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@darbyweaver
Hey Darby,
Thanks for taking the time to respond; that helped to shed some light. So it sounds as though you're primarily plagued with what most CCIE candidates appear to be plagued with: lack of time. The material is not necessarily difficult to comprehend, just tough to try and retain so many details of so many technologies when so many other daily matters are competing for your time and attention. That's completely understandable.
So in my situation, I'm currently deployed overseas in a hot warzone as an IT contractor to the DoD (Army). I believe you mentioned you also hold a DoD clearance, so I suppose being in the industry you can imagine that after a year over here, going back home debt free with no real bills to speak of will afford me an uncommon job-free opportunity easily for a year or more if I wanted to. So instead of investing that capital into a house or car, I'd prefer to invest in myself for as long as it takes for me to earn my CCIE. I definitely want to get my CCNP as a fallback regardless, but as I mentioned the last exam should be June/July. I'll be staying with my girlfriend in her apartment(an eye dr.), so as you can imagine living expenses will be little to none. Since we have no kids or pets and she works full-time, distractions are minimal as the neighborhood is a quiet gated-community as well.
Like many before me, I'm pretty sure I'll be going with INE for my lab and written training material (and of course some other material for cross-reference). I already rent a lab for a very low flat monthly fee ($41/month!) and it's built nearly identical to the INE lab (just more control and features), but if I can find some good enough deals I will be building my own INE lab for hands on. Also, I'm going to sit for my Wireshark Certified Network Analyst exam next month, so as you can guess I'm already big on protocol analysis, which is why I want my own lab. I can really spend more like $20k if I wanted to, but I'm not sure if the capex is necessarily justified, unless I'm somehow able to learn more effectively in a shorter time frame.
I agree with your idea,"debug the hell out of everything." Of course that will take more time to do, but as I see it this will be my full-time job for the duration of the experience at only 40-60 hrs/week (to keep from burning out). I read a helpful blog at http://blog.ine.com/2010/10/09/how-to-pass-the-ccie-rs-with-ines-4-0-training-program/ and it appears to be recommending a 48wk (@12hrs/wk) plan, so we're talking 16 weeks (3-4 months @36hrs/wk), or about 576 recommended hours devoted to this. Some have estimated the average candidate devotes about 700-750hrs to lab study/training, so considering a bunch of protocol analysis we're talking about 1000hrs (6 months @ 40hrs/wk) for me if we're being modest. That's how I arrived at a 6-month figure (I'm doing as Eman advised and "treating it as a business.")
I think I read somewhere else before where you mentioned you'd tried out INE in the past(?) I'm honestly not yet 100% sold on their self-study CCIE written training material, but their self-study CCIE lab material looks rather meaty and most important for me, structured. But as I've yet to speak with an actual training adviser, It's still very much in the planning and speculative stage at this point.
I was readlly going to give myself maybe 9 months, but I was hoping to include "job search" (Atlanta area) into that time frame. Might you have any feedback with regard to some good, structured CCIE Written training I might find? That would be great as part of the plan (a tip I picked up) was to sit for the written when I'm about 80% through studying for the lab (as I imagine there's a lot of overlap or complimentary training? not sure), so that would be most helpful. Thanks for sharing your story and I look forward to our shared successes
Thanks for taking the time to respond; that helped to shed some light. So it sounds as though you're primarily plagued with what most CCIE candidates appear to be plagued with: lack of time. The material is not necessarily difficult to comprehend, just tough to try and retain so many details of so many technologies when so many other daily matters are competing for your time and attention. That's completely understandable.
So in my situation, I'm currently deployed overseas in a hot warzone as an IT contractor to the DoD (Army). I believe you mentioned you also hold a DoD clearance, so I suppose being in the industry you can imagine that after a year over here, going back home debt free with no real bills to speak of will afford me an uncommon job-free opportunity easily for a year or more if I wanted to. So instead of investing that capital into a house or car, I'd prefer to invest in myself for as long as it takes for me to earn my CCIE. I definitely want to get my CCNP as a fallback regardless, but as I mentioned the last exam should be June/July. I'll be staying with my girlfriend in her apartment(an eye dr.), so as you can imagine living expenses will be little to none. Since we have no kids or pets and she works full-time, distractions are minimal as the neighborhood is a quiet gated-community as well.
Like many before me, I'm pretty sure I'll be going with INE for my lab and written training material (and of course some other material for cross-reference). I already rent a lab for a very low flat monthly fee ($41/month!) and it's built nearly identical to the INE lab (just more control and features), but if I can find some good enough deals I will be building my own INE lab for hands on. Also, I'm going to sit for my Wireshark Certified Network Analyst exam next month, so as you can guess I'm already big on protocol analysis, which is why I want my own lab. I can really spend more like $20k if I wanted to, but I'm not sure if the capex is necessarily justified, unless I'm somehow able to learn more effectively in a shorter time frame.
I agree with your idea,"debug the hell out of everything." Of course that will take more time to do, but as I see it this will be my full-time job for the duration of the experience at only 40-60 hrs/week (to keep from burning out). I read a helpful blog at http://blog.ine.com/2010/10/09/how-to-pass-the-ccie-rs-with-ines-4-0-training-program/ and it appears to be recommending a 48wk (@12hrs/wk) plan, so we're talking 16 weeks (3-4 months @36hrs/wk), or about 576 recommended hours devoted to this. Some have estimated the average candidate devotes about 700-750hrs to lab study/training, so considering a bunch of protocol analysis we're talking about 1000hrs (6 months @ 40hrs/wk) for me if we're being modest. That's how I arrived at a 6-month figure (I'm doing as Eman advised and "treating it as a business.")
I think I read somewhere else before where you mentioned you'd tried out INE in the past(?) I'm honestly not yet 100% sold on their self-study CCIE written training material, but their self-study CCIE lab material looks rather meaty and most important for me, structured. But as I've yet to speak with an actual training adviser, It's still very much in the planning and speculative stage at this point.
I was readlly going to give myself maybe 9 months, but I was hoping to include "job search" (Atlanta area) into that time frame. Might you have any feedback with regard to some good, structured CCIE Written training I might find? That would be great as part of the plan (a tip I picked up) was to sit for the written when I'm about 80% through studying for the lab (as I imagine there's a lot of overlap or complimentary training? not sure), so that would be most helpful. Thanks for sharing your story and I look forward to our shared successes
Posted by layer4down
11th Jan 2011
