Written Study Materials

Well I have been threatening to type up a post on what I used to prepare for my written for a while so here goes.

I consider my written study to have begun when I started working on my CCNP at the beginning of 2007. I think the CCNP course is a great building block for moving onto the CCIE and I would recommend following the certification pyramid to anyone who was new to the industry. I would also caution you not to rush through the exams no matter how tempting it may be to achieve your CCNP. Anyhow I digress, the material in the BSCI and BCMSN courses is especially relevant to the CCIE written and the CCIE lab in my opinion.

So the books I used for it where
Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks (BSCI): Authorized Self-study Guide (CCNP Self-study) This is my opinion is a great book and a really enjoyable read. I see a lot of people using the Certification Guide instead of this book because the Cert Guide is much thinner and so they will finish quicker :-) However if you are new to the topics I would recommend this book rather than the Certification Guide. I read this book cover to cover and tried out all the labs inside as well.

Building Cisco Multilayer Switched Networks (BCMSN) (Authorized Self-study Guide) I found this book really hard going it was not easy to read and did not seem to flow to me. This book was a real struggle to get through and it took me ages to finish. I was not keen on this book at the time but as time has passed my feelings towards it have mellowed. It has some really good information in it that applies to real life as well as certification exams. Also it is listed in the additional reading sections of the CCIE Written Certification Guide. I read the book cover to cover but did not manage to try out all the labs due to equipment restraints.

CCNP BCMSN Official Exam Certification Guide (CCNP Self-Study) I read this book cover to cover as well to try and make sense of some of the stuff in the Self -Study guide. This book was a lot easier to follow, however for the BCMSN exam it is a bit light in certain areas.

I also read the other CCNP Certification Guides and although they had some useful stuff for the CCIE Written like QoS and a few security topics the information presented in them can easily be found in other places. For their relevant CCNP exams they are still must read books. For the BSCI and BCMSN I also used the self study products from thebryantadvantage not the Trainsignal stuff just the study packages. I found the package for BSCI to be really good and it helped me a lot with BSCI. The package for BCMSN was not as good in my opinion but then the exam is also a bit random so I am sure it is pretty hard to come up with a training package for it.

I got a bit of a taste for QoS from the ONT exam and wanted to know more so I moved on to reading the Cisco QOS: Exam Certification Guide cover to cover. There are appendixes on the CD for people moving on to the CCIE that detail Frame Relay traffic shaping amongst other things. I absolutely loved this book and in my opinion this is required reading for the CCIE. The QoS exam was also very enjoyable by the way, it was second only to my recent CCNA exam in terms of being a good exam not full of stupid questions.

Then I decided to get a vendor neutral view on things and I read Interconnections: Bridges and Routers. I read the whole thing apart from one chapter, you can look on the Internetwork Expert website and find which chapter(s) they recommend you can skip. I did find this book really hard going in parts but I do feel that I gained a lot of of the book. I understand a lot more of the history of the protocols and have a much better grasp on how they really function. I even found out about the differences in the different bridging technologies which I did not know about before.

Next I moved on to TCP/IP Illustrated: Protocols v. 1 but I did not get too many chapters into it before I abandoned it for Internetworking with TCP/IP: v. 1. Internetworking is another great book in my opinion, and it reinforced a lot of things I already knew with a lot more understanding of how things work. I found this book a really easy read and loved every page.

Then it was on to Network Warrior which is a great little book. I read the whole thing except for some chapters on telephony that I plan to revisit soon. Unless you are a seriously experienced consultant then I would recommend this is a great book to pick up for everyone else. This is a real on the job book and it is a great read.

You would think I would be all booked out by now however the next one in the list was Routing TCP/IP Volume 1 Second Edition. This is on most people's must read list for the CCIE and I understand why. It was a great read and I read the whole thing except for the IS-IS chapter. I would say this is a must read book.

Internet Routing Architectures Second Edition was next on the bedtime stories list. The book is divided into two sections with the theory stuff covered in the first half and the configuration in the last half. I think I made a mistake in reading it straight through instead of reading the theory and then reading the corresponding configuration section. Still a really good book on BGP which helped me a lot.

Finally it was on to CCIE Routing and Switching Exam Certification Guide which I loved. I read everything except the two chapters on QoS. This book is an obvious must for the written exam and is great for reinforcing all the knowledge that you will have picked up from the other books.
So that was my reading list there were other books in there that deserve honorable mentions such as Routing TCP/IP Volume 2, Troubleshoot IP Routing Protocols, the two CCIE Practical Study Books and various other vendor neutral and Cisco Press books. I read a couple of RFC's as well (ouch) and various documents on the Cisco website.

As well as books I viewed a lot of CBT's (I would highly recommend CBT Nuggets for Professional Level Material, I did not have all of them for the CCNP as some were released after I had done the exams but the stuff I did have was excellent) and completed the whole of the first week of Internetork Expert's excellent Advanced Technologies class. I also completed all their Volume 1 labs on the various routing protocols.

For final exam prep on all my previous IT Exams I used Self Test Software which I have always found to be excellent. They are basically Transcender exams with a few less questions and for less money. I would highly recommended Self Test however they did not have a product for the CCIE.

