A complete disaster!!!!
Well....to be honest it wasn't so bad as it looks. I got 29 out of 50 points but :
1) I lost 1 question (2 points), because i jumped over it (it was only 1 line) while reading the exam!!!
2) I lost 4 questions (2+2+3+2=9 points), because i didn't read the whole question carefully enough and because the AutoVerify system of the Lab expects a very specific config.
3) I lost 3 questions (3+2+1=6 points), because i didn't know what to do in a minor subtask (although i had done correctly all major subtasks).
4) I lost 1 question (2 points), because it depended on one of the questions of No3 (although i had done it correctly).
5) I lost 1 question (2 points), because i messed up (i used 7 bits instead of 8) the dec to bin conversion!!!!
If i had reviewed my whole exam after finishing, i'm sure i would have earned at least 13 more points, which means 29+13 = 42 out of 50 (=84%!).
Once again, silly mistakes was the major fact i didn't have enough free time to review my whole exam. I forgot to apply a simple multicast config under an interface and i spend around 30 mins trying to find out why multicast wasn't working as expected. I had enabled all kinds of multicast debugs on 4 routers and i was looking at the debug logs for any mysterious/hidden problems. After 30 mins, i found out how fool i was!!! So i finished correctly the multicast section, but my time had run over.
This is the biggest problem in the CCIE Assessor Lab. You have two 4h sessions (if you take both A & B labs) and both of them include a core part (L2/L3 switching/routing). I'm usually slow on the core part, because i like to test everything twice. On a normal lab, i usually spent 50-60% time on the core part, 30-40% on the secondaries (everything besides QoS in usually easy) and 0-10% on a review. So when i have 2 core parts in a 8h (2x4h) session, i don't have enough free time to do the secondaries or run a review. Imho, Cisco should increase each session by 30 mins.
Generally, i'm happy because i didn't meet any major unknown features. As long as i have in my mind to keep things as simple as possible, everything will be ok.
Next Mock Lab coming on Saturday....
Friday, December 28, 2007
CCIE Assessor Lab V1.6 - 58%
CCIE R&S Lab info by Maurilio Gorito (Content Manager)
Yesterday i fell into a Q&A session on Cisco's NetPro Forum, where i found out a lot of interesting things about the actual lab. Too bad i didn't know it before, because i had some questions of my own too.
Welcome to the Cisco Networking Professionals Ask the Expert conversation. This is an opportunity to get an update on CCIE routing and switching with Cisco expert Maurilio Gorito. Maurilio is a customer support engineer with the CCIE program at Cisco Systems, Inc. He has more than 22 years of networking experience and is a triple CCIE, with certifications in Routing & Switching (1998), WAN switching (2001), and Security (2003). Maurilio is the content manager for the CCIE R&S exams, written and lab exams and also serves as an exam proctor.
These are the most interesting notes i kept:
There is no plan to change the CCIE R&S blueprint in the near future. We introduced this blueprint v3 3 months ago and I don't see any change happening in a time frame of one year from now, at least.
...
No, there is no plan to change the blueprint at any time soon. Usually when a change is planned we will announce it in advance, on a time frame around 5 to 6 months before the changes to take place.
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We are always looking into the technologies trends to keep the blueprint up-to-date. We did introduce the Wireless and MPLS/VPN topics to our CCIE R&S written blueprint about 3 months ago.
For the lab CCIE R&S lab exam we are researching these technologies too and the replacement of the 3550s and the 3725s but no decision was made yet and there is no time frame on this too.
I don't see any change on the blueprint or hardware for the lab exam happening in a time frame of one year from now, and any change will be also announced with 5 to 6 months in advance.
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Wireless was removed out of the Written Blueprint on version v3.0.
We are rethinking about the topic or how to address Wireless as it became an important technology in the core, so we are researching how to cover that either adding it to the core certifications, i.e. to the CCIE R&S and/or to have a separated Wireless track.
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Yes, we are working on a several projects looking to expand the CCIE lab exams offering worldwide. I cannot give a exactly time frame but I see some news on it to be coming at some point in 2008.
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We are working 1) to offer more seats at the full time lab locations such San Jose, Raleigh (RTP), Brussels and Beijing; 2) to turn the part-time lab locations such Sydney, Hong Kong, Dubai, Bangalore, Sao Paulo to a full time labs; and 3) to open more lab locations.
