Cisco Certfied Internetwork Expert
I finally PASSED the CCIE Routing & Switching Lab Exam today, May 5th 2005, out
at RTP in North Carolina!
I have been studying for the CCIE exam
for almost 3 years now. I am proud and ecstatic to announce that I finally
passed today out at RTP in North Carolina. I just got back into Chicago and
found out about an hour ago. So I am wired to say the least.
I came out of the exam feeling very confident that I had passed it. I knew I had
absolutely nailed it. The worst part was having to endure the torture of waiting
and not knowing the whole way home. I kept second guessing all kinds of issues
that I ran into. The mind can be an evil thing when it is left to its own
devices...
CCIE Plaque Anyway, I am so happy and thankful that this chapter of my life has
finally come to an end (so are my wife and kids). I already packed my library of
Cisco Press books back onto my bookshelf and powered my lab rack down. Yeehaw! I
can actually have my life back and stop spending all my nights and weekends
studying my butt off in the basement. What a huge burden off my shoulders. Now I
might actually be able to interact with humans again instead of routers and
switches. I never thought I could get sick of working on this stuff, but I
proved myself wrong.
Time to book at least a 2 week vacation to St. Somewhere.
For those that are interested, here is my Lab in my basement. This is where I
spent all of my spare time preparing to take the CCIE Routing & Switching Lab
exam. Fortunately the whine of the fans on all this gear does not carry
throughout the house. The nice thing is I added some APC remote start power
supplies which allow me to leave the rack powered down and I can fire it up at
any time from anywhere remotely.
I collected a lot of this gear off of eBay and some of it was spare hardware
from the office. This is about the bare minimum of equipment you need to run
through many of the practice lab scenarios. The only equipment I am missing is
an LS1010 ATM switch and a couple of ATM modules for my 2600's. That gets quite
a bit pricey, so I just rented lab time for that since it was an insignificant
amount of material to cover with respect to all the other topics.
If you think I am an extreme geek, then you haven't seen anything yet. Check out
Scott Morris' lab...the only non Cisco employee to have 4
CCIE certifications! The man is a
machine when it comes to this stuff.
My preparation path:
Realistic Exams Question and Answers with explanations
Testkingdom’s Advance Technology actual Preparation material and vol 2 (68 labs)
The Cisco CCNA network associate certification validates the ability to install, configure, operate, and troubleshoot medium-size routed and switched networks, more at http://www.certkingdom.com
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
CCIE Lab Preparation My personal path and Recommendations
Well this post will be in two parts. The smaller first part will detail what I
did to prepare for the lab.
And the in second part, I will detail what I think is the best way of preparing
for the lab, based on personal experience and problems I had along the way. In
short, if I had to prepare for the lab all over again, the path I’d take will be
in the recommendations J
My preparation path:
Realistic Exams Question and Answers with explanations
Testkingdom’s Advance Technology actual Preparation material and vol 2 (68 labs)
Q & A with explanations not required:
After preparation from testkingdom.com
ccie written exams bundle and ccie lab no Q & A with explanations is needed
each and every topic is very very
I started my journey last year and started working on written and lab
simultaneously.
I cleared the written exam in March, and then started concentrating on the lab.
Even before that my method was to read through DOC cd and make small labs to
understand a technology and feature using dynamips. By the time I study from
Testkingdom’s Q & A with explanations in April, I had finished first 68 labs.
After the Q & A with explanations I concentrated on Testkingdom’s Preparation
Material and completed it cover to cover and did some of the IEWB labs over and
over again till the lab date.
I followed this path, but will I do the same if I have to do everything all over
again? No, I will change the methodology and hence my recommended preparation
method is as follows.
Recommendations:
Assuming you have cleared your written exam what should be your next step.
Personally I think, you should start with focusing on individual technology.
For that I recommend Testkingdom’s Advance Technology Preparation Material. His
philosophy is to take a technology, make small labs about every feature and then
beat it to death. When you are finished with his Preparation Material, you have
typed in 95% of commands you need to know and practiced 95% of all features that
can show up.
