CCIE Journey!

Hi,

Do you guys familiar with sadikhov forum? I got my MCSE from this, LOL.
But, today, they already become a truly supporter for true-certification, but not dumps.
Here is one of a guy sharing his CCIE journey, interesting... after reading his, i'm thinking for mine now. How should I face it, how can i prepare, can i really do it, anyway, i'l go for it.

Link : http://www.sadikhov.com/forum/index.php?/topic/67385-what-i-did-to-pass-the-ccie-lab/

"
Hi after many PM's asking what I did, I have decided to put it here so I don’t have to type it so many times.

First of, I started my CCIE preparations last year about December. I started with Reading the standard books.

Routing TCP/IP vol I & II. I actually did all of my studies off of Vol I first edition and the re-read the 2nd ed when it cam out. I recommend reading the 2nd ed.
I also browsed thru Cisco Lan Switching, but the entire books is based in CAT OS so I ended up going back to my CCNP BCMSN (Cisco press) book. I think it pretty much covered what I needed to know. It is actually a pretty good book.
I used the QOS book (Cisco press) for CCVP. 
I referred to the BGP commands and configuration guide as needed.
I referred to the OSPF commands and configuration guide as needed.
In the last week before my written, I used TestKing.. (yes I used TK, but only after I felt I have a strong background in all of the core topics)
I took and passed my CCIE R&S Written on March 11. 
I bought the CCIE Exam certification guide after I passed the written and read it. It is much more useful it you get it before the written, because it is mostly for the written.

I then played around a little bit on the CCIE Practical studies VOL I until I started my class in June.

On Just 6 I stared a bootcamp in India. I attended Ip Solutions R&S Lab bootcamp in Mumbai India. It lasted for 1 month. Basically I sat in front of a computer with a Full Lab sitting next to me and for 8 hours a day I completed Labs with a CCIE instructor helping me. The class itself was 1 month, but I stayed a little longer, (about 4 more weeks) and utilized the equipment doing Internetwork Experts labs. I really liked them and felt they thought me A LOT. 

CODEwww.ipsol.net


I got back to the states in August and continued to do Internetwork Experts Labs with online rack time. I used Internetwork Experts online labs a few times, but mostly used CODEwww.ccie2be.comas they are cheaper for the time. Their equipment is set up perfectly for the IEWB. 
I made sure I could get thru all of the IEWB labs. I did 1-30 and repeated 1-10. 
In Late August I signed up for an IEWB Mock Lab and did pretty well on it and then I signed up for the CCIE assessor Lab. I did well on it too, so I figured I was ready. 

I sat my lab for my first attempt on Sep 8 and feel I came pretty close, just not close enough.

After that I was pretty discouraged for a while and did not study at all. I was just being lazy but really wanted to continue but did not have my heart in it. I scheduled a trip to Hawaii and for the day after Hawaii, I set up the Heinz Ulm bootcamp. 

So, after my trip to Hawaii, I flew directly to Denver and sat in Class with Heinz Ulm for his Mock Lab bootcamp. October 9-13CODEhttp://www.heinzulm.com/mocklab.php
That ended and I had one week before my Lab Date of October 20. I made a deal with Heinz and utilized his Online Labs until the following Thursday morning. (day before Lab) I used that week to do a few more of his labs and go thru the DOC CD every chance I got to find things I knew I might need to find in the real lab. 

I sat down on Friday, Oct 20 and was pretty confident. I was finished with my IGP and had started BGP before Lunch. When i got back form Lunch, I continued with BGP and moved on to the rest. I had completed my entire Lab with the exception of one security Task I never got to work right. I ended up leaving it alone because I felt it would mess me up in other areas because I never did get it right. I got up to leave about 1 our before time was up, but for some reason came back to my seat to run a few more tests (LUCKILY). I found one thing that was broken from one of the later tasks I did, and fixed it, after that I could not drag myself away from the seat until they told me to go. I ran ping, Telnets, and Trace routes to EVERY SINGLE IP in the Exam. I highly recommend that if you have time, do it. 
"

The most important protocol for a data network engineer?

What a wise pick for a topic ;) lets discuss about the protocols again. Needless to say, there are so many protocols out there and some Ipv6 protocols are still coming. Since i myself only working in data network, i can not discuss about voice or security or wireless, lets base on TCP/IP model also I do believe that Application Layer is less important then the others for a network operation engineer whi maintain and run a live network. However that was my earlier perspective and later I found out the other way round. I try to understand how the internal mechanism of most popular protocols are working, how they behave one another in different platforms, what m trying to say is for example, the famous routing protocol OSPF forming neighbors over LAN, and over WAN. But now I am quite surprise that these are not enough. There are quite a few numbers of protocols out there, most of them become IEEE standard while some of them are Cisco proprietary protocols, like routing protocol EIGRP and redundancy protocols like HSRP and GLBP(excuse me, m cisco student).
Anyway.. lets think again, u know what? I jst want to stop typing with my tiny iphone, this gonna b my first iphone blogging, gudnight!