My Journey towards CCIE#55605 -(2/2)

Remembe when I mentioned that I found some friends in the previous part. Yes, I found CCIE friends (Ammar & Ahmad) who already attempted three times. Ammar on the third time was PASS+PASS+PASS = Fail. Having mates in a group whom already took the exam is a plus point big time. Both work really hard with me and helped me so much. 3 attempts for AMMAR and 3 attempts for Ahmad and attempt of mine make them 7 attempts which was the main reason of our success this time.  

Before explaining how we prepared and what time did we spent before our final attempt, I would like to mention one other guy who tough me how to trouble shoot real fast. He is my manager Wasim Nashbat. Wasim has no big certification, but differently is one the deep technical guys I have ever known in cisco. One worth mentioning thing he told is that 80% of issue, you can find it just by showing routing table. So when you have loop, just check the routing table. When you have reachability issue, check the routes int the routing table and also the status of the route. If you are not getting the traffic load balanced, again confirm the routes in the routing table and see how are they residing in the routing table. Hosestly saying, understanding the routing table was the changing point in my approach in troubleshooting. From that time, the first thing I used to do is #show ip route | in xxxxx 😊 . For which made my life easier during troubleshooting.

Now again to our preparation. We ( me, Ammar and Ahamad) literally used to study minimum three hours daily and around 8 hours in the weekends. Friday was our gathering day, we used to gather in Ahmadis house usual or mines house as well and site for long long times. We used to create topologies for each other and configured them accordingly. After topology was successfully configured, the same topology was then altered with respect to 10 tickets as per the exam. We knew that the hardest part in the exam was troubleshooting part, and was composed of 10 tickets with total duration of 2 hours. We also had the same approach as we used to prepare 10 tickets comprised of different technologies like 2 tickets for layer 2, 2 for ospf, 2 for eigrp, 2 for bgp and 2 for mpls.

Now there was no hard and fast rule while preparing tickets. Meaning that we never tell each of us what were the rules while preparing tickets. All 10 of the tickets could be bgp, or5 bgp and 5 ospf or all of them igp. There was no standard for variation just to make ourselves prepared for the worst cases. Since we already knew exam approach ( specially Ammar & Ahmad beign attepted three times ) it was now easier for us to make configuration topologies real close to exams .

I then booked my exam at the end of January 2017, Ammar and Ahamad couldn’t find seats in this month so they had to go the very next mon for the exam.

To sum up, Getting CCIE unique # can be night mare when you are alone. You need to find CCIE preparation friends and study together in one group. This will ease and at the same time save a lot of your time.

At the end, with the deep core of my heart; I would like to thank Ammar,Ahmad, Wasim, my family and who ever supported me in achieving my CCIE #.  

My Journey Towards CCIE#55605-(1/2)

We shall be sharing network related topics based on real experience. Below is text from my experience when preparing for CCIE. i hope this will inspire network engineers to pursue CCIE. 

CCIE might not be big deal to achieve and at the same time it can be a big deal as well. Becoming CCIE equivalent expert is the hardest thing in my point of view.

I slowly started my study for CCIE in the beginning of 2015 by Watching INE videos. It took me around 6 month to only watch almost all the videos and making notes of the things that he found worth pointing in my Register (I still love paper works 😊 I believe they are more helpful in terms of learning than using technologies). It was tough time since I had to come from my work; have around 1~2 hours of sleep and start watching videos for 2~3 hours daily except the weekend 😝. It is very hard to watch all INE track with routine job and sometimes re-watch the same track if you think things were not clear.

Almost the next six month took me to practically perform the actual INE labs. In the begging of 2016, I had a target to achieve my CCIE # within 2016. I have had read enough books already and was planning to take the written exam real soon, which I did. People advised me to join any local boot camp so that you know the latest updates as I was already one year old now 😊. Also, I might find CCIE friend which I did at the end.  I continued with that boot camp for like 3~4 month and apparently, I found some friends which I will discuss later. Along with my routing job, I could hardly get 2~3 hours max every day for practice and around 6~8 hours in the weekends.

In September, it was the time I felt I was ready to take exam. In the mid of September (I don’t really remember the exact date, also I am lazy to login to 😉cisco and check the date 😊) I had my first attempt and unfortunately I got failed. I took 50% in the troubleshoot part, passed my Diagnosis part while configuration was the most interesting part. I knew that I am fail, but I wanted to proceed with the configuration and consider it as an experience. I had around 5 hours in the configuration part. I spent around half hour reading the questions, and then started the configuration part. There were section for security, services and some other section that I was not interested since I know I am already failed. I just wanted to make sure topology is up and reachability is everywhere. It took me more than 4 hours to ping test one of the results mentioned in the question and that was one of the happiest moment I have ever felt. Unfortunately, I couldn’t ping the internet as the session went off. I think I didn’t do the NATing section due to which the internet was not pinging (but I am not sure)

With the failure, I was not sad at all. To be honest, I was so happy as I attempted the exam and now I no more had the pressure and fear of CCIE. I took my second attempt in January 2017, and by the grace of Almighty ALLAH and I was able to pass.

How I managed to pass on the second attempt is worth reading which will be explained in the second part :p ( so stay tuned ) …