From CCIE R&S to R&S+SP -- commitment required

Hi all,

There are lots of posts on GroupStudy where people are asking for
pointers to good CCIE SP study resources -- that's not the intention
of this post.

I'd like to hear from people who went on from CCIE R&S to tackle and
pass SP. Was the time and effort required comparable to that of your
CCIE R&S journey, or was it more like a logical progression that
required less from you in terms of time and commitment?

Obviously some people tackle CCIE SP without R&S, and presumably for
them the end-to-end effort is similar for someone doing R&S from
scratch (otherwise plenty of people would be out there saying "SP is
easier than R&S"). Noting that everybody is different, I suppose I'm
curious about things like:

- Did you take a break after R&S, and if so, how long?
- How much of your retained R&S knowledge helped with your SP prep?
Did it allow you to skip much/any content?
- For the SP Written, how long did you prepare and how did you find
the exam, difficulty-wise? Same as R&S Written?
- How long did it take you, from end-to-end, from the beginning of
your SP prep to passing the SP lab? How many hours, roughly
- Any other observations re: changes in the way you prepared for R&S versus SP?

Having recently passed R&S, I'm keen to capitalise on my study 'mode'
and habits, but for me, pursuing SP is more about an interest in the
technology than any other imperative. I know if I leave it too long,
some of those strange tidbits of information still clanging around
inside my head will disappear, study habits will give way to life,
work will ramp up, and it will be harder to get motivated to get stuck
into SP.

Cheers,
Dale

Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
Received on Sat Jun 13 2009 - 17:39:14 ART