So I turned to NetMasterClass and their excellent CCIE Written Practice Exam. I must say that this is an excellent product and is a must have for anyone wishing to pass the CCIE Written Exam. I would not have passed the written if it was not for this product.

So that is it all the products that I pretty much used to prepare for the written (Apologies if this looks like a marketing post I assure you I used the lot and bought them all out of my own money). Of two new products (IPExpert CoD and CCIE Command Memorizer) I have used since passing the written, I would say the CCIE Command Memorizer would be a great help to preparing for the written.

Official Written Pass!!! Well I think so at least

Well it looks like I have been given the all clear and have passed the CCIE Written exam. Well I think so at least, as I have not really had any confirmation from anyone.

This morning I logged into the Peason Vue website they instruct you to log in to on your score report and it showed my results and showed pass, where as the night before it had said no results were available. It did not say "valid" which was what I was expecting it to say from reading the score report. However re-reading the report it does not specify the actual term used it just says that you exam results will be displayed. Anyhow a few hours later I recieved an email from Pearson Vue to thank me for testing with them, but no confirmation email that I had passed my exam like I am used to. So I was still a bit unsure if it was official. Then I logged into Cisco's website to see if I could schedule a lab and it said it could not find my details. Hmm so still not official and my mind was beginning to play tricks on me when would the confirmation come.

No confirmation email (if they even send one, I think they should by the way) ever came but I logged in to Cisco and now I can schedule my lab exam. I guess that is all the confirmation I need.

Hmm now when to book it for? This 90 day schedule thing while a good thing in terms of freeing up exam seats certainly makes you think before you commit :-). I notice that there are quite a few lab days open all the way until the end of the year in the test centre I will be using. So I guess it is working in freeing up slots. For me anything before next year will be throwing my money away. I was hoping to have my first shot at the lab I became really old :-) early next year, but I think I will have to wait. Christmas is nearly always a write-off and with a second child due early next year study time could be in short supply at the beginning of next year. So at the moment I am leaning towards a date at the end of April. I need firm dates to work to, but I will have to have a bit of a think over the next few days as well as a chat with the misses.

The Waiting Game

I went to my local test centre and took my written exam today and I have a preliminary pass (yippee). However it is not an official pass as Cisco have implemented these new security measures that I mentioned in an earlier post. So when you are given your score sheet there are some instructions on it that tell you to logon to a Pearson Vue site, so that you can check your results. It can take up to 72 hours after you have taken the exam for your result to be confirmed. So it looks like I will be waiting for a while. I will post my experiences of the exam when I am confirmed as having passed. Quickly I will say that I thought it was a good test the questions were not as out there as some I encountered on the CCNP track and the English was okay. I only complained about the wording on one question and used the comment button to send my feedback on it to Cisco.

On the subject of exam security though I have always been in favour of the new measures Cisco is introducing but today I had pause to think. When I was talking to the examiners after the exam about the new security features Cisco has implemented. I realised that I had not had my photo taken and added to my score report. I asked them why this had not been done and they explained that it was only a requirement for test centres to take photos by the end of October.

However to implement the photo requirement they explained they would need to have a seperate room, buy an expensive camera and probably hire an extra member of staff to process the signing in of candidates. So since they were not getting any financial support from Pearson or Cisco then they had decided this was an expense they could not afford and they would be shutting down as a test centre. Which is very bad news for me as it means it would be very expensive to go do any certification exam as the nearest test centre would be over 26 miles away (one direction not far for you Yanks I know but the traffic here is murder and the price for fuel well do not get me started on that). I remember when my city used to have five or six test centres ah the good old days when I was but a wee lad :-) Over the last couple of years as I did my 2003 MCSE, renewed my CCNA and then did my CCNP I have seen them all close down. Now it looks like the final one which is already quite a trek for me to get to is closing down as well.

From most of the exam centre staff I have spoken to I understand that they do not make a great deal of money from being a test centre. Apparently most of the money goes either to Pearson or Cisco (Prometric and Microsoft or so on) . I am not sure of how exactly makes the money if someone can enlighten me that would be great. I mean someone must be making some money out of this stuff because the exams are not cheap. So it would be good if the big boys Cisco or Pearson (whoever makes the money from these exams) had a program for helping the small test centres fund the equipment they require to stay an exam centre. That way they could retain local test centres and allow more people access to their exams as well as allowing the additional benefit of a certain Ferret to take more exams :-)

Written Moved

The last few weeks have been pretty brutal with work and family commitments. I did a change last night that went on for 7 hours and have had 3 hours sleep so far. This has ment I have slipped a bit in my CCIE written preparation and so have moved the exam till the middle of September. I should have a couple of weeks coming up where I can put in a lot more study time and get myself to a level that I feel will enable me to pass the written.

Written Booked!!! Well for now at least

Well I have just parted with a huge £160 of my hard earned cash and booked the CCIE R&S Written exam for the end of the month. I think I am being a tad bit unrealistic as I still have a lot of reading and practice exams to do and several busy weekends coming up. Anyhow I need a bit of a deadline even an unrealistic one just to get me moving in the right direction. I will probably move the exam but hopefully not by to much as I really need to get this one out of the way and focus my efforts on the main event.