Sprinting to the CCIE

EANx · April 2017

I was a network engineer in a former life but that was 15 years ago. I now find myself in the position to chase the technical certs I want to, even if I don't have time at work to work on them. Going after the CCIE is for me, to finish a goal I wasn't able to complete way-back-when (back when the lab was two days long). It took a few months but I regained the CCNP in Feb.

The Plan

I've decided to projectize my preparation for the CCIE Lab. Agile is a type of project management with scrum as a subset, where you define very specific tasks that will be worked on during a set period of time. Typically, these periods are consistent. Scrum time-lines are known as "sprints", sprints have a planning phase, iterative action phases and a retrospective where you reflect on what worked, what didn't and how to improve. Continuous improvement of the process is part of scrum.

I've decided on eight-week sprints, allowing for the occasional weekend away or week-long vacation. Assuming 15-20 hrs of study per week (three week-days with four hrs of study plus one weekend day with eight), a sprint will be 125-150 hrs of study. The first half will be around 50/50 lab work and non-lab work. Prep for the written will occur simultaneously with lab prep. After the written is passed, weekend lab time will increase eventually to 12-hr days to ensure I'm used to long lab days.

The first third will focus on the following:

Link-Layer
IGP
BGP
MPLS
DMVPN

The Resources

I bought the INE ultimate R&S pack as well as a copy of VIRL then my boss gave me some Cisco learning credits. I bought the Cisco 360 premium package and if I can get time away from the office I want to attend Narbik's 10-day R&S bootcamp.

Blockers: While I provide input on architecture, I don't do much hands-on with routing and switching at work. I also don't want to turn into a hermit and would rather extend the time-frame and spend time with friends and family. Time is the resource I don't have enough of.

EANx · April 2017

Sprint 1: April 3 - May 31
125-150 hrs total. 40-50 hrs of video, 60-75 hrs of labs, some reading

The plan is to go through the 360 videos then do their lab once. Then watch the INE videos and go through their labs once. After that, go through each of the lab sets a second time. So a particular topic gets four lab runs.

Topics covered:
IGPs: 135 hours

360 videos: 10 hrs of videos
INE videos: 35 hrs of videos
Labs: 360 labs = 20 hrs
Labs: INE = 45 hrs
Reading: 25 hrs

Returning home today from a skiing trip, I'll shop, clean and do some work to get the INE configs working with VIRL.

JoJoCal19 · April 2017

Hi EANx, good luck in your pursuit. By saying the 'first third', do you mean you will do 3 8 week sprints in total? With lab hours at 45 in the first sprint, will that be enough total lab time? From what people say, one should have about 1000+ hours in for a CCIE attempt.

Danielh22185 · April 2017

I look forward to keeping up with your progress! Good luck!

EANx · April 2017

Hi there JoJoCal19, No, the "first third" doesn't refer to the first 8 weeks, rather the first third of studying. Without breaking it into time segments, the first third of the topics I see are:

Link-Layer
IGP
BGP
MPLS
DMVPN

With the second third being:

Multicasting
IPv6
Security
Router QoS
DMVPN Security using ISAKMP and IPSec
Network Infrastructure 1
Network Infrastructure 2
Troubleshooting

And the last part bringing it all together.

I figure the whole thing will take 12-18 months.

Hi Daniel, thanks!

JoJoCal19 · April 2017

Ah ok, makes sense. I'm definitely going to follow your thread as I've become really intrigued with the Agile way of attacking projects (and problems) and I'm wanting to try and apply the process to more areas of life. I'm really interested in seeing it applied to tackling something like the CCIE.

Sprinting to the CCIE

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