steverossen.com

So now I am just waiting until lab seats are available by reading about MPLS and related new topics. I keep checking the site for 3.0 seats even though I know its a waste of time. I decided to reach out Narbik tonight and talk about what I should be doing between now and when I sit for 4.0. It was a good chat, that was the first time I had called him and you can really tell he cares about what his students are doing and making sure they learn and become experts on the material then pass the lab. We chatted about study strategy for the new material and he remind me to not rush into to a date. I still see seats for the first day of 4.0 and I want to do that just because I want to get the cert…but not doing that. Going to master all the topics before I schedule a date.

Narbik also gave me an update on what he has been doing for the new class and it sounds great! The class format it is changing and its going to be even more intense! He also let me in on a few details of a few out of class things he is working that will help all of his students. More on that later.

That’s all, just wanted to give a quick update. Now back to the DocCD for me.

The cost is NOT going up $1000!!! Read closer, its just going up $495!!! Thats less then $500 more and you get all of Narbik 2.0 AND 360. Retakes are always going to be free, the cost I was talking about is for the 360 materials, NOT retaking the class.

Now go sign up! He talked more about it today, it will be totally worth it.

UPDATE:

The cost is NOT going up $1000!!! Read closer, its just going up $495!!! Thats less then $500 more and you get all of Narbik 2.0 AND 360. Retakes are always going to be free, the cost I was talking about is for the 360 materials, NOT retaking the class.

So since Narbik announced he was going to join 360 there has been much speculation on what that is going to mean. So far all the details that have come out came from the best source, Narbik himself. You can read those comments here: http://groupstudy.com/archives/ccielab/200906/msg01672.html

Well that was about a week and a half ago and today I started my bootcamp with Narbik. This is my 2nd time to sit the class so I knew what to expect going in and was really wondering about what the 360 program would do to the class. Narbik started the class just like last time talking about himself, his background and his teaching style. This lead into him talking about 2.0 class and 360. This class is 2.0 beta, meaning the 2.0 workbooks are not 100% final and this class was still geared at the 3.0 blueprint but we have beta volumes 1-8 of 2.0 workbooks. Starting in August he will move to his new Best of the Best class which is Narbik 2.0 and Cisco 360, both of which will be for blueprint 4.0. His workbooks will be 12 volumes! This included new volumes on the new topics which I don’t know the full breakdown but its MPLS, Traffic Engineering, Layer 2 & 3 VPN’s, EIGRPv6 plus a brain teaser volume of crazy hard scenarios. I know the LDP and TE topics are pulled directly from his forthcoming SP class so this material will go way beyond what is needed for R&S. In addition to those new Narbik 2.0 volumes you will also get the current official 360 books. The cost will go up to $2995, I really can’t remember what he said. Really a small increase for added a 2nd vendors program it and the cost is not going up the full close to $1000 per student he now has to pay Cisco.

As for the class room portion the format will stay the same but will use his 2.0 materials, he still will not use the overhead projector at all, the schedule will be the same with adding MPLS and L3 VPN on Wednesday (if you have taken the class, you know the rest of the scheduled). He is going to add a 2nd bootcamp that is calling series 2 with series 1 being what he has always done. Series 2 will be more along of the lines of a mock lab experience week but he is not calling them mock labs. Basically he will lecture though the entire lab then you will do the lab. This again will be material he has written, not from the official 360 books. He said series 1 will will be all details on a scale of level 1-10 with series 2 being 11+ and the actual lab being a ~7. More details on that later.

Now why did he do all this? Well it sounds like as most people he feels two vendors is the way to go so rather then saying go get IPx, INE or whoever the student ends up with he is providing that second vendor. That way he will know the material and can help his students with getting that second perspective on things. He at first said he did like the 360 program but of all the vendors besides him he felt it was the best, thus the name of his new program the best of the best. What about the whole regional specific nature of the official partners? Well now he has to change his web site, he can’t have all the countries in one place. You will now have to click to the country you are in then you can get to classes in your region. What about retakes? He students still get FREE retakes, just if you want new workbooks printed will be a cost (as has always been the case.)

Now he said all that first thing this morning I have sat though hours of lecture and done over 150+ pages of labs so my memory on the details may not exact. He does have a new web site coming as early as next week with all the details on it so think of this as a preview where details may change. Bottom line is from what I have heard him say I am still going to 100% recommend this new class to anyone, Narbik is one of the best instructors out there and really cares about his students. Now its a few more labs for me then its off to bed to do this all over again tomorrow.

A little slow to get this review out but here it goes…

Title: CCIE Routing and Switching Exam Certification Guide (3rd Edition)
Date Published: November 2007
ISBN: 1587201968

This is a tough topic to jam into one book but Wendell Odom did just that. The target of this book is someone is preparing for the CCIE Written exam and it is not intended to give a full depth of knowledge on all topics. In fact in one case Mr Odom flat out says he are not going to cover much on frame relay because most engineers are very familiar with the topic. Also typical Cisco Press books end with a review of the topic covered in that chapter but this one does not, in basically all chapters he introduces something new with minimal detail. I say all that to point out you have to make sure you are the intended target, someone close to taking the CCIE Written. This will not give you enough details on its own but its a great read. Also the review sections are great knowledge builder because they give you terms you need to know and the CD includes blank forms for you to fill in help build that knowledge. I definitely say this a book you want to read on your way to a CCIE. I found it to be very informative will be reading it again along my to being a CCIE. The only complaint I have is that there are a number of typo’s (as many tech books have) but this is the 3rd edition and I would hope most would have been fixed by now.

