189 Days (6 months) to go, and already off track


Happy New Year all. I hope that your Christmas has been a good one, and that the new year brings you everything that you want.

I had a good time, spent it with family. Watching the boys get excited over Christmas brought a new-found appreciation for the silly-season. Though I have learnt that pretending to call up Santa and tell him not to come, will upset a three year old. Yeah, I felt bad. Still, this whole parenting thing is a learning curve for me and them. Whilst warnings of Santa's non-arrival if bedtimes are not adhered to are a good deterrent, it will also make a child cry and a father feel sad.

Santa did come though, for both boys, and the rest of the family. I got a vintage 1983 Star Wars poster.

Vintage 1983 Stare Wars Return of the Jedi poster

Naturally, I am very pleased with the latest in wall decor for my office.

Anyway, enough digression.
So how are the studies?

Well, I am already off track. According to my timetable I should have covered DMVPN, NAT and done labs on both. I did not think that with Christmas, that it would be too much, but clearly I didn't get as much done as possible.

DMVPN is done though, and with first half of the next book; "DMVPN and NAT" is nearly done. I have not even started to look at NAT though. I have been reading about EIGRP though (Doyle's Routing TCP/IP volume 1), so technically, I am already ahead of next month, and as I finished that part of the book and started on OSPF, I am already part way into February's learning phase.

I can probably get back on track by the end of January when things get back to normal.

I do think that, again, I am spending more time writing books than studying. Yes, the two do go hand-in-hand, but I need to remember what's more pressing - and that is the exam. That said, I am pleased with how the DMVPN volume os shaping up. I have decided not to include VRF-aware DMVPN, as I do not think it's needed at this level, but I will write about it at sometime. Most likely when I come to do the Service Provider track. The plan is to finish the DMVPN and NAT volume, then do Multicast and QoS. I was planning to do IGPs after DMVPN, but I am not sure that I need to. Doyle's book is excellent, and I am not sure that another book on IGPs is needed, especially as I am primarily writing to help my own knowledge, so am writing about the topics I need to focus on.

So the plan for the next couple of books are:

DMVPN & NAT - already underway.
Multicast & QoS
Routing and Switching to Service Provider (after I have done the R&S and whilst I am doing the SP track)
There will be a book after this, but I am keeping quiet about it for the time being. I think it's a really good idea, and am pretty sure that there is a massive gap in the market for it.

And there we have my life mapped out for the next few years, which is a fairly scary prospect.

CCIE #49337, author of CCNA and Beyond, BGP for Cisco Networks, MPLS for Cisco Networks, VPNs and NAT for Cisco Networks.

Related Posts

Previous
Next Post »

1 comments:

comments
Anonymous
3 January 2015 at 14:31 delete

Happy New Year, i am agree with you Stuart, a book on Multicast & QoS is better than IGP. RIP/EIGRP/OSPF/IS-IS is already more covers in detail with Cisco Press CCNP/CCIE and Doyle's book.

Reply
avatar