From: Tom Larus (tlarus@xxxxxxx)
Date: Fri Aug 30 2002 - 15:46:24 GMT-3
I passed last Friday at RTP, and have been on vacation since then. It was my
second attempt. I rented internet access for a half-hour last Saturday to
find out whether I passed, but I did not want to announce to the group when
I was not in a position to reply to congratulatory emails.
I would like to thank Paul Borghese for hosting this group. The
collegiality of this group is one thing that makes this whole field so
great. When the "field experience" versus "lab rat" debate is as bad as it
gets, you know it is a a pretty collegial group. And it is understandable
that people would be a bit insecure in this bad job market. We "lab rats"
worry about whether there is a place for us in this field, and some of the
guys with lots of field experience feel like their field is being invaded by
folks who are driving down the salararies. All of these concerns are real
and valid, and the the fact that we remain glad to help each other is
beautiful.
I have some thoughts on preparing for the CCIE that may be helpful to some
people, but not to others. There is not one "best approach" to CCIE
preparation. Each person needs to use the methods that work best for him or
her, but I will throw out a few ideas.
We all know that you need to read several core texts very carefully, and
probably repeatedly (Doyle I, Halabi, Caslow & Pavlichenko), but I would
urge you to read as broadly as you can, and to read exactly what you are
most
interested in learning about at the moment. That means, picking up, say,
Srinivas Vegesna's book on QOS, and reading a chapter at random, or whatever
chapter covers a topic that you want to nail down something about. When
people set
out to read a book cover to cover, they often find themselves in a situation
where they are covering a lot of pages, but they are not really absorbing
everything they are reading as well as they would if they just read what the
wanted to read. Take the books everywhere and read them every chance you
get. Obsession is helpful in achieving the CCIE.
Read the IOS Docs for fun, and read them to answer specific questions. Doing
practice scenarios should generate all kinds of questions about details you
want to nail down. Read to answer these questions, and flip through and
look for sections that look
interesting and read them.
I knew that buying the 12.1 IOS printed docs was one of the best decisions I
had made in this process right after I had bought them. To pick up the docs
and read them for fun the way you would read any other Cisco book gives you
a comfort and familiarity with the Docs that builds confidence and exposes
you to lots of material that is not covered elsewhere. The IOS docs are
pretty thin on IP Routing, so you cannot use them as a substitute for the
great books on IGP routing and BGP.
I recommend keeping a lab notebook, in which you write an estimate of the
time you spent each day, and the most important lessons you learned that
day. Just putting the lessons into a few coherent sentences will help you
to
remember what you learned. Two hours in which you learn "when configuring
x, you need to remember to put y under the interface" can be better than
doing four hours of router configuration without digesting what you learned.
I count reading separately from router configuration, and I generally do not
count reading groupstudy at all, even though it is an important activity.
Reading groupstudy is like a break, so I end up learning even on my breaks
from the more intense work of router configuration.
Following are some books that stick out in my memory:
Robert Caputo's Cisco Voice and Data Integration was very well written, and
was very practical in approach. (I am going from memory here, as I had to
return this book to the college library). McQuerry. McGrew, and Foy's Cisco
Voice over Frame Relay, ATM, and IP (Cisco Press), was pretty good, too.
Parkhurst's BGP book from Cisco Press book was actually fun. Yes, Halabi is
the master of the big picture, but this book allowed me to get a real
feeling of comfort with Cisco's BGP syntax. (And no, I do NOT consider
myself an expert on BGP.)
I did not use Solie's Practical Studies all that much, partly because it
weighs too much to be convenient to carry around and read, and partly
because it has too many errors to be trustworthy. It is the product of
enormous effort, and has outstanding coverage of certain topics, but should
have gone through more rigorous proofing. Doyle volume I weighed too much,
too,
but the spine broke and around 200 pages came out, which made it a bit more
manageable. Also, Doyle volume I is practically perfect.
