Shodown taking a bite out of the CCIE pie

I have deiced to go for it after a few weeks of thinking about it. After I passed the NP, I said I would prob not do another professional level exam(unless its security). So the options were CCIE R&S or Voice. I have decieded to do the R&S track. I have done voice for a while and I enjoy it, but I feel it would limit me to Voice roles. So I will be updating my blog entry as I work on a plan of action and strategy. My first plan on action is taking a honest assessment of my skills. Happy studying.

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gorebrush

Well done, and welcome on board. I am now competent to advise you that the one thing you need above anything else is commitment. So get into those books and start reading

If you need any advice then we are all here to help and support one another.

David.

CCIEWANNABE

good luck man and stick with it! We've seen a lot of people lately in the CCIE forum simply fall off the face of the earth. sometimes it can be a bit too much. you just have to stick with it and push through. don't try to set out of reach goals, rather learning a little a day is the trick. trying to get to the ccie level is a daily fight that must be won in small battles.

like i said, there were lots of guys earlier this year who were stoked to start studying and created their own threads about their studies, but simply have fallen out. don't give up when you get overwhelmed. what i have noticed that has worked for me is to just take some time off if it becomes too much, give your brain a break because there is simply too much to digest.

i have been labbing for about a year now and there is still new material that i find and learn. it is pretty crazy the depth that the CCIE goes into. there really is a huge gap between CCNP and CCIE. I would rate on a difficulty scale of 1/1000, CCNA is 50, CCNP is 100 and CCIE is 1000.

we're all here to help you out, good luck with your studies!

shodown

Any way on filling in those gaps? I have no real strong areas, but several weak areas(my Layer 2 is atrocious).

I will be purchasing INE material and going to there bootcamp as they offer a payment plan and they are willing to give me a good price on material.

CCIEWANNABE

narbik has a great lab workbook called "gap between ccnp and ccie". I highly recommend it. It really helped fill in the gaps for me. here is his webpage:

Workbooks :: The Foundation 2.0 - The Gap from CCNP to CCIE - Micronics Networking & Training Inc.

take a look. for $100 you can't beat it!

good luck.

bertieb

You CCIE candidates are like buses - you've all arrived at once!
badda...bump........tshhhhhhhh......I'll get my coat

Seriously though, it's great to see so many working on this as I thoroughly enjoy reading the updates and see genuine progress along the journey. These threads always remain a good motivator for me even though I have no wishes to follow this path myself.

Good luck showdown, like everyone else I sincerely hope you reach your goals

Turgon

shodown wrote: »

I have deiced to go for it after a few weeks of thinking about it. After I passed the NP, I said I would prob not do another professional level exam(unless its security). So the options were CCIE R&S or Voice. I have decieded to do the R&S track. I have done voice for a while and I enjoy it, but I feel it would limit me to Voice roles. So I will be updating my blog entry as I work on a plan of action and strategy. My first plan on action is taking a honest assessment of my skills. Happy studying.

Cool. Make this your techexams blog for your studies and we can all chime in. Good to have more for the ride. A counter of written study hours and lab hours would be good.

shodown

Turgon wrote: »

Cool. Make this your techexams blog for your studies and we can all chime in. Good to have more for the ride. A counter of written study hours and lab hours would be good.

Done. I'll start a counter on the side for my written

Turgon

shodown wrote: »

Done. I'll start a counter on the side for my written

Good man.

shodown

New update. Already have to take a step back. I have read through the switching chapters of the CCIE exam prep book. My switching is the worst part of my game. I need to do a week of labs and some more reading to re inforce ideas. I know some say just get the theory down, but I have known this is the weakest part of my game for some time. I will be reading from the SWTICH exam book and watching some CBT's on the topics I really don't understand.

Forsaken_GA

shodown wrote: »

New update. Already have to take a step back. I have read through the switching chapters of the CCIE exam prep book. My switching is the worst part of my game. I need to do a week of labs and some more reading to re inforce ideas. I know some say just get the theory down, but I have known this is the weakest part of my game for some time. I will be reading from the SWTICH exam book and watching some CBT's on the topics I really don't understand.

Go find a copy of Kennedy Clark's Cisco LAN Switching. Seriously. It is a mammoth tome, and a good portion of it is dated, but it will give you a good grounding in the fundamentals. I used to be the same way, all about the route, and had some holes in my switching fundamentals. That book gave me the schooling I needed to grow into more modern and advanced switching concepts. You can usually find used copies pretty cheap on Amazon.

shodown

Not much new, didn't get to work on my switching like I wanted too. We have been knee deep in new site installs and a mutlicast deployment. I haven't done much with multicast since I passed the BSCI. I got CBT's from CCIEWANNABE and purchaed INE vol 1/2 with the 300 tokens. Will continue to work multicast all weekend and get back to switching next week.

shodown

finished up my switching. Moving on to IP routing. I spend the last few days digging deep into multicast as we deployed it across the WAN, spent time here and there T/S issues with the LAN groups. I still feel my switching is the worst part of my game. I will really have to spend time there come lab time. On a positive note, since I got my NP, the job offers have went up 25K+. The only bad part is the jobs I really want don't pay as high as the jobs I dont want.

creamy_stew

shodown wrote: »

Not much new, didn't get to work on my switching like I wanted too. We have been knee deep in new site installs and a mutlicast deployment. I haven't done much with multicast since I passed the BSCI. I got CBT's from CCIEWANNABE and purchaed INE vol 1/2 with the 300 tokens. Will continue to work multicast all weekend and get back to switching next week.

