From: Darby Weaver (darbyweaver@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Sep 29 2007 - 23:07:37 ART
Shady,
While I'm not a CCIE yet, but have been around the
block a few times and still have to make a "good
trip"...
I can tell you that Jeff Doyle's books are known and
agreed by all to be a fundamental and core part of the
requiriem that is absolutely needed to become a CCIE.
There are now several very good books on Switching,
but Kennedy Clark still holds a place of high regard
with me and while I must admit it was a challenging
read at first, I can now read it easily and as such my
chances of passing my next CCIE Lab have gone up
exponentially as a result.
The COD by IE is a fundamental to understanding the
core concepts of mostly every technology that will be
seen on the CCIE Lab - there may still be a curve ball
but if there were not, then it would not be the CCIE
Lab. All in all, I consider my investment with
InternetworkExpert to be among one of the best and
most longstanding investments in the journey to CCIE.
I would also like to point you towards NMC for their
own library and their COD and exhaustive works on Cat
QoS, IPv6, and Frame Relay - If you purchase their
technology library then you will find one of the
finest explanations on Switching in Video Format as
well. I liked it and it cleared cobwebs for me when I
discovered it.
I like other vendors and have learned a lot from all
of them.
Narbik Kocharians has done the entire community a
great service with his workbooks.
The Brians at IE - Their latest workbooks with about
100 pages of amazingly clear and simple step by step
explanations of how and why have impressed me to no
end and as such I am now looking to buy their COD for
all 20 of their COD Labs. Their customer service used
to almost be a dis-service, but it appears that they
have realized this and turned it around to being one
of the best in the business - They found they had a
weak spot and they turned it around. This is probably
one of the best compliments I know how to give a
vendor. I'm not sure how others feel about it, I know
to date they have taken the time to make me feel like
a valued customer - I still have an offer from Brian
Dennis to make good on, but I believe he is an honest
man and he his dedicated very much to his products and
their reputation and quality.
I like H. U. and his works - His labs are more real
world and are probably "harder" since they make you do
things at a level where you simply must understand
what is happening and all under his very watchful and
careful gaze. He cares about his students and usually
seems to build life-long or at least career-long
relationships. Very dedicated to his students.
I can never say enough about Bruce Caslow, Val
Pavlichencko, and Bob Sinclair - if there was ever a
"Dream Team", then these guys are it. They compliment
each other so well in the class and in their products,
lately Anthony S. from GS had been affiliated with
NetMasterClass as well and he brings out the qualifty
the aforementioned masters of the art have striven for
and made the bar to match. Now if there were a CCIE+
Certification - one would have to go to NMC to get it.
We all know and love Scott Morris and he helps people
a lot and many people love the IPExpert Product. I
have not used it as much myself, but I do listen and
many people sing praises about Scott and his team.
Brad Ellis and NLI have a very clear product that I
like very much for its very straight forwardness.
Lots of very good products have come from NLI and they
have a very long list of CCIE's as well.
For core knowledge and easy reading - do consider
Cisco Press - they have very well written books on
TCP/IP, LAN Switching, BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, Frame Relay,
QoS (Wendell Odom 2nd Edition), Troubleshooting IP
Routing Protocols, etc.
Do not forget Oreilly's Cisco IOS in a Nutshell and
the Cisco CookBook 2nd Edition, not saying the first
ediition was any less - I own both...
Oreilly also published a book on Time Management for
System Administrators and it works equally well for
CCIE Candidates.
Wanna know more contact me offline.
It's also great to find a few serious people and
compare notes from time to time and keep you on the
ball.
Ideally get a friend and if you have remote racks -
set one up let the other guy create faults and you do
the same for him/her and see if you can really
troubleshoot. Makes a better enigneer if you can
isolate and fix things - especially in the lab when
you are under the gun.
Also consider modifying the requirements of your labs
and adding additional complexity to the labs you have
successfully completed. You can learn alot from
incremental changes.
Perhaps you are filter all even routes and then you
device to change the requirements to just filtering a
subset of those routes.
Perhaps you are asked to do a task that requires a
distribute list - are there other techniques that
might work as well? What if the requirement instead
changed to one where you were asked to use a different
technology altogether to accomplish the same task?
What about items like Multicast - if the lab stated to
perform the task given a certain route through your
network and what if the layer 2 spanning-tree topology
changed, how would this affect your layer three
routing and multicast route as a direct result?
Same thing for BGP?
What about filtering control plane traffic? Adding it
as a requirement or not adding it but needing it to
make a scenario work?
Lot of stuff to try even if you have only one lab to
work from and all vendors offer at least one sample
lab for you to get a taste of their quality and
complexity.
Imagine that you reuqire yourself to make your rack of
gear, however large or small, manageable securely and
with RADIUS or TACACS+, every protcol secure in some
means, Sysloging with different requirements, setting
up RMON thresholds, and a multitude of features each
and every lab.
Yep - lots of possiblities for a serious candidate
with some time on his/her hands...
Just some ideas.
Later
Darby
--- shady darwish <engshad.shady@gmail.com> wrote:
> is it enough to read tcp/ip 1 and 2 and BCMN
> selfstudy as core knowledge for
> ccie lab and focus on QOS ,Security and multicast
> from videos COD
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Oct 06 2007 - 12:01:17 ART