R&S Lab study materials review

As I wrap up my R&S lab blogging, I thought that it would be nice to list out the study tools that I used and give a short review of what was helpful and what was not. I previously wrote up a review of the study materials that I used for my written prep. So I won’t bother re-hashing that again. I’ll stick to focusing on the tools and materials used in my lab preparation.

Books

I only used 3 books for my studies. I did talk about these during my written preparation review. But they are very applicable for my lab preparations as well. The 3 books were the Official Certification Guide for the R&S, and Routing TCP/IP volumes 1 and 2. All of these are published by Cisco Press. I would consider these must have materials for any R&S hopeful. I mainly read these early in my studies to gain a good base of understanding of the bulk of the R&S core technologies. I also came back to them from time to time to review certain topics.

Videos

I found instructional videos helpful through the entirety of my studies. I had access to 5 video packages.

• IP Expert- Video on Demand Series
• Internetwork Expert- Advanced Technologies Class
• Internetwork Expert- Open Lecture Series
• Internetwork Expert- Lab Meet-ups
• Internetwork Expert- 5-day bootcamp

The IP Expert videos were great and I highly recommended them. They are presented by Scott Morris (currently at Interentwork Expert). They are a great combination of teaching and showing. These videos are intended to teach students about the basic to intermediate levels of most of the technologies covered in the R&S lab. They come in high definition on an external hard drive and play very nicely.

The Internetwork Expert Advanced Technologies Class was also excellent and are similar in content to the IP Expert video on demand series. These can be viewed online or purchased on a DVD. The videos are presented by Brian Dennis and Brian McGahan. The content here is very good and I also give this a high recommendation. Video quality isn’t as nice as the IP Expert videos. Between these videos and the IP Expert videos, you could easily get by with only having one or the other.

The Internetwork Expert Open Lecture Series videos are just plain great. These videos delve deep into specific technologies and topics. I found these incredibly useful in the mid to later stages of my studies. The great thing about these videos is that they come out with 1 or 2 of these each week. So you’re constantly getting new content. Even better, it’s just a one-time cost to gain access to the series and there is no reoccurring subscription fee. I would highly recommend these videos as they really help you to gain in-depth understanding of topics that can often be a bit confusing.

The Internetwork Expert Lab Meet-up Series are videos that take the Volume 2 labs from Internetwork Expert and have an instructor go over each task. It shows the configurations and talks about what it is in the task wording that leads you to certain solutions. I actually never even bother viewing one of these videos. So I can’t comment on the content. But since the workbooks come with solutions guides, I didn’t feel that they would be a good investment of my time. Others may feel differently. The biggest thing that I did not like about these was that there were very very few of these videos. Supposedly they were supposed to do one of these every week. But After a number of months, I only had access to 3 of them. I even contacted support to ensure that I had access to all available videos in my account and they said that I did. Based on that, I cannot recommend that people spend money on this product.

Lastly, the Internetwork Expert 5-day bootcamp videos were not as good as I hoped they would be. These are a recording of an actual 5-day online bootcamp that they held at some point. The vast majority of the videos were just going over practice labs. They would give the students different labs to do on their own. Then they would go over those labs, showing the configs and why certain solutions were chosen. I was hoping for more teaching. I didn’t make it through all of the videos. I probably got through a couple of days worth. I stopped watching them because I didn’t feel that they were worth my time. I would not recommend spending money on these videos. I also have doubts about whether I would ever want to attend an Internetwork Expert bootcamp for a different CCIE track in the future.

Workbooks

I had the volume 1-3 workbooks from both IP Expert and Internetwork Expert. I went through the large majority of the Internetwork Expert workbooks, and highly recommend them. I felt that they were very smartly put together. I also felt that they gave a good progression in terms of starting with more basic content and moving towards more advanced tasks. There were a few errors here and there. But I think that they are really the only workbooks that you would ever need to pass the lab.

With the IP Expert workbooks, I did most all of the volume 1 labs. These labs cover individual technologies. I didn’t do any of their volume 2 labs and only did a handful of the volume 3 labs (which were mock labs). I thought that the volume 1 labs were good. Through I felt like they threw in too much obscure stuff. As a result, they seemed difficult and frustrating. I didn’t feel as though they gave as nice of a progression in terms of starting easy and getting harder like Internetwork Expert did. I also felt that way about the volume 3 labs that I did. I found those quite difficult and very hard to get passing scores on. I don’t have a problem with having harder labs. But from a psychological standpoint, if you’re always having a hard time, it’s very discouraging. In the end, the IP Expert workbooks will do the trick. But I didn’t enjoy them as much as I did the Internetwork Expert workbooks.

Mock Labs

I did do some of the mock labs created by Internetwork Expert as well as a number of their newer Poly Labs.

The Poly labs get created on the fly. You select the difficulty level that you want to experience in a number of different areas (like switching, IGP, BGP, Multicast, etc) and a lab is custom created for you. At the end of the lab, it is automatically graded and you get a very nice report showing your scores along with what the grading engine was looking for. I think that these are useful labs to do every so often. I did a bunch in a relatively short amount of time and started seeing a number of repeat tasks. I would say that they should not be a regular part of your lab studies. The workbooks should be the core of your hands-on studies. But these are a nice change of pace every so often.

I did 2 of the mock labs from Internetwork Expert. They were OK. In retrospect, I didn’t feel like they helped me in my studies too much. Though I did pick up a good lesson on how I should be doing my redistribution to make sure I’m not losing points. It’s pretty much like doing a workbook lab and having it graded and critiqued by a pro. Interestingly enough, even though the labs that I took were on the easier side, I actually didn’t do very well at all. I think I was in the 60s on both labs. Overall, they can be helpful. But I wouldn’t do very many of them. I think 2-3 is plenty.

Forums

I spent a good amount of time on the Internetwork Expert user forums, which I found very helpful. It’s a great free resource where you can get questions answered by follow students as well as the instructors. I did try signing up (many many times) for IP Expert’s forums, but could never get it to create an account for me. I did join the online study list for a while, but didn’t really enjoy the email format.

Cisco Documentation

Although this could probably remain unsaid, I spent a ton of time in the Cisco documentation. Every candidate needs to be really good at using the Cisco online documentation. It’s a great learning resource and it’s what you’ll have access to in the lab. Live it, learn it, love it!

Home Lab/Rack rentals

I did have a home lab that allowed me to do all of the Internetwork Expert labs on my own. I also approximate the IP Expert lab as well. This was very convenient. But it was a little spendy. With the upcoming changes to the R&S lab, I don’t think that I would build my own lab again. With the new technologies, it’ll get too expensive. As I move forward in my other tracks, I’m pretty sure that I’ll just be using Dynamips and rack rentals. I did use some rack rentals from both IP Expert and Internetwork Expert. I had good experiences with both. One negative with Internetwork Expert is that when they do bootcamps, it can be very hard to schedule a rack for a week or 2. So that could be quite frustrating if you relied on rack rentals for your hands on practice.

Conclusion

Hopefully this post has been helpful to those there ther contemplating what to spend their hard earned money on. Feel free to ask about any of the products that I used that you’d like more info on.