CCIE Shorts 16/11/08

Work and my personal life have conspired to get on top of me the last few weeks and stop my blogging and studying. Anyhow I am still alive just and making a little bit of progress when ever I have some free time. Hopefully with the Christmas change freeze on the way work should be less of an issue in a few weeks. Anyhow to get my used to blogging again I thought I would post on some CCIE shorts that I wanted to get up but have not had the chance.

Firstly the CCIE Command Memorizer has been up dated. As well as the usual fixes the major new functionality is that you can finish your command with the Enter (Return) key rather than the Tab key. Apparently there was a lot of requests for this functionality which is why another update was rushed out so soon after the previous one. I never had any problems using the Tab key in fact I got used to it fairly quickly but I will let you know how I get on with the new version. I must admit I have not had much time to use the Command Memorizer as work has been very hectic and my normal routine was to spend 30 minutes a day at lunchtime using it. At the moment thought 30 minutes at lunch seems a distant memory so I have not had a chance to use it for at least 2 weeks. There has also been a subscription version of the Command Memorizer released, which Cisco Network Engineer has the details of.

I also noticed that IPExpert are having a Christmas sale and the BLS is back down to $999. The most exciting part of the sale for me though is that the rack rental sessions have been reduced in price. I still wish they would sort out some rack rental times that worked a bit better for Europe but at the price they are at the moment they are well worth investigating. Anyhow click here to check out the sale.

I have not had a chance to check out the latest Internetwork Expert news but hopefully I will get a chance in the next few days. I have been trying to justify the $1800 upgrade to the end-to-end program but with the value of the pound at the moment the chances of me being able to justify it diminish by the day.

Hopefully I will have a chance to do a study update in the next few days and get some good technical posts going but do not hold your breath at the moment :-)

CCIE Shorts 27/10/08

I was supposed to do this post on the weekend but some how I lost it in Blogger somewhere. Thanks to cciepursuit I learnt more about Cisco's CCIE 360 training program. The main thing is it looks like the 360 program will be utilizing the NetMasterClass materials. This was a bit of a relief to me as I was worried that there would Cisco would be producing training materials that would virtually ensure that if you used their materials you would pass the exam. This fear has thankfully proved unfounded, but my belief that Cisco was in this for the money rather than for than their claimed higher calling of cleaning up the CCIE training market seems to have been correct. It looks like they are putting a 100% mark up on the NetMasterClass products according to ccieguru. Anyhow if you want to read the full scoop on the CCIE 360 program head over to cciepursuit who has a very informative post on the whole thing. I swear the man missed his true calling in life he should have been an investigative journalist :-)

In other news cciepursuit (who else) has pointed out that the Internetwork Expert Scholarship program is back on. So if you can think of a brilliant essay on why you want to be a CCIE send it to me so I can apply :-) No seriously this is a great opportunity so head over to the Internetwork Expert site to apply.

Finally the other news I forgot to post about is that David Bomball released a new version of the CCIE Command Memorizer about a week ago. It might have been two weeks ago but unfortunately his email got caught in my spam folder and I did not check it for a few days. Anyhow the new version as well as some fixes includes new sections on DHCP and Miscellaneous Commands. I have upgraded to the new version but have not had much of a chance to use it yet due to work being hectic, boy I am looking forward to the Christmas change freeze :-) Anyhow once I have played with it for a bit I will share my experiences with you.

CCIE Shorts: Congratulations Matt Hill

The "I want to be a CCIE" blogging community seems to get smaller every day as more and more bloggers move into the illustrious "I am a CCIE" category. Anyhow Matt Hill is the latest to join their ranks so head over to his blog to congratulate him and read what must be the best post on someones lab experience I have ever read :-)

CCIE Shorts 14/10/08

Okay first of all a belated congratulations to Jo Knight of CCIE Lab Preparation who managed to pass his CCIE on the 7th of October. Nice one well done Jo I have been meaning to write a post to congratulate you but work got in the way of blogging time. Anyhow if you move at the speed of a sloth like me then head over to his blog to congratulate him, or if you are yawning that is old news like most of you probably will be then make sure you check out his great posts on the lab. He even has a post on what he is planning to learn next which includes Turkish. Turkish or some other foreign language is what my brain seems to think half the IOS commands are written in :-). Anyhow nice one well done Jo!!

