my Schedule

After playing for a few days with the online lab scheduling, i managed to schedule my lab exam for 10th of February 2014 (this means that i had to pay at the same time). Since i wasn't so lucky to find an earlier date (there are various work projects scheduled for February 2014, where i wanted to be free of non-work matters), i started looking for important things (besides dealing with these work projects) to do before the 10th of December 2013, where i am planning to actually start my lab study.

First of all i needed to find some mock labs in order to rate myself. Unfortunately i couldn't find any, because as it seems only R&S mock labs are available from most trainers. Since no SP mock labs are available, i decided to follow another path. Get some time on rack rentals, find some workbooks with labs inside and make my own version of mock labs. What does this mean? Run an 8-hour lab on online racks and then grade myself based on the expected results. Like i did in R&S, honesty is what counts most, so even the smallest error will make me lose all the topic points.

I did a quick research and i ended up with INE's rack rentals in combination with their workbook (a bundle for which i got a nice offer). The workbook contains 4 full scale labs, 2 of which i'm planning to run at least twice. So in total i am planning to run my own version of 6 mock labs. I don't know if i'll be able to do some of the other staff in the workbook (besides the labs), but i hope i do find some time to test a few of those things too.

At the same time, i am planning to run some of the above labs on my upgraded dynamips environment, in order to get used to the technologies that i feel weak. That means that i'll have to prepare my virtual lab for that. I'm not planning to use IOU/VIRL/etc, because my current hardware setup is able to cope easily with the required amount of dynamips resources and i mostly want to focus on the technologies themselves rather than on the virtual environment or the actual device configuration.

After i covered the practical side of preparation, i needed to do something for the theoretical too. So i ordered two new books based on the list at https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-10002. My library already has most of these titles, so i went for "MPLS-Enabled Applications: Emerging Developments and New Technologies" and "Traffic Engineering with MPLS" which seemed interesting, although the topics are well-known to me.

Last but not least, i ordered a new MP3 player/recorder (my old had broken one year ago). The reason i use such a tool has been described in my previous CCIE. I still consider this hear-yourself tactic as of major importance for my preparation.

Refreshing matters

Today i passed the CCIE SP Written (350-029) exam, something that was mainly done in order to renew my CCIE certification.

I was positively surprised to meet the following topics:

• A lot of questions about IPv6, CGN, etc.
• Many questions about AToM, EoMPLS, VPLS, etc.
• Quite a few of questions about fast convergence and MVPN
• Some references from Cisco Live slides
  

On the other hand, ATM/FR had their section and the usual annoying questions that nobody cares to remember had a small presence too.

If Cisco removes completely the last part (like it partially did for latest R&S), then this is going to be one of the most interesting exams for service providers. I entered more than 20 comments as a feedback (i love doing that), hoping to make the exam even more useful in the future.

I spent a whole week studying for this exam (with an average of 5 hours per day), but i fell happy when i realized that this was a nice push to refresh my knowledge. Luckily, due to my daily job, i knew most of the staff quite well, so i had only to take a review on most of them.

Since i answered some questions totally in random but i passed with a high score, i tend to believe that some of them were put there as an evaluation and they were not actually graded. After all, why does the candidate need to remember all those numbers included in IANA & IETF docs? When i need to find something like that, i just need to know where to look for it; that's where the exam should focus.

Looking for excuses

Excuse #1
Some years ago i was discussing with Mike Down (who was working for IPexpert at that time) about a possible collaboration. I still remember his words in his last email: "I can't wait to read about your trek for your SP CCIE! 2 months this time???".


Excuse #2
Some days after my first CCIE, i was already blogging about my next one: "CCIE Service Provider is already quite known to me, because i work for many years in an ISP and i know most of the stuff. I just need another 3-4 months (hopefully) of hard preparation and surely a good understanding of MPLS. Maybe i'll also try the CCIP before it, just like i did with CCNP. "
CCIP was completed some months afterwards and as you can see in this new blog, 3-4 months became 2 months.


Excuse #3
Two weeks ago i got a reminder from Cisco. It was about time for my CCIE recertification, but I had almost forgotten it.

So i thought: Seizing the opportunity, why not try another CCIE? What do i have to loose, besides another 3 months of hard preparation?

Then i thought again: 3 months is too much right now. My current job includes a lot of important and complex projects which cannot be delayed for such a long time, so i must make it even shorter.

So i booked the written exam for next week...

CCIE SP Written @ 04/Nov/2013