Locked and loaded

Well, Cisco officially has my money, and I’ve got my plane and hotel booked.

My main focus at the moment is identifying weak technical areas so I can work on shoring those up.  I’ve been losing too many points in certain technologies due to lack of knowledge and experience.  So I’m going through workbook 1 from both Internetwork Expert and IP Expert.  I figured that would be the fastest way to identify the specific areas where I need work.  It should also get me practice in all areas so I can either learn or increase speed.  Once I get through these workbooks, I’ll move back into hammering through workbooks 2 and 3.

My biggest concern right now is actually the Core Knowledge questions.  They seem like such a wild card.  Nobody really has a great method for preparing for them.  And I continue to read reports of people who would have passed the lab if it wasn’t for those questions.  I really would hate to waste a week of vacation and $2200 on an unlucky batch of questions.

No turning back now

I gave Cisco my credit card info last night.  It sounds like they won’t actually charge me until 90 days before my lab.  But that day would be tomorrow.  So I’m locked in to my lab date of July 9 in RTP.

Now it’s time to really kick my studying up a notch.  Nothing like a deadline to motivate you, right?

I have a feeling with this time table, I won’t be a total R&S wizard by then, but I should be good enough to have a decent shot at passing.  Time will tell.

IP Expert Core Knowledge Quizzer

IP Expert recently came out with a free Core Knowledge quiz program.  Be sure to download it from their site.  You will need to have Adobe AIR installed to use the program.

Let me say that this is a very basic program.  It asks you a question, you type an answer, it tells you if you were right or wrong and shows the correct answer.  Rinse and repeat for 100 questions.  At the end, you’ll get a score report.  There are no links to more information or methods to go back and review.  You also can’t take a shorter exam and the question order does not get randomized.

So basically what I’m saying is that outside of the actual question writing, this probably took them 1 hour to make.  But there are good questions in there.  With any luck, they will improve it over time.  On their blog, they even said that they rushed this out, just to get something in people’s hands.

All R&S candidates should download this and go through the questions at least once or twice.

**Update**

In a recent blog post, IP Expert said that they plan on bringing out monthly updates to their core knowledge quizzer.  So expect new questions and product enhancements to come over time.

Internetwork Expert Weeked Sale

Internetwork Expert is having a 20% off sale on all training.  Looks like this is good through Sunday night.  You should be able to see the advertisement if you go to the member’s login page.

Use coupon code APRIL09.

FYI, it looks like this is good on pretty much everything.  I just used it to pick up some rack rental tokens that I’ve been meaning to buy.

Internetwork Expert’s Open Lecture Series

Recently I started checking out IE’s Open Lecture series.  These are instructional videos that typically deal with a subset of a certain technology.  For some reason, I never really watched these before.  But now, I’m hooked on them.

Basically, these videos  are the next step beyond the Advanced Technologies Class (ATC) in terms of depth.  Often they focus on the less understood facets of different technologies.  The videos take a deep dive in terms of not only how to configure things, but more importantly how to verify and troubleshoot issues surrounding the technologies.  For instance, there is a great multicast series that focuses on how to track down issues with RPF failures, dealing with hub and spoke frame relay, and troubleshooting sparse mode joins and RP discovery.  It goes beyond the meat and potatoes theory/config of the ATC to getting “lab ready” on the given topics.

When they first came out with these, IE was releasing 2-3 per week.  Now it’s cooled off to 1-2 per week.  But they have a lot of stuff out there to go through at this point.  Also, if you purchase the “instructor led” version of CCIE 2.0, you can attend the classes live and ask questions.  Personally, I’d rather save the $1000 and just ask questions in the forums.  But to each their own.

So to those of you out there considering IE’s CCIE 2.0 package, the Open Lecture Series is definitely a valueable part of the package.  It can really take you to the next level.