I passed! I am Rob Riker CCIE #50693

how's it going everybody if you hadn't noticed by the title of this video I passed I am now Rob Riker CCIE number five zero six ninety three I'm like wow so for those of you that are interested in knowing how the lab exam was it was just as difficult as the first and second attempts were and so in regards to lab complexity is in terms of the difficulty of the test and what I had to do but this time around I flew through the exam did not like the literally you know it didn't take me any time at all to get it done I was done with all three sections relatively relatively quickly I had spare time to spare for each each of the three sections and it just my third time my third attempt it was definitely my attempt that was my attempt to pass so for those of you that are interested I checked the lab on Monday October 19th which is yesterday right now so I took it in an RTP Raleigh North Carolina my third attempt and leading up to the lab you know typical day get up around I think I got up a quarter to six local time I went downstairs there I was on the first floors where my hotel room was I went me I got a piece of toast and a couple sips of some coke and off we were to the lab got in the shuttle being a friend Jason we took the lab same time we've been study partners for close to a year now and we've helped each other throughout our lab prep so we got to the lab things went pretty well we did our thing the proctor came out got us all situated and we started our test and it was like I knocked out nine of ten tickets like could or couldn't get one ticket solved but I had added up the amount of points that I had and I was like you know what I'm good I don't have to worry about I didn't let the I didn't let little things about the test bother me because I knew the bigger picture was I had to have a certain amount of points per Section to pass and so I kept track of how many points I had total per section so I did that and as I was going along everything was working out quite well I got through diag and I finished a little bit early in troubleshooting I had an app about an hour 45 minutes in I had everything done I gone back and I had verified everything and I knew I was in good good shape so I had n section went to the next section which is diag diag was relatively easy and that's probably that was my biggest concern was diet because the fact that I had there's no way for you to really prepare for it so the big thing about diet is you have to have operations experience in order for you to be able to do it so if you haven't been in operations or supported something like that we've had to troubleshoot stuff where you kind of walk any kind of blind you're not sure something changed but you don't know what and you have to kind of figure it out you know people are giving you kind of a symptom and you get to be able to play off of that symptom and know okay what is it that could possibly cause that symptom so being able to find root cause analysis that's a big deal so that was pretty straightforward I got all I was able to answer there's three three questions and there's two parts to each question each part is see it as a point so you get six parts six points so I'm pretty sure I got five of six questions correct pretty sure so I went out and then I was into config and the first thing I did in config is I went to you get five sections you get at section 1 section 2 6 three second four second five so section one I was done with that and probably about 15-20 minutes and now we're just making sure layer two is up and I got that done in print relatively quickly I use notepad for the entire exam from troubleshooting to config you know rocketed through that the big thing about config is time management though and I want to spend a little bit of time on the whole time management thing because that seems to be the one thing that people talk about the most is a didn't have enough time to verify and I get that because you're trying to figure out what you've got going on but here's my advice when it comes to preparing for your CCIE if you have five and a half hours to work on your CCNA lab for your config section I spent probably close to 40 minutes figuring it out because you don't want to jump right into actually typing commands in the command line because the reason why I don't do that out of the gate is because I don't know what's needed I don't know where what was going to be needed for the test so instead I read through the test all five sections I knew what to do and what I did from there is I blocked block configuration that was going to be on the same devices together so once layer two is all Don down I was I was fine then I got to layer 3 which is your all-year-round layer 3 routing so I GP and BGP so I went through and I said ok for every block of routers that has you know the same autonomous system number or the same you know one or more routers is going to be running IGP and BGP I stand in that round right configure both IGP and bgb at the same time so I've not got IGP that I'm going to knock out BGP and I consolidated by configuration so I wasn't spending a lot of time going ok layer two then I'm knock out IGP that and I got BGP and then I got VPN and knock out services security I didn't do it that way and I'm not breaking NDA by telling you that because if you follow the blueprint you know you've got layer 2 then y la three in the VPN in the infrastructure security and infrastructure services so that's how the exam is built so I'm not telling you any questions on the task but the idea is for you to block your configuration together so if you get like I said two or more routers in the same same block you can put them together and build them out and you're good to go it speeds things up so that's the beste main thing that I wanted to let everybody know is you got to have a game plan going into the test now most of you know that I am an int instructor I I do laughs I do kind I report content variety and so far it has been a very very positive a very very good experience for me it's very cool having that access which in some cases you know I I'm very very happy with the Senate this is the situation scenario however you want to look at it so that's where I come from on that the but I didn't just use INE for my preparation so i want to throw that out right there i did i in the process of setting for my CCIE I went through all of II's workbooks I watched all of AIA knees CCIE vv5 videos so the entire