Riddle: What has two thumbs and five digits?

You can probably guess that I got "that email" from Cisco this morning. So it's the moment of truth.

Did I pass or fail?

I woke up this morning feeling tired. One of my boys climbed into bed with me, wriggled around for a bit then made me get up to make him breakfast. The other one is still asleep, unusual for him, but we did stay out really late last night. Part of me wanted to stay in bed, after all in a Schrodinger's cat kind of way, if I don't know that I have failed, that means I have passed, right? I think that's how it works.

Nevertheless, I am still nervous about the result.

I was not sure whether I'd get an email from Cisco by now, mainly because it is the weekend, so I would have allowed until Monday to hear back.

They sent the email at just after 5am this morning.

The email itself just directs you to the CCIE webpage.
This is what greets me:

Clicking on the "Pass" link takes us to another page:

So there we go. What's got two thumbs and five digits?

This guy.

I am CCIE.

I did it. I would like to know that actual scores, but now they are irrelevant.

I have the digits. Mission accomplished.

It's time to celebrate today. I can rest, I can enjoy time with my family again. I can spend my holiday (at the end of the month) relaxing and enjoying. This will be nice as I am sure my family would prefer me not to be studying for the fourth year in a row when we are on holiday.

I feel so relieved now. I have got some friends coming over later for a BBQ, so it's time to kick back and relax.

Once again I'd like to thank all of you who have encouraged me along this journey. It's not over yet, but I have reached a massive milestone.

So thank you guys for the support. I have the digits, and don't feel like I have let you guys down, as well as myself.

Time to go outside and smell the roses!

The day before the CCIE lab

I have checked in to the hotel. It's nothing fancy, but it is close, it has beer, and the staff are friendly.

I am now known as Mr. Reese, due to my Reese's chocolate t-shirt. That's the kind of welcome I like after a 2 hour drive into outer London. 

So did I manage to keep up to my schedule for the week? Yes and no. I got called into a meeting at work, and spent a very large part of Tuesday building a lab to solve the work issue. 

Other than that, it has pretty much gone according to plan. I have watched the majority of the INE cram videos, and picked up a couple of tips in the way. I did another 360 config, and learned from my mistakes. 

I pushed myself for most of the week, but totally slacked off today. Being the day before the exam, you'd think that I would be pulling out all the stops and getting every last little bit of information that I could, however, to be perfectly honest, I am feeling tired and a little bit burnt out. 

It's been a good week, but tiring. 

The CCIE is no easy effort. It requires time, dedication, and is an exhausting process. 

So do I feel ready?

Not sure really. 

My good friend and colleague from work passed his on Monday, and given the external factors he's had to contend with, I really must congratulate him on passing when others in the same circumstances would have let these factors overwhelm them, and not be able to pass. So he's done great, and it really gives me a good feeling that I can pass this. We have bounced ideas off each other, worked through scenarios and spoken at great length about the process needed to do well, and it is a process, especially in the troubleshooting section.

When I sat Narbik's course and he said that if you have the right process then you will pass, I sat there thinking "There's a process?how do I get a process?", well actually that came pretty easy in the end and I think I have one that should serve me well. It's nothing magical, it's just a list of command to cover most eventualities, and hopefully it'll work tomorrow. 

Tonight is all about the final pointers; get my aliases in my head, a bit of light reading, and an early night. 

It's up early tomorrow, I plan for a 7am start, grab a Starbucks, and off to Cisco!

After one last beer. 

Cheers!

Why you should invest in Cisco 360

As part of the Narbik course I sat last year, I got access to Cisco 360, and because of that I got a nice set of config labs to play with.

I hadn't done one in a while, so thought would give it a go on Saturday. I have to list a few erratas first, and this was that during the lab I had to go and pick my boys up, and put them to bed, which too a large chunk away from the allotted time, not saying that this is the only reason for my shocking performance, but it certainly did not help with my level of concentration, and I know that I rushed it, and did not treat it as an actual lab.

