Splashing Out Some More

Okay so I managed to get the discount code for the Internetwork Expert Dynamips Volume 1 labs the other night, and finally took the plunge and made the purchase. I intend to work my way through the Volume 1 lab which is rated a 5 this next week just to get an idea of where I am.

As I previously mentioned I was looking for something to boost my mastery of the individual technologies and so I tried to contact Micronics training 3 times via email. Narbik might write excellent workbooks but no one at Micronics seems to want to sell them to me as I do not recieve 1 reply. So I got a bit fed up and after last nights announcement decided to investigate upgrading to the Internetwork Expert end-to-end program instead. After contacting a very helpful IE sales rep I got a quote for my upgrade and although they discount my existing products the bill was still a little bit steeper than I was expecting (My maths must be worse than I thought as they do publish all their figures) especially when you are paying for the training yourself. (Hint to myself I might have to move back to South Africa and apply for the developing world discount that is if SA gets it :-) ) So now I am pushed back to thinking about Narbiks books so does anyone know of the best way to get hold of a sales rep from Micronics?

Peace at Last?

Just as I was about to do a post about how boring the CCIE vendor wars were becoming and that it was time for all the vendors to put their handbags away, it looks like peace has returned to CCIE training land. I did read a good post by Wayne Lawson on his view on the Cisco 360 program and then read Matt Brooks reply to Internetwork Expert's CCIE 2.0 announcement video. While Matt did raise some valid points about contradictions in Brain Dennis announcement, I think most people who listened to the broadcast would have realised that Brian was passionate about his company and probably not sticking to a prepared script, so there were bound to be some contradictions in his statements. While the CCIE training wars were amusing at first, it did become boring rather quickly and I think this really excellent post from Brandon Carroll sums things up. Now children get back to what you both do best namely producing top quality training for your customers and we will decide who the best training company is!

Technologies Workbook Advice

A reader of my blog (yup it surprises me to but it turns out there is quite a lot of them, must be a lot of very bored people in the world :-) ) asked me my opinion on whether if you had the IPExpert BLS it was worth getting the Internetwork Expert Volume 1 workbook. So rather than reply in the comments field I thought I would do a long winded post on the topic :-)

Before I start and I hate the fact that the world has come to this, let me add my disclaimer. What will follows is my opinion and my opinion has been formed by using both the Internetwork Expert and the IPExpert Volume 1 workbooks as well as reading about and sampling some of the other workbooks. I am happy for you to disagree with my conclusion if you are nice and polite but if you cannot do me that courtesy then well you can *&%$ off in the nicest possible way of course :-) Also I have no interest in joining the CCIE vendor wars so please do not drag me into them.

First I will go through the history of my product purchases to try and give you some insight into how I have formed my opinions. I bought the Internetwork Expert Volume 1 workbook while doing my CCNP to help give some structure to my labbing for the CCNP.

Then later in the year I bought the original IPExpert Volume 9 material because they were having a sale where they included their original CoD as well as the audio bootcamp and the printed workbooks (in my opinion unless you have access to a big printer or are happy to read off a computer screen all day the electronic workbooks are a false economy) for round about $600. Although I was not ready at the time I had just finished my CCNP and had not even looked at the CCIE written material, the dollar was nice and weak and so it seemed to good a deal to pass up. I was away on holiday when the material was delivered and then I was working quite extensively on QoS (I must not be normal because QoS is my favourite topic :-) ) when I got back, so I did not look at the material for quite a while. When I did decide to look into the material I found the going a bit tough.

IPExpert took the approach of offering 18 mini labs on the various technologies at this time and this is still the approach they take although the mini labs are up to 22 and they have been changed quite significantly. Now the IPExpert approach seems to be to throw you in at the deep end, with wording and restrictions similar to what you would expect on a full scale lab, except that these are technology focused mini labs. For me this was a bit overwhelming at first and along with the fact that I did not have a home lab to run all this stuff on I decided to go back to the Internetwork Expert volume 1 lab.

