How to Become a CCIE Wireless

By Saria

I began the wireless CCIE journey in July of 2012. Similar to the different CCIE track, the most important task was planning the route. My experience was an added benefit of having to go through the same process in 2008 when I passed my CCIE R&S test and knew what it looked like. It's not about you and your sacrifices and the contributions of your family members, acquaintances and everyone who is around you. First of all, I obtained consent of my wife to devote an additional 12 months to the wireless journey.It was not an easy undertaking because we're on our own with two children, and needed to find alternative ways to support my entire family at this period. My mother-inlaw and father-inlaw agreed to come visit us and stay for six months at a time.

When the environment is set I need to devise an effective study strategy. This was another important part of the journey. When you study, you must be able to keep track of your progress and ensure you build up the confidence to keep going. My plan was to do four hours of studying during the week and 12 hours of study on weekends. Below is an example of my time tracker using Excel. I wanted to make sure there aren't too that there were too many empty cells (actual hours are not as scheduled hours)

Your skills in managing time are crucial for success in this endeavor. You must also establish your goals using a timeline that is compared to the other. Personally, I would like to complete this by the year 2013 and I've already set up 3 attempts if required (you must be realistic about your goals and ).

The beginning was the tough portion for me. Initially , I thought that doing small-scale labs and getting prepared for the lab test could help me pass an exam in writing. It was extremely difficult to stay focused on that level and I eventually decided to give up the idea. Then I honed in on the exam on writing and devised an idea of how to get through the exam. In wireless, I did not have any official certification like CCNA Wireless, CCNP Wireless and I was determined to get an CCIE without these. I bought the below-mentioned documents for the CCIE Wireless written test and went through the exam.

1. CCNA Wireless (640-722 IUWNE) Quick Reference - by Jerome Henry

2. CCNP-Wirless (642-732 CUWSS) Quick Reference - by Jerome Henry

3. CCNP-Wirless (642-737 IAUWS) Quick Reference - by Jerome Henry

4. CCNP-Wirless (642-747 IUWMS) Quick Reference - by Jerome Henry

5. CCNP-Wirless (642-742 IUWVN) Quick Reference - by Jerome Henry

6. CCIE-Wireless Exam (350-050) Quick Reference - By Roger Nobel, Federico Ziliotto, Federico Lovison, Fabian Riesen, Erik Vangrunderbeek

Written exams are mostly about the theoretical aspects and you're well prepared to take the test as long as you keep up-to-date with the blueprint subjects. I took my wireless exam on August 30, 2012 and passed it the first time. I began my blog (www.mrncciew.com) to save my notes and stay in touch with others with a similar interest. This was a huge plus for my success, and it also helped me keep my passion and keep it in check all the way through my adventure.

After that, I've scheduled my lab test for the 7th of May, 2013. It is a crucial thing to be aware of in your journey. Once you set the date for your lab, you shouldn't have to change your schedule too much. I scheduled it in May in order to give me 6 months for the 2nd and 3rd attempts in 2013. The availability to take this CCIE Wireless lab exam at Cisco's Sydney was a most important factor for me. I was keen to take the test in the same time zone that I was studying in. There are times when little details become crucial to consider. It can be difficult to switch to a totally entirely different clock for the test when your body clock is operating in another timezone.

The first challenge was finding excellent study material to prepare for the exam. This was the time when CCIE wireless blueprint was updated up to 2.0 (done in November 2011) and only two vendors (IPexpert and Fastlane)have updated their entire material. I bought Fastlane CCIEW workbook & IPexpert Wireless Self Study Bundle because there were not a lot of choices (only Volume 1 had been prepared for v2.0 at that point and it took almost eight months to get their racks with remotes for volume 2.). This meant I needed to set up my own lab in order to conduct my work and it was another major success of my trip. I was fortunate enough to get a few items that I could borrow from my business in order to refresh in our wireless environments. My home lab, with 2x4402,1x2106, and 2x3750, 2x2960and 1x3725 (CME) 1x1841 (WAN) and the ESX for AD, ACS, WCS, AD, DHCP (Dell Optiplex 745)

You need to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, and then devote time to studying. For me "L2/L3 network infrastructure" & "Infrastructure Application Services" were two of my top subjects. "Autonomous deployment" & "Unified deployment-specific to security of networks) are my weak spots. "WCS" & "WLAN services" are good, however they need to be improved.

I struggled to get the hang of these issues since I had little experience with autonomous deployments. There aren't many excellent documents on these deployments.So I spent many hours to gain basic knowledge while creating basic lab configurations for every type of scenario (like Bridge, Repeater, WGB, etc.). Then I studied security and advanced configuration using that base understanding.