ATC I watched bits and pieces of the troubleshooting bootcamp that was a library or a library recorded and I did that I did a couple of my any labs the full-scale labs I did a couple of ine troubleshooting labs truth be told I spent more time on IP expert full-scale labs than I did on AI any full-scale labs and the reason why I say that is because IP expert is much closer to the real exam than IAT is you know that just happens to be the way that they built their labs you know and not a shot at ine in any regard but it's you know just how it works out so what I did is I use IP expert and I used for lab preparation so after I learned the at the point where I'm ramping up for the exam prior to that I used ine I used IP expert for some things I use some Narvik so Narvik if you're watching this video thank you for those for your content so that's pretty much where it goes from there so at the end of the day that's where I spend my time now in total it took me three years to study for this test now it's not that I'm slow that's including getting my CCNA my CCMP and now my CCIE so that's what's up so you know people ask me all the time how do you prepare for it really there's no goal and answer you know I can't say it was this or it was that it was a combination of all the things that I had done to prepare for the test helped me pass so doing videos on YouTube doing videos for ine thousands of hours of laughing and preparing and studying and note-taking and digging into things you will live and let me come in a little close for you guys you if you're serious about taking your CCIE and passing it as a few things you have to do those few things is you have to sacrifice a lot now I wouldn't expect anybody to sacrifice what I have sacrificed now that's just I wouldn't expect anybody to be like me I have literally put my life on hold for the past 18 months I don't go anywhere I don't do anything except for I'm on the computer lab I worked a full-time forty hour week job francisco reseller so I work for a part Cisco partner that has not always been the case there's been my first attempt at the CCA I was actually unemployed but I didn't a purpose because I wanted to have time to take the ramp up so you take that any consideration you also take any consideration that this test is you may be familiar with the gentleman by the name of Jeremy Chara he's a CCA instructor for CBT Nuggets great guy great guy he to size up the CCI a the first time I heard about it was from him I was going through CCA actually CCENT back in God was it early 2012 and he said this test is not for mere mortals and to put to put it in perspective just to give an idea of the complexity of the CCIE there's a roundabout and this is just a basic googling from numbers out there there's around 2 million CCNA s there's a round 2 there's around 1 million cc and PS I have a CCIE number of 50,000 693 as the number I've memorized all I had not even a day that I've been a CCIE and I saw it's weird for me even to say that I hasn't sunk in yet but 100,000 people would be 10% of 1 million for CC and PS if you take the total number that's three million certified professionals so if you work an i-team you get paid your professional IT so you take three million certified professionals and you take that 3 million you take that by ten percent that's three hundred thousand okay you take that number and you break it down a little bit more so five percent would be 150 thousand you take the number a little bit further down to fifty thousand that means on average one to two percent of certified Cisco engineers are CC II's that means I when you get CCIE when you get the credential CCIE you then become in the top one to two percent of network engineers in the world now I am NOT one to globe but that's a pretty cool fact and that's a pretty cool it's a prestigious award or it's a prestigious status to have now I've never been really a title person you know I'm a senior network engineer where I work you know it's the end of the day it's just a title it basically just it basically just highlights in the hierarchy of my company where I'm at I'm at the top you can't get any higher in the engineering that I am and architects are more of the sales design type I'm implementation support and engineering so I make the architects and the sales guys they design it and build out the statement of work and how things are supposed to work I'm the guy that puts it together it tells the sales guys where they screwed up and now and I'm the one that fixes it so Ivan my ccae is it's really cool don't get me wrong I'm really excited about it I'm really happy that I finally passed I finally have I can take a break and be human again you know I can spend time with the family and you know be a dad be a husband you let's have to stuff go do things you know I can finally go to the movies in the middle of the week if I wanted to you know or you know go out to dinner instead of having to come all to study now that doesn't mean I'm not going to study what that means I could take a break I think I'm going to take a couple weeks off there's a couple of minor things that I'm going to do for INE I've got some courses that I'm working on for them and stuff like that so again anybody that's been a subscriber of my channel I truly truly appreciate you being a subscriber interviewer I really do I mean if it wasn't for you guys watching these videos and listening to me ramble on for hours and hours and hours about technical stuff you you may or may not be interested in that that speaks volumes to the city to you guys and you know I'll take all the thank-yous you know I do appreciate that but it's also a big thank you to you for watching me do what I do so this is what I do for a living I'm really passionate about what I do I like I really enjoy what I do and that I think is conveyed conveyed very very well and my content so I'm actually kind of truth be told I'm actually kind of getting used to I a nice format it's a little bit different than I'm used to I'm used to kind of just talking off the cuff and after having some internal talks with Ayane and their and their staff and you know kind of what they're expecting for me and you know how I kind of feel about what I'm doing and you know they've kind of given me an idea of you know they've not like set in stone rules of how they want me to do stuff but more kind of a guideline more or less and they're like we want you to be you but have the I any image to fall inside of the eye