Bottom line is if your on the CCIE track you should get this book.

I am still around, just been reading a lot. I am focusing more on really getting a full knowledge of technologies and not spending as much time in the lab. I have been doing a lab almost every Saturday but not a lot during the week. I really need a better grasp on a few of the technologies. I had hoped to sit for the lab with a possible number of less then 25000 but with nearly 500 new CCIE’s in January no chance of that happening. Still on track to sit before the end of the year I feel. Thats the update for now.

Studying! Sorry for lack of update but since my last post I finished reading Wendal Odom’s CCIE Study Guide and half way though Jeff Doyle’s Routing TCP/IP Vol 1 (reading again, first time to read a study for CCIE.) Plus I went to a week of F5 training which is great for my my job but not great for the CCIE plan. I have also done a Proctor Labs session every weekend and a few small labs in Dynamips during the week. I am behind where I want to be but I should be about where I hope to be by the time I got to Narbik’s class at the end of March. Anyway just a quick update since I have been silent for a month.

I was not sure how much work I would get done over Christmas so I just scheduleed a few chapters of reading over the week and no lab time. Turns out I was able to read about double what I expected which I was happy with. I think the key that helped me stay on track over the past week while I was out of town was to first set a realistic expectation of what I could do. For me I was at my in-laws and out of town so I knew I time would be limited that I could go off by myself and focus. Because of that I kept the plan realisitic and even slightly underestimated what I could get done. The second key was to have a real plan. I did not just say “we’ll see what I get done” but had a wrtitten plan of what I knew I had to get done. I know of some who got multiple labs in but that was just not going to happen for me. Now I am back at it full swing and trying to plan out the next 3 months exactly what I am going to to studying on what days.

So today was my first vRack rental with ProctorLabs.com and I thought I would write up a quick post of this so others would know what to expect.  My lab started at 7am local time so I had setup my work area before I went to bed to get a little extra sleep. I use a Mac but had to decided to train for the CCIE on Windows using SecureCRT to closely resemble the actual lab. I downloaded a trail of v6 but will buy it soon. I just hope that by the time I take they lab they are running v6.  I also printed out a couple sets of the diagrams and task lists for the sections I was planning on doing. I planned on completing just Vol 1 section 1&2 which is estimated 5 hours. I would use the rest of the time to get used to the interface and whatever else came up that I did not expect.

Just before 7am I logged into to proctorlabs.com, opened up notepad and launched SecureCRT. As soon as 7am hit I clicked on the time slot under “Connect to vRack” and the interface launched. It was a simple layout and was easy to see where to load configs, how to power cycle routers and connect to the terminal server. I connected to the terminal server opened a tab for each router/switch which of course was something very familiar to me since I am logged int rotuers and switches all day long. When I first connected I was not sure what username/password it was asking for. I tried cisco and ipexpert but was my actual ProctorLabs.com login. That really was the only stumbling block. From there on out it was just like working on any other router. It was nice that the routers are 2800/3800’s since they are pretty fast (especially with nothing on them.) After that I just worked my way though Vol1 Section 1. This is a very simple lab and really should be nothing new. I felt this was really helpful to get an understanding of the layout of the lab and how everything is connected. They only thing that did catch me off guard was using a ? in a password, never tried that before so did not know how to do that. I did work a little slow just to make sure I was understanding the topology and trying to determine the process that works best for me. I spent about 2 hours start to finish on this, it was estimated at 1.5 hours and since it was my first rental session I thought it went well, I was not trying for speed. I did go on and complete section 2 also, that was more challenging.

To sum up the experience it was very easy and smooth. You will need no training the vRack at all as long as you are used to connecting to routers/switches via terminal server. My advice is just get your setup laid out ahead of time and you know what works best for you so do what your comfortable with. I would make your goal to complete Vol 1 Sections 1&2 on your first rental. Don’t rush, make sure your understanding the questions. I would also have a separate web browser open to the DocCD. All in all it was a simple enjoyable experience. My next vRack rental is tomorrow so I am off to review the weaknesses I found today before that starts in less then 24 hours!

So I signed up for the J-Net forum in Oct and today a free book showed up for me! This will definetly help this Cisco guy get some JUNOS knowledge. Thanks Juniper!

This is not a new book but I wanted to improve my service provider side knowledge of MPLS and since the book is the on the CCIE list I picked it. I got it used off eBay for $20 I think so buying older books has some advanteages.  I also read it to prep for the CCIE wrtiten test. I am going with the study for the lab then when almost ready take the written. Well MPLS is not in the R&S lab (yet) so this did not apply to that but since I work with routers attached to an MPLS network everyday I felt this would also apply to work as well. Now on to the review!

First let me get this out of the way, this is a slightly older book (2002) so some details have changed but the fundamentals are there. This is also the CCIP edition but its for an older 640-xxx test, not the current 642 test. The age was just a minor issue as this book will give you the fundamentals on MPLS VPN’s that most corperate networks are using now.

As for reading this book I felt it was very well laid out. It started out first with the basic and slowly built on that until you where running a full service provider MPLS network with multiple VPN customers. Though out the reading of this book I never got lost or wondered what was going on, the authors where very clear in taking you step by step though the process. The only area I could see people getting lost is with MP-iBGP. This book is heavy on iBGP and if you don’t have good understanding of it you might get lost as this goes into MP-BGP in great detail in explaining the how routes are propagated around between VRF’s. I found this discussion to be very clear and helpful.

Bottom line is liked this book, slightly dated but well worth a read today if your looking to improve your knowledge on MPLS and VRF’s.

http://www.ciscopress.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=1587050811