5 Weeks to go…..
So with only 5 weeks left to study, I have gotten a bit nervous as my preparation for my exam has been lackluster. I have not truly studied in the past 6-8 weeks since my daughter was born. i now have 5 weeks to get my act together and prepare. My plans is as follows:
1. Complete reading the Odom book, following the blueprint section by section2
2. Complete INE Written Class on Demand, taking notes as I go along.
3. Do as much of INE Vol 1 lab material as possible.
I had asked for advice on the INE CCIE Forums and got the following response from Deepak Arora.
1. INE Advanced Technologies Class 4.5 which has been just released by INE. It covers everything you need to know and videos are easier to go through instead of going through 2600 pages of vol 1 from INE.
2.If you have some extra bucks then spend it on Routing Hand Book from Dual CCIE Ruhann.
3. INE has a Deep Dive Multicast class
I will be taking his advice into mind as I prepared a schedule in the coming days, which I will post here. As of now, I will continue with just reading as much as I can and also doing the practice questions that came on the CD with the Odom book.
Best of luck for your exam… on the same boat but the journey is just begining. Cleared my CCNA last month and CCNP Route is coming up in about the same time as your CCIE written…. From India, lab costs are a ton… Here is what I have so far:
GNS 3 -> Router Emulation
Ubuntu 11.04
2*Quad HP NICs
4 * USB NICs
3 * 3550 with EMI
All shipped from US. I still dont have a motherboard to support the dual quad cards. I am begining to think that I can just dump the quad nics and replace them with a breakout switch. The studies for my CCNP route so far include:
I am doing hands on approximately 2-3 hours a day and theory/listening to audio/video is amounting to 4 hours per day. The thing that I havent got nailed is the 8 hours per weekend. At max I am managing about 6 hours in entire weekend.
Lets see, the journey has started, I have the following plan….
CCNA (accomplished) -> CCNP Route (July 1st week) -> CCNP Switch (August 2nd week) -> Troubleshoot (October) -> BGP + MPLS (December) -> February -> QoS -> May 2012 CCIE written -> October 2012 Lab 1st Attemp – > Attempt in every three susbsequent months….
What a journey, feel like writing my own blog. The hardest part is to keep oneself motivated over this long period. I am a Computer Science Graduate but being regular is not one of my strong points. Having said that 3 of my friends are CCIE’s voice and I know they aint geniuses’s so its doable.
Funny thing is that the motivation to do the exam came after I couldnt clear Cisco’s job interview. So my reading is almost motivated by my desire to take vengeance and show to the bloke at Cisco, that up yours dude. I am a CCIE.
Lets see how the journey unravles, you will see posts from me on your blog from time to time. My best wishes for you.