The RFC was a bit of a slap upside my head.  Not that I purposefully sought out complex solutions to things.  But as I learned all of these nifty configurations during my CCIE studies, I wanted to implement them.  So sometimes I would get these academically nice implementations that either didn’t need to be there, or were a bit more difficult to support.

Also, I see the effects of complex networks in my job.  There are some areas of my network that are very straight-forward.  As a result, they are easy to support and scale well.  There are also a few areas that started off complex and have only gotten worse.  It’s like the initial complexity bred more complexity as new demands were put on it.  As a result, it’s a total bear to support.  We’re trying to remove complexity out of it, but even that process is a major pain.  So even though it’s a relatively small part of our network, it soaks up more than its fair share of OpEx.

Now my design focus is on finding the simplest solution to a given need.  Obviously you can only go so far with simplicity.  But I’m learning to stop turning the nerd knobs, except where it promotes a simpler solution that makes the network easier to support and much more scalable.

If you have a spare 30-40 minutes, I’d recommend giving the RFC a read.  Even if you aren’t studying for the SP track, you should be able to pull out some helpful nuggets.

Looking at Internetwork Experts videos, they don’t really touch some important topics such as frame relay, switching, and OSPF.  Things that form the foundation of your SP network and will certainly be tested in the lab.  These topics are heavily focused on in their R&S materials.  Also, looking at their volume 1 workbook, which is meant to focus on individual technologies, they skip a bunch of technologies.  There are no individual layer-2 or IGP specific labs.  Nor are there Security or System Management  specific labs.  Again, the R&S volume 1 workbook had significant labs covering these topics.

Switching over to IP Expert, their volume 1 workbooks at least break up most all of the major lab topics into individual technology labs.  So far, I’ve done about 5 of them that cover topics that overlap with the R&S track.  They are proving not to be as complete as IP Experts R&S volume 1 labs on the same topics.  Now this could be because these topics are not covered as in depth in the lab.  I can’t really speak to that.  But it feels like they should be getting a bit deeper into the technologies.

I have a few ideas as to why this might be.  One reason is that the SP track hasn’t been updated an a number of years.  So the workbooks and videos themselves are a few years old.  I think the R&S workbooks have come quite a ways in even the last 2-3 years.  So maybe these SP materials are somewhat on par with the R&S materials of yester-year.  Another reason might be that it is pretty common that those going for the SP to already have their R&S.  Looking at the global CCIE numbers, about 40% of the SP holders out there are dual R&S/SP CCIEs.  I’m sure a number of the triple+ CCIEs also have both the R&S and SP tracks.  That being the case, why would the vendors want to put in the extra effort to re-hash what a lot of these people already know?  Especially for a track that has less than 1/10 of the numbers than the R&S track has.

Regardless of the reasons, I’m finding it quite beneficial that I have already gone through the R&S track.  I have been going back to my R&S materials for videos and technology labs for a lot of the overlapped topics.  We’ll see what happens when the SP track finally gets an update from Cisco.  Hopefully the new materials by these vendors will kick it up a notch.  Though I’m hoping that I pass the SP lab before any new changes occur.

This track is shaping up to be much cheaper than the R&S track.  Part of it is because there are fewer training materials available, so there is less to buy.  Part of it is because I already have some useful stuff from my R&S attempt.  Also, I don’t have to shell out a bunch of money on a home lab since I’ll be using Dynamips and rack rentals.  If I’m fortunate enough to pass my tests on the first try, I’m estimating the total to be around $5000 for everything.

Now that I have my materials, it’s time to start studying!

Here is the list of books that I will be using for my studies.  I may pick up one or two more depending on if I hit any weak areas in the books.

• Routing TCP/IP vol 1 & 2 (already owned)
• QoS Exam Certification Guide (already owned)
• Internet Routing Architectures
• MPLS and VPN Architectures vol 1 & 2
• Definitive MPLS Designs
• MPLS Fundamentals
• MPLS Configurations on Cisco IOS software
• QoS for IP/MPLS networks
• Traffic Engineering with MPLS
• Layer 2 VPN Architectures
• MPLS Enabled Applications
• Interdomain Multicast Routing

I chose the Service Provider track for a few reasons.  There is a healthy amount of overlap with the R&S track, so it seems like it should be easier to pick up as opposed to the other tracks.  It also seems like the natural extension to the R&S track.  It builds upon a number of the R&S topics.  And it also shares the main theme of the R&S track, which is routing data from point A to point B in an intelligent manner.  Lastly, I’d like to go for the CCDE at some point, and a lot of the SP technologies are a part of the CCDE blueprint.  So I think that it will help to set me up for future successes.

Now that I’m back on the CCIE scene, I’ll be trying to get back to posting somewhat frequently again.  So be sure to check back every so often.

I know some people complain about how cheap it looks for what we all have to pay and go through to earn it.  I somewhat agree.  I think it could be a little nicer.  Maybe if the paper had some nice raised print or something it would look sharper.  But when I look at past versions of the plaque, I think I like the current version the best.

