From: Gary Duncanson (gary.duncanson@googlemail.com)
Date: Mon Jan 28 2008 - 06:07:46 ARST
Don't IEMENTOR do R&S?
Roman?
----- Original Message -----
From: <subodh.rawat@wipro.com>
To: <farhan.anwar@gmail.com>; <ccielab@groupstudy.com>
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 3:17 AM
Subject: RE: How i became CCIE -- caution Huge Post
> Nice post Farhan...Surely will help many aspirants.
>
> IEMENTOR for R&S????
>
> Regards
> Subodh
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
> Farhan Anwar
> Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2008 6:57 AM
> To: Cisco certification
> Subject: How i became CCIE -- caution Huge Post
>
> Hi All,
>
> Since my last post regarding my CCIE# i have received countless unicasts
> from different professionals asking for advice on how to start their
> studies and how i did it in the first attempt. Finally since I am still
> resting and evaluating Job Offers in my mailbox :) , I have decided to
> write my journey towards becoming a ccie. I couldn't find any better
> place than the GS itself so pardon me if you don't like the size of it.
> Here it goes, pardon me for any typos and NO I don't work for any
> workbook vendor ;), telling ya straight.
>
> I started preparing for the CCIE roughly 4 years ago when i did the CCIE
> Routing & Switching Training from a local institute during my studies.
> But then I entered in the professional field, got married ;) and things
> slowed down to a halt due to my OTHER activities.
>
> I started my personal goal again over 1.5 years ago but things were
> going very slow, until i finally decided to take CCIE Certification
> Seriously and devote time and resources to it, i started studying in
> nights and on whole weekends. For Practicing I was in search of low-cost
> lab equipment when a friend told me about dynamips as a Cisco 7200
> Router Simulator; i was impressed with the performance and its ease of
> use. I immediately started searching for its features, configuration
> settings and found a detailed article from Brian Mcghan of
> internetworkexpert explaining dynamips, furthermore the HACKI's forum
> was very much helpful in the initial stages of dynamips / dynagen
> experiences.
>
> I tuned, tweaked and optimized dynamips configuration files and idlepc
> values for one month while practicing my Routing Techniques on it, and
> it was in JANUARY 2007. A CCIE Friend told me about
> internetworkexpert.com. And also about the groupstudy.com, At that time
> I didn't have a clear view of what to study how to do it and what to
> practice for the CCIE due to a number of topics being covered in the R&S
> Program. Brian's detailed CCIE R&S Topics list in their Free Resources
> section helped me enormously till the last day for tracking my
> performance and topics to cover.
>
> I already had a strong base in IGP and BGP but i was weak in Advanced
> Switching, QoS, Security and Multicasting. For getting an edge in
> non-core topics i reviewed KnowledgeNet QoS and Multicast. I polished my
> security and Switching skills using the Cisco DocCD.
>
> Afterwards, i started viewing Class on Demand Videos of Internetwork
> Expert. After digesting that video of several hours in one month by
> seeing it again and again. I started doing Advanced Technology Labs on
> Dynamips. It took me another one and a half month to finish them off
> completely and tuning Dynamips Topological File for Advanced Technology
> Labs, i changed the interfaces, switch connections and frame-relay
> topology to suit my needs. Some Tasks were not supported in Dynamips
> such as Dot1x Tunneling, VLAN ACLs, RSPAN, Dynamic Trunking etc. so i
> skipped them and lateron rented a rack several times for practicing
> those specific topics. During this time, i reviewed the CoD countless
> times to gain a deeper understanding of technologies.
>
> My next move was to purchase a dedicated dynamips server to support my
> topology as my laptop was not enough for it, i purchased an AMD Athlon
> 64 4400+ with 2 GiG RAM as a dynamips server machine. Here Scott
> Vermillion came to the rescue as I was using Windows as my primary OS
> but I failed miserably in running the full topology, Scott insisted and
> encouraged me to use linux as at that time he was using MacOSX.
> You can find my huge post in the GS Archives.
>
> I started doing the Core-Labs as my next move to improve my IGP, BGP and
> Redistribution skills, additional one month just for the 10 Labs, they
> surely were hard as i think now :). Core Labs were done easily done on
> the Dynamips Server that i had purchased because they focused on IGP,
> Redistribution and BGP the most. Switching was mostly simple and when i
> was stuck with an unsupported task, i always skipped it and did them
> later on a rented rack if I had the chance.
>
> Finally i started R&S Workbook Labs, the first five labs were just warm
> up labs as the authors said but they looked really hard to me at the
> first glance, they can be done using Dynamips but some tasks were
> skipped in Switching. Initially it took me 3 days to finish only one lab
> with research on every topic. When i reached Lab5 i gained speed,
> accuracy and got familiar with most of the problems. Lab5 was done in
> 13 Hours in first attempt on my dynamips.
>
> I continued doing the workbook labs 6,7,8,9 and 10. The hardest of all
> was Lab 7 which again took me two days to figure out. After finishing
> Lab10 i almost knew all of the problems and i could solve most of the
> tasks at the back of my head. Labs 11 - 13 i did with a pencil just to
> save some time. Then I did all the remaining 14 b 20 Labs. Next, I
> rented rack equipment and did several labs on them again. Again My CCIE
> friend came to rescue and generously gave access to his own rack with 9
> Routers and 2 3550's I used it to do Labs again and gained some speed
> and accuracy. Thanks Ghias for that.
>
> In total I did the IE Labs 3 times on different equipment, 1st time on
> Dynamips, 2nd time on rented rack and third time on Physical Rack.
> Finally, in the last month, I reviewed most of the content again,
> reviewed the Class on Demand Videos to refresh some of the topics such
> as Catalyst QoS (freely available on internetworkexpert free resources
> section), IP/IOS Services, Multicasting, Security and BGP. I took
> references from the DocCD to memorize where to find stuff like Router
> Menus, WCCP, Nat, Reflexive ACLs, CBAC, IGMP Filtering, Multicast Stub
> Routing, IPv6 etc.
>
> I sat for lab in dubai on 22nd Jan 2008 and fortunately attained the
> number in the first attempt. For the last 2 nights i couldn't sleep and
> i just kept on praying and building strategies like should i do
> frame-relay first restart the routers then go on switching or the
> otherway around etc etc..
>
> Well, I hope this LONG LONG Post will help most of the people who
> emailed me for guidance on how to start and where to search the
> material. I specifically used IE Material but I have also seen other
> vendor's workbooks such as IPEXPERT, IEMENTOR, Soup-to-Nuts etc. and I
> have found them equally good for practicing the labs. It's a personal
> preference and what your company/budget allows you to purchase.
>
> Lastly, i would say, this was my technique, i cannot guarantee that
> following this one could lead you to success but it worked for me. I did
> the core-labs first, authors dont recommend this way, but i did it.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Farhan Anwar
> CCIE(R) .N9lN9..N9lN9. #19871
> www.farhananwar.com
>
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