IP Expert core questions giveaway.

Mike Down from IPX provided me with their core questions quiz software. Its a .air ( click the link to download it ) installed file which is quite neat and doesnt require a login as compared to IE. There are 100 questions in it, and i am hoping it will increase in the weeks to come.  BTW its FREE, did i mention that.  What with the economy being what it is, and well yours truly being unemployed i definitely am not knocking it. I look forward to using it in the upcoming weeks as its questions total increase. I dont think it ll be a bad thing at all since i own the IE product and using both will only help me learn more if not hammer away some of the core stuff in my head. PS with todays economy who can complain about getting a free product. Not me.

Happy studying all. time for me to get back to the cli.

Full Steam ahead.

Yesterday i covered every dot1x command there is in the doc cd. I also spent time working on some open ended question material.  Toss in some qos commands and i cn honestly say it was a good day of studying. Today i plan on finishing out all the QoS related commands. My goal is to cover mostly every command under the switching section of the doc cd before renting a lab rack. The lack of switches doesnt give me the luxury to browse the doc cd while the clock is ticking away on a rack rental. I am hoping that in two weeks i have covered all that there i to switching and then move back in to routing protocol labs.

BootCamp completed.

Bootcamp part 1 completed. Part two will be in in July 09. I read a lot of reviews about Narbiks bootcamp and none, not a single one was wrong.  Its worth every penny spent. I went in not knowing what i would experience other then reading blogs/posts on ccie forums, and well i was not disappointed by any means. Narbik is awesome, he breaks it down on the whiteboard & i quote many a blog here he writes it down and also backs it up with his workbook content meaning there are labs to follow.  The week starts off exactly like how i read about it on other blogs,  Day 1 Switching, FR, Day 2 Ospf, Eigrp, Day 3 BGP Day 4 Ripv2, Qos & day 5 ends with Multicasting with the remants of Qos covered in the early part of the day.  We also labbed during the day after each lecture was done. Questions were recommended by Narbik as well as to email him after the bootcamp is over.  The bootcamp ends with some recommendations from Narbik as well as his comment to us 1st timers to repeat it a second time.

So i now have three plus months of time to work through all the material i received from Narbik.  Unfortunately being unemployed gives me ample time to work through his workbooks.  The past couple of days i have spent on  SRR and Classification. This morning i have gone back over the theory for .1x authentication and am going to spend the rest of the da labbing it up.

So its back to the cli folks. Happy Studying.

Bootcamp kicks off tomorrow.

This past week i have done nothing but work/complete all the  soup to nuts core technologies. This weekend after receiving the HUGE Advanced CCIE R/S workbooks i completed the i was able to go through the Switching/MST and some of the private vlans during the 5.5 hour session that i rented online. Switching is a weak point for me, but i am feeling better and better as i work through the workbooks and their tasks. Repetition is key for me, my only sorepoint is that i dont have access to any switches, and now due to financial constraints i will have to get creative and either drop the commands in a notepad or see if i can get some switches/access online.

I have been looking forward to Narbiks Bootcamp for quite some time now.  I plan on getting the most out of it. Its time for me to take a well deserved rest for the night and get some good sleep.  More to come tomorrow.

Crunch Time.

Lately i have been spending numerous hours that i can muster in a day working through all the core technologies from the STN workbook.  Other then playing Mr Mom ( anyone remember that old Michael Keaton flick ) since i recently got laid off most of my time is seen banging away at the CLI on my laptop.  Thus as of this  Friday i have covered Frame Relay, RIP, Eigrp along with their theory for the core questions.   So overall a good few days spent practicing configs, and theory revisiting.

I plan on splurging on a Mac Book since the laptop i used all this time was from work.  I have had an urge to run dynamips on a  Macs ever since i read Scott Vermillions post and the success he had with it.  Scott was kind to reply back and give me some advice on the dynamips/mac task which i am thankful for.

This coming week will be all about my initial seating at Narbiks bootcamp which i have been avidly dreaming/drooling about for some time now.  As such i will be posting my thoughts about what i experienced in the session.

Ok back to the CLI.  More labs await me.

7 days and some hours left

Before i get to sit Narbiks bootcamp. I am excited and as ready as i could be.  I have decided to spend the last of my 10 days before the bootcamp going over the core technologies to refresh myself.

I also plan on spending some dough for a MacBook so i can get dynamips running on that. As such my free time has been spent browsing hacki forum/web for blogs with howtos as well as scripts that will help with dynamips on a MacBook.

