Circle of Love: 6/22

When studying for the CCNP exams, my mentor taught me an exercise to help retain knowledge, as well as track progress. He called this the Circle of Love. The gist of it is that everyone who's studying sets a goal for the day, and at the end of the day, everyone circles up and shares what they learned, if they met their goal, and some challenges they met along the way. I didn't use it for the CCNP, because most of the tests were fairly straightforward. In fact, the ISCW and the ONT don't really have much configuration in them, so it wasn't that stressful. I also don't like the huggy feely stuff like that, so I tried to avoid it. However, the CCIE is much harder to achieve, and I'm resurrecting the practice.

In general, these will be a lot more technical than my other posts, and while I love to not take anything seriously, this is something that is the exception to the rule. I'm only going to put them up when I hit major milestones, so you dear readers won't have to worry about one of these everyday. Of course, I am the only reader right now, so I can't really disappoint myself. If anyone else is studying for their CCIE lab, feel free to post your thoughts and challenges. It's a long road, but it's worth it.


Today:

I spent the day working on Multicast. I understand the reasons behind why people use multicast, but PIM always gives me trouble. I'm going to be doing that in my practice lab very soon, so I want to be able to at least start the configuration without having to look at the answers.

In addition, I'm still working on mastering the IGPs. I know I have RIP, but then again, it is the easiest of the IGPs. OSPF is about a 75% confidence rate and EIGRP is about the same. Network types are the big ones here. Gotta study for them more. BGP is another issue, but I'm holding at a 50% confidence rate. I just learned confederations, which was actually pretty cool. Redistribution isn't that bad, I know the ins and outs of that.

My goal is to have my CCIE number in a year and a half. I haven't taken the written exam yet, but if I can do decently on the labs, I'm not worried about the written part.

That's it for now. Until next time!