Just received an email about Cisco’s mobile CCIE LAB coming to London:

Mobile CCIE Lab Available in London, United Kingdom, from October 6 to October 14, 2014

To address the urgent need for certified IT professionals, and to offer more convenient testing, Cisco has developed the Mobile CCIE Lab for qualified candidates who are ready to take their CCIE Routing and Switching exam or CCIE Security exam.

We encourage you to take advantage of the mobile lab scheduled in London, United Kingdom, from October 6 to October 14, 2014. The CCIE mobile testing lab will allow qualified candidates to more easily and quickly take the exam, reducing the waiting time, effort, and costs accrued by having to travel to take the exam. The eight-hour lab exam tests your ability to configure actual equipment and get the network running in a timed-test situation. There will be 42 seats available for the CCIE Routing and Switching exam and 7 seats available for the CCIE Security exam.

Apart from the Cisco Certified Architect (CCAr) certification, the Cisco CCIE certifications are the highest level of achievement for network professionals. Less than 3 percent of all Cisco certified professionals earn their CCIE certification.

Click here to register for the CCIE Routing and Switching exam or CCIE Security exam in London.

For information on registering for a Mobile CCIE Lab event or for additional information about the Mobile CCIE Lab program, visit the Cisco Learning Network.

Tags: CCIE,cisco,work
Categories: CCIE R&S
1 Comment »

Long live Social http://alexking.org/blog/2012/05/22/social-2-5

Testing automatic posting to Twitter and Facebook from my blog, sorry if you consider this spam.

Tags: facebook,twitter,wordpress
Categories: CCIE R&S
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This one has been coming for a while… Last time I went for my CCIE was Q3 2007 and it’s been pretty quiet here since.

In the mean time I’ve moved country, changed jobs and moved again, though not as far. So how is my CCIE doing? Well to be honest, it’s not. You see, I came from a sponsored certification track -which incidentally I forged with my employer at the time- and thus had to sort out a transfer sum from my new employer. No problem for the Dutch employment market, at least at the time. But here in the UK I had no such luck, suffice to say that financially it was not a good idea to move country. My new employer expressed that they would be happy to support attaining CCIE status. Little did I know that we had completely different concepts of ‘support’.

Loving a new challenge I quickly settled into my new position, only to find two years had gone before the question of attaining CCIE popped up again. No wonder really when you have a 100% billable target and there’s plenty of over time involved in the projects at hand. Then when things settled down and I moved to another customer I only found myself further and further away from (CCIE related) technology.

Yes, I still design and do have a consulting role but I’m in no way challenged and kept on my toes protocol wise. It took a few technical interviews to fully realise the impact of this. Which brought me to this point: Either, I work and retrain myself towards CCIE in my own time, hope my employer will pay for the lab and favour me with a mere week off for full-time study. Or do I let go of the desire to attain CCIE and trust that there will be employers out there who are smart enough not to be blind sided by the highly praised numbers of my peers.

My choice has been to no longer pursue CCIE. I can’t ask my family for a long and hefty sacrifice once again, we’ve been there done that. I’m now one kid and two cancers (promisestoday.com /@maizymoo tweet) further and value my own time more than my career, if this means UK employers don’t like me any more than so be it. I know what I’m capable of, just wish I was better at convincing prospective employers…

[Above edited, below added – Jan 27th 2014]

Sad thing is that the CCIE we find ourselves hiring. often do not have the consultancy skills needed to satisfy our customer’s needs. To the HR managers out there: Hiring a CCIE does not mean, you get good communication skills, customer facing skills or even basic networking experience for that matter. Trust me I know, I’ve had to replace a number of (single, dual and a quad) CCIEs on various projects where things had gone so bad we were about to lose all future business.

Don’t get me wrong, I value certifications and see them as a good means for career progression. I do have issue though with the UK market putting so much pressure on individuals to develop themselves, alienating them completely from a corporate drive to improve through a shared responsibility. UK employer – employee relationships have become too one sided… For more on this see a recent article of mine.

