CCIE Candidate

I’ll preface this post with the statement that I feel like the class was worthwhile, because while my opinion of the class is not entirely negative, it isn’t what I might consider marketing material.  So to be clear I’m glad I went.

It is often said that the ISC2 CISSP certification is, “a mile wide and an inch deep.”  To develop a class that covers the CCIE R&S Lab exam must be especially challenging as it’s a mile wide … and a mile deep.  To this end it’s really hard for a one-week class to succeed OR fail entirely as the IGPs, BGP, and QoS could each easily command a week-long bootcamp.

Format and Class Structure

That said, I would not recommend this class to anyone who was not already at least 75% through their lab preparation.  The reason being there isn’t much guidance, there is practically no lecture, and there is nothing built into the curriculum or schedule to deepen a student’s understanding of a given technology.  This is a six-day marathon of hands-on lab work, where you are presented with problems and YOU, the student, pound through them.  If you are not already comfortable enough with OSPF to rattle off exactly which LSA types are allowed in each area type, this is not the place for you to be.  You can certainly ask Rahim questions, and I saw him working patiently with each student individually (myself included), but you can’t ask him for in-depth explanations on everything, there just isn’t enough time in a week.  This is very much a polishing up class.

For contrast I will look to Narbik’s class, as it’s the only other lab prep class I have attended.  Narbik’s class has a lot of lecture.  The hours were just as long in each class, but the difference was that Narbik spent the face-to-face time doing deep dives on all the major topics (except IPv6, but that’s probably the easiest area on the blueprint), then assigned the lab work as homework via in-depth books he developed and gave out during class.  These books reinforced the lectures directly, and Narbik was very open about there being no way a student would finish the workbooks that week, or even the week after.  In fact he estimated the workbooks would take at least three weeks to complete, and a candidate would have to work through them multiple times.  Then he told us to use a different vendor at least a little bit to see the different approaches, wording, etcetera.

Focus of the Class

Another key difference that I alluded to but deserves explicit attention is the focus on test versus technology.  Narbik is quite adamant about learning the technology; learning it down to the nook and cranny, and in some cases trying to get in the code developer’s head.*  This was also pretty heavy for someone just starting out on the CCIE Lab path, but the emphasis on fundamentals and the lab books with their detailed explanations made the class more helpful to people who weren’t going to take the exam within a month.  This underscored Narbik’s philosophy that if you really get your hands dirty with every topic on the exam and know it inside and out, the test will be easy - therefore that should be your goal and, hence, your focus.

The Unitek class did not go into fundamentals.  Rahim went over tips and tricks, but never actually explained how anything worked unless you asked, and even then the focus was really on passing the exam.  For example, I’m still a bit shaky on some of the nuances of QoS, and Rahim was able to clarify that “shape peak” does the same basic thing as “shape average”, but you get to burst up to twice the amount you specify with “shape peak”.  Ok, fair enough.  Now I can remember that forever because that made perfect sense, but I have to look up the mechanics of the traffic shaping via “average” versus “peak” on my own.  I’m alright with that, but others might not be. 

There was a little bit of lecture on Saturday afternoon, but it was random.  It covered things Rahim felt we would see on the exam, jumping from one point to another in a very staccato manner, and was mostly him telling us to make sure we understood the topics he mentioned, with some light explanation. 

Preparing for the Exam - the Long, Lonely Road

One thing I found conspiciously absent from the class was preparation advice.  There was some on Saturday afternoon, but it held the same staccato rhythm** as the technology poking we got (it wasn’t actually a lecture on anything).  There was no mention of finding a vendor workbook to study from (or an alternate method if you don’t want to), preparation strategy, order in which to study material, suggested books, how to build or rent a lab, study schedule, how to gauge readiness, etcetera.  The few students I talked to about vendors didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked them which vendor they were primarily using, and I think they could have really benefitted from a quick rundown of the logistics of getting this done.  I know I personally wasted about three months milling about when I started and I wish someone had grabbed me by the shoulders and pointed me in the right direction (someone eventually did, thanks Craig Hammond).  Since this was a class on how to pass the exam I think it’s fair to expect this kind of information.

Just as important, there was nothing to prepare students’ minds and spirits for the ordeal ahead.  This isn’t some weird, new-age Los Angeles trophy-wife voodoo - there is every chance that a candidate will spend a year of dedicated study time preparing for the exam, and fail.  It’s important to be prepared for the brutal sacrifice that this takes.  Telling students they can accomplish this feat is nice, but not warning them what lies ahead is the same as sending colonists on LV-426 into an alien ship without telling them of the potential dangers, and look how that turned out. 

Summary

To summarize, the Unitek bootcamp seems far more geared toward people who are pretty much done studying and just want to do several proctored mock labs a few weeks before they test.  If that is your strategy then I would actually recommend this class.  Unitek has a bundle package where you pay extra for the class and stay in a nearby hotel (which has a passable breakfast buffet), get shuttled back and forth to class every day, and get your lunches and dinners provided every day (various foods, you get to pick from the menus of nearby sandwich joints, and they were all fine).  This was nice in that it freed us up to focus on beating on the material, and it also allows a candidate’s manager to pay for the entire trip, minus air fare, via Cisco Learning Credits, which might make it easier to get you out there.

A couple of other students seemed unhappy with the class, and one told me that he could have done this all on his own.  True enough, and the $4,000 price tag (without the hotel deal) seemed steep to me for a week of proctored lab work since you can get take proctored labs via the major CCIE training vendors for far less, but for me the true joy was getting to focus 100% on my studies for 6 days straight.

I hope this helps. 

 

* A quick side note.  I was flipping through John Moy’s “OSPF: Anatomy of a Routing Protocol” again a few weeks ago (it’s been years) and after truly learning the protocol and labbing it up 100 times, some of the things he said, like ABRs without an area 0 database being prohibited from using type-3 summary LSAs to make routing decisions, tied so many things together it brought a tear to my eye.  I immediately and enthusiastically shared that specific epiphany with my wife, with predictable results.

** I’d like to take a moment and recognize the word “rhythm” as my nominee for the grossest violation of phonetics in the English language.

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