About
My name is Jeff Rensink, CCIE#24834 in Routing and Switching. I’m 31 years old and live in Minnesota. I have a great wife of 5 years, a baby boy, and 2 furry pets.
I started this blog in late 2008 when I started working on my R&S CCIE. In July of 2009, I passed the lab and got my digits. In October of 2009, I started on the Service Provider track and am currently pursuing that. So you’ll see older posts from my R&S days along with newer posts from my SP trek.
Since getting my CCIE, I have changed jobs and currently work in one of the largest data centers in the mid-west. While the networks that I work on look in no way like the ones in the CCIE lab and workbooks (thank goodness!), I have found the CCIE knowledge and skills have been real asset. So the certification has definitely been worth all of the work.
I am continuing on with this blog during my SP studies in order to share my experiences so that others might find some benefit from it. That benefit might be learning what works well and what does not in CCIE preparations. Or it might just be encouragement that if a dude like me can find CCIE success, that others can definitely do it as well.
Aragoen Celtdra said
Hey Jeff! Just found your blog today. Sure we can always benefit from another dude bloggin about their experience! We all share in this experience.
I’ll be following your journey as you forge ahead for those golden digits.
Nickelby Thane said
Hello Jeff. I echo Aragoen’s sentiments
(my excuse for being lazy to type more). Good luck in your studies! I hope we’ll get our numbers soon enough 
.
jrensink78 said
Hey Nickelby! Thanks for the encouragement. Hopefully we can both get some numbers after our names. Nice blog by the way. I’ve been following it for a while now.
jrensink78 said
Hi Aragoen,
I though that I had responded to your comment when you left it, but I’m not seeing it. In any event, thanks for checking out my blog. You’ve got a pretty solid CCNP blog going on. I made sure to add it to my blogroll. Good luck on your studies!
CCIETalk.com said
Hello Jeff! Just saw your blog and wanted to say what’s up. You are right about motivation factor. Having a blog keeps you on track and sometimes if you are stuck with some stupid thing someone will always be there to help you out. I will give you my example when I was having a hard time with redistribution and couldn’t seem to figure out why. I posted and CCIEDownunder replied with a nice plan that helped him figure out redistribution. Anyways goodluck with your CCIE R&S.
Annon said
Hi Jeff,
I wish you all the best of luck in the pursuit of your CCIE R&S certification.
I wish to also start my CCIE R&S cert and have been reading your blog and has acted as a catalyst (no pun intended) to start ASAP.
Annon said
HI Jeff,
What IOS image do you use for your 2950 switches?
Thanks
jrensink78 said
Thanks for checking the site out, and good luck on your own studies. It’s a lot of work, but it’ll be worth it.
My 2950s run the Enterprise IOS version 12.1(22)EA11. They get me by in my labbing. But I do wish that I had a couple of 3560s. Unfortunately, $3000 for hardware isn’t really in the budget right now. Thank goodness for rack rentals!
Joe said
Hey Jeff,
You’re likely taking the written exam about now. Best of luck! I’m just starting the “trek” myself, your blog caught my eye as you’ve only recently started – but more importantly you haven’t already gotten the written under your belt.
I have some questions for you about how you’re studying, to be honest I think I just need to hear it from someone as i’m starting to doubt myself already. In brief, do you recommend just ploughing through the R&S Cert Guide followed by the IE CODs to prep for the written? I just need a concrete plan to get rolling with and i’ll be happy.
I know you’re probably very busy by the sounds of it but I’d be real grateful if you could shoot me your email address – of course i’ll understand if you don’t think you’ll have time for my questions. Best of luck to you either way!
Thanks
Joe
jrensink78 said
I’m taking the written exam on Thursday, so I’ll be able to let you know what I would recommend after that. But the cert guide and CoDs are a great place to start. Everything starts with learning the theory and interworkings of the protocols and technologies.