Next thing of interest that seems to be going on in CCIE land is the fact that Cisco is introducing it's own CCIE training program. Thanks to CCIE pursuit for pointing this out to me, head over to his blog to check out the full story. Now this is big news in my opinion and so is the fact that Cisco wants 3 million certified engineers by 2012 up from 1 million now.

Both the Cisco CCIE training program and the 3 million certified engineers are something I disagree with. According to the various articles Cisco is designing the program to compete head on with 3rd party bootcamps that are not up to par. So I wonder which 3rd party bootcamps are not up to par? Most of vendors that people seem to use in passing their CCIE's seem to have been up to scratch, as how have some many people passed their CCIE's up until this point?

Companies like Cisco and Microsoft survive and prosper because they have millions of smaller companies supporting their products and providing innovative products/solutions that address the short comings in their own products. Now when the demands for growth mean the Cisco and Microsoft's of this world start eating their own children so to speak then I get a bit upset. Innovation and product improvements do not generally come from large companies they come from small companies that spot a niche in the market. So surely these smaller companies should be rewarded by the corporate giants for supporting them rather than being trampled all over. I mean how much can the CCIE training market be worth to Cisco? Surely not that much where as to companies like IPExpert and Internetwork Expert it is their livelyhood. Also as soon as the corporate giant has established a monopoly in an area then they tend to innovate less which is bad for us consumers.

The other worry I have with Cisco entering the CCIE training market is will they develop a course that spoonfeds candidates? Previously Cisco guarded the intergrity of the CCIE and they did not actually produce any training material for it (oaky a few Ciscopress books aside). However now they have a program to sell they will obviously want to sell more of their training courses than the competition. So one of the best ways to do this is to have a higher pass rate than the competition and if you write the exam and the training material does this not mean that you might be tempted to load your training material with all the information to pass the CCIE? So could the commercial pressure of Cisco wanting to sell training programs lead to their program becoming a complete this course and you will be guarenteed of passing your CCIE type of program?

Would Cisco devalue the CCIE in this way? Do they really care about the CCIE or are they just intrested in getting as many engineers out there as possible who have knowledge of their products and thus act as marketers for their products? I mean why target a specfic number of engineers you want to produce? Instead of setting a target of 3 million engineers why do they not instead insist on improving the quality of the engineers they certify? I do not know what everyone else's experiences are but whenever a company I have worked for has wanted to recruit a new engineer we have never starved for lack of candidates. We have however had severe droughts of quality candidates. Even people who work at Cisco have admitted to me their problem is not the lack of candidates it is the lack of quality people. So what does everyone else think is this a good move by Cisco? Is there a shortage of engineers or is it the quality of the engineers that is in short supply?

Finally as for the demise of the USA that Network World seems to go on about in my opinion that is still a long way off. There is a inovative streak and a remarkable capcaity to reinvent itself in the eagle that the dragon and the tiger with their billion strong populations still have not achieved. On day they will get there but I do not think the US will be brushed aside just yet. Besides the US is still growing and it could hit half a billion people fairly soon, but I digress mental note to self this is a CCIE blog not a currnet affairs blog :-)

CCIE Shorts 05/10/08

First the bad news as you have probably already heard cciepursuit did not pass his lab on his first attempt. I was convinced he would pass and after following his blog religiously for over a year, he was the blogger I most wanted to pass. Anyhow he did not make it first time although I am convinced he will make it in January. It does show that this CCIE thing is no walk in the park and no matter how well prepared you are you could end up with a lab that hits all your weak points or as in cciepursuits case hits you with question interpretation issues. I have a hard enough time interpreting some of Cisco's normal exam questions so I dread to think what the CCIE will be like. Anyhow head over to cciepursuits blog to give him some encouragement for his next attempt.

