So we have the first 5 days completed now and it is time for some relaxing in the weekend and a bit of labbing as well.
So far it has been great. Brian Dennis is both a great teacher and a great guy as well. With Brian you don’t only get explained how things work, you get explained WHY they work that way. He as a lot of background and knowledge and the good thing is he will show you also how things should work in production. He’s absolutely one of the top guys out there and I would recommend anyone to attend the class.
Some people like to take a bootcamp early to get their journey started but I would not recommend that. You will be expected to know the basics so if you have never configured frame relay before then this bootcamp is not for you. I would recommend to take it in your final stages of preparation or in the middle, no earlier than that.
Brian has a nice way of explaining things and he drew some pictures that just says it all. What could take people 2 pages to explain he just explained with one picture. I’ll try to put some things online later to show you what I mean.
For the first 5 days we have gone through L2, frame relay, OSPF, BGP and MPLS. Class runs from 9 AM to about 19 – 20 PM so in the evening you will be very tired. You also get some labs to complete and you can do that in the evening or leave it for the weekend.
During the OSPF section we discussed some interesting things about convergence. Many people falsely believe that convergence is about hello timers which it really isn’t. By default SPF will wait 5 seconds before it is run when receiving a LSA. To trim convergence you need to trim SPF. If you are using non P2P links then yes then you will have to rely on hello timers to detect link failure but in that case you would rather run BFD if you had that option as well.
That is all for now. I will post sometime when I get back from London as well.
Hey Daniel
Nice write up
Regards
Manish Salaria
Hi Daniel,
Guess you are practicing rigorously.
Please tell us how much is the training cost and how many people are attending a session.
Is it possible to cover the entire CCIE topics in 10 days even a student has an intermediate level knowledge?
Thanks for the update.
Tom.
Hi Tom,
We are roughly 20 students attending. We have people from Bolivia, France, Sweden, Venezuela, Finland, UK, Italy, Norway, Scotland so it’s a nice mix 🙂 You won’t be able to cover everything in 10 days but a lot will be covered. You are expected to know some of the basics and then Brian will show you the rest. You are free to ask questions and if you want a specific topic covered then you can suggest that to Brian.
The bootcamp costs 5990$ and then you have flying and hotel cots etc. There are two different packages you can choose from, option A:
2 years AAP (2598$ value)
Apple iPAD (499$ value)
1500 lab tokens (1500$ value)
CCIE RS ATC (299$ value)
option B:
2 years AAP (2598$ value)
Lab exam fee (1500$ value)
CCIE RS ATC (299$ value)
So yes it will cost a bit but it’s the best training out there and you could have your lab exam fee covered so that’s a good thing. The Cisco 360 training is more expensive and not as good. The Global Knowledge one will probably be as expensive or more expensive and then you won’t have a 5x CCIE teaching you.
Dear Daniel,
Thanks for the reply.
It must be a great experience to attend 5x CCIE Brian’s sessions. But currently I cannot afford the training fees and the fees is too high for me 🙁
I think I must attend this training before I book my exam. Need to make some money also 🙁
Will think about this after my car loan is over 😉
Best wishes Daniel and please keep updating.
Toms
Wow great. Will you write a wrap-up about how was the training overall ?
The training is 6k but minus the exam fee you get to around 4500. Is it worth it ? (if you pay from your own pockets) or you are better off studying 3 months more for the exam?
Thanks,
Daniel
Hi,
Yeah I’ll do a writeup when I get back home. So minus the labfee you are paying 4.5k, you won’t a 2w bootcamp with an as qualified instructor as Brian for that price. So yes I think it is worth it.
You can pass without a bootcamp and many people do. It’s all about what you can afford but from a value perspective I think it is worth it.
Daniel,
When I told someone here about the bootcamp price, they were laughing. They also made a comment “He is making a lot of money”. Here in India, it is a huge amount.
I explained them about the quality of training and this price is for the efforts he put to become a penta CCIE.
Try Jeromy Ciora’s CCIE CBT’s also. He is also a great trainer, dedicated his life for Cisco 😀
Waiting for your update…
Toms
Hi,
It depends how you look on it. In Sweden to attend a 5-day Global Knowledge course the price is usually around 3000 to 4000$. Then you will have an instructor reading from powerpoint all day. If you go to Brian you will get one of the top3 guys in the world teaching you 10 days for 4.5k.
If you go to a Narbik class then it is 3000$ for 5 days. So you see that is around what the best guys charge per week. The best thing is if you can get your employer to pay it or at least help you out as they should have a training budget if you are working in IT.
I can see that in India that must be a lot of money and I think you have some trainers locally that might be good, the won’t be nearly as good as Brian but they could be decent teachers.
Unfortunately I see lots of people from India trying to cut corners. I’m not saying that all are and you seem to have a genuine interest that is why I am explaining what you get out from this. It is not mandatory in any way it’s just a really good course.
I’ll write a writeup when I get back home.
Hey Daniel
I am from india, and agree that the cost is too much as compare to INDIAN Rs. BTW I would like to read your Bootcamp experience with INE. Can you please mention each day topic Brian has explained.
Looking forward to your reply.
Thanks
Manish Salaria
Hi Manish,
I will do a writeup explaining the topics Brian has gone through. I know a lot of people go to India for training because it is cheap. Thanks for reading.
Daniel