What are these tokens you speak of, good Sir?

mikej412

creamy_stew wrote: »

What are these tokens you speak of, good Sir?

You use tokens to pay for rack rental at Graded Labs. $1US = 1 token. And the number of tokens you need depends on the type of rack and the day/time you want. You can buy token in bulk at a nice discount (or wait for a special).

CCIE Rack Rentals - Powered by GradedLabs

creamy_stew

O0oo! I'm a mere CCNP candidate, but one of these session per exam would be... instructional. Even if(when) I fail the assessment, I should receive som pointers.

How much of a discount can you get?

mikej412

creamy_stew wrote: »

How much of a discount can you get?

It depends on what discounts they are offering at the time or what you can talking a training adviser into and probably the quantity your looking to get.

This weekend they are having a special -- 150 tokens for $99. I'm probably going to buy some this weekend even though I have my home lab since you also use tokens to pay for mock labs. Looking at the R&S rack schedule it looks like weekday 5.5 hour slots are 18 tokens and the popular Friday night slots are 26 tokens, and the most popular weekend 5.5 hour slots are 30 tokens. There are a couple of "transition slots" that are 22 tokens (Monday morning and Friday afternoon).

Wow -- security racks are 17 - 23 tokens. Service Provider and Voice racks are 15 tokens. R&S Mock Labs are 129 tokens.

creamy_stew

Sorry for hijacking the thread.

Mike: I cant find that offer. Do you have a link?

shodown

Today I read up on Redistribution, prefix list, route maps. I jumped ahead of the rest of IP routing. I just felt a bug about redistribution since we had some issues at work. Its better to read up on what you are intrested in at the moment and getting the most out of that time vs looking at other topics which aren't burning the mind. I hope to spend the weekend reading up on the topics above then moving back IP routing. Then I will be going back over redistribution again. Hopefully it sticks well the 2nd time over.

mikej412

creamy_stew wrote: »

Mike: I cant find that offer. Do you have a link?

It was in the newsletter. I just tried it and the INERACKS code works for only the first 150 tokens. I just got 5 30 token blocks for $99.

Sigh -- and the Graded Mock Labs are 199 tokens -- I guess I'll go back and see where I saw that 129 bit (maybe an ungraded mock lab?)

shodown

Purchased the INE written COD to give me 2 avenues of studying. Books and COD. I can get the vids at work in between projects, and do reading at home.

Turgon

keep the reading up daily. Then the odom and boson tests

creamy_stew

Turgon wrote: »

keep the reading up daily. Then the odom and boson tests

Hasn't he already passed the written?

shodown

creamy_stew wrote: »

Hasn't he already passed the written?

No I haven't passed the written. Just around 10 or so hours into it. I'm shooting for the written at the end of NOV. Then I will start on the lab after MLK.

shodown

Working through the INE switching video's and will follow that up with some reading on switching. Most of the week has been multicast and QOS issues.

"Remember kids when you are running HSRP the routing table points to the Standby Address not the interface you have PIM enabled with". I think I have said something to those affects over 100 times the past few days. Also Possible new job with a Huge service provider. So I may have to take a break to brush up on the requirements of the job.

CCIE2B

shodown wrote: »

Working through the INE switching video's and will follow that up with some reading on switching. Most of the week has been multicast and QOS issues.

"Remember kids when you are running HSRP the routing table points to the Standby Address not the interface you have PIM enabled with". I think I have said something to those affects over 100 times the past few days. Also Possible new job with a Huge service provider. So I may have to take a break to brush up on the requirements of the job.

Man I enjoyed your blog about management. It was so Awesome and true

shodown

CCIE2B wrote: »

Man I enjoyed your blog about management. It was so Awesome and true .

Thanks that blog turned out to be a hit or miss. Some people like it, others hated it. My next one will be multiast.

shodown

Working though the INE video's on switching followed by reading and the GAP between CCNP and CCIE labs. Job interview this week for a pretty large LAN. Not sure if I"m interested, but I will go check it out to make sure I don't miss out on anything. Also still have the Large ISP in the pipeline also. One of our buddies that post videos already works there at another location

. Hopefully something comes of that.

shodown

Still on Switching(will I ever move on) Mainly getting labs up getting a better Idea of whats going on. Scored a outta band management device dirt cheap. So this weekened I will be making roll over cables

Bl8ckr0uter

How did the interview go?

shodown

I heard from the recruiter that it went really well, so we will see.