IP Savant – CCIE Study Blog

Apologies on the delay between the first blog posting, and the last posting.  I actually passed the 350-001 R&S written exam about a month ago, and wrote the second post afterwards, but failed to publish it.  Proof that despite currently designing a $5 million IPTV headend network architecture – I fail at the internets and blogs.

Cisco 360 CCIE Routing and Switching Program – The First 30 Days

The last thirty days have been…interesting.  I remember listening to a Cisco Systems podcast several months ago describing the goals and motivations for developing the Cisco 360 program for expert level training.  At first, I had mixed feelings.  On the one hand, its always encouraging to see a vendor or corporation take greater ownership of training and professional certification for its products and services.  On other other hand, I have found inconsistencies and content/scope issues with Cisco Press certification titles in the past, so the pessimistic side of me thought that this could be muddying the waters.

Ever since I began this journey over five years ago, the CCIE lab preparation/training space has been served by three principle players:  NetMasterClass, Internetwork Expert and IPExpert.  I’ve had various amounts of exposure and experience with all three products and services over these years, and feel that I have a pretty good gauge of what each product strengths and weaknesses are.  My opinion (take it for what its worth), is that NetMasterClass has always had the best product.  This opinion is supported by two close friends who both passed their CCIE lab exam in the past 18 months; both tried all three products over the course of three to five years and came to the exact same conclusion.

Knowing that NMC tends to be more challenging and complex, I was happy to learn that they had partnered with Cisco to develop and administer the program, and now, 30 days into it, I continue to be pleased.

The Cisco 360 program has a substantial amount of content; ranging from VoDs, focused technology labs, reference library and of course, their flagship – “The Workbook”.  Perhaps my favorite component of the program is the strategy and organizational topics.  The meat of the program is definitely the lessons and workbook, but the bread that holds it all together is the theory, organization and strategy for executing the lab exam itself.

Concepts like a worksheet for task tracking, a routing protocol “loop” diagram, and segment/subnet identification and tracking are foreign concepts to me.  I never utilized these tools in my previous campaign, but will undoubetably incorporate them into my future attempts.

Aside from a shift in strategy and organization, most of the information and technical instruction has been as I expected it.  I have completed Switching, Frame Relay and IGP sections.  I have a few chinks in the armor still; calculating traffic share in EIGRP unequal cost load balancing, Frame-Relay Switching over GRE tunnels and some issues with how ip default-network is processed/handled in an EIGRP summarization scenario.  Overall, I’m impressed, encouraged, and motivated to move forward with a full head of steam.  Each study session, I recall more and more of what I learned in the past, and typically learn one new concept or detail that sticks with me.

All in all, I’m really liking the program so far, and excited about the next 30 days!

Recap

Lessons so far –  Switching, Frame Relay, IGP

Labs so far – (2) technology labs for Switching, (1) technology lab for Frame Relay and (2) technology labs for IGP

Next 30 days

Lessons to come – BGP, IPv6, Catalyst QoS

Labs to come – Technology labs for BGP, IPv6, Cat QoS.  Workbook labs 1 &2.

-The IP Savant-

So, for the 3rd time in just over 5 years, I completed the 350-001 CCIE Routing and Switching Written Exam this week.  As usual, lots of study and practice filled the two week period leading up to the test, and feelings of releif followed.

The CCIE Written is an odd duck.  While it does renew my CCNA and CCDP certifications (which I need currently, in lieu of my CCIE), its hard to really get excited about passing it.  Naturally, my wife and coworkers were all excited and congratulatory, but personally I felt like the $350 and month of time logged studying, served only to confirm that I belong at the CCIE level of study.  Relief isn’t happiness; I am not turning cartwheels and giving high-fives, I just feel like I had to justify myself to Cisco – something I don’t feel that I should have to do after passing the written twice already, and sitting the lab three times.

Concerning the exam itself, I feel Cisco has improved it greatly.  My first written had topics such as Cat5000/CatOS, IPX, Token Ring – despite none of those topics being on lab exam at that time.  The second time I took the written, I had several questions relating to Wireless networking and MPLS – again, not topics that were on the lab exam at that time.  This time around, I was pleasantly surprised.  I’ve always thought of the written exam as a device used to gauge whether or not a particular candidate was deemed fit to pursue the lab exam.   The initial two writtens I passed seemed only to support that notion halfway.  The other was was more of what I would consider “Professional” level certification questions.  In my opinion, a CCIE candidate should focus more on topics like mutual route redistribution, than Wireless standard statistics.

This time around, Cisco did good.  I was happy to find a handful of typical CCIE lab equivalent questions – like how summaries can lose more specific prefixes in auto-summary environments, route redistribution, and more command syntax and comprehension questions.  All in all, I’m content and feel like this written has more value than the previous ones.

So, I’m off to begin the Cisco 360 CCIE track, back to CCIE lab studies nearly seven years after I started down this path.  I’m more confident than ever, and I can’t wait to get in there and get my number, even if I’m six years late.

-The IP Savant-

Welcome to IPsavant.net – CCIE Blog and Network Engineering Community!

My name is Terry, and I created IPsavant.net to be an online community for CCIE’s, CCIE candidates and Network Engineers of all description to come together and blog, exchange ideas, find support and collaborate.  To learn a little more about this community, read on…

• CCIE Study / Network Engineering Blogs – Pursuing your CCIE?  Already a CCIE?  Join up and start blogging!  The first goal in creating this community, was to start blogging on my own personal CCIE quest.  Check in often to see how I’m doing, offer advice, correct me or ask questions.  However, dont stop there – join up and start your own CCIE or general Network Engineering blog and let the rest of the IPSavant community know what you are all about.
• Forums – Interested in another certification?  Having a hard time configuring a router or switch?  Have a question about internetworking technologies?  Interested in connecting and ‘networking’ with other Network Engineers?  Then head on over to the IPsavant forums and join the discussions.  Our forums are monitored by multiple CCIE’s and CCIE candidates with years of experience.
• Wiki – Interested in gaining a deeper understanding of a particular CCIE exam topic?  Looking for some real world examples of a networking technology?  Feel like you have something to add?  Head over to the Wiki and collaborate with other Network Engineers.  Help build a meaningful and focused collection of knowledge on the topics that matter most in the world of CCIE study.
• More features coming soon – Check back often, we will continue to add new features regularly!

So that should give you an idea of what to expect here at IPsavant.net.  I hope you will follow my blog, join our community and participate.  I look forward to the journey and to meeting many more IP savants!

-The IP Savant-