Internetwork Expert approach their Volume 1 labs (I am talking about version 4.1 here) in a different way. They give you a bit more hand holding to get you up to speed and this is what I needed. The other bonus was that you can run their Volume 1 labs (except switching) on Dynamips and they give you the Dynamips topology to do this. The downside to the Internetwork Expert stuff was that some of the labs were to simple and the explanations seemed to disappear the further you got through the various labs. In fact the explanations are not up to the standard of the other workbook vendors. However the good news is that Internetwork Expert seemed to have realised this and are working on version 5 of the Volume 1 workbook. A lot of the version 5 sections are now available in a beta form and if you purchased the version 4.1 volume 1 workbook you get immediate access to them without having to pay any more money.

My situation at the moment is that I am working on both the Internetwork Expert labs in Dynamips and using some of my Proctor labs sessions to do the IPExpert stuff. I still get stumped on a lot of the IPExpert stuff and refer to the solutions guide more than I would like. However it is teaching me the thinking involved in the CCIE lab and how to use the documentation to look things up. As for the Internetwork Expert stuff I am mainly working on the version 4.1 stuff till I can get near a printer to print out the new version 5 labs that have been released. I have also been having some problems getting the initial configurations to work in Dynamips which is slowing things down.

So now we have been around the houses a bit back to the original question. If you have the IPExpert BLS would you recommend purchasing the Internetwork Expert Volume 1 workbook?

The answer is it depends how comfortable are you doing the IPExpert Volume 1 labs and what are your timescales for completing the CCIE lab?

If you are struggling like I was with the IPExpert stuff and are in no rush to get your CCIE, then I would recommend Internetwork Expert as your second vendor. The version 5 labs are a huge improvement on the version 4.1 labs. They have detailed explanations and notes in the solutions sections which is what I have been looking for all along. When version 5 is finished and providing the standard of all the other sections matches what I have seen so far, then I am sure Internetwork Expert's Volume 1 workbooks will be right at the top of the introductory lab workbooks pile. However the problem is that they are still in development and that's why I say if you are in no rush to get your CCIE because I am not sure what the timescales for completion are.

However if you do not want to wait around and you own either IPExpert or Internetwork Expert Volume 1 workbooks then I do not recommend you buy the other vendor's products. Based on the samples I have seen and what I have read on the other blogs the best Volume 1 level workbook to teach you the technologies out there at the moment is the Advanced CCIE Routing and Switching - Technology Focused Workbook by Narbik Kocharians. It is a workbook that I am seriously considering buying even though I really cannot afford it and have shelled out on enough CCIE training material already. You only have to look at the sample pages on the Micronics website to see the level of detail Narbik goes into in his explanations (in my opinions when you are trying to master a technology explanations and show commands that show you how to verify things are the most important component of any level 1 workbook). Then there is the best recommendation of all the fact that three newly minted CCIE's (Ethan, Baroq and Matt Hill) recommend it.

Splashing Out

Okay so the other night I decided to splash out and buy the Dynamips workbooks from Internetwork Expert. In some way I feel a bit conned because I already own the proper Volume 2 workbook and even though you get a discount for this, the fact that they divide the workbook into two still means you end up paying $195 for a slightly different product. If I was not so lazy I could probably have got away without needing to get the Dynamips versions but I could not face the hassle of re-engineering the Volume 2 workbook. I still need to get a voucher code so I can get the the first part of the Dynamips workbook. I also ordered a printed copy of the Volume 3 workbook because the printing facilities in my new job are not as accommodating as those in my old job :-) My old job was great for printing we had a whole department dedicated to printing and you got these lovely productions back. Even there though they started installing print monitoring software, big brother is every where these days :-)

It was the plummeting value of the pound that really forced my hand as I was looking into getting Nabriks Advanced Technology Workbook. However no one from Micronics replied to my email and as the pound fell faster than Aussie wickets in the second test (if it was falling as fast as English wickets do then we would be in serious trouble :-) ) it would have been too expensive anyhow. Besides I probably need to stay focused on the products I have.

I did receive a comment asking me if I would recommend getting the Internetwork Volume 1 material if you already have the IPExpert BLS and I though instead of just replying in a comment I would do a blog post later on today about this.