any image but do things your way kind of in a way so they give me some freedom to be me which is huge because I am NOT a robot I don't work on an assembly line I don't punch the clock you know you know if I would my phone was to ring or my emails to go off and a client needs help I got to stop what I'm doing to go deal with that so when you work on IT and you have the ability to work from home and work remotely you never really stop working you know I'm salaried you know I work around 4045 hours of eeeek but at the end of the day that's pretty much where it stops you know once I go home it's my that's me time but because I work for a bar and it's same sort of value-added reseller if you didn't real if you didn't know that which means that we take the vendors equipment and myself so we take we buy stuff from Cisco we sell it to companies and then we help them put it together and make it work that's what we do now I've worked in the enterprise space for several years as well quite frankly I don't really care for the enterprise space I don't want to be the senior guy at one and one network because I find the challenge of people bringing me this people bringing me that and having to figure it out I'm a problem solver at the end of the day that's what I like to do so I get a lot of questions and how do you study for and how do you prepare for certification in general it's up like that and quite frankly you know and this is more geared to the recent questions I get on like I get a lot of questions for Facebook you know if you follow me on Facebook or LinkedIn you already know that I have my CCIE previews and watching this video but I wanted to shoot a video one-on-one like I've been because you guys need to like that correspondence and stuff like that so I like to give you guys a face-to-face now other things I'm looking to do on my one-on-one to videos I'm doing here on YouTube and some be getting a webcam and I'm gonna have to figure out a way to get the webcam to show up more Zevon news and I have a laptop to my right here with a webcam in the webcam is kind of sucks it's older so it's not that clear and I noticed that when I connect into it to do stuff it's not very clear somebody's getting a webcam so you guys can see me and I'm gonna be doing content that I'm not going to give to I any I'm going to be giving I'm gonna be doing specific stuff so I'll do like a lab you know topics that I get requests for I'm going to do stuff like that like I can't even think of anything off the top my head but I'm going to start doing that where it'll be which are I do like more HD video for you guys actually watch me you know you'll see me and you you know you'll see the command line and stuff like that I'm gonna start doing that more and more as we go along so that's what I'm hoping to do I'm trying to make it more personable because I like the way that IP expert ine new things and no I won't be doing any like live boob cancer in like that I'm a remote author Friday I produce videos to go in their library so I don't think there's going to be anything like anything like that anytime soon so but um fara was going to go with that well that's okay you know this is like guidance me talking my train of thought so people ask me a lot how to prepare for it and really you just got to sit down you got to either crack open a book or watch a video and start learning really that's all there really is to it I spent a lot of time reading has been a lot of time watching videos and laughing I live in Wireshark I mean my indie bugs while watching packet.d bugs I live in D bugs and there the other reason that I know the content as well as I do is good I spent a lot of time going through the content and making sure I know it you know no one's going to be able to do it for you you know I did what I do is a very thankless job and there is this a thankless is because nobody knows the time and effort that that guys like me put in you know and not to say that people that have a CCNA or CCPD don't put as much time and effort into that's totally not the case you know I put a lot of time enough for my CCNA mi CCAP mi CCIE written and my vc p and my CCNA security I put a lot of time at all those kind of certification because they require it because if you're like me and most people are you pride yourself on knowing how to answer the question the engineer in me wants to be able to answer that question so it's funny when I'm on a sales call somebody asked me a question it's like I have to ask a couple clarifying questions see okay how far do I have to take it and you know I enjoy that about what I do because then I can quickly qualify something just by asking a couple qualifying questions but you only be able to do that if you know what's going on and one of the other things that I find very very beneficial is doing it like online forums and the Cisco Learning Network responding to questions and answers and answering questions things like that that's huge so at the end of the day it really depends on what you want to do you know if you honestly want to become a CCIE more power to you you're never going to hear me tell you no it's actually kind of funny it it's about 10 o'clock my time at night and I went out for a celebratory dinner with my family you know something I haven't really been able to spend a whole lot of time with them recently and you know this weekend was very very busy for me you know I flew out Sunday I took the test on Monday I flew home the guys were results very very early Monday morning and I was up for a couple hours after that trying to like you know update things and spread the word I mean I was really excited but I knew I had passed now you might say well how do you know he passed a lab before you walk out you'll know when you know and I say that only because the fact that I felt very confident walking in I wasn't bringing her I mean I was still nervous but I wasn't as nervous as I wasn't my first attempt and you just feel good about it you know you walk through and if things work you know unless there's some sort of major issue that you run into or you ran into sorry everything should work out for you but you've got to be you gonna be willing to put the time and effort in to get there and that's the thing that most people aren't willing to do you know life gets in the way work it's in the way you know I now that I'm there I am so geared to studying that I'm like well what do I do now you know it's a I have a friend and not we're not like