My CCIE Journey

Few good news happen in the last one week :)

I have (officially) schedule for my lab exam and paid for it. Only needs confirmation from Cisco that they have received my payment. Then, book hotel and transport to go there.

The other good news is: my wife supports my decision to preare to pursue my future career path in Silicon Valley!!! Ohh, it keeps me loving her more and more *blush* :)

All good plans are suddenyl formed and my wife and I now have various choices to go.

CCIe is the key this time, un-negotiable and no compromise. I must pass this test and I will!

Today I have completed lab 12. even though the difficutlies is rated at 7 out of 10, I must admit that this is tough.

I found this tough after the nose dive of my study performance. This is not an excuse but as a wake up alarm for me.

My scheduled weekly hours is 36 hours per week for lab tasks only. I could only managed to meet 20.5 hours per week at the top. This is not right. What had happened?

Seems like I need to reorganize my time again. The only foreseeable time allocation could only be start by 26 September. But that means within 1 month away from my exam.

Several alternatives available:

• Meet my study time at 36 hours per week religiously (and stick with it!)
• In addition to the above item, put more time of study for another extra 1-2 hours per day (including weekends)
• Take a 'break' from my work during daytime and use it for study. Reading books, searching for information, etc.

Seems like this is the time that I need to activate my body's real performance: mind control :)

It has been proven in the past that I could be 'superman' (according to my colleagues). At the moment, I am still looked as 'superman', but in the relaxing Australian way.

I am not saying that Australian are too laid back (even though the environment supports it), but I must be able to have more time management from this opportunity window. Australian value live more than ever as human being, not as geek or nerd.

There you go, I said it. I am actually a nerd/ geek in the making :D

However, I prefer to be known as socialite geek/nerd. Impossible? We'll see then

Finally, the first non-study challenge happen today (yesterday???)

I started my lab session as usual, and for no apparent reason: I don't feel like doing it!

What had happened? No idea!

I hate to put delay in my study as the clock is ticking. I have 6 more weeks to go and there is no way I could have any delay.

Well, I could only plan anyway. All I could do is try my best to stick on track with my study.

After giving enough rest (sleep), an hour ago, the spirit of learning returns *phew*

Now I really felt why not many people manage to succeed their lab preparation. I can't say I managed to do it, because I have yet to do it later for the first time.

As the time goes, I also need to constantly update my game plan.

Here are the facts: I keep missing the valuable lab time due to various reasons, mainly physical and mind tiredness.

I could overcome tired mind, but without proper physical fitness, there is no way my mind could work straight.

Thus, the new game plan will be as follow:

• the coming two weeks
• Priority will be given to my client's tasks. This might involve several after hours attention. I just need to meet my standards in providing quality work and this will satisfies me a lot.
• Second priority is to this study (CCIE R&S lab exam preparation)
• Other than family matters, only study tasks allowed.

• the quick break over a weekend
• Enjoy my sweet holiday time :)

• the exciting 5 weeks of endurance, tests and challenges
• I must meet the result in 'the coming two weeks' before proceeding with the next items
• Weekdays Morning: work
• Weekdays Afternoon: work
• Weekdays Evening, night and dawn: lab time
• Weekend Morning: wake up early and hit the lab
• Weekend late morning till early afternoon: family time (short version)
• Weekend rest of afternoon, evening and night: hit the lab

(Not forgetting the routines, though: shower, meal and other things. I must keep it as efficient as possible this time)

Yep, my score was only 56!!!

This lab is one of the highest difficulties rating: 9. Is this a good excuse for me? I don't think so :) I'd better get ready with some good revices plan.

Here is what had happened in the last two weeks:

• Assisting client with their transition requests -> bunch of them and yet I believe I could finish it on time
• Attending few incident reports that managed to squeeze through up to my desk -> many of my team mate had informed me that once an incident report arrived at my desk, that means something worst had happened. It is not bad at all anyway, I was actualy surprised that several incidents are actually pretty simple to solve. It only takes attention to details and reading between (configuration) lines

The next couple of weeks will be full of schedule:

• Completing transitions
• Assisting the new team mate after transition
• A bunch (a lot!) of configuration changes both assisting other mate and hands-on

There is also one major tasks that I need to do. Lack of documentation is my biggest challenge, but I believe it could also be solved as like other tasks arrived on my desk :)

One last thing: dynamips RC5 has been released! A lot of improvements on the performance and the console also looks more user friendly.

Referring to my previous blog, I managed to tweak around several settings to tame the high CPU utilization. Thanks to Chris for creating such a beautiful simulator. Wish I could finish this lab exam as soon as possible (with pass result of course!), and I could lend my brain for this amazing simulator.

Today I have a very constructive discussion with my mentor in CCIE.

The discussion was not about CCIE at all! It was all about the exciting mind exchange.

Anyway, let's get back to topic shall we?

The reason I put the title is not because I am getting more addictive to CCIE lab preparation. I am alrady addicted to do this CCIE lab preparation.

What I meant by 'sucked': I started to get excited in doing software tests

At first I know about Cisco 7200 simluator only as another 'side dish' while I am preparing my budget to buy Cisco gears for practice. Then it struck my mind "preparing CCIE lab is the way I could interact with the IOS, not the gears (physically) and nothing else". So, I decided on focussing just how to use IOS in a better way to practice with my CCIE lab workbook.

Finally I give a quick taste on the 7200 sim. Guess what??? I liked it!

Then, the version keep building and improved. The recent RC2 and RC5 has a major improvements that rendered me speechless.

I read the source code and ony have 1 thought "damn! this is brilliant!!!"

So, Chris, if you are reading this blog. I could only promise you one thing: I will contribute in the source code after I pass my CCIE.

For the time being, I could only be a tester for various tasks that involved my lab activities.

Anyway, after doing some fine tuning with several --idle-pc, I managed to run all 12 routers (9 routers, 1 FR switch and 2 routers-turned-into-switch) with only constant 25% utilization (50% if I total up both processors)

I have tweaked the memory usage in the past as well. Thus running IOS that needs 256MB RAM only need 128 - 160MB of router RAM. Thus, with all 12 routers running, with 2.5GB memory is more than enough.

What is the significance between processor utilization, memory usage and this lab preparation?

I planned to have a notebook for work in my client(s). I could use it for work in client(s) and also practice my lab during travel to/from client(s). Thus, I have even more time for this practice: anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

Hopefully things getting smooth as I expected, and I will be back to this log again for update.

Not many peopl believe that I run my study in 'hom lab' using Cisco 7200 simulator.

Follow this link to see the screen shots.

Special thanks to Christophe Fillot for spending extra time in developing such a good Cisco 7200 simulator

Enjoy!