Beginning the journey
First off I’d like to thank Ethan for allowing me to blog about my CCIE lab journey on this site. I have followed this site for the past 3-4 months and have seen great value in witnessing both he and Keith’s perspective and study habits. I passed my R&S written back in January (seems like so long ago!) and, after starting a new job, I am now ready to begin my lab journey.Â
My lab exam is scheduled on December 15 so I have a little over 4 months to complete preparations for the exam. 4 months seems like so little time!
Since I currently lack lab equipment, I decided to begin with the Internetwork Expert Dynamips lab workbook. (labs 1-10) I began my quest in frustration a couple days back.   The frustration was with my CPU pegging when I started up all of the Dynamips routers. I tried many different idlepc values with no luck on both Windows Vista and Ubuntu. After reading posts from others about this issue, I decided to use our home iMac for dynamips. It works perfectly. (iMac 2.4GHz with 3GB memory)
I have now completed the first lab (nowhere near within the 8 hours allotted). I got stuck on everything from frame-relay basics to multicast. I did, however, start to get a really good feel for searching around the Cisco doccd.  Another thing that should have been obvious, but eluded me to this point, was that I will have to create a logical layer2 topology diagram for myself. It was a little hard for me to follow what device was in what vlan without going back to the device and doing a show vlan and show cdp neighbor. I am a visual learner so a drawing did quite nicely…
Unfortunately this post does not contain anything technical as I am still trolling through the details and trying to understand exactly what it is that I don’t understand. I look forward to Labs 2, 3, and 4 which I hope to finish in the next 10-14 days or so. At that point, I will go back over the first four labs and find every detail that I can in the doccd.Â
Now that hardware is no longer a concern I look to be feeling a little more confident after Lab2.
My plan (as I see it at this time - it certainly may change)
- Complete IE Dynamips Lab Workbook 1-10 (Middle of September?)
- Begin Narbik’s Soup to Nuts workbook (Beginning of October)
- Attend Narbik’s boot camp in November (Nov 10 - 14)
- Work on Narbik’s material (Rest of November)
- Take CCIE assessor labs (maybe -Â if I can afford it at the time)
- Take real lab exam! RTP (December 15) best practice one can buy
10 Responses to “Beginning the journey”
August 12th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Looking forward to reading about your journey!
Best of luck.
August 13th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Hey,
Good luck with the prep.
Speaking from experience, I think about doing Narbiks material first. So switch things around a little. I got really frustrated when I started doing IE labs. But once I went through Narbiks book and then started doing IE labs, it became easier. I started understanding things better. There’s something about going through a technology in full and then moving on. Its less frustrating as well. Remember, Narbik also has a retake policy. Maybe you can do the soup to nuts, take the bootcamp, do the bootcamp workbooks, maybe IE labs after that, re-take the class, a few IE labs the assessor labs and pass the exam :). Well, I’m speaking from experience, because I jumped straight into the IE labs and then had to back track. It would have saved me so much time if I just did Narbiks stuff first.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Hello Carl,
I look forward to reading your posts.
I know nothing of your background and study habits but 4 months to prepare for the lab for me seams very ambitious. It is doable for some people I guess but such a schedule is not for me. I have studied now for 5 months since I passed my written and I have 5 more months to go before my lab. I usually spend about 30 hours per week doing labs and studying but will increase that to 40-60 hours per week during the last 3 months of preparation. Before I started my CCIE journey I already had CCNP/CCDP/CCIP/CCVP and had been working with Cisco gear for a decade. You might be a very fast learner but after your first month of studying you should be prepared for the fact that you might need to rethink your plan.
And like CCIEDownunder said you should start with Soup to Nuts and Narbiks other material to learn the technologies really well before you start with any full scale labs.
Best of luck!
August 13th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I appreciate the suggestion. I think I am going to follow your advice as I seem to be moving extremely slowly through the IE labs.
Thanks again! I’ll let you know how this works out.
August 13th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Good luck with your studies Carl. Your study plan looks very good. I also had a plan similar to yours to pass the R&S Lab but I focused on materials from IPExpert and IE. I think that if you stick to your schedule, 4 months should suffice to pass the exam.
August 14th, 2008 at 8:21 am
The broken down labs by technology are real nice to start with. I did the same thing as starting out with Internetwork Expert’s wb II after only a few wb I labs and it was a mistake :).
You will move slow through the first full full labs either way though. It is just par for the course. Even after doing a bunch of technology focused labs it is still a bit slow.
See you at Narbik’s camp in November!
August 14th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
[...] Candidate - Another new blogger join’s Ethan’s site. Welcome aboard [...]
August 14th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I don’t think IE Volume 2 is meant to teach you the fundamentals of a technology so much as get you more practice with them, deepen an already solid understanding, and get you used to combining them. I also started out with Vol2 and went back to Vol1+Narbik’s stuff. The Vol2 labs were shockingly easy after that (in comparison, they still kicked my butt). I went from a week to do a lab to finishing them within 8 hours. It took about 4 months to do Vol1+Narbik, as I didn’t cap my time in any way while exploring and understanding the technologies.
August 14th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
You’ve got an aggressive schedule planned, considering you’re also working. If you’re a fast learner, it’s possible, but I think you’ve got an uphill battle ahead of you. I really look forward to reading how you’re making out.
I would consider mixing in Narbik’s technology-focused labs with the IE dynamips labs. As others have mentioned, you might consider doing Narbik’s before doing full-scale labs. That’s your call, however you learn best. But I know for me, I wish I’d done technology-focused labs before I’d jumped into the NMC DOiT labs. My foundation would have been stronger.
August 27th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
“I did, however, start to get a really good feel for searching around the Cisco doccd”
Just pointing you to this blog entry, which states you have to use the documentation website (instead of univercd) starting 9/24/2008. I’m about to take my written again, and sometime early next year, it looks like I get to use the new and awkward website…
http://blog.internetworkexpert.com/2008/08/25/documentation-cd-update-for-the-ccie-lab/
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