IEWB Vol II Ver. 4.1 Lab8 & 9 -or- June Update…

I’ve been hitting the CLI almost every night, so blogging has been taking a back seat. I have been managing to keep track of my total hours on the routers, though. See the CCIE Prep Hours section.

I have completed IEWB Vol2 Lab8 and am working on Lab9. The labs are both at level 8 and seem to be getting a bit easier.

I came up with a plan for the month of June that I have been following pretty well. This plan has been keeping me from going outright nuts (and I would with the stress). As follows:

• Weekday evenings, 4-5 hrs a night – IEWB Vol2 labs (level 7 & 8 working slower through, verifying everying, checking answers, working on details)
• Saturdays, 4 hrs – complete IEWB Vol3 lab of choice to build speed
• Saturdays, 4-6 more hrs – bone up on topics that were twisted to me during the week using IEWB Vol1 labs
• Sundays, 2-4 hrs – review finished IEWB Vol 2 and 3 labs, see mistakes that were made are research answers

I will do this schedule until July 4th and at that time I will see where I stand and what needs to be addressed. As part of this plan, I have the following Mock Labs scheduled as well:

• May 31st – Mock Lab #2 L7 – score: 32%
• June 28th – Mock Lab #3 L7
• July 12th – Mock Lab #5 L8
• July 19th – Mock Lab #6 L8

I am not too down about the first Mock Lab results. I figured that I got 30-40% after looking through the solutions guide for it. Some were just dumb mistakes like using 11:59 for 11:59PM instead of 23:59, for example. I also was unsure about multicast and and a few BGP items. QoS was a bit challenging as well.

My main topics I need to work on are QoS calculations, BGP traffic engineering, multicast troubleshooting (reading that blasted mroute table), and believe it or not EIGRP variance. That varience stuff kicked my whitey butt this past week (my butt don’t get no sun sittin’ in a office chair all the time).

I am using the next Mock lab on June 28th as the next step. I am just looking to that one and concentrating on it, trying to not see further than that for the time being. I am trying to take this one step at a time. Studying every day has become habit and I don’t know what to do with myself if I am not touching the routers every day. It’s almost like the droning sound of the equipment is a comfort.

I am so grateful for my wife for hanging in there through this process. She needs to be commended and given the WOTY (Wife of the Year) award. It would be more like for 4-5 years running! She has buffered the family from me when I have needed to hit the books or have quiet to concentrate. She wouldn’t let me become a cop or go in the military, but I don’t think she thought going into IT would be like this!

The wife and kids will be in Denver visiting Grandma from July 2nd to July 22nd and I will be home jammin’ on the routers all that time (I am taking July 2nd through July 28th off to concentrate on studying). This will help a lot, although the dog and I may get sick of each other.