Ordered some workbooks!

It's been some time since my last update - about two months!  The Cisco related focus has slowed down hopefully temporarily.  During this time I have been working on beefing my Alcatel-Lucent Service Routing Certification qualification. After completing 4 exams over the last 5 weeks I have the pre-requisites to reach the Network Routing Specialist II certification (just need to sit and pass the lab exam in Melbourne) and need to pass another two exams to be able to reach the Triple Play Routing Professional...  Hopefully I will be able to sit the NRS-2 lab some time this year.

The last few months have been focused on service provider capabilities - in particular I have been having a lot of fun with FreeRADIUS to perform enhanced subscriber management with the service router platform supporting the termination of DHCP and PPPoE residential subscribers and fun with IPv6 and Multicast.  I really like the way the 7750 platform handles these operations compared to how I remember my early experiences with the Cisco 6400 BRAS nearly 10 years ago, or using the Juniper ERX platform 5 years back.  I suppose the advantage of being a little later to the game is that you can learn what went well, what didn't really make sense and to have it fit into a good, coherent view has certainly been taken and extended into newer generation ethernet access technologies while still supporting "legacy" ATM and L2TP services.

Anyway, the main thrust of this blog is my CCIE pursuit, so on with that:

As the post title mentions, couple of days ago I made another investment into achieving CCIE status.  I paid for a workbook and video on demand package from the guys at IP Expert.  At the end of the day, whether I pass the lab or not is going to be down to me alone, however study materials are definitely contributors to getting there.  While evaluating which vendor I thought would work best with my ideas on study, I spent more than a few months on the Online Study List mailing list that is run by IPX looking at the kind of questions people had (related to technology/concepts, non-CCIE lab specific questions and material related clarification/questions), sometimes even answering a few myself and noticing the frequency and type of responses the IPX guys gave as well as the active community on the mailing list.  In the end, it was this that gave me a feeling that there is a good support there and other students in general appear to enjoy the materials.  I visited the INE forums a number of times but honestly I didn't go often enough to form a particular view for or against their community, I know that they have some great trainers and from what I hear their material is very good.  I guess if I didn't like what I saw on the OSL I would have investigated their forums more.

The other thing was that was in my mind is the fact that there are very few bootcamps held in Australia - the vendors that appear to get the biggest kudos for their bootcamps are Narbik's, IP Expert (they mention Sydney for bootcamps but never appear to have courses outline) and Internet Expert (highly regarded but don't appear to have courses in Australia).  Of the three, really only Narbik appears to hold bootcamps here and the timing doesn't quite seem convenient to my work life.  The other thing is the expense related to bootcamps, from what I understand Narbik's is very competitively priced and has a teaching style that seems to give nearly a religious mania to his former students, there is the flights/travel/meal expenses that need to be observed.  At present I have elected to use a video based course rather than a bootcamp, being able to replay sections on areas that I need more assistance on and to be able to run at my own pace as well as being significantly less expense seems to be an advantage.  Both IPX and INE have material in this area.

In the end, I put my money down on an IPexpert Bundle (their workbooks Volume 1 and 3 and the Lab prepation videos) and I also have ordered INE's CCIE R&S Audio Bootcamp.

Hopefully the material will arrive in the not too distant future, and I will see how things go.  By the way, at this point in time I'm not endorsing any vendor until I have the material and see what kind of impact it has on my study.  The reality is that I may need to supplement things further and may pick either or another vendor for the supplementary materials even if I'm pleased with the quality/quantity just to get a different way of presenting the same ideas/concepts.