The figure 95% is estimation, and Testkingdom is continuously updating his
Preparation Materials and you can instant download for latest updates for 12
months absolutely free.
Now, I am also very satisfied with IE Preparation Materials, and IE is reshaping
their Vol 1 technology labs according to same philosophy. Up till now, those are
in Beta Phase. So at the moment, the only deep technology Preparation Material
that I know of is Testkingdom’s.
I did attend Testkingdom’s Q & A with explanations and I have only good things
to say about it. I chose it because it was the cheapest, but the 5 day Q & A
with explanations was really informative and a great experience. Once again, I
didn’t attend other vendors’ Q & A with explanations so I cannot compare. But
from what I heard, everyone praises both IE and IPexpert Q & A with explanations
as well. So I’ll also recommend Testkingdom’s Q & A with explanations to all
readers.
After that, you should start with full scale labs. I only tried IE first 10 labs
and I was really happy with those. I didn’t try any other vendor for full scale
labs so I cannot comment on those. I would recommend those to all readers as
well.
In this way, by doing Testkingdom;s ccie
lab first, you learn to do almost everything you need to, independently. And
with full scale labs, you improve your speed, stamina and learn how to approach
a full scale lab and get a very good idea about how technologies interact with
each other.
I hope this post is useful for readers of this article readers.
did to prepare for the lab.
And the in second part, I will detail what I think is the best way of preparing
for the lab, based on personal experience and problems I had along the way. In
short, if I had to prepare for the lab all over again, the path I’d take will be
in the recommendations J
My preparation path:
Realistic Exams Question and Answers with explanations
Testkingdom’s Advance Technology actual Preparation material and vol 2 (68 labs)
Q & A with explanations not required:
After preparation from testkingdom.com
ccie written exams bundle and ccie lab no Q & A with explanations is needed
each and every topic is very very
I started my journey last year and started working on written and lab
simultaneously.
I cleared the written exam in March, and then started concentrating on the lab.
Even before that my method was to read through DOC cd and make small labs to
understand a technology and feature using dynamips. By the time I study from
Testkingdom’s Q & A with explanations in April, I had finished first 68 labs.
After the Q & A with explanations I concentrated on Testkingdom’s Preparation
Material and completed it cover to cover and did some of the IEWB labs over and
over again till the lab date.
I followed this path, but will I do the same if I have to do everything all over
again? No, I will change the methodology and hence my recommended preparation
method is as follows.
Recommendations:
Assuming you have cleared your written exam what should be your next step.
Personally I think, you should start with focusing on individual technology.
For that I recommend Testkingdom’s Advance Technology Preparation Material. His
philosophy is to take a technology, make small labs about every feature and then
beat it to death. When you are finished with his Preparation Material, you have
typed in 95% of commands you need to know and practiced 95% of all features that
can show up.
The figure 95% is estimation, and Testkingdom is continuously updating his
Preparation Materials and you can instant download for latest updates for 12
months absolutely free.
Now, I am also very satisfied with IE Preparation Materials, and IE is reshaping
their Vol 1 technology labs according to same philosophy. Up till now, those are
in Beta Phase. So at the moment, the only deep technology Preparation Material
that I know of is Testkingdom’s.
I did attend Testkingdom’s Q & A with explanations and I have only good things
to say about it. I chose it because it was the cheapest, but the 5 day Q & A
with explanations was really informative and a great experience. Once again, I
didn’t attend other vendors’ Q & A with explanations so I cannot compare. But
from what I heard, everyone praises both IE and IPexpert Q & A with explanations
as well. So I’ll also recommend Testkingdom’s Q & A with explanations to all
readers.
After that, you should start with full scale labs. I only tried IE first 10 labs
and I was really happy with those. I didn’t try any other vendor for full scale
labs so I cannot comment on those. I would recommend those to all readers as
well.
In this way, by doing Testkingdom;s ccie
lab first, you learn to do almost everything you need to, independently. And
with full scale labs, you improve your speed, stamina and learn how to approach
a full scale lab and get a very good idea about how technologies interact with
each other.
I hope this post is useful for readers of this article readers.
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