Jon Waller, CCIE #29187

I passed the CCIE Routing & Switching lab in Brussels on Wednesday at the 1st attempt. It took a year of gradual build up then a final push of 3-4 months of solid hardcore study. The cornerstones of my success are hard work, dedication, sacrifice, love & support from family & friends and INE's high quality material. My CCIE journey started around 18 months ago after passing the Written. I started out by working through WB #1 a couple of evenings a week, I took it very slow and didn't finish WB #1 until the end of 2010 - it really opened my eyes to the depth and breadth of options and features that are within Cisco IOS that you don't see from your day-to-day job, it can be quite daunting! In early 2011 it was time to get serious. From mid-Feb I started repeating WB #1 in the evenings, while doing WB #2 and WB #3 at the weekends. After the first 4 weeks I was doing 10-12 hours every Saturday and Sunday and 4-5 hours an evening, 3-4 evenings each week. In total I did WB #1 twice, WB #2 1.6 times (Labs 1-12 twice) & WB#3 once. Workbook #2 really challenges you in every technology and gives you the key skill of lab management - watch what you've done, what you're doing and what you still need to do, make sure you don't configure a feature that breaks something you've done or clashes with something you have to do in a future task. Workbook #3 drills you through all the Core stuff that needs to be second nature on exam day, not just IGPs & BGP but PPPoFR, Bridging, PAP & CHAP & Multilink etc - a must! I used Workbook 4 in the last 4-6 weeks before exam day. The approach it takes feels strange at first but it helps you get really close to the show and debug outputs that you may need in your 2 hours Tshoot. In the last month the VoDs are excellent for recapping & the new ones from Brian McGahan are awesome - EVERYONE MUST watch the free sample on using the Doc CD! If you are truly INE standard, the Cisco lab has nothing to fear. Thank you INE! Jon Waller CCIE #29187