CCIE Candidate

When I passed my CCIE R&S Lab Exam in 2001, I remember both the jubilation and exhaustion of the moment. Also the loneliness, after all, my wife and children had been without a functional partner and father for more than year, and they were not there with me at the final moment.
Let me explain.
My exam [...]

I’ve opened up the comment function so that you no longer have to register & log in to comment.  Let’s see how it goes.  I have a feeling I may need to ratchet down the spam filters a bit tighter.

This article is a follow up to CCIE R&S Syllabus, Part 2…
Q: I’m ready to start preparing for the lab exam. Where do I begin?
A: To start preparing for the lab, you should have a good idea of what you’re up against. The CCIE lab exam isn’t merely a technical exam. The [...]

I’m looking for people to contribute to CCIECandidate.com. All of the following types of content are of interest to me:

Articles by CCIE candidates about their journey. Becoming a CCIE is an arduous task; blogging about what you learn along the way and the progress you’re making is of interest to other CCIE candidates.
Articles by [...]

I got this fascinating tidbit in my mailbox a little bit ago from InternetworkExpert.com:
Reno, Nevada, June 25, 2008 - Internetwork Expert, Inc., a pioneering leader in Cisco CCIE Lab Exam training, today announced that Scott Morris (CCIE #4713), a four-time CCIE, has joined the company as a CCIE Instructor.
Scott Morris has been in the Cisco [...]

So since a couple of people have asked, I guess not everyone is reading the groupstudy mailing list. I passed the lab on my first shot last Thursday. It was just like everyone warned me it would be - tough, but fair. Also it was more straight-forward than most of the vendor [...]

Finding myself in the spotlight over the past couple of weeks has given me pause for thought.  Why was I lit up like I was?  One important part of that answer is that I purposely made myself easy to find.  My name isn’t that common, although googling my name comes up with an athlete (decidedly [...]

I spoke with CertGuard yesterday, and we agreed that it would be appropriate to post this letter from Robert Williams on the CCIE Candidate blog. Several others received this letter via CC. The letter (in italics) follows.
Formulating an apology to such an important topic has not been a simple task; especially when I [...]

The outpouring of support I have received from the CCIE community has left me awestruck. I received e-mails, phone calls, and other messages of encouragement that helped keep my spirits up. Although the existence of this blog might imply otherwise, I’m not a person that craves attention. I’ve found all of this [...]

I am hoping that the server stability problems I was having a week or so ago have been resolved.  I re-imaged the server from scratch, so the memory leak should be a thing of the past.
But the server stability wasn’t why the site was down for a week.  I took the site down on purpose for other [...]

Today’s lesson - on multiple points of mutual redistribution, always use tags. Even if you think you can do it without them, just use them.
When I finished reading the lab through and updating my diagrams, I looked at my IGP redistribution requirements and knew I was going to take a beating. I think [...]

Back in the saddle again
Just thought I’d stick another song in everyone’s head. At any rate, after moping around this weekend I realized that I wasn’t bored, and I sure as hell wasn’t overconfident or finished preparing - I was burnt out. I had been drilling for something like 9 days straight and [...]

Random tip of the day - When you’re at a restaurant with your wife and she asks you if there’s anything on her face, “nothing worth mentioning” is not the right answer.
I seem to be going through phases. Last week I oscillated between panic and calm, now I’ve moved into boredom. I just [...]

“Peace you wolf of hell! Choke back on your bile and let its venom blister your throat!”
Virgil, The Inferno
So we all grow up redistributing between two routers running different protocols, typically some combination of RIP/OSPF/EIGRP. The easiest and surest way to avoid looping is to tag the routes before they get redistributed, then [...]

The last week or so has been a bit of a roller coaster. Sometimes I go through a lab and think, “wow, I actually do know this stuff, I haven’t just been pissing into the wind this last year, and I’m not just a fraud.” Other times, like the last two days, I [...]