CCIE Training

That is a very true saying – in fact one that we believe strongly in here at INE. However we also understand just how expensive it can be to undertake studying for any CCIE Lab exam. That is why, whenever we can, we try to reduce the load on you – the students – to bear this cost. Take for instance our CCIE RS Volume II for Dynamips – we do all we can to provide you the best available instruction while trying to reduce, or sometimes even be able to eliminate the hardware costs associated with studying.

So now we have taken to task trying to do the same for our CCIE Voice track products. We can’t quite virtualize all of the routers used as voice gateways (pesky DSP’s and TDM trunk cards that dynamips won’t ever be able to support since we actually need hardware for the drivers to be able to trigger the signaling), but we thought we would try to reduce the hardware cost for you, the student, in any way we can with the necessary hardware. Anyone having decided to study for the CCIE Voice lab exam has no doubt realized that even if you decide not to take on the enormous cost of building your own rack to practice with, and instead, to rent rack time from any vendor on the market, you still must purchase your own hardware 7961 IP Phones along with some sort of a hardware VPN solution (such as an ASA 5505 or 851 ISR router) at a minimum in order to be able to practice for all of the most important features tested in the lab. This is quite simply due to the fact that the much older 7960’s and all current SCCP Software Client phones (including Cisco CIPC, IPBlue VT-GO*, etc) don’t support any of the newer features – those that are most critical to studying for the latest lab exam. Even if you can manage to find refurbished 7961 IP Phones from eBay for roughly $150/phone and $500/ASA5505 – you still have to invest over $1,000USD just in hardware before you are ready to rent the rack! Seeing as how the 7961 phones are already a generation behind the current ones, and the possibility that when you pass your lab 6-12 months from now that they will likely be 2 generations old and harder to sell for the same price you paid for them – it becomes a very expensive venture to undertake!

To that end, we have made the decision to equip each of our voice racks with three 7961 phones (one at each “site” within the rack topology). Now the only way adding these phones to our racks makes any sense for our students is if we give them some way of controlling them. So we decided to form an exclusive partnership with the most premier remote phone control software company on the market – VoIP Integration. They recently upgraded their very popular Remote Phone software and have added a bunch of features, not to mention made the screen refresh rate a lot faster. Anyway – onto the good stuff. If you are a current (or future) Voice customer of INE, our strategic partnership with them will allow you to purchase their normally $199 Remote Phone software for a significantly reduced cost. One license will allow you to run multiple instances of the software in order to allow you to control all of the phones connected to your rack from a single PC.

If you have the ability to procure these hardware 7961 phones, they are still a great study option, and we still of course still support both IPSec EzVPN in Network Extension Mode and SSL VPN for everyone of our 14 Voice racks, just as we have done for well over a year now. And of course every live Voice course that we teach uses six hardware 7961 IP Phones – that won’t change.

Students outside the US who have experienced higher latency and trouble getting their remote hardware phones to stay registered to CUCM or CUCME may also wish to consider this option and ultimately find this to be a very acceptable alternative.

One final reason that drove us to form this partnership and invest in phones for our racks was that we’ve been asked by so many of our Voice students to provide an option for them to study with 7961 phones as they travel from site to site, and don’t wish to, or in many cases simply cannot, take their hardware phones with them. This gives them the inexpensive option to study using either our phones directly connected to our racks or else their own phones at their main study location connected to our racks via VPN, remotely controlled with this software.

Either way you choose, you now have an equally suitable option for studying for your Voice lab. The only unfortunate part about this is that you know have less of a reason not to be studying for your exam.

Only thing you have to do to qualify for this deeply-discounted version of VoIP Integration’s Remote Phone software is to have 1) purchased any one of INE’s Voice Products, and 2) send me an email expressing your wish to purchase a copy of their discounted software. VoIP Integration will then in turn send you an email to purchase the software at the discounted rate.

Finally – stay tuned for a new announcement approximately one week from now on a brand new Voice product that I personally am very excited to deliver! Something that I have been wanting to do now for a very long time, and something that so far, every live classroom student that I’ve run the concept by, has emphatically communicated back to me how deeply needed this type of instruction is in the Cisco UC marketplace, well beyond the help for the CCIE exam that it will provide. I wish I could give you more info right now – but my flight is landing for my next week’s training class, and I am being told to put my laptop away. So watch this blog early next Friday for the announcement of when this product will (so very soon) launch!

In the (modified) words of Napolean Dynamite:

I hope all of your wildest (studying) dreams come true,

Mark Snow

*IPBlue VT-GO can register to CUCM as a 7961/62 phone, however it does not actually act like one. Many of the most important features tested in the lab, specific to the 7961, don’t work with the IPBlue soft-client – such as Globalization and Mapping Globalized to Localized, G.722 codec negotiation, and many of the softkeys needed.

Not many people take a long exam, so preparations might be hard to think of other than studying. Here are some basics for people getting ready to take a long exam that covers preparations that you might have overlooked.

When taking special exams for certifications, some of them can take over eight hours and it is a good idea to be prepared for such a long exam. Each exam that takes this much time will have different rules for breaks, so this article will simply cover the basics of what is to be expected, and how to handle things in case you don’t get a long break during the exam.

Most long exams will work one of two ways. They can have separate sections, such as a written exam and a hands on exam, and you can take a break in between the sections to get food and take time to use the bathroom if need be. Other exams don’t allow for these breaks because they have to be careful about people studying for the exam during the break. It will be a good idea for you to learn what the policy is for the exam you are taking.

Exams that let you take breaks are ideal because it puts less stress on you. You will need to know if food will be provided, which is the case for many long exams, or if you will have to bring your own meal. Some places will give you the option of bringing a meal even if food is provided, while other will require that you eat what they serve. These exams are so strict because they don’t want anyone bringing in outside materials that could have studying tools in them. Bathroom breaks may be given at designated times, probably during the time between each section.

An exam that doesn’t give breaks will be a bit more complicated and require more preparation on your part. The morning of the exam, you will want to make sure you eat a big breakfast at least one hour before the test. Also make sure you limit how much you drink during that same hour because you don’t know when you’ll be able to get a bathroom break. You want to eat and drink early before the test so that you have time to use the bathroom before you go to the exam. You may be able to pack some snacks as well for during the exam, but again you will need to check on the policies for that specific test.

Besides prepping for being confined in a room for eight hours, you also need to be ready for the test itself. You should have already been studying for the exam, but have you been preparing for sitting that long? If you can, take a practice exam so you get a feel for the long hours. When you go to the test, make sure you take extra pens or pencils so that if one breaks or stops working you’ll be able to continue with the test. Having both types of utensils will let you be prepared if they require one or the other for taking the test. You may also want to bring other supplies such as a ruler and a pencil sharpener, or extra lead if you use mechanical pencils. By doing all of this you should be ready for a very long exam.

This gradedlabs tech bit demonstrates how to schedule and unscheduled a CCIE Security rack rental from the Internetwork Expert Members Site.

This gradedlabs tech bit demonstrates how to schedule and unscheduled a ccie service provider rack rental from the Internetwork Expert Members Site.