Tags: CCIE,cisco
Categories: CCIE R&S, Main blog, Work
Comments Off on To CCIE or not to CCIE?

Ouch. Humility is a painful process…

I’ve just been taught a lesson in humility and authorship. My post about Cisco’s NTP authentication implementation received a comment from a certain Frank. I’ve added my comment and need to verify my statment as soon as I can manage to get some hands-on in a lab again (not got Dynamips set-up yet)…

Categories: CCIE R&S
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Only just noticed but in effect since September 7th. The CCIE lab exam has gone up from $1250 to $1400, which results in $1694,- / €1199,30 including the 21% VAT for the Brussels lab location.

Even though it’s a 12% price increase it’s been 8 years since the previous increase. It’s been argued on Groupstudy that a 2% annual increase is not bad as it’s relatively on par with the inflation we’ve seen over the last 8 years. Never the less for those of us forced to pay for our own labs it’s a bitter pill to take.

Also note that all exams from CCNA to the CCIE written and lab have increased in price.

Categories: CCIE R&S, Main blog
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A recent question prompted this post. I’ve noticed that my site is getting more popular, despite my silence over the past weeks. I hope to propperly break the silence soon. All I can say now is that I’m busy working out an action plan towards my next lab attempt. By no means am I giving up!

Since my last post I’ve been very busy with work related issues and as such have not had the time or the right frame of mind to study. Please bear with me as I work to get back into the game. Feel free to comment on my previous posts, or this one if you like. It really helps me to know that other find this stuff useful.

Categories: CCIE R&S, Main blog, Work
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Since 12.3 (T?), static routes pointing to interfaces will be advertised by RIP and EIGRP as these static subnets are assumed to be part of the interfaces on which RIP and/or EIGRP is activated.

ip route prefix mask {ip-address | interface-type interface-number [ip-address]} [dhcp] [distance] [name next-hop-name] [permanent | track number] [tag tag]

Show me more… »

Categories: CCIE R&S, Main blog, Networking, Work
Comments Off on Static routes since 12.3

Eek, Cisco keeps tabs on page hits when checking available lab seats. I set up firefox to automatically reload the page which works fine but resulted in me being locked out. Luckily only for a day but at 28 days before my ideal lab date this is not funny.

The following advice to all who’re desperate for a lab date: Be persistent but do not over do it.

ERROR: The ‘Available Lab Seats’ activity limit for the candidate has been exceeded for today. Please try again tomorrow.

Categories: CCIE R&S, Main blog
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Wow, I managed to spot and book the 2nd of October instead of my February 7th seat. Hopefully I’ll manage to swap this day for September 14th with someone from Vietnam. Poor guy that is a long way to come for a lab… But as you can see from my previous post swapping seats is a risky business.

[edit, 17 Aug 2007] I’ve managed to move to September 28th and I’ll stick with it for now. There’s enough to keep me busy till then, may circumstantially even have to move my date back. I’ll be diving back into the books/lab next week, too much social stuff going on this week.

[edit, 10 Sep 2007] Sadly I have cancelled my September 28th seat. There’s just too much going on right now to be able to concentrate, let alone to have enough time to commit to studying. I’m hoping I’ll ba able to move my Feb 19th date forward but for now it would be wise to keep the February date, at least until some things settle down.

Categories: CCIE R&S, Main blog
3 Comments »

As many people have found it’s rather hard to book a lab seat these days. All locations are fully booked. The occasional cancellations are snapped up in minutes.

I did manage to book a seat but it’s one of the seats that became available last Saturday, Cisco gives seats out 6 months ahead of time. They are snapped up within hours if not minutes. Many people just book anywhere in the hope they can swap later on, or figure out how to pay for the travel. Mails about swapping lab seats are becoming more and more frequent on Groupstudy.