close friends but it more or less it I would say more acquaintances than anything else and ask me for specifics because I'm not going to tell you I know a guy who's a Navy SEAL and you know he's good guy I've only had interactions with him know half a dozen times maybe good guy though and one of the things that he told me is once you become what you want to become you're like oh and he goes and you don't hear this on like I look for motivation and stuff like that because it's like there are some times where I just don't want to do it and I'll watch Navy SEAL motivation videos and you'll hear from like either retired or active duty Navy SEALs and these guys say they earlier tried it every day they're trying it is like that logo you get your your CCIE and I kind of relate that to what I do I want to earn my CCIE every day now you may not always have to do that because a lot of times when you're working in environments the CCIE test is way more complicated than any environment that I've ever touched because of what you've got going on and most environments are pretty easy to work with and if you can say that you know I work with CCNA and CCNP is a lot and I find myself like having to to coach them and you know kind of like okay that's not working what else does that lead to and you know I do it in a kind of a nurturing manner internal like mentor like type of situation because I never ever ever ever want to tell somebody you don't know what you're doing because no one ever told me that everybody was very positive you're going to be very encouraging you know I'm that's one thing I can't stand up on negative people as holding you --fill you learn very quickly about me you're negative I won't have anything to do with I can't stand negative people when I run into negative people I shut them out of my life as quickly as I came into it the reason for that is because I have too much going on in my day-to-day life with my camp my family my job my career my career what I do for a living you know my interest to be to have anybody take any amount of time away from what I want to be doing and dealing with what I don't want to be dealing with so what that basically boils down to is real simple I was in a study group and a study group had I think two CCA's when I joined it right now and there was I think like nine people were up to 60 people and seven of those ones let me count that up it's me myself there's seven CC II's in a group of 16 with Jason JP Carlton for more going in the next month or two the point is you surround yourself with people with similar interests you know it's pretty common if you're you know I'm a Green Bay Packer fan I'm a huge Green Bay Packer fan when I was actually in Raleigh this past Sunday they were playing the San Diego Chargers in Lambeau and it was so nice to not have to focus on the test and be able to watch a football game I hadn't watched a football game all season or the previous season really I mean I thought parts of bits and pieces you come downstairs for a break that was like whoa this is what it's like to actually have fun he's just always so constantly drilling the exam you get so involved in it you get you know it's like I passed that's like the big thing you know but you get so involved in someone gross than what you're doing that you don't know what to do outside of what you're you know outside of your own world I was out to dinner tonight with my my family my wife my kids and my in-laws they took me out for dinner and as a congratulatory dinner it was really cool was nice to be able to just chill and talk and my mother-in-law who thinks quite highly of me and I do appreciate that you know that she thinks so highly of me she actually told the waiter and the manager of the restaurant there were she was celebrating her son-in-law CCIE she says CCIE you know instead of I rattle it off a little faster neither of them had a clue what that was and so it's like they looked at me I said basically it was like PhD in networking it's better where I work in ID you know it's routing switching that type of stuff and she's like he's like the master a trout switch and and some number routes which CCIE so that was cool I appreciated that you know at work my boss was talking me up on conference calls and sales calls and with customers of like that and my project manager you know on the phone with customers it's like oh wait we got to get Robert CCIE you know it's cool for you know it's cool to hear it it still hasn't sunk in yet you know I say well you're a CCIE now I am a CCA it still has a like hit me yet that I have done I'm a CCIE and I'm not sure if ever will but you know it's at the end of the day it's just a certification it really hasn't changed who I am because here I am I'm taking time out of my day to record a video for you guys because to me did this I said I couldn't wait to get home because I wanted to record a video to let everybody know what's going on so I wanted to record and I usually shoot for half an hour so if you guys have any questions comments whatever put them in the con the comments below I definitely appreciate everybody that it's on the channel that's why I keep doing these videos I want to keep doing this stuff and if you guys have I do appreciate course ideas I've already started recording some more stuff and I'm in the process of getting some other stuff in play you know if you guys have any course ideas again please let me know if you have any questions you want to know anything is more specific leave a comment and you know drop your email you know if your what have you trying to think here what else if you follow me on LinkedIn or Facebook you know send me a message through LinkedIn Facebook I'll be happy to become friends with you you know to me the more the merrier and the more the better so again it's one of those it's big deal to me I take you all you guys and gals sometimes it is a few ladies that surprise subscribe to me you're all my extended family that's the way I look at it you know and that's that's you know that that's me being real so again I'm extremely happy to finally be over that and I would you know I felt like you guys deserved a quick video I didn't have time to do it before that so again I hope this has been informative for you and I to thank you for viewing

Channel: Rob Riker's Tech Channel

Views: 34,670

Rating: 4.8930483 out of 5

Keywords: CCIE, Cisco

Id: TSemYm7Gg-g

Length: 30min 3sec (1803 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2015