Bridging the gap between CCIE RS and SP

Had a good week, managed 70 hours lab time. This was used to work through the last of the IPX vol 1 labs, IPX vol 3 lab 1 – 4 and INE vol 2 labs 1 and 2. I will finish off INE vol 2 lab 2 tomorrow morning. I found a liking in the IPX labs, but there is just something different about the INE labs. The INE labs are giving me flash backs of RS. One thing for sure is that it is taking longer to do the INE labs. There could be a few reasons, but one that stands out for me is the amount of configuration on these first two labs are tedious. Another thing that I noticed while doing the IPX vol 3 labs is that I hardly used the diagrams. With INE you constantly have to keep an eye on the diagram. This is mostly due to wording of the questions, this gives it that Cisco lab feel to it. The first two INE labs are tough but all the questions get answered, they are not too hard, this ensures that the new knowledge keeps flowing in, bit by bit. I could configure labs for a living, oh wait I do. Seriously though, real world scenarios are not 1% as exciting and challenging as the labs.

Study schedule: While I lost quite a bit of time last month, I did manage to gain this week, I am still about 30 behind, but should manage to catch that up later. That is, if all goes well. Someone mentioned that the open ended questions were added to another track, I have not researched this but I think the three tracks are RS, Sec and Voice now, so I guess OEQ on SP is imminent, therefore more pressure to get the practical out the way to be able to review theory before the lab. In fact, I have no idea what the OEQ are like or what to expect, so speculating about a study approach for them is pointless. I will have to read up a bit more, perhaps Cisco will have samples to get an idea.