Hopefully during the actual exam I won't have two toddlers asking for different TV programs to be put on, cats wanting to be fed, or having to drive around to pick up said toddlers, and put them to bed. I am sure the actual lab exam will be a little easier, in that respect.

Anyway, let's start by listing the problems that were my fault.

1. I didn't look at all of the topology diagrams

There are a number of topology diagrams, and I concentrated on the main one (the clickable map on the main screen). I didn't look at the MPLS diagram for a start.

Stupid, stupid me, and because of this, I failed on two major tasks.

Because of this one question regarding VTP didn't make any sense. We have a switch that is not allowed to have any VLANs created on it. Not being able to see any way for that switch to get the VLANs, I went ahead and created them on there.

If I had looked at all the diagrams, then I would have seen that there was a backbone switch, that would have supplied all of the VLANs required.

Similarly, we have a couple of routers that are VRF enabled. Now, I did this part, created the VRFs, but in doing so, fucked up all of the IGP stuff I had done previously - so again, failed massively, which brings me on to point 2.

2. I didn't read through the whole list of of tasks.

Again, stupid, stupid me.

Because I didn't read all of the requirements at the beginning I screwed myself up badly. I did not treat it as an actual exam. I rushed in head-first, without thinking about consequences and how a network is built.

The example here is that we have a couple of VRFs, SITE1 and SITE2. When we are dealing with VRFs we need to specify the VRF in the IGP process. I didn't and so when the lab was graded, what had originally worked, was broken when I implemented the VRFs.

3. I didn't treat if as an actual lab

I rushed this. I wanted to practice something different, so tried to push a lab in between normal weekend activity. Clearly this didn't work. I should have found proper time, a closed environment uninterrupted by external influences, and treated it in the same way that I intend to take the lab.

Lab day is getting close, its only 17 days now, and I still have three or four 360 labs that I can do. But these need to be treated properly and respected, as it were, for the lab that they are. Although I am pissed at myself, I still think that this was a good failure, and I'll explain why this is, and why they are a good investment.

Why is 360 a worthwhile investment?

So why would I recommend 360?

Because it is written in the manner that the exam is. This is key. Understanding how Cisco terms things, how they write their questions, and how they lay things out, will greatly benefit you when it comes to the actual lab. You also get access to the answer key, which explains what they expected and why. You can also see what commands they run as part of the automated checking, which is very worthwhile reading, as you might pick up a command or two to add to your arsenal.

Although I fucked up royally, due to the points above, fucking up can be a good thing (sometimes). I keep espousing how I am trying to hone my process, for troubleshooting and configuration, well this is (now) a highlighted part of that process.

Because it is close to lab time, this will be fresh in my mind, and I am less likely to make these mistakes again.

Granted there are a number of vendors that offer "labs", but 360 is worthwhile due to being able to see how Cisco actually write these labs. It offers you a chance to try and get inside their heads and see what they are expecting.

What would be nice would be if Cisco could offer these at a lower cost. You can get a four-pack of either configuration, or troubleshooting labs for $499 each, which isn't cheap in the slightest, and buying both is nearly the same price as the actual lab exam. If they offered them at say $50 each, I think they would have a lot more custom. But then the CCIE is never a cheap thing to do.

If you do want to invest in these then you can do so from the learningnetworkstore site.

Hopefully I can find time to sit another one of these, learn from my mistakes on Saturday and do better!

Onwards and upwards!

CCDP passed, normal studies can now resume

I just sat and passed the CCDP exam.

Spending nearly a day and half flying to, around, and from the USA over the last two weeks gave me a lot of time to read the certification guide, as well as the other one I mentioned, after I passed the CCDA.

I would highly recommend both books. Especially the official guide.


I havn't finished all of the official guide, but I will continue reading it, as it is a very good book. Not just for the exam, but it's one of those books that every network engineer should read to understand more about how to properly design a network. I would give it a full five out of five stars. Well recommended!

