According to the Lab Exam Blueprint, i have covered the following topics until now:
- Bridging and Switching
- Frame relay
- Catalyst configuration: VLANs, VTP, STP, MSTP, RSTP, Trunk, Etherchannel, management, features, advanced configuration, Layer 3
- Tunneling
- IP IGP Routing
- OSPF
- EIGRP
- RIPv2
- IPv6: Addressing, RIPng, OSPFv3
- GRE
- ODR
- Filtering, redistribution, summarization and other advanced features
- BGP
- IBGP
- EBGP
- Filtering, redistribution, summarization, synchronization, attributes and other advanced features
- IP and IOS Features
- IP addressing
- DHCP
- HSRP
- IP services
- IOS user interfaces
- System management
- NAT
- NTP
- SNMP
- RMON
- Accounting
- SLA
- IP Multicast
- PIM, bi-directional PIM
- MSDP
- Multicast tools, source specific multicast
- DVMRP
- Anycast
- QoS
- Quality of service solutions
- Classification
- Congestion management, congestion avoidance
- Policing and shaping
- Signaling
- Link efficiency mechanisms
- Modular QoS command line
- Security
- AAA
- Security server protocols
- Traffic filtering and firewalls
- Access lists
- Routing protocols security, catalyst security
- CBAC
- Other security features
This week i'm not working, so i'm moving faster through the topics. BGP was quite difficult to me because i have very little experience with it. Also redistribution was another topic where i found out how wrong i was about a lot of things that i had taken for granted.
Usually i spend 4-6 hours per day on the CCIE preparation during the days i'm also working, but this week i'm reaching around 10 hours per day. As time passes by, i'm getting more & more worried about not being ready in time. The biggest problem is that it is too much information to remember. And if you don't practice it, you won't remember it after some days.
So practice...practice...PRACTICE...until you start seeing dreams with routers & switches while you sleep.
According to my schedule, i should finish the 1st pass of all topics just before the weekend, so i'll use the 2 weekend's days to practice a whole 8-hour lab, but without being constrained by the actual clock. First i need to understand completely all the topics and then to be fast enough to configure/verify/troubleshoot them.
I'm also looking for renting some time on online racks, because Dynamips doesn't help a lot with the switches stuff. You can do the basic stuff, but many advanced features are not available for the NM-16ESW module.
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COngratulations on your achievement. I agree that if one prepares very well, CCIE will look easy. I scored 95% myself in the R & S written exam and I am now preparing for the lab.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, you said you did not use any workbook to prepare, how did you prepare to esnure you cover all the features scenarios in the blue print ? How do you come up with scnearios to configure for practices.
I mainly used the examples from CCIE Practical Studies Vol I && II plus some from Routing TCP/IP Vol I && II.
ReplyDeleteAlso, after i had my first mock labs, i used these as preparation tools. I just repeated them many times, trying to come up with different solutions, especially on the things (i.e. redistribution) that i was weak.
Besides all the above, you have to know the DocCD upside/down. Just find some topics you don't know and are considered non-core (i.e. bidir PIM, drp, wccp, ip sla) and try to configure them. If you do them twice, you'll remember most of them.
But you need to know the fundamentals, the technologies before proceeding with everything else. My work experience helped me in that one.