CCIE Plaque

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.

I took my R&S lab on July 9 at RTP in North Carolina.  It was my first attempt at the lab.  I drove myself to the lab, even though my hotel did have a shuttle there.  I stopped by Starbucks and McDonald’s to get some caffeine and some food before the lab.  I showed up pretty early.  I think I was at Cisco by 6:30 AM.  There is some visitor parking right outside of the building that you can use if you drive yourself.  The parking lots are pretty empty at that time, so getting a parking spot isn’t hard.

A little before 7:00, I got out of my car and headed over to the building entrance where a few other candidates were waiting.  Most people weren’t too talkative.  But I did chat it up with a few people who were taking the SP and Voice labs.  There were probably about 10 people there in total taking their labs that day.  Eventually, our proctor (Howard) popped out and brought us into the lobby.  There, he handed out name tags with our rack numbers on them.  We did have to provide a photo ID to get our name tags.  A driver’s licenses work just fine for that.  Once everyone was there and had their name tags, Howard brought us back into the lab room.

The lab room was a good size, with a number of pods of desks and racks of equipment for the different lab tracks.  There is a low hum of router/switch fans, but it’s not too loud.  It does provide a bit of white noise to cover up noise from other candidates, which is nice.  The temperature of the room was comfortable.  I was just fine in a T-shirt and jeans.  The lab has a stack of small lockers (maybe a foot high by a foot wide) that you have to put everything on your person in.  The bathroom is outside of the lab area.  You can use it whenever.  You just need to grab a security badge attached to a bottle on your way out so you can open up the door on your way back.  But if someone already has it, you can just ring a doorbell to have the proctor come and open up the door for you.  Supposedly there was a room outside of the lab that you could grab some coffee or water, but I didn’t bother trying to look for it.

Once we were in the lab room and had our stuff put away in our lockers, Howard went through the rules pretty quickly.  After that, the timer started and we were off to our workstations.  The desks setup in pods of 4.  The desks themselves aren’t overly big.  You’ll definitely be using most every inch if you want to spread out your diagrams and lab materials.  The R&S pods had new 25″ LCD monitors.  Those were quite nice.  I was able to open up a SecureCRT window for each device and be able to see each one without much overlap.  The keyboard and mouse was pretty standard.  I had 2 sheets of letter size scratch paper and a jar full of colored pencils to use.  You can get more paper from the proctor if you need it.

When you get to your station, it’s setup for the core knowledge questions.  I think I spent around 10 minutes on those.  They ones that I got weren’t overly difficult.  I think that they were fair questions.  They were all answerable based on the knowledge that you would gain from preparing for the lab exam.  I was trying to do a bit of cramming from the R&S written exam study guide, but it really didn’t really make a difference for the questions that I received.  Our proctor told us during lunch that these questions only get used once and then get tossed.  So multiple people might get the same questions on the same day.  But after that, they will not be reused.  I’m not really sure how sustainable that is, but that’s what we were told.

Once you’re done with the 4 questions, you end up logging out of windows and logging back in under a different profile than what you were in for the questions.  Your user name is printed on the scratch paper that is sitting at your desk (which also has your name on it).  Once you get logged in, there are shortcuts on the desktop to open up a SecureCRT window for each of your devices (as well as for the access server).  I chose to open each window separately.  There are also shortcuts in the quick-launch area of the task bar for your notepad, calculator, and IE.  Not sure if everyone has noticed, but not too long ago when you’re going through the documentation area, the website started making you log in with your cisco.com account.  I did not encounter this in the lab.  So you shouldn’t need to worry about that.  Also, the IE window has a search bar on the bottom just like firefox has.  It even starts searching the page as you’re typing into the search box, just like firefox.  So it’s a much nicer search that the standard IE search function.

Once I re-logged into Windows after the core knowledge questions, I did a fairly quick read-through of the lab.  My first impression was that it was much easier than I thought it was going to be.  The tasks seemed fairly simple and straight-forward for the most part.  It was at that point that I starting think that I had a good shot at passing.  After reading through the lab I quickly checked the IP assignments to make sure that the initial configs were correct.  The proctor tells you to do this, so evidently it can happen from time to time.  I also perused the diagrams and determined that they were adequate enough for most things.  So I didn’t make my own separate diagrams right off the bat.  There were 5 diagrams on my lab for IGPs, BGP, frame relay, and layer 2/3 connectivity stuff.  I ended up taking all of the lab pages out of the binder and spreading out the diagrams for easy access.  You can take the pages out of the binder, but you cannot take the pages out of their protective covers.

I started off with the layer 2 stuff and made my way through that easily enough.  Then I moved on to the IGP section.  I got through most of that pretty easily as well, but there were quite a few areas where I wanted to get clarification from the proctor since there were a number of things that weren’t specifically stated in the tasks, but were implied by some general instructions in the lab.  I had most of the IGP section done before lunch outside of some details that I had to clear up.  But I did get bogged down a little bit just trying to make sure that I was getting this section really nailed down correctly and that I was achieving full connectivity.  Speaking of full connectivity, it was really nice doing ping tests in the lab.  It probably only took like 15-20 seconds per device to ping all configured IP addresses (where it would take me over a minute per device in my home lab).  Because it flies through the pings so fast, you can pretty much just kick them off on all devices one after another.  It’s pretty obvious when a device runs into an address that it can’t ping.

