Back from Narbik’s Bootcamp in Pasadena
August 16, 2008 by CCIETalk
Filed under Bootcamp, Lab Equiment
These last 2 weeks were insane. I had to finish Multicast, QoS, Security labs from Narbik’s WBs and then fly out Pasadena for the bootcamp. I think I have a list of to-do’s esp when it comes to things like IPv6, QoS, Security and Multicast. You gotta love the way Narbik teaches, no powerpoint no computer what so ever. It’s him, 3 different colored whiteboard pens and a white board!
Narbik’s Bootcamp - Day 5 (QoS etc)
We started the day with 3550/60 per-port per-vlan QoS and then moved on to mls qos. Narbik talked about Policers, IP Prec, DSCP values and went in detail to show us how IP Prec and DSCP values are derived. He went over Priority Queueing, Custom Queueing and explained the issues with those. According to him, the problem with PQ was that if you had more traffic in the queue higher than yours, then your queue will always starve. Read more
Narbik’s Bootcamp - Day 4 (RIPv2 & Multicast)
Narbik started the day with a brief but detailed lecture on RIPv2. If you are like me then you were probably thinking oh RIP is so easy, why even bother? Well there were a few things that I never studied before so this was a great opportunity for me to pick those up. As with BGP, he started RIPv2 by teaching us ways to optimize RIP and how RIP works. Narbik thinks that if we know how a protocol works, then we won’t have any problems making it work. We covered RIP filtering and he also taught us how to get the even and odd subnets by using a simple multiplication method. Read more
Narbik’s Bootcamp - Day 3 (BGP)
What a day it was today! This was like the longest BGP lecture of my life. He has changed his method from last classes and started off with teaching us how to optimize BGP. He thinks that if we know how BGP works then it won’t be hard to work with BGP. After the lecture, we have about 260 pages of labs! Talk about stress and hard work. Narbik expects each one of us to get 100% on FR, Switching, IGP and BGP. I think he covered each subtopic under BGP and my head is still hurting with all this. But as soon as I started doing labs, everything started making sense. One of the many things I like about Narbik’s labs is that they are VERY simple. He doesn’t want us to worry too much about topology but wants all our attention on the actual technology. That’s why most of his scenarios are around 3-4 routers with easy to follow IP addressing scheme so students don’t get lost trying to figure out the topology. So in BGP he covered almost everything under the sun including peer groups, templates, route dampening, ORF, synchronization, you name it.
Narbik’s Bootcamp - Day 2
I was not able to finish all the Frame-relay labs last night so I am already behind. I think I will dedicate my Saturday & Sunday for all the leftovers. Today we covered OSPF and EIGRP with 40% lecture and 60% hands-on labs. Narbik started off with OSPF lecture and covered every single thing about OSPF you ever wanted to know. As always the starting point was that OSPF is a linkstate protocol and I thought to myself “Damn I already know that, is that why I am here?” but by the time he was done - I was like WOW! I didn’t know all this about OSPF. So we had the lecture from 9am - 3pm with a lunch break in between. At 3pm we started cranking the OSPF labs until 7pm. I was not able to finish all the labs so got some more leftovers for the weekend. I have tons of notes from the lecture that I will try to post here later on.
Narbik’s Bootcamp - Day 1
June 23, 2008 by CCIETalk
Filed under Bootcamp, Bridging & Switching, Frame Relay
Finally, the day I have been waiting for has arrived. Its 830am and I am sitting here in the class room. Comfort Inn had a nice Breakfast so I am ready to roll. We have 8 people in the class with different levels of experience. One of the guys has attempted the R&S lab 4 times already. Another guy was in the class with Ethan and Keith so we started talking about the whole Network World fiasco. Narbik looks like a teacher, and I mean Old School teacher! No projector, no power point, no computer screen - Just him and white board and he can spit commands out like a router. Guy knows every single option from the back of his head.
CCIETalk.com - Live from Pasadena, CA
What a day! First I missed my flight in the morning but luckily for me Atlanta is a Delta hub so every hour there is a flight to LA. Well, my first flight was at 730am but I was not able to check my baggage in so they offered me the next flight which was at 843am. I was waiting at the gate when they annouced that the flight will be delayed until 920am. I thought, I hope this is not one of those days but sat there in hope. Finally we started boarding around 930am and left Atlanta around 1044am. Plane touched down in California @ noon local timeAfter getting my bags from the baggage claim, I came out to the Rideshare stand. If you are coming to Pasadena for training, the best thing to do is book your one way shuttle at SuperShuttle. For $30 they dropped me off at the Comfort Inn Pasadena.
Ready to travel to Pasadena, CA for Narbik’s Bootcamp
Well it’s saturday June 21st 2008 and I am all packed up ready to go. My flight is tomorrow 730am and should arrive in LA around 9am PST. Already booked my Shuttle to Comfort Inn and that was roughly $30 including tip. I don’t think I will have time for sightseeing since the schedule is so hectic. I would rather learn everything possible from Narbik during the 6 days. From what I have heard from other folks who have been to his class, they all recommend that I pay attention during the class because even though his style is easy, if you are left behind you will have hard time catching up. I don’t want to be that guy 
Signed up for Narbik’s CCIE Lab Bootcamp (June 23rd - June 27th 2008)
So after searching all over the web for various CCIE bootcamps, I signed up for Narbik’s CCIE Bootcamp in Pasadena, CA. Make no mistake that cost was a big factor in my decision even though I have to fly there and stay at a hotel. But the reviews I read about this guy are just amazing. I hope I would be gaining tons of knowledge from this week long camp.
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