From: akbhardwaj@sympatico.ca
Date: Tue Feb 13 2007 - 12:39:46 ART
Hi folks,
this email is a bit delayed and I apologise for it, but I passed my CCIE (Service Provider) lab exam in Brussels back in October, 2006, on my first attempt.
My reference material primarily came from Cisco's univercd: every article that touched upon a subject in the lab blueprint was read and incorporated into my lab scenarios. I had read Vivek Alwayn's "Advanced MPLS Design and Implementation" from cover to cover; kudos to the author for delivering this dense topic so skillfully. Several IETF RFCs referenced in the univercd were read, and finally Jeff Doyle's Routing TCP/IP Vol. 1 and 2 were used as a desk reference.
Winnet Systems provided my lab scenarios. The instructors were very skilled at challenging my knowledge of the subject material: it took me many, many attempts to get the results that they wanted. I estimated that at least four hours of every day for the last six months were spent doing these scenarios from left to right, upside down, and backwards :) .
The lab exam was pretty challenging, but touched upon all the subjects covered in the blueprint. My advise to anybody attempting this lab is to read up on the material in the blueprint before starting your lab scenarios. Keep hacking away at your scenarios: try to configure your rack in different ways to understand the interaction that MP-BGP/MPLS has with the various routing protocols. Then try to break this relationship and view the results. At the least, you'll feel confident that you can deal with anything that Cisco can throw at you in the lab!
Good luck to everybody attempting the Service Provider lab. I had a lot of fun studying for it! Now if I could only write shell scripts as good as I could configure a router ... my next area of study :) .
Cheers,
Anuraag K. Bhardwaj, CCIE # 17083.
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