Initial Review - INE CCIE R&S Audio Boot Camp Week 1

Separate to the main topic of today but related - I just received an email saying that my material from IPExpert is now winging its way to me - something that I'm quite looking forward to receiving - I have pretty much cabled up my home lab in anticipation - just waiting on receiving a couple of copper SFPs to interconnect Cat1 Gi0/1 and Cat2 Gi0/1 and I think it should be ready to rock....

During the week I have been listening to Scott Morris going through the Internet Expert CCIE R&S Audio Bootcamp for week one.  Once you get purchase the materials, access to downloading it is very quick, there are twenty-six sections that cover layer two technologies and IPv4 routing and MPLS.  The files are in m4a form and encoded at 192kbps, which for spoken word except for the brief punctuation between sections with a few seconds of music 80s rock exerpts from bands such as Def Leppard, Queen and AC/DC amongst others is more than adequate.

The duration of each section does vary depending on the topic- from around 20 minutes up to about an hour and a half - subjects such as OSPF have 3 sections and BGP has 5 sections dedicated to them (the overall uncompressed filesize is nearly 1.5GB for the weeks material)

Anyway, the more important thing is how good is it?  Well I haven't listened to it all yet (and I'm sure I will be listening to various aspects multiple times) but I have to say that I quite enjoy Scott Morris' style of delivery- it kind of gives me the impression that he's an old friend that has come over at your place to chat about networking and knows his stuff but isn't talking down at you - he knows you're keen and wants to help you understand the technologies as well as little gotchas that can crop up.  While it appears to be fairly free flowing, there is structure and form in the presentation that builds upon previous sections.

I find the material easy to listen to but it is something that you have to focus your attention on as it is information rich - if you're multitasking, you're going to miss out on a lot of the info first time round.  Not a problem when you're riding home from work on the train with your ipod going but not so good when you're writing documents and having the lectures play in the background.  I do like the portability though in that you can take a lecture around where books/online resources are more of a hassle to drag around.  This material is specifically made as a self-paced learning material and not an audio track ripped off a video.  In some of the cases diagrams are referred to in order to explain topologies but they are usually simple to explain or reference the standard INE topology for you too look at and visual as Scott is talking.

Can this be used as a sole piece of study material? No way and its certainly not pitched that way - this is more focused on consolidating overall technologies and features into one place then you read up more on the doc CD or lab stuff out and possibly use again as a review after that.

Does this material lock you into INE? Beyond the topology diagram, its more than possible for this to be the only piece of INE material in your study materials (at present I'm heading down the path) although I'm sure it does fit within INE's overall study plan. 

This week the Week 2 material has become available on the INE site and I have already ordered and downloaded that material too, it's not as long in duration as week one and it's not recorded by Scott Morris (I think it's Anthony Sequeira by it's not specifically mentioned anywhere) the focus is on IPv6, Multicast, Security and QoS mechanisms.  Particularly the IPv6 and QoS related topics are chopped up into smaller digestible chunks than a single long and drawn out boredom festival which should be good when it comes to reviewing and being able to review key areas there.  I haven't spent much time checking this out yet, so it's probably going to get a minor review of parts later on.

In closing, am I happy with the INE Audio R&S Boot Camp Week 1 material? Yes I am - I have already picked up a couple of tricks to add to my arsenal, I find it easy to listen to and there should be some good repeatability over the course of my study.  Is it value for money? I paid for this material with my own hard earnt cash and while I haven't listened to it all so far - probably around 70% of it but I would say yes, it's amongst the least expensive training material available not including individual books (but even then you need to have a good number in your library anyway) and is of good quality and information density.

If you have already attended a bootcamp or done a video class and have been happy with what you have walked away with - then perhaps this material may be of lesser value to you, however if you are looking for an alternative view on topics I think you will get value as well.