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Blog: 28 days to go….A day in the life of a CCIE candidate

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4:45am: Crawl out of bed. I went to bed at around 11pm last night, and couldn’t really get to sleep. My brain just wouldn’t unwind, and I kept thinking about a redistribution problem i was trying to solve. My quality of sleep has definitely gone down lately. I’ve been doing a minimum of 12 hours a day on labs, and then about an hour watching COD videos before dozing off. I think i need to take a rest day sometime soon. Maybe just watch COD videos all day, otherwise I think I will burn out.

4:50am: Grab a shower to try and wake myself up. I read and reply to a few emails. I’m doing IE Volume 2 Lab 7 today. I’ve done this one before (I’ve done all of them before). It’s rated 9. I am planning on doing 3 rated 9 labs and maybe a rated 8 before my next Mock Lab on Sunday.

5am: CCOnline lab booking starts. I heard about these guys after reading CCIEPursuit (CCIEPursuit…you should get a commission!) and decided to give them a shot today. I normally use the Internetwork expert labs, but they were all booked this week so I gave these guys a shot. I am glad that I did. $25 for 11.5 hours is a bargain. The equipment is top notch. You don’t get all the bells and whistles (you have to manually set up the backbone, and some of the DLCI’s on the frame don’t match exactly), but for the price I really can’t complain and the customer support was excellent.

5:20am: Finished setting up the backbone, routers. The CCOnline lab topology differs slightly from the official IE one. For one everything is a f0/0, so no eth0/0. The DLCI’s on the frame to BB3 is also different. There are no 3550’s, only 3560’s for layer 3 switches, and most of the routers are 2800’s. You still log on via a terminal server, so that is pretty much the same.

6:00am: Finish the Layer 2 Ethernet section. No real surprises. My mind goes temporarily blank on how to remark COS values for a PC connected to a IP phone. A quick search of the DOC CD jogs my memory: switchport priority extend cos 1 should do it.

6:10am: Frame Relay just won’t come up. No matter what I try the interfaces stay in the down, down state. I try a sh controllers and realise that no clocks are set. Im the DTE though! Looks like the problem is on the frame relay switch which I don’t have access too. I quickly hop on MSN and contact Tony from CCOnline. After 5 minutes, the problem is solved (the interfaces were down on the frame relay switch). Great customer service, love the live chat.

6:20am: I’ve started making it a habit to do a no peer neighbor-route on PPP links unless the two ends of the link are on completely different subnets. This has saved me a few times, when trying to figure out why traffic is taking a certain path only to realise it thinks its directly connected because of the PPP neighbor route. PPP automatically injects a /32 route to the other end, which is sometimes not a good a idea in the labs I have been doing especially in this one.

6:40am: Layer 2 complete. Quick ping of all neighbors across all links and looks good. Onto IGP.

7:20am: IGP complete except for redistribution. Nothing really scary. I had to use a GRE tunnel instead of Virtual Link to join up an area to area 0. Virtual-Links couldn’t be used because otherwise, you would have broken a previous condition where a /32 route would be leaked. I’ve seen this one before, so I recognized the conditions straight away.

7:25am: Redistribution seems to be the bane of my existence lately. Working through this one is a real challenge. I usually make sure I tag routes when there are multiple points of redistribution and then adjust administrative distance as necessary. For some reason I missed one of those and ended up spending the next 45 minutes chasing down different problems. I should have taken more care with IGP and done this redistribution problem more systematically.

8:10am: Finally got it working. Used an offset list on SW2 to get it to take the most most optimal route as per the question. Onto BGP.

8:20am: Have breakfast and chat to my beautiful wife before she leaves for work. I can’t wait till I finally get my CCIE digits so I can spend more time with her. I’m starting to feel guilty that I spend more time looking at SecureCRT lately than I do with her. That will change with my CCIE digits I tell myself.

8:50am: BGP Done. This one is great. I am starting to really enjoy BGP. I am getting really good at it. This used to be my biggest weakness and now it is one of my biggest strength. I am going to have to turn redistribution from my biggest weakness to my biggest strength somehow.

I take my “Lunch Break” now. 45 minutes. Spend the time answering a few emails from Work.

9:30am: Back to it. Start Multicast. There is a probelm with a RPF check. Found it after turning on debugs and a show ip mroute count. Add a static mroute and all is good.

10:20am: IPv6 finished.

11:00am: QOS finished. I’m starting to feel really tired now. Technically only have 2 hours left for the lab. I am going to have to start drinking coffee or something. A friend of mine who just finished his 2nd CCIE recommends taking Red Bulls into the exam. He took in 2 Red Bulls each time, and when ever he needed a boost took one. I am starting to think this is a brilliant idea.

QOS is another one of those things that used to be a real weakness for me, but after a couple of months of focused study it has become one of my strengths. I used to have real problems interpreting what was being asked, but now I know what things to look out for it has become easier. Still for some reason, every time I get up to it on a practice lab I don’t do as well as i thought. I missed the frame-relay traffic-shaping command on an interface and spent about 10 minutes wondering why it was not showing up when I was doing verification commands. I think I am getting really tired.

11:35am: Security section Done. I’ve matched on http a lot (I even wrote an article on it!) so no biggie here. On the home stretch now.

12:20pm: The DHCP part was easy, but I spent about 30 minutes trying to find, figure out and configure mobile arp.

12:30pm: Finished. 30 minutes to spare. Spend the next 30 minutes verifying stuff. I don’t have connectivity to one of the loopbacks on my switch (SW3). I don’t know how i missed this before, i checked it via a tcl script. I double check as much as I can. By 1pm, technically my finish time, I am still checking.

1:00pm: Still checking. I am really punch drunk at this stage. My mind is mush. I go outside and go for a walk around the city and grab some lunch. I live in an apartment right in the center of the city so there is plenty of things to do at lunch. I spend most of the time going through different scenarios in my head.

2:00pm: Back from Lunch. This is a long day, and I just can’t bring myself to do any more work. My brain is cactus. I try watching a COD video, but I can’t concentrate.

3:30pm: After trying to watch the COD (I don’t know how much actually “watching’ i did, I kept wondering off doing a few bits and pieces around the house). I’ve only got 1 hour to go on my lab booking. I go back and practice redistribution using different strategies for the next hour.

5:00pm: I’ve had enough today, and my wife is due back any second. Spend the rest of the afternoon hanging out with her and grabbing dinner.

7:30pm: Spend about 30 minutes talking into my MP3 recorder (Arial Sound Recorder) recording my notes about the lab. Even though I’ve done this lab a few times before I am still discovering little bits of insight each time.

Only 28 days to go. It is starting to really freak me out, and I need to calm down a bit. Its been a long couple of days and there is still 28 long days to go. My last Mock Lab didn’t go as well as I hoped, and I want to do better for my next one on Sunday. I think I am going to take Saturday completely off and just rest up for Sunday.

Fear of failure is a big part of what is driving me at the moment. I must admit, I am not enjoying this as much as I used to. I’ve never worked so hard for anything in my life, but it is something that I have wanted for a very long time. I have to work hard. Even though its hard, I must not give up. I have to concentrate on my weaknesses and turn them into strengths. I have to ignore my self doubts and keep going.

I must keep seeing an opportunity to learn in every difficulty I face. That, I believe, is part of the journey to a becoming a CCIE.

It’s late and I’m becoming philosophical…lol. I need sleep. :)

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© 2008 Arden Packeer. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway. This material is not sponsored or endorsed by Cisco Systems, Inc. Cisco, Cisco Systems, CCIE and the CCIE Logo are trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and its affiliates