CCIE Wireless Preparation Tips

Since the introduction of the CCIE Wireless certification in 2009, there has been a path
to be recognized as a Wireless Expert. The journey to become a CCIE Wireless will not
be one of the easiest or shortest activities you will ever venture into. However, from the
defining moment that you make that decision, you will also find many rewards along the
way; from increasing your knowledge and technical ability across a variety of
technologies, to gaining peer recognition as a wireless expert once you obtain those
sought after CCIE digits.

To become a CCIE Wireless, you must pass both a written qualification exam and a
hands-on lab exam which, since the introduction of version 3 in late 2015, it now also
includes a one hour diagnostic module.

With the ever-growing proliferation of the Internet and mass information sharing across
shared communities, there should be a lot of preparation material available. However, as
wireless is a relatively new track in comparison to other CCIE exams, you might feel that
there is not as much material available as for other tracks. In any case, try to be
selective and choose preparation materials that offer hands-on approach using
configuration & troubleshooting skills by taking a pragmatic approach.

Assessing Strengths & Weaknesses

There is no single universal formula or recipe for successfully passing your CCIE, as
each candidate has their own strengths and weaknesses. However, most candidates
should benefit from the below points:

Use the blueprint to determine your conceptual, theoretical and practical

experience and establish a skill-matrix and identify your knowledge-level by
rating yourself on each topic; on a scale of 1-to-5 (1 being poor, 5 being
Excellent).
Evaluate your hands-on experience in each technology and topic areas listed on
the blueprint for the lab exam.
For areas of strength, practice for speed and perfection.
For weaker areas, boost your knowledge level by following trainings, selected
reading material, online resources, and lots of hands-on practice (for the lab).
If this is your first CCIE, you might find Your CCIE Lab Success Strategy The
Non-Technical Guide Book a useful resource.

Using your skill-matrix established above; draw your own unique study plan and
customize it to reflect your own personal technological strengths and weaknesses. A
good, individualized study plan is the key to your success!

Please visit the Cisco Learning Network website to check out the latest available
blueprints. Some must-read information can be found at:

CCIE Wireless Written Exam Blueprint:

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/ccie_wireless/written-exam-
v3/exam-topics
CCIE Wireless Lab Exam Blueprint:
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/ccie_wireless/lab-exam-
v3/exam-topics

CCIE Wireless Lab Equipment and Software List:

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-26437

My approach to prepare the lab exam is to first break down the lab blueprint into
digestible pieces. Once I have the blueprint separated into manageable chunks, I focus
on each technology area individually until I feel I have mastered the concepts for that
particular technology. Once complete, I start doing practice labs that encompass all of the
technology areas into one.

(Matt Swartz, Wireless SME)

Training
An important note to keep in mind is that training is not a prerequisite or formal
requirement to achieve your CCIE certification. However, Cisco recommends you to
follow training courses and, in that respect, a good starting point might be the CCNP
Wireless Program.

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/ccnp_wireless

Note, that although Routing & Switching is mostly pre-configured in the CCIE Wireless
Lab exam, candidates need to have knowledge of these in order to understand,
troubleshoot and fix any underlying problems, as well as to implement basic routing and
switching (including basic IPv6 knowledge!). Therefore, it is highly recommended that
you also spend some time looking at fundamental Routing & Switching training offerings,
if needed.

In terms of equipment, we strived to include equipment that would generally be seen in

most enterprise wireless networks today. There was a significant focus on creating a lab
exam that exemplifies common design principles as well as best practices gained from
the field. Although the exam focuses on implementing and troubleshooting Wireless
technologies, expect to see CCNP level routing and switching concepts. Within the design
team we agreed that this was a must, given the high amount of Wireless issues in the
field that ultimately were due to a basic underlying routing or switching issue. Candidates
will not be expected to know complex nuances of any particular protocol, but should be
proficient in the core concepts of predominant IGPs.

(Matt Swartz, Wireless SME)

CCIE Wireless Bootcamps
Bootcamps can be another source of confusion for candidates preparing for CCIE
certification. There are many 3rd party vendors offering CCIE bootcamps and preparation
workshops. Please note that these are not Cisco authorized curriculum and, the CCIE
team does not endorse them officially. However, they can be used at the candidate
discretion to prepare for their exam.
Bootcamps might provide mock scenarios which, help candidates gauge their readiness,
and provide the candidates with some essential tips-and-tricks for exam taking. To gain
the most benefit out of these bootcamps, we recommend you to initially focus on self-
study materials using the skill-matrix and self-preparation books and resources
discussed above, and master each individual technology from the blueprint. Once you
feel you have achieved that peak level, then you could plan on attending any bootcamp
to gain maximum mileage.