The exam itself was pretty easy (thanks to the guide), a bit of routing protocol knowledge really does help, but I was done in about ten minutes. 55 questions, no drag and drops. Walked out feeling good.

So now it's back to CCIE.
104 days to go.

Time will fly.

I must say that I don't really feel prepared at the moment. I do know my stuff, I feel confident that given unlimited time to sit the exam I would pass with full marks. Unlimited time, however, is not an option.

So, how best to prepare? How best to makes sure I can do what's requested in the limited amount of time?

My wife is very understanding, thankfully, and she knows that I need more time to study at the weekends. The flip-side of this is that I also want to spend time with my family. The boys are at a great age now of three and a bit, where they are fun to play with. So, really, I am not one of those people who can do 12 hours a day study, partly by choice, partly due to other commitments (and my family is far more important that a qualification, really).

So, although I can squeeze some more study time out, it's about working smarter, not harder.

Still trying to come up with a plan though!

If any of you have any ideas, then I'd really like to hear them!

Got bored. Got CCDA. CCDP next.

Studying for CCIE can get a little bit boring. It's a fairly constant rotation of reading, more reading, re-reading, labbing, bit more labbing, and then loads more labbing.

So, I decided to take a little side-road down this long path towards CCIE-dom, and get my CCDP. Because I don't have the CCIE yet (which would fulfil one of the prerequisites), I have got to do the CCDA first. FYI the prerequisites are a valid CCENT, CCNA Routing and Switching, or any CCIE.

So I did it.

Arrived about half an hour early, did all the paper work and pictures, triple signatures, sat the exam, and passed.

I really do not think that it is a hard exam - certainly not when I am in the midst of CCIE-study. There are a number of questions about routing protocol specifics, which are very easy, many of the questions just need a bit of logic to get through them, the rest were all answered by reading the study guide.

The study guide is very well written, it's clear and concise and I finished it within a week.


You can grab it from Amazon by clicking the picture above.
So now I have this, I can sit the CCDP exam, which should be a little bit more fun.

By the way, when did Associate level exams cost the same as Professional level? The CCDA exam cost £151 as does the CCDP. It was £135 for a CCNP exam back in 2012. CCNA was £123 in 2009, are all associate and professional exams the same cost now?

Anyway, I am off on a tour of the US offices for a few days, so lot's of time in planes and airports, armed with my Kindle. I have already started reading the "simplified guide", which is pretty good so far. I wouldn't say it's got all the depth I will probably need for the CCDP exam, but its a good place to start.


I also have the Cisco CCDP guide:


I have been skimming through this at work, and again it's very good. I should be able to finish the the simplified guide on my first flight (London to Philadelphia), and then get through the official one when going from Philly to Arizona, and then from Arizona to Boston. If that's not enough time then I can finish it on the flight back to the UK (though that's a over-night flight, so I might sleep instead).

Anyway, plenty of time to get up to scratch for the CCDP exam at the end of this month, before it's back to the CCIE studies. Then it'll be three months of labbing before the CCIE lab exam in July.

I really should start packing for my trip now. Have a good weekend all.

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.

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 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 v5.0 Lab exam - full breakdown

There are somethings that really stand out on the new v5.0 Lab exam blueprint, firstly is that there is quite a few mentions of Wireshark, so I would hazard a guess that VIRL/CML connects easily to Wireshark in the same way that IOU/IOL and GNS3 do. RIPv2 gets a very brief mention, but BGP is really ramped up when compared to the v4 blueprint. I am starting to think that RIP might not even make it onto the v6.0 blueprint (yes, you heard it first here, folks), and we also have the new versions of Netflow as well now.

Here is the complete list of things you need to cover for the new v5.0 written exam:

CCIE R+S v5.0 Written exam - full breakdown

The v5.0 Written exam has many changes from the v4.0, if you want to remind yourself what's in the V4 then have a look here. The new exam topic lists make the v4.0 look almost too generic really. If you have been following this blog then hopefully you will have seen that as I cover a topic I am linking it back to a very early post where I listed the v4.0 topics, well it looks like I will have to start linking again, and hopefully as I am now into the fifth month of my studies there wont be too many (completely) new topics!