Now if you excuse me I am going to entertain myself for a few more minutes by reading about the cat fight between IPExpert and Internetwork Expert that Ethereal Mind pointed out. He did make a comment on Twitter that it was like watching $20 hookers fighting it out on a street corner over a punter which I must object to. I as CCIE mendicant (yes I had to look it up as well) feel I am a bit classier than being fought over by $20 hookers, $50 dollar ones at least :-)

Training

Training seems to be the theme of the moment in CCIE blog land. What with Cisco launching their own 360 degree training program and bloggers like Greg at Etherealmind talking about the value of certifications versus experience. Ivan at IOS Hints and Tips also did a great post on the different ways people get knowledge. I did get to try out one of NIL's CCNA labs when Ivan was looking for beta testers and I was very impressed. If my company ever decided to purchase some training courses for me they would definitely be one of the vendors I would check out.

On the training theme IPExpert have just released their latest newsletter which if you do not subscribe to you can read by clicking here. They have finally launched their CICE blog site and there is the usual list of special offers in the newsletter. There is also a report by the Tolly Group comparing Internetwork Expert versus IPExpert. I always wonder why companies still pay for these reports as I do not know anyone who takes them seriously.

I love lines like this "While this is a head-to-head review, the Tolly Group did not contact Internetwork Expert about it's product, because information utilized came directly from the company website." Lines like that just make me laugh. Anyway to save you all some time and because I needed a good laugh (studying is not going so well these days to many changes to be managed for work) I read the report so you did not have to. To summarise the report says both companies offer great training (which I can confirm since I use them both, however I have not passed my CCIE yet so there is obviously room for improvement :-) ) but that IPExpert is more cost effective.

To me there does not seem to be a great deal of difference in price between the two vendors, however there was one comment I do agree with. Namely the information on the rack rentals. It states that IPExpert tends to be more expensive for the rack rentals (which is why you should always buy their rack rentals when they have the double rack time special offers on) but that they tend to be easier to book. Where as Internetwork Expert rack time can be bought for less money, but trying to get a rack at short notice can be a bit of a problem. My personal experience does tie up with that view and I do prefer the fact that the IPExpert sessions are longer given that you normally lose up to half an hour just logging on to the rack and getting everything setup.

The other thing I did notice on the report that was a bit strange since it was about cost effectiveness was that it did not mention Dynamips. Probably because Internetwork Expert are the only ones with a Dynamips product :-). The cost savings of using only Dynamips are huge compared to renting rack time and it seems more and more people are passing using only Dynamips or at the very least using a lot less rack time because of it.

Finally the other thing to report on the training front is that Internetwork Expert are taking registrations for their Beta Assessment Lab which is designed to asses your knowledge of key topics and technologies. Apparently it will provide you with a study plan and recommend Internetwork Expert products to suit your needs. I have registered in the hope I get accepted and that it is ready to begin testing fairly soon.

IP Expert Special Offer September

I have been meaning to blog this for a while but I received the IPExpert newsletter the other day. (If you do not subscribe get yourself over to IPExpert and subscribe and then get yourself over to Internetwork Expert and subscribe to their newsletter oh and then www.confgiureterminal.com and subscribe to their newsletter as well. Hell there are loads of good newsletters out there so if you have anymore ideas add them in the comments section.) So where was I oh yes the IPExpert special offer apparently the Blended Learning Solution (BLS) is only staying at $999 till the end of September and then it goes up a massive amount. So if you are thinking of getting it I guess now is the time. Stick it on an interest free credit card like me and only worry about paying for it when the interest free period ends, except the interest free period ends a lot sooner than you would think and then ouch so maybe that was not such a good suggestion :-). The other special offer that they still have going on is the double rack time which I also intend going for (you have to have bought a BLS I think but may be able to negotiate). I will go for 10 sessions get them doubled to 20 and then hopefully Internetwork Expert will have a special so I can pick up some of their sessions as well. Anyhow enough of the marketing speak (just to let you know by the way I do not get paid or get free products from any of these companies) and back to some studying.

Trainsignal is 6 Years Old!!

Trainsignal in case you have never heard of them are an IT training company and it is their 6th birthday. They do not produce CCIE level training materials they work in a similar space to CBT Nuggets. That is they focus on Microsoft and Cisco Associate and Professional level training. They do make some great training products and as it is their 6th birthday they are doing a massive giveaway so click here to check them out.