On a happier note South African Networker passed his written. I am envious at the amount of time he has to study as he only works part time, (with the credit crunch a few more of us might find ourselves in that position soon, although I am not keen on unpaid study time :-) ) so he has managed to put in some fearsome hours. Anyhow head over to his blog by clicking here to congratulate him.

The other thing to mention is there should be an update of the CCIE Command Memorizer coming later this week that I am looking forward to. I will let you know some more on what has changed later in the week.

Finally Internetwork Expert have released a partial release of the new Version 5 IP Services section so I look forward to trying it out. By the way what does everyone else do with their electronic access workbooks do they print them out themselves or do they order the printed version? I need hard copies of a couple of my workbooks and I am not sure which is the best approach at the moment, so I thought I would find out what everyone else does.

CCIE Shorts 22/09/08

So I did manage to get my mothers ADSL working and it was relatively painless which was a bit of a surprise. I thought this being Africa things would not go smoothly but apart from the tree (which I need to cut back) that keeps knocking the phone line about the ADSL setup was nice and quick. The MWeb support staff I spoke to were excellent and setup was relatively quick. From my experience it looks like they lock down the wireless on the ADSL routers with WAP out of the box in South Africa which is a good thing. So I think they are one step ahead of the UK on that score. I seem to remember reading on the BBC that most of the ISP's in the UK ship their wireless routers out with WEP if any wireless security at all.

Anyhow I have been busy doing other things around the house sorting out her phone lines and fixing lights and all that stuff so I have been a busy boy.

While I have been busy Barooq passed his CCIE lab, this is pretty old news but if you are one of the few who has not seen this yet then why not head over to CCIE Candidate to congratulate him or better yet head over to his own blog Chronicles of a CCIE journey and congratulate him there as well. He has written a post on his lab experience that I found very interesting and he has promised to write another post on his advice for preparation that I am really looking forward to.

Also on the CCIE front thanks to Cisco Network Engineer for pointing out to me that the September edition of the CCIE Flyer had been released. There are some good articles in there and it is well worth the read so click here to check it out.

As for my studies well I am watching my way through the IPExpert BLS videos at the moment. Been learning a lot of new tips and tricks and reinforcing a lot of things I knew. However they are not short videos and with the note taking and lack of concentration they are taking quite a while to get through. Also I need to enjoy some African sunshine before I leave.

CCIE Shorts 19/08/08

Just seen a post at cciepursuit about Graded Labs introducing Workbook Scaffolding. I think I may have an email somewhere in the depths of my inbox about it. However cciepursuit does a pretty good job of explaining what it is so rather than re-inventing the wheel head over to his blog by clicking here to read more. It does look an awesome feature and it certainly will make rack rentals more attractive well it will for me. I plan to book some Internetwork Expert rack time in the coming months so when I do I will let you know how I get on.

Also I see Ted Romer passed his R&S CCIE so head on over to his blog by clicking here to congratulate him.

Colin McNamara posted an excellent presentation entitled "who moved my brain" so click here to go read it.

Greg at etherealmind posted about his blogging ethics and is looking for some feedback on them so give him some feedback by clicking here. I do not have any ethics so not really a post I could make :-) in fact my none of my posts could never compare to Greg's. In my opinion he writes some of the best opinion pieces on the web so if you have never been to his site I would really check it out.

Finally Networkers is being held in Johannesburg this year and Deon of Network Ninja has already booked his place. I would love to go to Networkers but I have never worked at a company who would pay for me to go. As it is in Johannesburg I would even be prepared to pay for the plane ticket as I could tie it in with a holiday to visit family. Hmm maybe I will have to try my luck at work and see how I get on.