Reference Books
No single resource is uniformly great; you will likely need to review multiple books to
assist you in preparing for CCIE Wireless certification. You may need to use varying
books to master different topics from the blueprint. No single book will cover all the
topics in-depth. There are several books available from Cisco Press and other 3rd party
publishers. The list is expected to grow in the future. Recommended books and other
material to prepare for CCIE Wireless can be found at:

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-26433

Please do note that new books are released all the time. If you are interested in a
particular subject, you can also check Cisco Press to find out if there are any more up to
date publications on your topic of interest.

http://www.ciscopress.com

Cisco Website CCO

Many candidates overlook one of the best resources for useful material and technical
information which is available free of cost, the Cisco website. A plethora of sample
configuration and technical tips are available on support pages for each Cisco product
and technology. These articles & whitepapers are written to reflect current trends and
demands and include sample diagrams, configurations and, invaluable show and debug
command outputs. Also study the Wireless Best Practices and Design Guides!

The CCIE Wireless exam focuses on commonly used Wireless design principles as well
as Cisco Best Practices to make sure engineers that get CCIE Wireless certified are up
for the implementation and/or troubleshooting challenges they come across in the field.

(Erik Vangrunderbeek)
Cisco Learning Network (CLN)
You can use one of the most sought after social learning network tool CLN, to enhance
and advance your knowledge and use it as the primary source for information sharing
and learning. Browse the many technical content out there and connect and share
insights, opinions, and knowledge with the community. Visit the CLN portal at;
http://www.cisco.com/go/learnnetspace

Community Forums
Additionally, technical forums can play an essential role for a candidate during
preparation; you can generally find qualified CCIEs and other wireless engineers
available 24x7 to answer your queries and work through your technical problems. Group
forums can play the escalation role during your preparation time to help resolve your
technical problems by providing instantaneous technical support;

Ciscos Networking Professional Connection (NetPro) Candidates can post

questions for technical assistance, seek suggestions or share experiences at
NetPro: http://www.cisco.com/go/netpro

Ciscos Certification Online Support Q&A on certification related topics such

as exam info, books, trainings, requirements, resources, tools and utilities
and much more: http://www.cisco.com/go/certsupport

There are also many other 3rd party forums and blogs that you might find useful, most of
which have been written by individuals while preparing for the CCIE Wireless exam
themselves. In that sense, it might prove constructive, as well as encouraging, going
through other peoples experiences and approach to the exam. You might even find it
useful to start your own one! The list below is by no means exhaustive, nor it is intended
to be in any particular order:

http://mrncciew.com
http://wirelessccie.blogspot.com
https://rscciew.wordpress.com
http://www.my80211.com/ccie-wireless-syllabus-v3/
http://cciew.blogspot.com

Cisco Technical Documentation (Your Lifeline)

During the CCIE Lab exam, there is only one resource available to assist you if you get
stuck or need help the Cisco Technical Documentation. You need to be able to
navigate the Cisco documentation website with fluency & confidence. This is the only
resource you are allowed during the exam and you will need to be able to look up
anything you need with speed. Candidates need to ensure they make it part of their
regular practice. If you are familiar with it, it can save you time during the exam.

http://www.cisco.com/web/psa/products/index.html
Equipment for Studying (Home Lab vs. Rental Racks)
This is by far one of the most important aspects for every CCIE candidate i.e. arranging
equipment for study. Although acquiring a personal home lab is an ideal scenario, it can
be costly to gather all the equipment to build a CCIE Wireless rack. However, you can
start with just a few devices a few controllers, access points and switches and, ideally,
some sort of server/PC to run virtual machines. The goal should be to obtain a thorough
understanding of the technologies and the architecture and also know how they integrate
with each other. For hardware devices that are costly & difficult to obtain; look for renting
the equipment online to familiarize yourself with the devices.