Another challenging issue was wireless QoS. I spent a lot of time testing it using sniffers, and then finally getting an understanding of the way it operates in wireless environments. This is crucial since QoS plays an important role in the wireless lab test. The same is true for Multicast too.

ACS was a different topic with a similar theme. I've never been working with it on a regular basis, so I had to study the basics. A good friend who was a CCIE-Security has helped me greatly to understand the basics of ACS and how to configure it. Spend 2 hours each weekend with the person (via telephone and remotely sharing) to get to know this subject.

I read through all the Configuration Examples and Technotes that are related to the blueprints for the lab exam topics. I kept all of them in one excel sheet so that I could quickly refer to them whenever I needed to. Below is a section of the excel sheet in relation to 5508 similar examples of config. Here is the entire excel sheet to help you with any needs. CCIE-W-TechNote1.0

There was a bootcamp in Australia in February 2013 for CCIE wireless in February 2013. I was optimistic that we could take lessons from Jerome Henry who was well known as the No. 1 CCIE wireless instructor around the globe as it was run by a Fastlane associated company. However, by the time the event ended, he had left Fastlane and joined Cisco which is why we didn't get any good results from the bootcamp. We were handed a Fastlane workbook once more and were left to work on it.I was disappointed and had to fight the company to obtain more rack hours because of the low standard of their bootcamp.

I took a break of 3 weeks from work to prepare for my first attempt on the 7th of May. I spent the majority of that time working on IPexpert rental racks to conduct something like full-scale labs. It was difficult to utilize their racks in a productive manner since the racks weren't ready for Volume 2. ( five fake labs). I was not 100% sure regarding ACS & Autonomous related advanced issues, but I did have enough confidence to give it an attempt.

I visited Sydney on May 6th from Melbourne. The wireless lab takes place every week on Tuesdays in the Sydney lab. I was the sole candidate that day (normally 4 to 5 people are on other tracks throughout the day) . I felt at ease in the lab. After the initial presentation by the proctor, I began my lab at around 8:15AM. While I had a goal to read the paper and complete the initial work of planning within 30-45 minutes, it took nearly 1 hour and 15 minutes after I completed the job. After that, I started preliminary configuration verification and troubleshooting to make sure that basic connectivity was working. There were some questions on Autonomous and ACS related to that I was unable to know the answer to, but for ACS I found a workaround and was able to pass without scoring any points. Once I was in the Unified deployment section, I encountered the most difficult task during my test. WLC's GUI was extremely slow and I never felt at ease with it. I tried using WCS for a specific QoS template configuration and encountered several issues. Then I tried certain WLAN configurations using WLC GUI in one of the controllers, and took an archive of it using WCS. Then , try to derive from CLI instructions to make it work to other controllers. It was a very quick time and I knew that I wasn't going to be able to finish this task. In the last couple of hours, take the time to read the questions a few times that I don't know the answers to be better prepared for the next time.

At 4:45pm, I completed my lab exam and immediately after, I took a taxi to Airport. As I arrived home at around 10:30 pm I found an email in my inbox, which I was not going to read. It was the expected Unified deployment section. I've scored low and then the Autonomous section. Although I thought I scored good in L2/L3, I didn't get 100 percent. In the WCS section, I scored 100%, and I was extremely happy with that.

Without thinking, I decided to go ahead and book my second time on August 20th. I was required to wait three months since there were no lab dates open for wireless in Sydney with wireless. After that, I re-evaluated what went wrong with my first attempt. Below are the flaws I discovered.

1. Slow approach (planned for 30 minutes but took 1 hour and 15 minutes )

2. Rely heavily upon GUI & GUI was very slow (couldn't complete task in time, without understanding CLI, and was stuck on certain tasks)

3. I didn't master ACS 5.2 configurations

4. I didn't realize Autonomous had advanced configuration

5. The length of the questions that were asked was way far too lengthy...

6. A lack of practice and feeling my speed was way too slow.

Between the first and the second one, I took my time attempting to correct my flaws. The most important thing was that I didn't want to risk becoming uncomfortable with the slow GUI and relying on it to manage my configuration. Therefore, I decided to study the CLI methods of working. Initially, I started with WLAN configuration via CLI Then I moved to Mobility, RRM Video Stream, 802.11 band-specific configs, SNMP, Syslog, RADIUS and more. After doing this several times, I was convinced it was easy, as you are familiar with the commands, it takes only a few minutes to configure it across multiple controllers (simple copy and paste exercises). ).

