Anyone Studying for the CCIP?

Anyone studying for the CCIP? What is your lab setup? What routers are you using in real life or in GNS3? What switches are you using?

What are your favorite study materials for this exam?

How are your studies so far? Anything causing you problems?

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Comments

stuh84

Agreed on that, I've ran 15-20 router topologies on mine without breaking a sweat, definitely glad I have my server for this. I've done practice from work, home, at my parents, grandparents, as long as I have an SSH client I'm good to go.

I've done QoS now, and the BSCI was already done. Internet Routing Architectures arrived yesterday so I expect to be working through that at some point in the next week, hopefully for an attempt at the BGP exam sometime in April at the latest, but you never know, I may be able to fit it in this month (seriously doubt it, but I'm not going to ignore the possibility)

tomaifauchai

Heero, can you tell me a bit about the books you read for the composite exam?

Plan to take this it this summer, after Tshoot!

Before buying the books, i'd love to have your opinion on what ciscopress suggest to read for this exam.
Some guys says Halabi IRA for BGP isn't enough, should i buy another book?

And also, is MPLS
MPLS and VPN Architectures
MPLS and VPN Architectures, Vol. II

are needed togheter as a complement, or i just pick the volume II ?
I heard about a "MPLS fundamentals" also...I'm really a noob about MPLS.

Tom

stuh84

Volume 1 and Volume 2 of MPLS & VPN Architectures cover different material. It isn't a new revision of the same material.

As far as MPLS Fundamentals go, I know of people that passed with MPLS Fundamentals alone, so its probably the better first book to go for (given you don't know MPLS, a book which teaches the fundamentals rather than mostly scenarios in how it is applied is going to be a better bet)

gorebrush

So you run Ubuntu in a VM then run Dynamips in there?

This is something I need to get on with!

Cheers.

I'm also starting QoS soon.

mkomon

tomaifauchai wrote: »

Heero, can you tell me a bit about the books you read for the composite exam?

Plan to take this it this summer, after Tshoot!

Before buying the books, i'd love to have your opinion on what ciscopress suggest to read for this exam.
Some guys says Halabi IRA for BGP isn't enough, should i buy another book?

And also, is MPLS
MPLS and VPN Architectures
MPLS and VPN Architectures, Vol. II

are needed togheter as a complement, or i just pick the volume II ?
I heard about a "MPLS fundamentals" also...I'm really a noob about MPLS.

Tom

I haven't taken the composite, I cleared BGP and MPLS separately.
IRA is a great read but is not sufficient for the BGP exam itself. It is a bit outdated on the config part and lacks some BGP features one should know. I read the BGP part of Routing TCP/IP by Doyle and complemented it with BGP case studies at cisco.com. The exam was a cake.

For the MPLS exam I used only the MPLS Fundamentals book plus dynamips and passed without problems.

HTH,

Martin

tomaifauchai

stuh84 wrote: »

so its probably the better first book to go for (given you don't know MPLS, a book which teaches the fundamentals rather than mostly scenarios in how it is applied is going to be a better bet)

mkomon wrote: »

I read the BGP part of Routing TCP/IP by Doyle and complemented it with BGP case studies at cisco.com. The exam was a cake.

For the MPLS exam I used only the MPLS Fundamentals book plus dynamips and passed without problems.

HTH,

Martin

thanks guys!

jovan88

mkomon I've been reading MPLS fundamentals and I think I should be ready to sit the exam soon, but I can see there are a lot of extra chapters in the book such as ipv6, VPLS, QoS etc. Is it worth reading through all of it, or just what appears to be on the exam topics?

networker050184

jovan88 wrote: »

mkomon I've been reading MPLS fundamentals and I think I should be ready to sit the exam soon, but I can see there are a lot of extra chapters in the book such as ipv6, VPLS, QoS etc. Is it worth reading through all of it, or just what appears to be on the exam topics?

I'd read it just for the knowledge.

mkomon

I went for the exam straight after finishing chapter seven. After the exam I studied the other chapters, because it is the knowledge that counts.

Edit: not that I read all of them, I only picked AToM, VPLS and TE because I could use that at work. As for the question, I'd recommend reading the TE chapter for the exam too.

Heero

gorebrush wrote: »

So you run Ubuntu in a VM then run Dynamips in there?

This is something I need to get on with!

Cheers.

I'm also starting QoS soon.

Thats what I did. The problem with windows is that even with 64-bit windows, dynamips is limited to 2gigs of ram for each process, so you have to run multiple processes of dynamips. This is because of some underlying driver that is used for the windows version that doesn't support over 2gigs of ram.

This limitation drove me to just create a VM of ubuntu server. No such limits for dynamips with linux, as long as you run 64-bit linux. Also ditched the GNS3 portion and just ran dynagen+dynamips. All command prompt, but not too hard to learn.

Heero

tomaifauchai wrote: »

Heero, can you tell me a bit about the books you read for the composite exam?

Plan to take this it this summer, after Tshoot!

Before buying the books, i'd love to have your opinion on what ciscopress suggest to read for this exam.
Some guys says Halabi IRA for BGP isn't enough, should i buy another book?

And also, is MPLS
MPLS and VPN Architectures
MPLS and VPN Architectures, Vol. II

are needed togheter as a complement, or i just pick the volume II ?
I heard about a "MPLS fundamentals" also...I'm really a noob about MPLS.

Tom

Other people are more qualified to answer, but so far i have just used IRA and MPLS Architechtures. Both are old and lacking, but there is plenty of online material to cover what I miss. I've always found textbooks to be better for an introduction, and the Internet very good for more specific things when you need to find something.

With dynamips it is very, very easy to run labs for BGP and MPLS, so I'm trying to be really strong on the implementation. Welcome to GNS3 Vault has some nice labs as well.

APA

For the composite...

BGP Design and Implementation
Internet Routing Architectures

Those two will give you a very good understanding of BGP..... and for the MPLS portion I suggest reading...

MPLS Fundamentals
MPLS & VPN Architectures

Both of those will give you solid knowledge on MPLS for the composite.... even for the standalone MPLS exams if you wish to go down that track...

down77

APA wrote: »

For the composite...

BGP Design and Implementation
Internet Routing Architectures

Those two will give you a very good understanding of BGP..... and for the MPLS portion I suggest reading...

MPLS Fundamentals
MPLS & VPN Architectures

Both of those will give you solid knowledge on MPLS for the composite.... even for the standalone MPLS exams if you wish to go down that track...

Making sure to add these to my Amazon wishlist! After I finish the Design exam I'll be focusing on the CCIP track. These were on my "to do" reading list for the CCIE: R&S as well!

tomaifauchai

Under your recommendations, i've ordered all the books needed to go through my CCIE R&S.
NetAcad students, you have a nice discount on ciscopress books after completion of the program and you should look under the Alumni connection of your web account at Cisco Academy.

I bought the following for my 2nd shipment!

CCIE R/S Official cert guide
BGP Design & implementation
Internet routing architectures
Routing TCP/IP volume II (Have already Volume I, 2nd edition)
MPLS Fundamentals