What I Did to Get Ready for My CCIE

Introduction

I have a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and had more than five years of job experience when I decided to pursue my CCIE—configuring, installing, and debugging IT and networking equipment for customers as part of the experience. I held the CCNA certification at the time but had never pursued the CCNP.

Planning

As with other professional qualifications, you are a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) entails more than merely reading a book, knowing a bunch of facts, and passing an exam. The arduous hands-on lab exam, which lasts eight hours, is the actual text of the CCIE certification. To give the lab, you must have a thorough understanding of routers, switches, and network protocols and a complete comprehension of Cisco configuration instructions.

Obtaining a CCIE is a significant investment of time, effort, and money, and it is critical to have a good plan before beginning. The strategy should consider your present expertise and experience, the resources you have on hand, and the time and money you have available. The material on the following pages should assist you in developing a personalized study plan that will take you to success. These suggestions are based on my own CCIE experience and the experiences of others who have passed the CCIE lab.

I've included links to four important documents that detail what to expect on the CCIE Routing and Switching written and lab examinations. These documents should be downloaded, printed, and read carefully. To get these documents that may be useful to you, you may need to register.

Exam (written)

Several study resources, including books, documents, white papers, and RFCs from Cisco and other sources, were used in my CCIE written exam preparation. For CCNA and CCNP studies, certification exam simulators are popular preparation tools; however, not all companies provide a CCIE solution. If you think an exam simulator will help, Boson's Exim-Max for Cisco 350-001 CCIE R&S v4.0 is a good option. I did not use test simulators to study for the CCIE written exam; instead, I relied solely on books. To give you an idea, below are a couple of sample CCIE R&S written test questions. I read certain books in their entirety and others as a reference in places where more reading was required. The following are the books I used:

Fourth Edition of the CCIE Routing and Switching Certification Guide.

The CCIE Routing and Switching 4.0 blueprint is covered in this Cisco Press work by Wendell Odom, Rus Healy, and Denise Donohue. This book was the cornerstone of my written exam preparation and covered practically everything I needed to know to pass my CCIE written exam. However, despite its vastness, this book is written in a very concise manner. I discovered knowledge gaps while reading this book, which I filled by studying other books and documents listed in the following paragraphs. If you're new to technology, start with additional resources to learn about it, and then use this book as a last-stage prep tool. This book is only valid for the CCIE written exam, not the lab.

Volume I of TCP/IP Routing, 2nd Edition.

Any serious networking practitioner should have Jeff Doyle's book on their bookshelves. It focuses on Interior Gateway Protocols (IGPs), such as Routing Information Protocol (RIP), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), and Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), and provides a solid basis for both the written and lab exams. I initially read this book cover to cover and then used it as a reference book from time to time.

Volume II of TCP/IP Routing.

This is the second book in Jeff Doyle's Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) series, which focuses on BGP, Network Address Translation (NAT), Multicast, and IPv6. This book is a little outdated, yet it still serves as an excellent resource on the issues addressed. I also read the entire book, but I want to see an updated edition because some problems have changed.

Exam in the Laboratory

After passing the written exam, it took me over a year to give the CCIE lab exam. The time it takes you will be determined by your current knowledge and skills, as well as the amount of effort you are willing to devote to CCIE study each day. You must make two essential decisions at the start of your lab preparation: choosing a training provider and acquiring access to a practice lab. In the following parts, I'll go over the resources and options available to CCIE candidates, as well as how I chose and used them for my study.

The troubleshooting section of the CCIE Routing and Switching 4.0 lab exam is entirely virtual, which may surprise some. It's called a "pod" by the CCIE lab proctor, although it's based on IOS on Unix (IOU) and L2IOU (Layer 2 IOS on Unix), which operate as native Linux processes. You'll work with a vast network of 30 to 40 routers and switches. On a web page, you get a graphical representation of the network. It's a big situation, so you might have to scroll to see everything. Right from the browser, you may click on a device to launch a telnet client that gives you console access to that device. Cisco does not make the IOU concept available to third parties, yet IOU is known to be used in Cisco's online laboratories. The lab exam consists of approximately ten difficulty tickets, each of which is worth two or three points.

Resources of Learning CCIE

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