Cisco Certification Pyramid

Last Friday I passed my first test for the CCIP (Cisco Certified Internetwork Professional) certification. I passed with a 900 after about two months of studying and a year of almost daily work experience.

The 642-661 (Configuring BGP on Cisco Routers) can be taken on it’s own or in a composite version, 642-691 (BGP+MPLS). I decided to split them up since work had some Cisco Learning Credits and I could take the BGP class online. I ended up getting the online class through NIL who were excellent. In fact another coworker went through the same online class and also passed with a 900 about three weeks before I did.

The actual class (here’s the link to it if you’re interested) went over all of the content very thoroughly and each fundamental topic was accompanied by a cool lab that you could schedule or load on the fly if it was available. Each module had a review test at the end that helped make sure I had grasped all of the material. The only thing bad I have to say about the tests is it would be nice if there were a larger base of questions it could draw from so the tests could be randomized each time. Some of the questions were flat out wrong and I found myself getting them right anyway because I had memorized them.

The thing I liked the best about the class is that it was designed so each topic built on the preceding topics and reviewed the key points from the previous topics. This method of learning is really effective for me as it serves to drive home the key points and also helps me zero in on the things that will definitely be on the test.

I don’t want to play up the class as the be all end all of my study preparation. I knew a lot about BGP before I ever started studying for the test as I’ve been managing our IP transit policies at work for the last year and have had a lot of hands on training configuring and operating a transit network for a Service Provider. The class did fill in a fair few gaps in my understanding of BGP and has given me several ideas for some clean-up work I already had under way.

Now with a self imposed two week break before I start studying again I don’t know what to do with myself. When you go from 20-30 hours of studying  a week to none it always feels like I am forgetting to do something. After new years I am going to get to work on 642-611 (Implementing Cisco MPLS) which is the other half of the composite test. With any luck I’ll finish that in February and can move on to the last two tests.

Welcome to Collier-Byrd.net. Sara and I have been meaning for awhile to put up a web page to collect photos for family and write about our various interests but I can be a terrible perfectionist and spend way too much time getting something suitable before I ever (or never) get around to using it.

This time I’ve decided to try something different and put up a WordPress site, start posting, and we’ll work out the bugs as we go. I think we’ll actually get use out of the page this way and work on the non-content pieces when I have time.

As I said, the original idea was to collect some photos for family and friends, but we also have a lot of interests we’re planning to cover. Sara was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis last year and we have been doing a tremendous amount of research about the disease. As her father’s side of the family has a history of the disease, it wasn’t at all unknown to us, but suffering from an auto-immune disease is a lot different from knowing about it as a result of family, friends, or acquaintances learning to live with one. Sara really wants to compile a lot of the information we’ve found and relay her personal experiences living with MS to date in hopes it may help others who know someone with MS or people who have been diagnosed that are learning to cope with it. The side benefit of this will be to (hopefully) raise awareness about the disease.

My primary focus for the foreseeable future (other than MS) is working through several professional certification tracks. I have been working for ISPs and Telecommunications companies for the better part of the last 12 years now and while I do have a lot of on the job experience and more than a fair bit of knowledge about the Internet and how it all works, there’s definitely no shortage of new things to learn. I’m currently CCNA certified (Cisco Certified Network Associate), and working towards my CCIP (Cisco Certified Internetwork Professional) and CCNP (Cisco Certified Networking Professional) certifications. At some point, once I finish these two certifications, I am planning to work on the service provider versions of the JNCIA (Juniper Networks Certified Internet Associate) and JNCIS (Juniper Networks Certified Internet Specialist) certifications to round out my experience. When I finish all of this, depending on what I am spending most of my time working on (Cisco or Juniper gear) I’ll look into pursuing one of the IE (Internet(work) Expert) paths. As I’ve got at least a year or two of work in front of me to get to a point where I am choosing an IE path I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself but I definitely want to have a rough timeline in my head to help moving me forward. Part of my learning process is putting together training materials presented in a method that clearly conveys the concepts and ideas I am studying, so I would say that you should expect to see a lot of boring and very technical information about Cisco and Juniper routers as well as different routing protocols, RFCs (Requests for Comments), and IETF drafts on emerging technologies.

Outside of career and health related pursuits Sara and I would like to travel. To start we will probably take day trips on the weekends to see the things we can reach in a day’s drive. As we run out of things to see in a day’s drive we’ll probably start flying. Eventually we would like to see all of the US and plan trips overseas. There’s so much to see and do and we’d like to do as much as we can while we are young. We’re hoping to put together photo diaries to track our travels and we’ll be posting them here. Our first big trip will be to Yellowstone for two weeks at the end of July next year when Sara’s uncle retires. Her aunt and uncle are taking their family out to Yellowstone for a group trip so we’re already planning our days and hoping we can make the most of it.

At any rate I don’t want to put together any kind of gigantic list of everything we’re planning or not planning to do with the site. We hope it will grow organically as our interests and tastes evolve and change and with any luck, you’ll be here with us for all of it.