thing, you probably do retain the information better if you have handwritten notes, but I just don't think it's worth the time anymore. I already have 6 full sized notesbooks from CCNP and Comer's book, and I don't think it scales to a CCIE level number of books. I also believe that there could be a psychological benefit to compiling information into a single book or repository (inspired by this Commonplace book - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

I ordered the Wacom Intuos S as my first pen tablet. It seems good enough for my needs and reasonably priced.

If you do think about it though, if you are freeing up a lot of time by typing notes as apposed to handwritting you are allowing more time for yourself to review it. I find myself reading and re-reading my handwritten notes anyway. Why not create a format where I can accomplish that faster and potentially have the ability to review it more.

I like where you're your brain is with this. I think I am going to change my ways as well. i'll still highlight and make simple references in my books but any of that will be typed up later.

late_collision

fredrikjj wrote: »

I ordered the Wacom Intuos S as my first pen tablet. It seems good enough for my needs and reasonably priced.

This is an interesting idea I hadnt considered.

I am currently using a large whiteboard (4 feet square) and am constantly running out of space. I also tend to think I retain more by handwriting notes. Something about forcing my brain to slow down to the speed of my hand.

fredrikjj

Ok, so I got the tablet and installed OneNote. My first impression is that it's pretty much exactly what I wanted (text editor with seamless drawing capabilities). It's just hard to draw with the pen for someone like me without much talent in that department.

In other news, Comer is kicking my a** with his TCP chapter. It's good though because after 200 pages of stuff I felt like I mostly knew already, my ego is getting a well needed readjustment.

Juliusg

great ideal with the tablet... I use a note book with my CCNP studies and I'm running out of space. may have to invest into a tablet of some sort to keep my written notes. thanks for the though!

fredrikjj

I finished the first half of Comer's book today, and as I've mentioned before, it's mostly review of concepts covered in CCNA/CCNP. The TCP chapter was the most 'academic' and in depth, while anything related to routing felt very easy in comparison. Next up is a fairly large multicast chapter that I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into tomorrow.

snadam

super belated but congrats on the pass!!!

Iristheangel

fredrikjj wrote: »

Ok, so I got the tablet and installed OneNote. My first impression is that it's pretty much exactly what I wanted (text editor with seamless drawing capabilities). It's just hard to draw with the pen for someone like me without much talent in that department.

In other news, Comer is kicking my a** with his TCP chapter. It's good though because after 200 pages of stuff I felt like I mostly knew already, my ego is getting a well needed readjustment.

I have the same book. I've only glanced through it but it looks like good stuff. Also try picking up TCP/IP Illustrated I and II. Great books to have on hand

fredrikjj

Iristheangel wrote: »

I have the same book. I've only glanced through it but it looks like good stuff. Also try picking up TCP/IP Illustrated I and II. Great books to have on hand

I don't know how to say this without sounding like the biggest nerd in the world, but I already have Illustrated vol 1. It's the first edition though and even if most things are still valid, I don't feel capable of separating the outdated stuff from the rest. I've also heard that the second edition isn't that great as it's revised by a different author.

My plan of attack right now is: finish Comer -> Routing TCP/IP vol 1 -> (maybe Moy's OSPF book, undecided as it might be overkill at this point) -> some IPsec book (probably ipsec fundamentals) -> NAT/Multicast sections of TCP/IP vol 2 -> BGP Design and Implementation. By then the books for the new CCNP:Sec are hopefully out and I can evaluate if that's going to be my next cert. It'll come down to if I can get by with a virtual lab environment or not as I really can't afford buying any hardware beyond the asa 5505.

fredrikjj

1. I have an interview next week at company that does a bunch of stuff in the networking space. I'm very excited because it's exactly what I've been working towards for like a year.

2. I'm almost done with Comer's Internetworking.

3. Ordered Routing TCP/IP vol 1 and Moy's OSPF book. I figured that I might as well go all out on OSPF since it's such an important protocol. I want to study these two books in conjunction with solving the IGP labs in one of the training vendor's workbooks. I haven't decided what vendor to go with, but hopefully they'll have some kind of great offer when they release the version 5 material.

4. I've decided to finish my bachelor's degree. I have an unfinished degree in economics and that's pretty lame and useless. The most convenient way I've found to do this is to get a 2 year online degree in network administration, combine it with some of the economics credits, get a few more credits in something computer related, and then write a bachelor's thesis. Since this is essentially free I see no downside to it.

Plus, the fact that it's online means that I won't have to spend a lot of time on the early classes teaching the OSI model or VLANs or whatever. Looking at the class schedule I'd say that I know around 50% of the material already since the second year route/switch classes are focused on the CCNP. The focus does seem to be on networking, but there are also a few linux and scripting classes that I'm looking forward to.

fredrikjj

I've almost finished Comer, and today, this arrived:

I'm very excited to get back into old school classic IP routing and spend some time on the CLI. Comer's book has been great, and I'll write a longer review once I've finished it and completed my notes, but it doesn't really compare to the warm and fuzzy feeling you get from completing routing labs.

PS.
I got some bad news as well; I didn't get the job I mentioned in my previous post. The ad for the job mentioned experience with Cisco products, but when I was actually in the interview, they mentioned that they used exactly zero products from Cisco. Furthermore, they were not particularly focused on routing and switching - it was essentially an IT security company. I feel like I answered the technical questions reasonably well, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.

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fredrikjj

fredrikjj wrote: »

It's mine!

I finally finished my notes on this book. I'm starting on Routing TCP/IP Vol 1 tomorrow while spending an hour or so per day rereading my notes from Comer's book. I plan on using some kind of mind mapping software for Routing TCP/IP because I'm starting to get burned out note taking and need to explore other methods. I've also more or less decided that my next exam is going to be AdvRoute from CCNP:SP, but that's a quite a few months away since I'm not focusing on BGP until after I've refreshed and improved my IGP skills.

JustFred

Which version of the Comer book did you buy? US or International edition? I have seen the International editions going fairly cheap on eBay.

fredrikjj

International edition. It seems to be missing the final chapter on the Internet of Things and the glossary, but it costs half as much.

JustFred

Absolutely. I will pick the International Edition up as well. Its pretty much the same book with a softcover

azaghul

I've found AbeBooks is a good clearing house for 2nd hand/excess stock books.

9788120348677 - AbeBooks

You can sometimes get a bargain on current edition -1, the basics don't change that much.

JustFred

Thanks for the Link az. Bookmarked