Hours studied: 12

This was a tough week due to holidays and motivation, but took the lack of motivation to look around for some different study material and get back to some of the basics. Even though I didn’t lab as much as I would have liked/wanted to, I spent a lot of time typing which I think will help me out from a typing speed and accuracy perspective

Sunday

Took the day off to get some things done around the house

Monday

Worked on some pointed labs and typed up some notes

Tuesday

Worked on some pointed labs, typed up notes. I also listened to some ExtremeIE videos on BGP

Wednesday

Typed up notes and worked on some pointed labs

Thursday

Did some flashcards before heading out for Thanksgiving. Wasn’t able to get to much else study wise

Friday

Typed up more of my notes after getting home.

Saturday

Labbed CA04. This lab was fairly straight forward. L2 was easy to get through. The OSPF, EIGRP and RIP sections were also fairly simple to understand with only some minor tuning. Redistribution worked on my first attempt using tagging and also achieved the restrictions set from OSPF.

BGP was setup without any issues, however I applied things with a route-map and prefix-lists instead of directly on network statements. The one thing I need to understand better still is a table-map which came up from the QOS section.

I did not get to the IPv6 or multicast sections, but reading through them I believe I can do this all in my practice labs throughout the week.

QOS and NAT were setup without an issue, but I would still like to practice NAT further. I also found a typo in the lab, but this didn’t slow anything down. I do need to practice the system administration things of CPU monitoring

Even though I posted this early, I’ll also continue typing up notes tonight

Sunday

I started off with working on TS1 on Cisco360. I struggled with understanding the ask in a lot of the questions. There was a lot of information given but none of it was really relevant. I started off with TS for the day as I believe it’ll help me with getting better at verification and also more experience since it’s not a part of my daily work. I took 3 hours for getting through the lab as I didn’t want to pressure myself with speed yet.

After lunch I finished up CA01. The EIGRP section still tripped me up with things that I know I need to work on further. The redistribution was easy since there were no ways to create a loop. BGP was easy to setup, but showed that I need to research the backdoor feature in some more detail. The IPv6 section tripped me up due to subnetting. If anyone knows a good tutorial and some practice tests, drop a comment below. QOS was simple since it was a reproduce the output. Systems administration was also easy being an HSRP setup and archive config. I ran out of time for the multicast section, but reading through the tasks it was a basic setup.

Monday

I had a lot of road time which translated into a lot of audio time. Finished the INE and started on XtremeIE.

Tuesday

I wanted to study… However server and connectivity issues had other plans for me

Wednesday

I had some train travel and was able to Lab some IPv6 until my laptop died. Power outlet kept going in and out.

Thursday

Some videos on the train

Friday

Took the night off due to exhaustion

Saturday

Worked on TS02 and CA02. The troubleshooting was ok. I feel like the tasks are not spelled out in what they are looking for clearly. However I was able to get through it. For the configuration I got through L2, DMVPN and some routing before I lost all energy to move forward

I’m going to start going back to the gym to see if I can work on getting my energy levels back up and watch videos while running.

This was a rough 2 weeks on getting time to study between work and family obligations. My schedule has been crazy but I think I can wrap some sanity around it just to have the holidays throw it back off

Sunday

Bought a new car for the growing family. Needed this to be done before baby number 2 arrives in December. This was very time consuming and left me a bit brain dead (also brain dead from yesterday).

I reviewed some notes and flashcards to at least get something done

Monday and Tuesday

I was unable to get to study these days

Wednesday

Worked on some small ATC labs and also consolidated my list of focus areas as I had them written is about 5 different places

Thursday – Sunday

I was on Dad duty

Monday

Worked on CA01. Tried doing everything in notepad so I can stop relying on ? And make sure I am typing correctly for when I copy and paste it in. Also slowed down to take time with verification and checking my work against the solution guide

Tuesday

Was in all day training and mostly brain dead afterwards.

Wednesday

Worked on a small ATC IPv6 traffic filtering lab

Thursday

I started with listening to some more of the INE videos for security.

For labbing I went back into CA01 and worked on the routing portion. The OSPF and RIP sections were easy. The EIGRP section was more involved and I did not finish it. It has been a long week and my brain was tired, so I figured I would give it a fresh look on Friday to be able to fully understand what is being asked.

Friday

Listened to some more INE videos.

Saturday

Wasn’t able to lab due. Sunday is a full lab day.