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Blog: CCIE Practice Lab Built

I’ve got my own practice lab! Well it’s not really mine, but work has graciously let me do my CCIE prep on the BSCI gear they have. What this means is that when a BSCI class is not running, I can use it for my CCIE lab prep. We run a BSCI class about once a month, so that means the rest of the time its mine! The BSCI kit consists of 14x 2600 routers, 1x 2522, and 1x 2950. I’ve cabled it up to mimic the Internetwork Expert Topology (minus the 4 switches!). All the 2600’s are cabled into the 2950, and the 2522 acts as an 8 port Frame-relay switch for 8 of the 2600’s.

I can’t practice the switching parts of the labs, but everything else works great. If I want to work on switching I’ll book my labs through Graded Labs, but its great to be able to practice whenever the mood strikes instead of when I have labs booked.

My study routine is usually get up around 5:30am, study for 2 hours, then go to work. After work, I start studying again at 8:30pm. My wife and I have struck a compromise, with the time between 6:30pm and 8:30pm allocated as “our” time. We are newlyweds so I feel really guilty about all this study, but she has been really supportive and understand that this is for our future. The schedule works really well, and I do love spending time with her and unwinding after work. I usually study until 10:30pm-11pm then off to bed.

Its been working really well so far, the only problem was that it was hard to book labs without wasting a lot of the allocated time. We have daylight savings at the moment here in Melbourne, Australia so the only real feasible slots for the Internetwork Expert labs are the S3 and S4 slots which start at 10am and 4pm Melbourne time respectively.

Having my own labs means I can practice whenever and wherever I want! Gotta love that.

Labs hours this week: 12 hours (Working on Workbook 2, Labs 7 and 8 )
Study hours this week: 18 hours
Days until lab: 103

© 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