This is part of a big plan and we forecast you will see the lab seats offering become less painful on early 2008.
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We are working to open up more seats availability to our current labs, but the ultimate goal is to extend the offering worldwide to more locations. The idea is exactly to minimize the cost and travel time to candidates while opening more opportunities to candidates worldwide to take the exam.
I can't tell you at this point how it is going to be as we are working on the planning.
News on it we will have more in 2008.
...
-If you arrive up to 2 hours after the exam has begun you can still taking the exam but no extra time will be given you. If you are traveling to take the exam I suggest you to plan to arrive the day before of the exam.
-You just need to bring your ID with you as you will be asked to register at our reception when you arrive. Pen, pencils, scratch papers, etc will be available for you at the lab location. No food is allowed, but snacks and brinks are.
-Depending on the lab location we have either restaurant/cafeteria for lunch or lunch will be ordered. Yes, we do provide the lunch.
-Usually we have washroom, restrooms and breakrooms close to the lab room. Candidates can go there any time during the day but one at a time.
-You can ask any question that you feel you need clarification on. Proctors are there to help you to understand the requirements and/or questions restrictions.
-Sure, you can report to our Customer Service if you feel the proctor as not available or didn't address your inquiries. During the exam if you feel you are having an issue on performance or hardware problem you must advice the proctor. He or she will double check and make sure there is no problem on our side. If there is a problem on our side the time that the proctor took to fix it will be given back to you in the end of the exam.
Again, you can report any issue you have during the exam, including proctors issues to our Customer Service.
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Proctors are to clarify the questions to help you make you understand the question's requirement(s) and if the question has a restriction.
You can make as many questions you feel you need clarification. There is no such thing as to mark you points down for asking questions.
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At the moment we have a mix as the documentation shift still ongoing so we have part of the documents on each website, but again we try to make the shift on our side as you we identify the need.
If someone during the exam identify that a link or website to a technical documentation is not available it should be informed to the proctor to have it fix.
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When you search for a specific website into www.cisco.com/univercd and it is being redirected you still getting the same information needed as before.
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The physical connections are pre-cabled and you don't need to touch them. Also, in some lab locations the racks are remote so you don't even see them. If you suspect you have a physical problem you ask the proctor to verify it for you.
The lab document has L1/L2 diagrams for the physical connectivity. An IP or topology diagram and an IP Routing diagram.
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The re-read will not give more details from your exam.
The process is having a second proctor loading your configurations into a rack and re-grading your exam to see if there were no issues from the first grade. If a score change your score report will be updated but no additional information is added. No details on what went wrong.
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1. Take DVMRP on the basics when preparing to the lab as it is not that much explored.
2. Good point here. You should consider looking at the L2 Multicasting as well when preparing to the exam. Consider looking at http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/lan/cat3560/12240se/scg/swmcast.htm
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You are not penalized for adding extra configuration as long as this will not break a specific restriction. Your example on OSPF router-ID is perfect.
And the same applies to aliases: You don't need to remove them if they do not interfere on getting access to the device when the exam is over.
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There is no restriction on configuring features or extra configuration as long as it does not break specific criteria. Usually we ask candidates not to change: passwords and hostnames.
I would just add concerning to debug is that depending on what debug you are running it may affect the device itself. I suggest if you use a debug command you to remove after making the test or verification, just to avoid a crash or similar thing.
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We are not testing Mobile IP. VRRP and GLBP will fall under IP/IOS Features and the total of points for this section is around 8 points total that includes all other content.
...
Surely, many of my questions have been answered. Thanks Maurilio!
3rd Mock Lab - 97%
This was the first mock lab, i finished in about 7,5 hours! Of course it took me another 1,5 hour to review all of it and correct 2 "mistakes". But generally, i'm quite satisfied by the result.
There were 3 topics i had to look at the DocCD; one of them was complete unknown to me (MVR - Multicast Vlan Registration). I just knew there was a feature which provided the functionality i was asked for, but i didn't know, neither its name, nor its configuration. As it proved out, it wasn't so difficult.
