CCIE R&S Lab exam booked!

I have booked my CCIE Routing and Switching v5 lab exam. So, now, the real fun starts.

It is booked for July 10th at Feltham, in the UK. It is a mobile lab, so costs $1900, which equates to around £1200. There are hotels nearby, so I plan to get there the day before - after all, who wants to travel down on the morning and risk getting caught in traffic, or late/missed trains, and losing out on both the exam attempt and £1200!

I have seven full months to get prepared for it, which should be plenty of time.

My study plan, is a mix of learning and doing - after-all, there is no better method! So the plan (at the moment, but subject to change) is as follows:

Month	Learn	Do
December	DMVPN & NAT	DMVPN & NAT Labs
January	EIGRP	EIGRP Labs
February	OSPF	OSPF Labs
March	BGP & MPLS refresher	Revision & Labs
April	Multicast & QoS	Labs on both
May	VTP, STP, PPP	Small labs on weak areas
June	Services*	Medium scale labs
July 1st - 9th	Minor revision	Full scale labs
July 10th	Exam	Celebrate / commiserate
July 18th	Go on holiday	Have fun

*SSH, DHCP, NTP, NetFlow, SPAN/RSPAN
Most of my learning will be through reading, and by doing the Narbik labs.

The reading list is going to be:

Routing TCP/IP (volumes 1 & 2) by Jeff Doyle
Developing IP Multicast networks by Beau Williamson
Cisco QoS by Wendell Odom

This does mean that my planned books; Volume 3: DMVPN and NAT, and Volume 4: IGPs, will probably not be published until after the exam. Both are well under way, and will be added to as I go through, but writing a book is a long endeavour, and now I have a date for the exam I do need to work towards it, keeping my eyes on the prize, rather than letting the writing take all my time up. Besides, if I do pass then it will stop people leaving reviews saying "he's not even a CCIE" - which is true, but to me it's like saying "you can't teach me to swim, you are not a fish".

Anyway, I have a date, I have the books, I have plenty of time. Booking it has now lead to a slight increase in nerves, but also will help to focus me a lot more.

Onwards and upwards!

CCIE R&S written (400-101) passed

After months of cramming I finally got around to sitting the CCIE Routing and Switching written exam (400-101).

I got to the testing centre nice and early, and sat waiting to be taken through to the room. I wasn't feeling all that nervous, the only nerves were all around the cost of having to resit it if I failed.

Once in the room we go through all the usual identity checks, drivers license, something else with signature, do two more signatures and have my photo taken. Then we are in the room and I sit down.

The invigilator signs in and we wait for the system to start. It hangs, and they have to call up the support people. This is when I start to get nervous, well, more anxious than nervous. I really don't want to wait for another day of the system decides to muck about.

I am told that this happened a few days ago, and they had to wait twenty minutes for resolution. It's cold in the room, and I could do with a cup of coffee.

Thankfully they get through pretty quickly, and get the issue sorted.

The exam starts.

Obviously I can't say what was tested on the exam (I signed the NDA, so I won't discuss the questions), but just compare the written objectives to the lab objectives and you can get an idea of what's more likely to crop up on the written.

The format is nothing new, 100 or so questions, some single choice answers, some multiple choice answers, and a whole bunch of drag and drops.

I was finished in about half an hour.
I have had issues in the past where the score report is not shown on the screen when its all done, this has happened more than once, and quite frankly, is very annoying. This didn't happen this time, and my score, which was pretty good was shown on the screen.

I got up from my seat, ready to grab my things and get back to the office, forgetting that I needed to fill in the survey at the end of the quiz.

Survey done, sign out, grab stuff and head off.

Now it's on to studying for the lab.

I have just bought a 26GB 1U server to run ESXi and IOU on, which should serve nicely for when I do the CCIE Service Provider exams (which is my plan for after finishing the Routing and Switching).

One step closer!