CCIE HELP

[mshirley551]

Hi All,  I am recently certified CCNP R & S.  My skills and experience lie in this area... Switching, OSPF, EIGRP BGP etc

I would like to progress on to the CCIE R & S but have had very little exposure to QOS and MPLS, VPN's Frame Relay, ATM etc - basically anything not in the CCNP R & S Syllabus.

What would you advise is the best way for me to proceed?  Should I jump straight into CCIE and try and cover these topics with reading / labs whilst going through an INE log book or is there a better route for me to take? E.g Try and do CCNP Service Provide studying first.  I have all my foundation CCNP R & S topics up to date and dont really want to take a break from studying...

Any advice would be appreciated, I am currently eployed as a 2nd line Cisco engineer.

[cadet alain · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Gonna give my two cents:if you've got the CCNP RS  then no need to do CCNP SP before doing CCIE RS.

Regards.

Alain

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[mshirley551]

Thanks for the advice...  Have you already completed CCIE R & S?  What would you recommend using to study? INE? Is 18 months a realistic time frame doing around 20 hours a week study?

[Collin Clark · Accepted solution]

Here's my two cents- don't work on SP. Look at it this way. CCNA gives you exposure to R&S. The CCNP builds upon that giving you a basic foundation of R&S. The CCIE expects you to master those foundation topics. MPLS, QOS, etc are on the exam but they are "minor" compared to the R&S foundation topics. Don't sweat the small stuff.

[mshirley551]

Thanks for the advice...  Have you already completed CCIE R & S?  What would you recommend using to study? INE? Is 18 months a realistic time frame doing around 20 hours a week study?

[Collin Clark]

I am not a CCIE nor do I want to become one It doens't fit for what I want to do. Many people have used INE with great success. They are a major player in CCIE studies and I don't hink you could go wrong using their study materials. I would think that would be plenty of time. If I remember right most CCIE's put in about 1000 hours of studying.

[John Blakley]

Mark,

I passed my written in August, and I can tell you that I'm still "green" on some technologies. The challenge that you're going to have, as you've already mentioned, is going to be no real world experience. The written is generally based on theory, but there are some questions that I believe one would've had to have seen in the real world in order to understand why they received an error.

As far as what Collin states, I'm currently using both INE and IPExpert for my studies. They both recommend 650-800 hours of real lab experience before attempting the lab. Personally, I sometimes find it hard to determine what the lab is looking for as far as a technology, but I guess that will come in time. Some differences are that INE, in my opinion, has better videos and lab times than IPExpert, but I believe it's good to learn from both if you have the budget. I actually learned something the other day that I never heard IPExpert cover. The lab rentals from INE can be done in 3 hour increments, with you getting 2.5 hours of that for real rack time, whereas IPExpert timeslots are 8 hours. It's sometimes easier for me to do a 3 hour timeslot as opposed to 8 hours, but Proctorlabs has stated that they're looking into shorter times starting early next year (I hope they do).

All in all, I don't think you can go wrong with either one really. It's going to be all about your studies, and even though I have access to both of these, I still see myself going to Cisco docs quite frequently.

Good luck!

John

[mshirley551]

What is the method of teaching with INE ? Reading -> Videos -> Practice on Lab?  Also I have just finished the CCNP Switching exam.  I did Route and then TSHOOT as I thought my switch skills were at a good enough level already, I did pass first time on all 3 but realise how lucky I must have got in the tshoot exams as i was overestimating my switching knowledge.  Which reading would you recommend I start with to recover all foundation and essential topics?

[John Blakley]

I have the all access pass from INE which is all video based. There are pdfs that you can download from them, but they're primarily for following the videos like topology diagrams, etc. You can also download slides of their videos too. I have a lot of books. For QoS I'd recommend the Cisco Press QoS Exam book. It's by far the best, most in-depth, Cisco centric book I've found. For IPv6, I'd just look around the web and find things. INE has a list of recommended reading as well:

http://www.ine.com/resources/cciebooks.htm

Yeah, the CCIE lab is one of those things that doesn't work around real world experience. They ask you to do things that don't make sense, so it's really a "think outside of the box" type lab. I haven't sit it yet, but this is what all of the INE and IPExpert instructors tell you. That's why I said that the written exam, which you have to pass first, is theory based. I'd recommend for the written test that you read a lot of RFCs.

HTH,
John

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