Lunch time came and I was pretty much all set with my layer 2 and IGP sections.  I had calculated that I had a little over half of the total points (there were a total of 79 points in tasks on the lab).  So I was feeling pretty good.  The proctor gave a warning that lunch was coming in a few minutes, so we had time to save our configs and reload if we wanted (which I did).  Lunch was serviced in a conference room attached to the lab area.  It was a pretty unimpressive pasta/meat/sauce dish with a salad and roll.  There were also some bars along with soda and water.  I didn’t eat too much food.  I just wanted enough to keep me going, but not make me full.  I also grabbed a few sodas to help keep me going.  Lunch only lasted 20 minutes.  The proctor was chatting it up with us a bit, but most of us weren’t in a talkative mood.  I was mainly trying to keep myself relaxed and focused.

After lunch, we headed back to our desks and got back to work.  I ran through the rest of my lab sections without too much trouble.  I really only got stuck on one task that I wasn’t quite sure how to accomplish.  I probably spent more time that I should have on it.  But I did realize that I was spending a bit too much time on it and decided to move along to other tasks.  After I had gone through everything once, I had 3 tasks that I could not accomplish.  They were either things that I had never done, or they were significant twists on things that I was sort of familiar with.  During the second half of the lab, I noticed that I couldn’t find the proctor.  At first, I figured he had stepped out to the use the bathroom or something.  But after a while, I was getting concerned.  I think a few other candidates were also feeling the same way as I saw a few people getting up and looking around without finding him.  I turned out, he had gone into the lunch area and was chatting with someone else (another employee I think).  So by the time that I found him, I had questions on like 5-6 tasks.

Speaking of asking the proctor things, I definitely asked a lot of questions.  Pretty much any time a task could be interpreted more than one way, or any time things were implied rather than specified, I asked about it.  Howard was good about answering all of my clarifying questions.  I think I only had to reword one question because he didn’t think that he could answer it without giving something away.  I’m pretty sure that all of my questions made a big difference in my results.  They also helped in my confidence level as I didn’t have to feel like I was guessing at things too much.

As the afternoon progressed, I had gone through everything that I could.  With about an hour and a half to go, I had gone answer pretty much every task that I could.  So I saved, reloaded, and went through each task over again.  I read each task slowly as if I were reading it for the first time.  I think I found maybe one or 2 mistakes doing this.  After I added up all of my points, I was sitting at 69 points that I felt like I had locked in, 4 points that were “maybe”s, and 6 points that I threw away.  I then did one last round of ping tests to ensure that my connectivity was good.  By that time, there was about 15 minutes left to go.  Since it wasn’t enough time to tackle any of my incomplete tasks, and since I didn’t want to risk breaking anything, I saved my configs, and called it an afternoon.

You just walk yourself out of the lab area.  I left the building a little after 3:00 PM.  I was thinking about going out to dinner, but I really didn’t want to be away from my laptop when I got the email that my results were ready.  So I grabbed some Arby’s and a 6-pack of beer and headed back to my hotel room.  Based on my verifications, I felt like I had a good shot at passing.  But when I did my mock labs, my actual scores and my expected scores were usually quite different.  So I was going back and forth between optimism and pessimism.  After about 4 hours of hitting refresh on my Yahoo mail page, I finally got the email that my results were ready.  So it took about 5 hours after I was done with the lab for the grading to be complete.  One minute later, I was logged into the Cisco site and saw that I had passed.

I was pretty relieved to pass on my first try.  With the combination of the impending lab blueprint changes, there being no open lab dates before the changes happen, and having my first child due at the beginning of August, I was going to have to go through a lot more hurdles to pass at a later time.

The difficulty of the lab was closer to a 6 on Internetwork Expert’s workbook scale.  I was actually surprised at the difficulty level.  I was getting so used to weird redistribution scenarios and tricky multicast RFP issues.  It was almost a little disappointing when my first ping test went off without a hitch.  I got over it though =)

That’s about all of the details about the lab that I can think of (or that I can share without breaking NDA).  Let me know if there is anything that you wanted to know that I didn’t talk about.  Obviously I can’t share anything about specific technologies or tasks/questions that I received.  But I’m more than happy to answer anything about the lab in general or about the facilities or lab process.

My original goal was to take the lab later in the year.  But since we have our first kid coming in a month, I wanted to try and get it out of the way before I lost all of my free time.  I’m sure hoping that I can pass on the first try here.  Otherwise, it looks pretty certain that I won’t be able to try again until after the v4 blueprint changes take effect.

My lab date is July 9.  So be looking for a post that evening or the next day with my results.  I’m hoping for a posting title that contains 5 numbers.