Finally, to be honest, i believe i should have been graded with a 91%, because there were another 2 tasks that i didn't complete 100% according to the solution provided. I know that sometimes there are many correct solutions to each task, but i think (after looking the vendor's solution) that my own solutions weren't so correct.
On the other hand, there were 2 tasks that my solutions were correct and the ones from the vendor were probably wrong. That's because one task was influenced by changes near the end of the exam (new routes introduced) and the other one wasn't meant to be tested (full reachability while a backup link was active). If i hadn't checked all the questions one more time, i wouldn't have found them. Especially the second one, it took me some time until i come up with a solution; i was trying to find out why an OSPF router was load-balancing between a correct path and a "wrong" path, when the "wrong" path was through a totally NSSA area which was having a default route back to this router. So i was getting a loop there. I finally changed the cost in order to avoid the NSSA area and everything worked fine.
Today i'm having my second CCIE Assessor Lab... hoping for something >80% this time.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
CCIE Assessor Lab V2.0 - 78%
Yesterday i had my first CCIE Assessor Lab, Cisco's online CCIE preparation tool.
According to Cisco's page:
Key Features
- Practice scenarios simulate difficulty and format of lab exam
- Live, dedicated equipment pods
- Detailed command-line feedback
- Suggested study resources for lower-scoring sections
- Full assessment report automatically emailed for post-session use
- Designed and updated by Cisco CCIE program managers
- Currently available only for CCIE Routing and Switching track. Watch CCIE website for announcements on future tracks.
As it seems, in every online lab i'm having a problem with the equipment. This time one router didn't have the default enable password (as it was written in the instructions) so i couldn't configure it. I was thinking of trying to do password recovery, but i wasn't sure if i was supposed to mess with things like that. So i decided to call their 24h support and after 25 mins the router was fixed. Actually the config was erased by the support engineer and then the default one was uploaded again.
The actual problem that was caused by this, was there were many 0.0.0.0 entries created in the frame-relay mappings of this router, something that i didn't notice until some time later, when i tried to configure OSPF on the frame-relay hub-n-spoke network. I spent 15 mins trying to find out why OSPF was reseting as soon as one router's OSPF was coming up. The router with the zero frame-relay mappings was working fine (!), but the other spoke router was continuously reseting its OSPF adjacency. After doing some debugs i found out that the reset was happening as soon as the 1st router (which was working fine although it had all these zero mappings) was sending its LSA's to this router! (all routers were in area 0).
So i remembered that this router had been reconfigured from the beginning by the support engineer and i'd better re-check its frame-relay mappings. Then i saw all these 0.0.0.0 entries. I tried "clear frame inarp" and "shut/no shut" of the interface, but neither the first action, nor the second one worked. I reloaded the router and after ~5 mins, everything worked fine. The whole issue costed me totally ~45 mins.
Assessor Lab V2.0 is CCIE R&S Assessor Lab, Version B. Generally the exam had questions that lead you only to one solution, which was mostly good (as long as you know all the possible solutions). There were many "don't do this", "do this", etc. One thing that was confusing, was that the initial configurations had quite a lot of commands in them, so i had to check thoroughly them before beginning the lab. I actually started configuring the routers after 30 mins, because i had to write down some notes on the diagrams. Btw, there are many diagrams provided, which is good because you don't have to draw them yourself, but on the other hand it can become confusing when looking at all of them, trying to find out which one to use in each task.
There were around half of the questions you would expect in the real lab, covering >60% of the CCIE blueprint. I met only 3 tasks that i didn't have any practical experience with, although i knew the theory behind them. So i had to look them at the DocCD, which took me some time.
The lab lasts for 4 hours, which seems enough to go through all the questions and then start answering them one by one. In my case, i lost those 45 mins on the enable/ospf issues, so i finished just in time (1 min before the end!), without actually having enough time to check my whole config once more. That costed me 5 points because of 2 very silly mistakes, which would have been avoided if i had checked them again.
During the exam you have the option to run an assessment report which shows what you've done right or wrong until that time. Quite a nice feature! I used it once after i had finished my IGP configuration and i found out that i had made 2 mistakes. Of course i didn't correct them, because i wanted to see my actual score at the end. Keep in mind that you have to be careful while running the report, because it's changing some of your config (especially some logging commands).