I must admit that I’ve joined the ranks here. I’m looking for a seat on Sept 10th. Need to call Cisco today, hoping to be able to safely swap seats with someone who is willing to swap Sept 14th for my day in Feb. So my advice to anyone planning to take their lab in the next year: Plan your lab carefully.

[edit, 15 Aug 2007] Well I called Cisco (see this link) and as expected they refuse to swap lab dates. No manual database work will be done. When I argued that seats are booked within minutes after becoming available, their advise was to swap seats during off peak hours. My goodness even I considered flying out to Sao Paulo, this is a global struggle for CCIE lab seats. There are no off peak hours!

So for those planning to swap dates. My advice is get on the phone, MSN, IRC or whatever other low delay medium (this means no e-mail) and make sure you pick each others dropped seats up asap. Sadly there is no safe was of swapping seats.

Categories: CCIE R&S, Main blog
1 Comment »

Well I received my results just as I took a snapshot of the window that’s been haunting me since I got home last night. No pass this time… 🙁

So I’ll have to pick up speed and book another lab asap.

[edit] To make matters worse, Cisco has no dates available at all. I hope this is a system error but I know that the earliest people have managed to book at this time is around end of Jan 2008…:

There are no available lab dates for the selections you made. You may want to adjust your criteria to find lab dates convenient for you. Also, check back frequently in case there are cancellations.

Categories: CCIE R&S, Main blog, Work
Comments Off on Oh dear…

Totally different from last year, I ran out of time. I’d knew it might happen as I just didn’t have the speed in my fingers and mind as I did for the first attempt and I wanted to be more thorough. I’d like to think I was more thorough but I also blanked out twice which lost me probably about half an hour in total. Stupid ‘bgp update-source’ addresses… 😉

Oh well, in all I think I lost 14 points to unanswered questions or uncertain answers. This leaves about 6 points leeway, not a lot but just maybe enough. Also nice is that this time I don’t have the mail before I get home so I’m taking that as a good sign: at least this time I wasn’t completely hopeless.

Will post as soon as I know, checking my mail regularly and the certification page. that page is weird by the way, it lists my attempt with links for a  ‘Submit Critique’ & ‘Request for Reread’ but no real result is stated. I’ll be twiddling my thumbs a little longer I guess.

Categories: CCIE R&S, Main blog, Work
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Well It’s Thursday evening and I’ve gone over (too?) many topics today. Time to take a break and rest before the big day. So I’ll be trying to stay away from my laptop tomorrow (fat chance I know) and get some rest, hopefully by some sleeping in the sun.

Will post here as soon as I get some time at home after the lab and of course as soon as I have my results.

Categories: CCIE R&S, Main blog
1 Comment »

A quick and dirty rip from CCO just for those who’re in a hurry:

Enabling 802.1x Authentication

To enable 802.1x port-based authentication, you must enable AAA and specify the authentication method list. A method list describes the sequence and authentication methods to be queried to authenticate a user.

The software uses the first method listed to authenticate users; if that method fails to respond, the software selects the next authentication method in the method list. This process continues until there is successful communication with a listed authentication method or until all defined methods are exhausted. If authentication fails at any point in this cycle, the authentication process stops and no other authentication methods are attempted.

SUMMARY STEPS

Configure:

1. aaa authentication dot1x {default | listname} method1 [method2...]
2. interface interface-id
3. dot1x port-control auto

Verify:

1. show dot1x

Categories: CCIE R&S, Main blog
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As I’m on a roll posting things today anyway…

I love Safari, now reading “CCIE Practical Studies, Volume 2” by Karl Solie & Leah Lynch. I have a hard copy of “CCIE Practical Studies, Volume 1” by Karl Solie, but volume 2 is a great addition to volume 1. It brings a lot of up-to-date information while not doubling the info in volume 1, well not in great detail anyway as it often refers to volume 1.

So highly recommended for those prepping for their R&S!

Categories: CCIE R&S, Main blog, Work
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