From: Farhan Anwar (farhan.anwar@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Jan 29 2008 - 08:35:31 ARST
Thanks for all the replies i am getting for this huge post.
I hope this helps many aspirants as well, i was one of them a week
ago. I am always open for any queries or questions you have.
It would be great if the brian's would reply or comment on to my
strategy about how i used their products.
.. after this post i have noticed a huge surge of visits on my website
as well ;) ... a week ago it was 246, now its over 3000 ;)
Regards,
On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 9:28 AM, Ash Garg <ash@telstra.net> wrote:
> Thanks Farhan, your fantastic post closely reflects where I am and how I
> hope to move towards those elusive digits!
>
> There is till hope for me yet!
>
> Kind Regards,
> Ash
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
> Farhan Anwar
>
> Sent: Sunday, 27 January 2008 12:27 PM
> 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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>
>
--Farhan Anwar CCIE #19871 Web: www.farhananwar.com Blog: sfarhananwar.blogspot.com
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