At the end of the exam you're given another 2 hours if you want to "play" with the routers. The bad part is that you have to re-upload your config there, because it has been erased. The good part is that there is a button to make it automatically (hopefully).
The whole lab was a nice experience, because i was stressed in terms of time and i had to follow specific directions. The most annoying parts were the fact that only Internet Explorer is supported and that you have to access the routers through a java application, which makes the responsiveness a little sluggish. Also, it's more expensive than all other online -evaluation- labs, something that makes you prefer it only once or twice (if you want to try both versions).
I have another CCIE Assessor Lab on next Friday, so i'm hoping that one will be even better.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
2nd Mock Lab - 72%
That was HELL!!!
The 2nd Mock Lab from IE was a lot more difficult from the one i took one week ago.
Which was actually nice, because i wanted to test my strengths. I feel satisfied by the result, but i'm not satisfied by the time i spent in order to finish the whole mock lab...almost 11 full hours! I spent around 1.5 hours on a single ospf question, designing & trying all possible virtual-links (total 5), trying to find the smallest possible number.
Lastly, yesterday i found out that the 1st Mock Lab i had taken was rated as level 6, which is easier than CCIE (level 7), while the 2nd one was rated as level 9. So i decided (since their price went down; someone must have heard me) to take another 2 labs on January, rated at least as level 7.
For the next 2 days (Thursday & Friday) i have booked 2 rack rental sessions, because i want to try some strange L2 scenarios (some i met on these 2 mock labs and some other i have in my mind) on the 3550s/3560s. Dynamips is great for L3, but it lacks a lot of functionality on L2.
I also booked 2 CCIE Assessor sessions (Cisco's online CCIE preparation labs) during the next 2 weeks, because i read somewhere that they resemble the real CCIE lab, especially the style of the questions. So i decided to give it a try.
It's a shame that although the IE's ML scenarios are very clever, the post-sales support is non-existent. Nobody seems to actually read the forums, or if someone reads it, he/she answers mostly the pre-sales questions.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
IE Mock Lab dissapointment
Taken from http://www.internetworkexpert.com/iemlcod-rs.htm
Manual Grading
The CCIE Lab Exam is not a multiple choice exam. Instead, it is a highly complex exam with advanced protocol interactions that more often than not result in subjective answers. For this reason we do not run your configurations through a grading script to simply compare them with the solutions that we came up with. Each of your solutions are meticulously checked by hand by our highly skilled CCIE instructors. Once your exam has been graded you will be sent a detailed score report from our CCIE instructors. Sections that are marked incorrect include detailed feedback as to why there were incorrect, and typically include additional links to outside resources.
detailed score report : It was a simple 2 page report with some comments on my errors
detailed feedback as to why there were incorrect : The largest feedback on a section was 27 words, the smallest 3
additional links to outside resources : I wish i could have seen them
Solutions Guides
In addition to the detailed score report and lab breakdown you will receive a solutions guide broken down on a task-by-task basis for each Mock Lab Exam that you take. With this solutions guide format there is no need to sort through long configuration files to guess which configurations correspond to which task. The solutions guides show you not only the configuration for each task but also give important "show" outputs and explain how you can verify that your configuration is functional per the lab requirements.
lab breakdown : nice to have it, but not when some sections are out of date (refering to 2005)
Post-Lab Support
Once you have reveiwed the Mock Lab Exam and solutions, it doesn't stop there. Internetwork Expert also offers free support for each of the Mock Lab scenarios on our CCIE Support Forum. In the real CCIE Lab Exam there is no outlet for getting more feedback on your performance. With our CCIE Mock Lab Exams you'll have the opportunity to ask our instructors why your work was graded a certain way, 24 hours a day!
the opportunity to ask our instructors : ...Still hoping to get an answer...
The good part: Excellent diagrams! Clever scenarios! Tough Tasks!
1st Mock Lab - 74 %
On past Friday i had my first Mock Lab attempt, which proved easier that expected.
I was expecting IGP redistribution in multiple points, IPv6 BGP/OSPF/RIP routing, DVMRP, etc, but most of the sections where quite "easy". That of course doesn't mean that i passed. I missed 10 whole points in the Bridging & Switching section, which is one of my favorites.