I strongly recommend checking out "used" books on Amazon.com. I got the
Vegesna QOS book for a great price, and it is not an old, outdated book. I
also got Terry Slattery's Advanced IP Routing in Cisco Networks the same
way, and Chris Lewis's TCP/IP Reference, and Parkhurst's older McGraw Hill
OSPF book (not his new OSPF Cisco Press book). Like many books on OSPF, the
older Parkhurst book covers too much that is not OSPF, leaving little space
for in-depth coverage of OSPF. Thomas Thomas' OSPF Design Solutions was the
same way, but is still worth examining closely. I would imagine that the
new Parkhurst OSPF book is probably great, since I loved new BGP book so
much. I think you should buy and read liberally from just about everything
you can get your hands on. Each book has its strong areas and you can learn
a lot from reading (even skimming) broadly.
If you can somehow manage it, take the NMC-1 class from Caslow,
Pavlichenko, and Ingham. From what I have seen on this list from and about
the brilliant Brian McGahan, I would imagine that CyscoExpert is also an
excellent choice.
Bruce Caslow insisted that I use a more efficient approach to switching
between routers-- specifically, making the router number match the session
number--and adopting his method (along with using aliases much more
aggressively) saved me lots of typing time and mental energy, which allowed
me to
learn much in the final two months of preparation. Of course, this CLI
efficiency stuff is a minor thing. The real benefits of NMC-1 lie in the
subtleties
the instructors expose you to, and the fact that you can rely on virtually
everything they say to be correct and authoritative. They expose you to a
concept that I think of as "find the dead link." In various topologies, you
will have a link that, for one reason or another, simply cannot work, so you
need to figure out how to work around it.
A theme of the NMC-1 course is "nail everything down." That pretty much
sums up the later stages of CCIE Preparation. Nail everything down, of
course, means not relying on things like inverse arp. I extended it to mean
nail down every detail about which you have doubts. Your study in the
middle to late stages needs to be an active process of having questions
raised through lab scenarios, and making sure you get precise and accurate
answers to those questions.
I do not have the ideal pedigree for obtaining the CCIE, as I do not have
years of field work as a network engineer, nor do I have a B.S. degree in
computer science or electrical engineering or the like. This means that I
will not be a top pick for most positions in this down market, but it does
not mean that the CCIE was unattainable, or that my skills will be useless
once the number and variety of jobs increases.
To those of you who are career changers like me, I would suggest that many
of you have skills that may well help you in pursuing the CCIE, and that may
help you in the right job, too. As a lawyer, I have felt right at home with
Cisco material for 2 1/2 years since I bought my first two routers and
started studying for the CCNA.
- My experience with languages and linguistics helped me to learn the
language of networking and the Cisco IOS "language."
- Studying law at University of Virginia School of Law and passing two State
Bar exams (one easy Bar Exam, one hard Bar Exam) helped me to develop the
"graduate school issue-spotting" skills that Caslow and Pavlichenko refer to
in their book. Law school also taught me to ask the important question
"why?" and to understand that the most important part of any explanation is
the part following, "because." When studying Cisco networking, one must
know why certain things are done the way they are, and why a network
engineer would want a particular
feature. Many of the folks with lots of field work experience have an
advantage in
this respect, in that they have had plenty of opportunity to learn "why"
certain features are necessary.
- Years of experience in legal research and writing have given me good
skills in research and analysis. I would say that I developed good writing
skills, except that those don't help at all in preparing for the CCIE, and
I feel downright tongue-tied as a write this email.
You, too, may find that skills you developed during a misspent youth may
help you in attaining the CCIE almost as much as someone else's years of
networking experience helped them. For example, if you are an accountant,
you may find that your eye for detail and problem-solving may come in handy.
The important thing is, once you have committed yourself to learning what
you need to
learn to pass the CCIE Lab (a commitment which I would not make lightly), do
not let yourself be deterred from achieving your goal by negative posts. I
simply invested too much time and money and effort, and pride, in achieving
this goal, to give up, so giving up simply was not an option for me.
Best wishes,
Tom Larus
CCIE # 10,014
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