It's always good to have a goal, and aiming towards a certain date is certainly a good way to push yourself forward.
There is a CCIE R+S remote lab in London between June 30 and July 4th next year. Can I be ready by then?
I reckon I am about half way there. There is six months between now and then, and hopefully I can get onto the INE course on London in April. As part of INE's course they offer to pay for the exam fee, and this includes the mobile labs. They do however require 100 days notice, not sure if this is written in stone or not, but I can ask Tami, the lovely person at INE who is superbly helpful...
Assuming I get the last day available booked for the lab (4th July) that puts the notify time to the 26th March, and in order to book the lab I need to have passed the written exam.
This would give me 132 days (from today) to pass the written in order to give INE the 100 days notice to take the lab exam.
So in 132 days, lets call it 130 to give me a couple of days to do the written exam, I need to either finish or cover (going strictly by the V4 blueprint):
- BGP
- Frame Relay
- IPv6
- MPLS
- Multicast
- Security
- Network Services
- QoS
- Troubleshooting
- Optimizing
This works out to be 13 days per topic. Now some will be quicker than others, certainly the network services and the Optimizing topics I reckon I can whizz through. Other will take longer (MPLS, QoS and Multicast especially).
The other alternative is the October 6 -10 mobile lab, which is slightly more feasible, and actually keeps in line with my original one year plan.
Either way, its good to have a goal to work towards.