The reason? I was in a hurry to finish the first sections which i have more experience with, in order to have enough time to do the rest. But, many questions were tricky and passing through them in a hurry, proved to be the wrong method. I missed 3 points on a simple task (because i didn't configure a vlan) and another 4 points (in two other questions) because of the first error.
There were only 2 sections that i didn't know at all and i had to improvise (one proved correct with a minor error in an acl entry, the other totally wrong). Also there were another 4 sections that i had to look into the Doc CD. At least i have now learned to use the Doc CD more efficiently. It's surely invaluable in such situations.
Also, when i finished, i had only 30 mins left (according to the actual 8-hour lab, because in the mock lab you're allowed to exceed this time by 3 hours). So instead of looking back all the sections in order to verify them, i decided to reload all routers! What was even more disastrous, was the fact that i reloaded them all at the same time and i didn't look at their logs while booting.
The result? After the reload, something wasn't working as expected. After a quick search i found one router which seemed not to be running OSPF. I checked its configuration (thank god i had saved all my session locally) and i found that there were two "neighbor" commands missing! I added them and reloaded again. This time i watched the logs and there was an error message saying that this particular command is not supported on this kind of topologies (a bug? command is accepted while configuring, but it's rejected after reloading). So i saved my configuration and warned (through email) the proctor about this behavior.
The answer from the support department the next day was to post my "problem" on the forum and i'll get an answer there. Of course, after a week there's still no answer there. And after a quick search on their forum, i found out that many questions remain unanswered. Too bad, because i have heard a lot of good words about InternetworkExpert's training material. I wanted to test their Mock Labs and maybe buy their Workbooks, but this kind of support made me rethink it. If i have one question in the Mock lab (and gets unanswered), i 'll probably have tens in the Workbook labs. Anyway, i still have one Mock Lab from them. If they keep the same -high- price and/or wrong "attitude", i'll have to look at a different vendor.
Let's hope this Friday, i'll have something tougher. The goal still remains for something >50%.
Monday, November 19, 2007
1st pass finished - IE's sample lab finished
Yesterday i finished the 1st step of my CCIE preparation!!!!
I have read (once) all chapters from the lab blueprint and during the last 4 days i was trying to run the sample lab provided at IE's site.
My system is a Core2Duo E6550 with 2 GB ram running WindowsXP & Ubuntu 7.04 (through wubi). These are the conclusions i came into after finishing the sample lab on Ubuntu (WindowsXP was too memory hungry):
1) 2 GB ram in Linux are more than enough to run 14 routers with full configuration ("ghostios" option used).
2) You have to change the idlepc value for each router after major reconfigurations, in order to keep the cpu load as low as possible (i used htop for monitoring it).
Regarding the 2nd one, this is what i did:
I found out that most of the times, idlepc counts around 50 are the good ones, despite what dynagen says. Try changing the idlepc value (choosing 1 out of proposed 10) until you get 5%-10% cpu load for all currently running routers/switches.
I had to repeat the "find the idlepc value" steps 3-4 times for each router/switch, until i finished the core part of the lab (just before IP Multicast). At that time, cpu load was around 7-10%. After that, there was a minor increase for the extra configuration till the end, but that didn't have any impact on the L2/L3 functionality. If i didn't change the idlepc values, then when the cpu load was going above 70%, i was having L2/L3 issues with routing protocols reseting, interfaces going down, etc.
When i finished the lab, i noticed that having all routers with full configuration caused a cpu load around 20-30%, sometimes peaking to 50% (probably due to the BGP scanner and/or the "wr mem" command). I guess, that could have been lower, if i was experimenting with the idlepc values while being at the final config.
I had many cpu issues when i was using the access server (TermServ) to access the routers. Maybe console access through it or traffic passing through the tap0/br0 interface in linux, is causing increased cpu load. I decided to use the -default- tabbed xterm from Gnome (it was a little annoying closing/opening windows, but it worked fine).
I met a lot of issues with 3640s as switches running 12.3(14)T7. I changed them to 3725s running 12.4(17a) and everything worked fine till the end.
PS: There were some times that, while starting dynamips, the whole system became stuck (cpu load 100%) and i had to reboot it. I still don't know what was causing this (i haven't checked if dynamips has reported something on its log). If dynagen was successfully started, then everything was working fine afterwards.