There are some quite new things, such as IOS XE, ISIS, Wireshark but many are just extensions of topics we should already be covering.

Here is the complete list of things you need to cover for the new v5.0 written exam:

CCIE R+S v5.0 Confirmed - Find out what's new!

Cisco have released details of the new v5.0 blueprint for the CCIE Routing and Switching exams.

Here's a breakdown of what is in the new exam.

Last date of the v4.0

You have until June 3rd 2014 to take the V4 blueprint.

Start date of the v5.0

The v5.0 exams will start on July 4th 2014.

Hardware

As previously thought the lab will be 100% virtualised, though if you want to buy equipment you will need Cisco ISR 2900 series running IOS 15.3T Universal, and Catalyst 3560Xs running 15.0SE universal (IP services).

v5.0 Written exam

The new code for the written exam is 400-101, and is much the same format as before.

It is now broken down into six areas, with the percentage for each topic in brackets:

1.0 Network Principles (10%)
2.0 Layer 2 Technologies (15%)
3.0 Layer 3 Technologies (40%)
4.0 VPN Technologies (15%)
5.0 Infrastructure Security (5%)
6.0 Infrastructure Services (15%)

A full breakdown of the v5.0 Written Exam topics

v5.0 Lab Exam

The lab exam has also been simplified, with now just 5 areas:

1.0 Layer 2 Technologies (20%)
2.0 Layer 3 Technologies (40%)
3.0 VPN Technologies (20%)
4.0 Infrastructure Security (5%)
5.0 Infrastructure Services (15%)

There is a big change to the format of the lab exam, and now it is split into three parts.

Troubleshooting - 2 hours with an optional 30 minutes
Diagnostic - 30 minutes
Configuration - 5 hours 30 minutes with an optional 30 minutes (if you havn't already used it in the troubleshooting)

The diagnostic module is ticket based - similar to the CCNP TSHOOT, whereby you are required to make a choice between pre-defined options and show either where or what the root cause is, or what lead you to this conclusion, or what is missing to make a judgement about the root cause. There will be multiple sources of information such as logs, diagrams and emails - though given some of the "The internet is broken" emails I get, I hope Cisco won't go down to end-user level...

A full breakdown of the v5.0 Lab Exam topics

What's been added, moved or removed

Indications from various sources were pretty spot-on.

The following have been removed:

• Flexlink, ISL, Layer 2 Protocol Tunneling
• Frame-Relay (LFI, FR Traffic Shaping)
• WCCP
• IOS Firewall and IPS
• RITE, RMON
• RGMP
• RSVP QoS, WRR/SRR

The following have been moved from the Lab exam to the new written exam:

• Describe IPv6 Multicast
• Describe RIPv6 (RIPng)
• Describe IPv6 Tunneling Techniques
• Describe Device Security using IOS AAA with TACACS+ and RADIUS
• Describe 802.1x
• Describe Layer 2 QoS
• Identify Performance Routing (PfR)

New topics on the written exam are:

• Describe basic software architecture differences between IOS and IOS XE
• Identify Cisco Express Forwarding Concepts
• Explain General Network Challenges
• Explain IP, TCP and UDP Operations
• Describe Chassis Virtualization and Aggregation Technologies
• Explain PIM Snooping
• Describe WAN Rate-based Ethernet Circuits
• Describe BGP Fast Convergence Features
• ISIS (for IPv4 and IPv6)
• Describe Basic Layer 2 VPN - Wireline
• Describe Basic L2VPN - LAN Services
• Describe GET VPN
• Describe IPv6 Network Address Translation

And finally new topics on the both the written and lab exams:

• Use IOS Troubleshooting Tools
• Apply Troubleshooting Methodologies
• Interpret Packet Capture
• Implement and Troubleshoot Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
• Implement EIGRP (multi-address) Named Mode
• Implement, Troubleshoot and Optimize EIGRP and OSPF Convergence and Scalability
• Implement and Troubleshoot DMVPN (single hub)
• Implement and Troubleshoot IPsec with pre-shared key
• Implement and Troubleshoot IPv6 First Hop Security

As I thought in my previous post on what's probably going to come up in the v5.0 there is a greater emphasis on IPv6. Some older technologies have been removed such as ISL, and Frame-Relay, and other technologies that are more suited to the Security track (WCCP, Firewall and IPS) have also been removed.

The changes do make a lot of sense, certainly as IPv6 adoption increases then the exam-provable skill sets must also increase.

All in all it's not an overly scary change. The current reading list is still pretty valid, even the 4th edition certification guide by Wendell Odom is still very useful, but we would expect the new version to be released in the first half of next year.

I will go through the complete changes to the v5.0 Written and Lab exams in separate posts, so stay tuned!

Free CCIE R+S quiz

Finally I have posted the start of the free CCIE Written test. 

There are 83 questions so far, and more will be added as we go.

Obviously the questions I have done are not the same as those in the real exam, after all it would be pretty dumb to incur the wrath of Cisco in order to bring something (hopefully) entertaining to this site. So any questions that are similar to the real questions in any way is purely coincidental and I would be happy to remove them, should Cisco request me to do so.

That said, I hope you enjoy it and please follow us on your social networking site of choice, or follow by email, so that when more questions are added you can come back again.

Take the quiz!

CCIE R&S set for update to V5 in 2014

** UPDATE :- The information has been released - find out more **

At the forthcoming CiscoLive! In Milan between January 27th - 31st there is a session on the V5 version of the CCIE Routing and Switching exam. Information is sparse at the moment, but the two hour session will focus on:

• CCIE RSv5 Program refresh
• Overview
• RSv5 New Curriculum presentation
• Exams Overview 
• Written
• Lab: Structure, Delivery, Hardware/Software requirements, 
• Lab modules sequence, stake, logic, format, demo
• Cisco360 Training Overview 
• New content 
• QA

According to the INE blog post, the exam will, most likely, be 100% virtualised and platform independent - which will be great news for those using the likes of GNS3, IOU or (sooner or later) VIRL.

According to INE older topics such as Frame-Relay will disappear, along with ZBF, WCCP, IPv6 Multicast and PfR, because the lab will probably be 100% virtualised we can also probably consider the following as topics that will be removed:

• QinQ Tunneling
• ISL trunks
• DHCP Snooping
• Layer 3 Port Channel
• Private VLANs
• SPAN/RSPAN/ERSPAN

I would think that RIPv2 will also feature less, if at all in the new exam, with the focus being EIGRP.

New lab topics might include IPSec, DMVPN, and Embedded Packet Capture. I would also suggest that the exam will be more IPv6 centric, including IPv6 security.

There is also a very good chance that the IOS version will move away from 12.4 and up to 15.

New written topics might include ISIS and IOS XE commands.

Will the lab exam format change from the current 2.5 troubleshooting and 5 hour configuration? Perhaps, there might be a diagnostic element to the exam.

Those with exams booked before the end of March should be ok, but after March the chances of getting V5 labs greatly increases as the V4 is phased out.

Once more information is released I'll update. In the meantime take the poll on the right-hand side and let us know what you would like to see removed for the V5!

You think the CCIE is expensive?

There are many that balk at the price of the CCIE exams, they are expensive, we all know this, but how does the CCIE exams compare them against other "top level" computer certifications?

I will compare the CCIE against Juniper's JNCIE track, RedHat's RHCE, Microsoft's MCSE and VMWare's VCP5-DVC.

Let's start by breaking down the costs for the CCIE. We know that it is comprised of two parts, the written exam and the lab exam, and we can break these down into their hourly "rate" - making it easier to compare against other exams.

