Tag: ccie

This is the story on how I became CCIE# 46173

To be honest, when I look back, I do not really know the main reason behind going through all this trouble, but I can tell you the story about how I did it. It’s mostly a thriller, and some drama towards the end. I will give you an overview of the whole process including the materials used, videos watched, books read and struggles that I went through.

I think that is the right thing to do. This article is for all of you out there who are still trying to study for this exam and need some suggestions. One of the most important things for me was to gather others candidate experience and suggestions in making a good study plan and get the info about the books and stuff. This is also a perfect occasion to brag about passing the damn thing and write a bit about myself. On technology blog, this is a rare opportunity when is alright to write a self reflection.

Cisco finally released long-awaited personal network simulator VIRL. VIRL is a simulator like Cisco CML – Cisco Modelling Lab released few moths ago which is made available for business network simulations and testing in engineering normal day job. With VIRL we got a personal version of CML with drastically lower price tag aimed to help students preparing for Cisco CCNP and more than that for those preparing CCIE lab exam. VIRL will surely help the engineers managing small business network to proof their configuration change before applying it to real network.

This solution give us a more stable and “official” GNS3 which will save all the time spent troubleshooting lab issues that were really GNS3 issues.

Few days ago I added an article with Config GNS3 topology for newly published INE Routing and Switching Workbook v5 Full-Scale LAB1. Here’s now the topology with starting config of TS section for LAB1.

I will not insert here any of my stories today as the same article was published before but with other topology files so if you would like more info, just go to previous post INE R&Sv5 Workbook Full-Scale Practice Lab1 made in GNS3

DOWNLOAD

Yesterday INE finally added a Full-Scale LAB in their new CCIE Route and Switching blueprint 5 workbook.
I realized this morning that you maybe don’t want to spend half of your day (like me) configuring this topology in GNS3. Better to just take it from here and start your lab right away.

In my study process for the last year I made almost all my labs from INE on GNS3. In that way I was able to run the labs for more days in a row and not think about the money I would spent on rack rentals. Of course, you will still need some rack rentals particularly for troubleshooting sessions. For troubleshooting you need preconfigured rack because if you configure those topologies by yourself there is a big chance that you will see ticket answers and that will break the point of troubleshooting study process.

All my config sessions were done on GNS3 and this one in the next few days will be also done in GNS3. If you want to spare some time and get the topology ready, up and running in few minutes you can download it at the end of this article.

Read more and download files!

Please note that this article is more or less pure speculation. The fact is that CCIE R&S v5 blueprint will be presented 28th January 2014 on Milan’s Cisco live event everything else is yet to be announced.

From Milan’s Cisco live 28.1.2014 there is an CCIE R&S v5 blueprint event scheduled. When Cisco wants to speak about new CCIE lab blueprint on Cisco live it means that this blueprint will be announced prior to that event (couple of months before). That leads us to the conclusion that there will be new blueprint announcement this month. There is a big possibility that predictions about changes written in my article about CCIE v5 blueprint here should be changed for the lab exam somewhere around April 2014. Everything in details will be described on that event where Cisco will give out all the details of changes in new CCIE lab v5 blueprint.

There was a chance of announcement this summer when I was following Cisco Live in Orlando. After the event went through it was obvious that there was no mentions about the CCIE lab blueprint change. Later I was reading some blogs about Cisco’s way of changing the blueprint. From all of them it’s clear that new blueprint is never announced on some Cisco live event. It’s always discussed in detail in first event after the announcement. We have this situation now. There is a Cisco Live event in Milan, Italy in February and there is an CCIE v5 blueprint event scheduled for 28.2.2014. Based on all those information we are almost sure to see the announcement this month.

I am studying for the exam for 6 months now!?!

For us studying for the lab exam, the old topology and all the topics from v4 are still valid but for how long?