Note to dynagen/dynamips authors: A feature to find/change the idlepc value, regardless if it's already known, would be a welcome addition. Then i wouldn't have to stop/start dynagen after each change in the net file (while trying to find the best idlepc value).
Note to IE's sample lab authors: There is an issue (probably in the initial config) with a BB router not having eigrp authentication configured, when starting. I had to manually change it.
For those who are wondering how i did in the sample lab... i failed with 70%. But i'm quite satisfied, because all the tasks i missed where due to me not understanding the exact meaning of a subtask, or providing wrong values (bits vs bytes) due to oversight. And on Friday i have my first mock lab...50% is the goal.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Progress 13-Nov-2007
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.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Progress 04-Nov-2007
I have bought some CCIE books and i'm reading their chapters according to to the CCIE Lab Exam Blueprint.
Until now i have covered the following topics :
- 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
I hope i can move faster by the end of next week, when i'll have more free time. Surely there are a lot of topics that i haven't covered yet, but i already know a few things about some of them from my work experience. So i hope i'll move quickly over them, when their time comes.
In the meantime i have booked 2 Mock Labs for the end of November. I know i won't be ready by then, but i need to find out if i have understood the topics i have already read and to experience the difficulty of a real lab, since all these Mock Labs are said to resemble the real CCIE lab. If i get something above 50%, i'll be quite satisfied.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Why it all started
For quite a few years the CCIE certification was strolling in my mind. It was like a magic trick that many had tried, but very few had succeeded on it. It was the last year that i took the decision that i should give it a try now, otherwise i wasn't going to try it never.
There are many reasons for taking that decision at that time, but the 5 most important were:
- I wanted to do it in order to test my skills/knowledge. Just a bet with myself.
- During that time my work schedule was light (quite strange for me).
- There have been quite a few (unofficial) proposals for a much better salary from other employers, even without the CCIE in my hands (possibly due to my networking experience). I guess a CCIE would make them even higher.
- I just wanted to confute one of the excuses of my employer for not giving me the salary i was asking.
- I had tried Dynamips/Dynagen and i was excited about them. I could practice at home using only a PC.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
How it all started
For the last 9 years i work in the telecoms & service provider business for a well known local ISP.
Around end of November 2006, i decided something that was already in my mind for a long time.
Go for the ultimate certification regarding my occupation...Cisco's CCIE.
It took me around 2 weeks in order to find information about the certification and all the other steps i could follow in order to be prepared as much as possible.
The history so far...
CCNA
Start Day : 16 Dec 2006
- 640-801 (CCNA): 18 Dec 2006
CCNP
Start day: 20 Dec 2006
- 642-811 (BCMSN): 27 Dec 2006
- 642-821 (BCRAN): 27 Dec 2006
- 642-831 (CIT): 28 Dec 2006
- 642-901 (BCSI): 4 Jan 2007
CCIE R&S Written
Start day: 10 Jan 2007
- 350-001 (CCIE R&S): 7 Feb 2007
Most of the CCNA/CCNP topics were very well known to me, because in my work i'm responsible for ~200 switches, ~100 routers (dial/isdn & bras), multicast, aaa/radius/tacacs and most of the new services implementations.
BCMSN & BCRAN were the easiest. BCSI was the hardest one, because i had to dig deeper into IS-IS, EIGRP & BGP. CCIE written was a sum of all the CCNPs plus some extras which weren't too difficult.
A lot of work during the next months makes me abandon the idea of a lab around June.
Before the end of summer 2007 i'm starting to look for an available CCIE lab date during November.
As soon as i book it, new projects come into play in my work, so the lab date gets rescheduled for Jan 2008 (hoping that this time it will be final).
During September i inform my employer about my decision and that i'm going to give priority to it. It went well ;)
Immediately afterwards i order some books about CCIE practice labs (i already had bought a few about the written test), i find some sample scenarios on IE's site (great info there) and i start to prepare my personal lab.
On Oct 19th i'm ready to start playing with my virtual lab (thanks to the dynamips author). The journey had begun...
CCIE R&S Lab
Start day: 19 Oct 2007
- Lab: ?
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