Cisco CCIE

Total price $1850
Written = $350 (2 hours) = $175 per hour
Lab $1500 (8 hours) = $187.5 per hour
Total = Ten hours

Redhat RHCE

Total price $800
Prerequisite

RHCSA = $400 (2 hours) = $200 per hour

Exam
RHCE = $400 (2 hours) = $200 per hour

Microsoft MCSE: Server Infrastructure

Total price $750
Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012
Administering Windows Server 2012
Configuring Advanced Windows Server 2012 Services
Designing and Implementing a Server Infrastructure
Implementing an Advanced Server Infrastructure

(2 hours per exam at $150 = 10 hours)

Juniper JNCIE-ENT

Total price $1900
Prerequisites:

JNCIA-JUNOS = $100JNCIS-ENT = $100
JNCIP-ENT = $300

Exam
JNCIE-ENT = $1400Approx 14 hours 

VMWare - VCAP5-DCD

Total price $3125 (might be upto $3625)
Prerequisites

VCP5-DVC exam (2 hours) = $225Training course (28 hours) (approx) $2500 (sometimes as high as $3000)

Exam
VCAP5-DCD (4 hours) $400Approx 34 hours

Comparison

Cost (per hour)

Certification	Total hours	Hourly cost
RedHat RHCE	4	$200
Cisco CCIE	10	$185
Juniper JNCIE-ENT	14	$135
VMWare VCAP5-DCD	34	$91
Microsoft MCSE	10	$75

Cost (Total)

Certification	Total hours	Total Price
VMWare VCAP5-DCD	34	$3125
Juniper JNCIE-ENT	14	$1900
Cisco CCIE	10	$1850
RedHat RHCE	4	$800
Microsoft MCSE	10	$750

As we can see the CCIE is actually not the most expensive. On the overall cost it comes in at number three, and it comes in lower than the RHCE when we look at the hourly "cost".

So really, it's a fairly good cost to hours ratio! I would love to know your thoughts, and if you know of any exams that should be compared then please let me know!

The goals and study plan for the CCIE lab exam

So it's always best to have a goal, or a plan, for studying. So I will break it down into 12 months with the end goal being taking the lab exam a year from now.

Month 1 will start on 1st August (2013).

So where am I now?

I finished up my CCNP Switch and TShoot exams and have started collecting study resources, books and buying equipment, and generally having a little break. I have just started with the Wendell Odom book CCIE Routing and Switching Certification Guide (4th Edition). Which really should be the first book you start reading - for obvious reasons, the clue is in the title!

I have got some of the practice labs from different vendors and will start to segment them into the varying topics and do those portions of the labs as I progress through the Odom book.

Clearly there are topics that will need a bit of a refresh, and many that will be completely new to me. But then who doesn't like a challenge. If I didn't like a challenge then I wouldn't be doing this exam...

The Odom book above has 20 chapters. 20 divided by 12 is 1.7 (rounded up). So lets call it a minimum of 2 chapters a month. That gives 10 months for reading and learning and two months of solid practice. I could perhaps clear it in a quicker time, but I also want to balance my time between my wife and children and my studies.

I will continue to use this blog to solidify my knowledge as the best way to learn something is through repetition, and hopefully others will benefit as well. At the end of every month will be an update with current progress and it will serve to (hopefully) keep me on track.

So so far - Chapter 1 is done and I have a week left before the clock starts. I will be in sunny Spain next week, so hopefully will be able to finish a large part of the book.

Anyway, enough talking, got to start on chapter 2...

Passed CCNP TShoot

Hurrah! I am certified in CCNP Routing and Switching!

I took the CCNP TShoot exam yesterday, I passed, but that's not to say I found it easy. In fact I think this exam took me longer to complete than any of the other exams so far. 

The format is that you are given a couple of multiple choice or drag and drop questions, and then it's onto the trouble tickets. 

