From: Scott Morris (smorris@ipexpert.com)
Date: Mon Jan 28 2008 - 11:32:34 ARST
Roman from IEMentor hangs out on this board (can't remember the last name
since it changed not too long ago, but search the archives and you'll find
him!)
I'm assuming he doesn't hang out here simply because we are an entertaining
group of people! Although I don't see anything about R&S labs on their web
site. *shrug*
Scott Morris, CCIE4 (R&S/ISP-Dial/Security/Service Provider) #4713, JNCIE-M
#153, JNCIS-ER, CISSP, et al.
CCSI/JNCI-M/JNCI-ER
VP - Technical Training - IPexpert, Inc.
IPexpert Sr. Technical Instructor
A Cisco Learning Partner - We Accept Learning Credits!
Telephone: +1.810.326.1444
Fax: +1.810.454.0130
http://www.ipexpert.com
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
subodh.rawat@wipro.com
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2008 10:17 PM
To: farhan.anwar@gmail.com; ccielab@groupstudy.com
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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Feb 01 2008 - 10:38:02 ARST