Thats all i have for now. More to come later.

IPv6 summarization.

Lately i have tackling IPv6. This past week was a brush up on theory as well as several practice labs of IPv6.  Tonight i have been going head to head with IPv6 summarization. A google search came up with some decent hits. Best one i liked so far is ccietobe blog  summarizing IPv6 . You ll have to click the link to get there. I havent browsed the rest of the site even though i pride myself on spending time on each and every ccie blog/site that i come across.  Nice explanation on how to break the summarization down.

Ahh I have been looking forward to Narbiks bootcamp for some time now, and i can finally see that week coming close. I am 19 days away from sitting his camp.  I also read/commented a post on cciecandidate from Lucio Janik about Narbik adding new material. I wont copy or paste what Lucio wrote so just click the link to read what he wrote.  Man oh man i am so looking forward to now not only the bootcamp but using the new material as well.

nuff for now. time for me to get back to my labbing.

March 09 hath arrived.

Lately i have changed my study schedule, tweaked it a bit to get more out of my precious study time. So here goes. I get off work, stop @ the gym, workout for an hour then head home. Grap a cuppa tea for a caffeine jolt then its off for some labs or theory. I take an hour break for family time, then get back to the task at hand.  I have been splitting my time in half at night with part of it going to lab practice and the other reading.  Come 10:30 pm, i call it a night, grab some Zzzzz, and then get up at  4:30 am whereupon its back to some mini lab practice. As the instructions say on the shampoo bottles, apply lather, rinse repeat. Well no lather/rinse here. Just repeat, repeat.

Well I am working through the bgp section of ye olde STN workbook & its coming to a close. Next up is  IPV6 and then QoS. I plan on reading up on some of the advanced Switching topics before tackling it.

And not to forget i am also working on my CCVP, Cvoice is what i picked up as my first task to complete.  As such i am scouring my resources such as cisco / tmcnet.com for goodies on VoIP related news and documents.  I also came across sipforum.org a while back and oh wow the goodies there are endless for a sip afficionado.

hello. i m back.

Its been a few weeks since my last post.  not much going on, other then work/study work/run errands & then repeat.

My goal was this month is quite short. I am trying to cover bgp,  and then hoping to make it into switching before the month ends.  My original goal was to go through, BGP, Switching, & Multicasting as the new topics that i would cover for the month. But since i am painstakingly working through each of them, thus i have come up short.  Not to mention i have had a few lapses due to the daily rouine of day to day life coming up and kicking me in the behind.  No excuses. I still feel like i accomplished a decent amount, tackling a beast like BGP is not an easy task.

Lately i have been following and stalking ( viabits/bytes  )  some of the blogs whose owners/participants have attended Narbiks  boot camp, and well the reviews have been great. I am under a month away from attending my session, and i am not only excited but a bit on edge since this will be my first bootcamp experience.

Ip summary who what how?

I am working through my 2nd session of the STN workbook. No i havent covered all of it, just some sections such as FR, Ospf, Rip, Eigrp, ACLs, GRE which i am going back over now. This past weekend/week has been spent repeating Eigrp.  Last night i was looking at one of the questions that said create a default route but dont use global or router eigrp command to answer the task. I sat there twisting my already warped mind wondering how  am i m going to answer this one. Visions of route-maps ran through my mind, i thought distribute lists, hmm no dont be silly. No wait ip default-network, ahh cant use that its a global command.  Eventually tired from the 10-15 minute brain bash, surfing the Doc Cd command set for eigrp/documentation i looked up the solution and it surprised me  as it had done so last month when the answer was ip summary eigrp 100 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0. It still throws me to think that was the answer, but after verifying it, and it worked i can say yes thats the solution. Glad i got a question like that now and can ( hopefully retain it ) for the big one.

Tonight i am moving on to complete leak-maps and be done with Eigrp. Tomorrow starts Ospf once more. My goal this month is to cover Bgp/Switching the forementioned Ospf & multicasting.  Lofty goals but i know it has to be done.  I dont plan on showing up at the bootcamp without properly preparing. Lately i have been going at the cli till midnight from 7ish in the night minus  hour for family time.

I usually check GS every thursday for weekly tidbits on who passed,  latest news and problems that other engineers are working on.  I was expecting to see a new post about the new modification to the R/S CCIE track and my expectations were confirmed.   A post named Open Ended questions was started and had several good replies to it. It was interesting to read.