If you plan to build your own VM machine, you might find the link below helpful, at least
as a starting point, but of course, there are plenty of other possibilities to achieve a
similar result.

http://www.ryanbirk.com/the-perfect-vmware-vsphere-5-homelab/

Practice Labs
During your study, I strongly recommend that you start with individual technologies and
master each topic from the blueprint independently. When studying individual
technologies, you might find you can easily gain proficiency using them as standalone
technologies, but integrating multiple technologies can be tricky and difficult at first. Your
goal should be to champion each topic in-depth on its own without having to worry about
integrated technologies.

Later on, once you are confident in each topic; you need to focus on multilayer,
multifaceted integrated technology practice labs & complex scenarios involving all the
topics from the blueprint. Find practice labs with complex scenarios that require you to
integrate multiple technologies. By practicing with more complex lab exercises you can
improve your exam strategy and identify areas that require extra study. This will help you
refocus and revise your study plan and adjust it accordingly.

In addition to technical skills, candidate must also focus on time management and exam-
taking strategy; this plays a vital role to your success. Practice labs not only help you
assess your technical skills, they also help you improve your time management and test-
taking approach skills.

Troubleshooting
As many of you might be aware, CCIE Lab exams also evaluate troubleshooting skills.

There are two types of troubleshooting questions in the Wireless Lab exam:

1. Dedicated explicitly marked Troubleshooting Questions these are clearly

marked and candidates will be told that this is a troubleshooting scenario, and
has been preconfigured with some broken configs. Candidate needs to identify
the purposeful injected faults and ensure functionality of the item.
 2. Integrated, embedded Troubleshooting Questions these are not marked
troubleshooting, but are integrated into the topology. Troubleshooting is woven
into the scenario and candidate may have to think over and beyond in order to
achieve the task and ensure functionality.

When studying, I usually recommend candidates to learn how to read debugs. Configure
a task and turn on debugs. Capture good debugs, and copy into your Notepad. Then,
break your own work by miss-configuring something, re-capture bad debugs and then
compare with the good debugs. This is one of the best methods to learn the protocol in-
depth and understand how it works.

Know how to troubleshoot extensively using the show and debug command outputs.
Check for typos when configuring items, this is a very common mistake observed during
grading the exam. Keep in mind the point value; dont waste too much time working on a
two or three point question. Verify functionality for each question before moving on.
Remember, no functionality no points.

Lab Exam Tips and Techniques

Finally, I would like to share a list of Lab exam tips and techniques that we were able to
compile through our day-to-day proctoring experiences, and watching what some
candidates do best. Some of these items are trivial but candidates tend to forget them:

Read the entire exam first.

Redraw topology (consolidate information from all the Diagrams given)
Plan your exam, divide-and-conquer rule.
Manage your time by the total number of Sections/Questions.
Make no assumptions.
Ask the proctor for clarifications.
The 10-min rule - report any technical problems or hardware equipment issues to
the proctor after troubleshooting 10 mins on it (only if you are convinced that your
configuration is absolutely correct).
Keep a list of everything, items need to be re-visited or re-checked or re-verified
before exam end.
Work through questions as a unit.
Some questions are independent, and some are inter-dependent. Read carefully.
Test your work, functionality is important. Do not rely on config only.
Save configurations frequently.
Minimize last-minute changes.
Plan at least 45-60 mins towards the end of the exam to re-verify all your work
from the beginning.
Reduce stress arrive early to the exam location.
Leave yourself time the exam can run over.

The Diagnostic Module

The new Diagnostic module, which has a length of 60 min, focuses on the skills required
to properly diagnose network issues, without having access to any of the devices. The
main objective of the Diagnostic module is to assess the skills required to properly
diagnose network issues. These skills include analyse, correlate and discerning multiple
sources of documentation like for example, e-mail threads, network topology diagrams,
console outputs, logs, and even traffic captures.

Final Word
I hope that the preceding tips and information will help you succeed in achieving CCIE
Wireless certification. Passing the CCIE exam is a great source of satisfaction and can
boost your career to the next level. The secret to success on CCIE, as with most
endeavors, is motivation, dedication and consistency. Failure on the first lab attempt is
not uncommon and, for that reason, it is important to be mentally prepared should that
happen. Keeping the momentum can be critical in order to not waste months, or even
years of preparation. In the long run, being an expert in the field of Wireless networking
is not just a destination, but an ongoing journey. I wish you all the best in the pursuit of
excellence.

For more information about the CCIE Wireless Program, please visit the CCIE Wireless
website at;
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/training-events/training-
certifications/certifications/expert/ccie-wireless.html