I revisited the Autonomous Config Guide, Config examples & Technotes. Additionally, I looked at ACS configurations to determine what I could do to accomplish similar tasks in various ways. Also, I worked working with IPexpert remote racks. By this point, their racks were set to run its mock labs. When I completed a couple of 8 hours of labs, it was clear my improvement. Then , I tried to simulate some exam scenarios and was sure that I would be able to perform that again. This time, I had a clear outline of the sequence of jobs I was going to do. The first time, I was going to the flow of questions rather than my own approach to tackling the issue.

We went back for the test on the 20th of August. There were three additional hopefuls (for Voice, SP & RS) to take their test. Exam began at 8:25AM and I began reading. In the first 30 min, I created the time/point tracker table myself along with a device connectivity table and a WLAN table. The content was similar to my previous time and I did not need to go through word-by-word to understand what they were looking for. I then began preparing my notepad using CLI commands to accomplish every task. I also included verification CLI commands too. At this point, all the candidates began hitting their keys boards and caused the environment to become noisy. I was nervous however I was aware that I had practiced this technique before and needed to stay at ease and execute my strategy. It took me approximately 45 minutes to finish my notepad, which means 1 hour and 15 minutes went by without completing any configuration task . However, I felt very secure this time because I had the answers within my notepad.

I began to do things in the sequential order. Each time I completed a configuration task , I checked it using CLI. I had all the information in my notepad. It was simply a matter of "Copy & Paste". When lunch was over, I was somewhere between steps 9-10. I was extremely confident, as I had checked a couple of WiFis before lunch and all was working. I could tell that everything was running according to my schedule this time around and I wasn't concerned in any way.

1. Examine NTP and the reachability of NTP server on all switches and WLC. If it doesn't work, fix those problems

2. Configure the Mobility groups.

3. Set up the RRM requirement

4. Each controller must register all LAPs. controller

5. Configure AP modes according to the request (H-REAP and OAP )

6. Configure RADIUS in WLCs

7. Configure the ACS rules and policies

8. Configure SNMP, and then add the controller to WLC

9. Configure WLANs

10. Check the connectivity using Anyconnect.

11. Configure Autonomous AP tasks

12. Add MSE & Maps

13. Configure QoS

14. Verify, Verify & Verify

After lunch, within 2 hours I completed my exam completely. I took the last two hours looking through the GUI of every controller and checking if I made any configuration mistakes. This is a different method to find your errors(by conducting it in CLI and then testing it with another method using GUI) This is extremely important for any CCIE track. You have to allow at least two hours to complete the final verification. If you can complete this amount of time, you're quite close to clearing this test. There were a few uncertain questions, but when I added my scores, I scored approximately 85 marks, which is without excluding these. I was extremely sure that I did my best and would be able to get through it. In CCIE the exam, it's way too for you to be celebrating until you receive the acknowledgment of Cisco.

I thought I'd have my results before I went home the same way as I did previously. The second time I was unable to wait to receive this email. I went through my email several times prior to boarding the plane to Melbourne and found there were no emails.I went home at 10:30pm and went back to my email and nothing was found. I didn't get a good night's sleep and woke around 5:15AM and checked my email and found no messages from Cisco. After I got to work, I checked my email again. There was no message from Cisco and then I went to my spam folder, and then found the email. It was sent around 8:00AM (15 hours from my test). The email was opened with a fright and I realized that I am now an CCIE Wireless

In conclusion , here's my tips for anyone willing to embark on this adventure.

1. Write your exam as early as possible and concentrate on it in the beginning.

2. Take your lab test immediately following your successful completion of the written test, and make sure you have enough time to prepare for the lab test.

3. If you can, maintain a blog it will help you connect with others in the world who share a similar passion and help you stay focused on your goals.

4. Create your own home lab and begin to practice the technology area (not fully scaled labs)

5. Explore Config Examples and Technologies in relation to blueprint topics/products of the CCIE wireless test.

6. If you are able to purchase training materials, go to an authorized supplier of your choice and try it out.

7. At the end of your training, complete 8-hour laboratory sessions (by employing remote racks) and come up with your own plan of how you will overcome it.

8. Discover different methods to accomplish the same task and select a less risky alternative that's more appropriate for you. You can practice this many times.

9. Do the lab test. Try to follow your plan. If you fail to succeed , review your plan and return within a couple of months.

10. until you are below step 9. You'll get it in a day

Orignal Content Source: https://medium.com/@passyourcert24/how-to-become-a-ccie-wireless-302b0955dc90