Passed CCNP Switch exam

So I passed my CCNP Switch exam on the first attempt. So far its always been fail on the first attempt, and pass on the second. I missed my first CCNA attempt by just a couple of points, and same with the first attempt at Route.

But first time round on the Switch exam, passed with a score of 890.

Will book the TShoot for a couple of weeks time, and then straight into CCIE studies!

The gaps between the CCNP and the CCIE

So moving from the CCNP world to the CCIE world seems like a massive jump. Just look at the book list for instance.


But how huge is the jump really?

Looking at the topics shared between the different levels (and due to space constraints I have had to shorten the topic titles as much as possible) we can see that a number of topics, as expected are already well covered, and there are a few that will be completely new.
The items that aren't covered are in green, and where a topic is covered the corresponding exam is in brackets (R for Route, S for Switch and T for TShoot.

CCNP Switch Exam topics

So although this site is focused on the CCIE R+S exams, I really probably should point out that I am still finishing off my CCNP routing and Switching (R+S). I have completed the Route exam and am lining up to take the Switch exam. 

So lets have a little look over the exam topics.

CCIE Exam topics

These are the currently published topics for the Cisco CCIE exam(s).

As this blog expands these will be linked to the relevant blog post, so please keep this page to hand. The plan is to cover everything by the time I take the exam.

Part 11 is for the written exam only.

1.00 Implement Layer 2 Technologies

1.10 Implement Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
   (a) 802.1d
   (b) 802.1w
   (c) 802.1s
   (d) Loop guard
   (e) Root guard
   (f) Bridge protocol data unit (BPDU) guard
   (g) Storm control
   (h) Unicast flooding
   (i) Port roles, failure propagation, and loop guard operation
1.20 Implement VLAN and VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP)
1.30 Implement trunk and trunk protocols, EtherChannel, and load-balance
1.40 Implement Ethernet technologies
   (a) Speed and duplex
   (b) Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet
   (c) PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE)
1.50 Implement Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN), Remote Switched Port Analyzer (RSPAN), and flow control
1.60 Implement Frame Relay
   (a) Local Management Interface (LMI)
   (b) Traffic shaping
   (c) Full mesh
   (d) Hub and spoke
   (e) Discard eligible (DE)
1.70 Implement High-Level Data Link Control (HDLC) and PPP

2.00 Implement IPv4

2.10 Implement IP version 4 (IPv4) addressing, subnetting, and variable-length subnet masking (VLSM)
2.20 Implement IPv4 tunneling and Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE)
2.30 Implement IPv4 RIP version 2 (RIPv2)
2.40 Implement IPv4 Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
   (a) Standard OSPF areas
   (b) Stub area
   (c) Totally stubby area
   (d) Not-so-stubby-area (NSSA)
   (e) Totally NSSA
   (f) Link-state advertisement (LSA) types
   (g) Adjacency on a point-to-point and on a multi-access network
   (h) OSPF graceful restart
2.50 Implement IPv4 Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP)
   (a) Best path
   (b) Loop-free paths
   (c) EIGRP operations when alternate loop-free paths are available, and when they are not
   (d) EIGRP queries
   (e) Manual summarization and autosummarization
   (f) EIGRP stubs
2.60 Implement IPv4 Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
   (a) Next hop
   (b) Peering
   (c) Internal Border Gateway Protocol (IBGP) and External Border Gateway Protocol (EBGP)
2.70 Implement policy routing
2.80 Implement Performance Routing (PfR) and Cisco Optimized Edge Routing (OER)
2.90 Implement filtering, route redistribution, summarization, synchronization, attributes, and other advanced features

3.00 Implement IPv6

3.10 Implement IP version 6 (IPv6) addressing and different addressing types
3.20 Implement IPv6 neighbor discovery
3.30 Implement basic IPv6 functionality protocols
3.40 Implement tunneling techniques
3.50 Implement OSPF version 3 (OSPFv3)
3.60 Implement EIGRP version 6 (EIGRPv6)
3.70 Implement filtering and route redistribution

4.00 Implement MPLS Layer 3 VPNs

4.10 Implement Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)
4.20 Implement Layer 3 virtual private networks (VPNs) on provider edge (PE), provider (P), and customer edge (CE) routers
4.30 Implement virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) and Multi-VRF Customer Edge (VRF-Lite)

5.00 Implement IP Multicast

5.10 Implement Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) sparse mode
5.20 Implement Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP)
5.30 Implement interdomain multicast routing
5.40 Implement PIM Auto-Rendezvous Point (Auto-RP), unicast rendezvous point (RP), and bootstrap router (BSR)
5.50 Implementmulticast tools, features, and source-specific multicast
5.60 Implement IPv6 multicast, PIM, and related multicast protocols, such as Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD)

6.00 Implement Network Security

6.01 Implement access lists
6.02 Implement Zone Based Firewall
6.03 Implement Unicast Reverse Path Forwarding (uRPF)
6.04 Implement IP Source Guard
6.05 Implement authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) 
6.06 Implement Control Plane Policing (CoPP)
6.07 Implement Cisco IOS Firewall
6.08 Implement Cisco IOS Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)
6.09 Implement Secure Shell (SSH)
6.10 Implement 802.1x
6.11 Implement NAT
6.12 Implement routing protocol authentication
6.13 Implement device access control
6.14 Implement security features

7.00 Implement Network Services

7.10 Implement Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP)
7.20 Implement Gateway Load Balancing Protocol (GLBP)
7.30 Implement Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP)
7.40 Implement Network Time Protocol (NTP)
7.50 Implement DHCP
7.60 Implement Web Cache Communication Protocol (WCCP)

8.00 Implement Quality of Service (QoS)

8.10 Implement Modular QoS CLI (MQC)
   (a) Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR)
   (b) Class-based weighted fair queuing (CBWFQ), modified deficit round robin (MDRR), and low latency queuing (LLQ)
   (c) Classification
   (d) Policing
   (e) Shaping
   (f) Marking
   (g) Weighted random early detection (WRED) and random early detection (RED)
   (h) Compression
8.20 Implement L2 QoS: weighted round robin (WRR), shaped round robin (SRR) & policies
8.30 Implement link fragmentation and interleaving (LFI) for Frame Relay
8.40 Implement generic traffic shaping
8.50 Implement Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP)
8.60 Implement Cisco AutoQoS

9.00 Troubleshoot a Network

9.10 Troubleshoot complex Layer 2 network issues
9.20 Troubleshoot complex Layer 3 network issues
9.30 Troubleshoot a network in response to application problems
9.40 Troubleshoot network services
9.50 Troubleshoot network security

10.00 Optimize the Network

10.01 Implement syslog and local logging
10.02 Implement IP Service Level Agreement SLA
10.03 Implement NetFlow
10.04 Implement SPAN, RSPAN, and router IP traffic export (RITE)
10.05 Implement Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
10.06 Implement Cisco IOS Embedded Event Manager (EEM)
10.07 Implement Remote Monitoring (RMON)
10.08 Implement FTP
10.09 Implement TFTP
10.10 Implement TFTP server on router
10.11 Implement Secure Copy Protocol (SCP)
10.12 Implement HTTP and HTTPS
10.13 Implement Telnet

Written exam only:

11.00 Evaluate proposed changes to a Network

11.01 Evaluate interoperability of proposed technologies against deployed technologies
   (a) Changes to routing protocol parameters
   (b) Migrate parts of a network to IPv6
   (c) Routing Protocol migration
   (d) Adding multicast support
   (e) Migrate spanning tree protocol
   (f) Evaluate impact of new traffic on existing QoS design
11.02 Determine operational impact of proposed changes to an existing network
   (a) Downtime of network or portions of network
   (b) Performance degradation
   (c) Introducing security breaches
11.03 Alternative solutions when incompatible changes are proposed to an existing network
   (a) Hardware/Software upgrades
   (b) Topology shifts
   (c) Reconfigurations