This afternoon I sat for my second attempt at the CCIE R&S written v5.1 exam after a miserable failure a little over a month ago. I’m happy to report that this was a better result, I managed to pass by a good margin this time, and I just wanted to give a few thoughts on how I think the written is progressing since v5.

I’m honestly happy to say that I believe that Cisco has made really great strides since the v5 was launched almost 3 years ago. I first took the v5 written at CLUS in 2015 and failed horribly. While I will admit that I didn’t do hardly any studying for that attempt, I do remember that the questions themselves were not written well. By that, I mean that they seemed to touch on subjects that were not well defined on the blueprint and there were a lot of grammatical and spelling errors throughout the test. There was no way that I was going to pass it, and I earned that failing score.

This year, I made the decision that it was time to really make a go at a serious attempt to obtain my CCIE. I originally passed the old v4 written almost 3 years ago (Dec 5, 2013) but due to some things that happened in life that ended up being for the best, I never attempted the lab within the 18 months of the original pass and so I knew I needed to retake the written. Shortly after Cisco Live this year, I started studying in earnest.

The structure of the written exam now, in my opinion, is much better than it has been in the past. I thought this when I took the v5.1 the first time and failed last month, and it has been improved on greatly. The topics that it hits are relevant for the most part, and I think that a lot of the input that Cisco received at Cisco Live this year was taken and has helped to create a better exam. This is a fair exam, and I don’t say that just because I’ve passed it. I believed this when I failed last month as well, it makes sense and the topics hit exactly how they should hit according to the blueprint.

My study schedule started out as around 15-20 hours a week for the first month, but due to attending Networking Field Day and a training class for work, which essentially limited my study time in August for two weeks, I really hit the books hard in mid-August. My study schedule evolved into getting up at 4am daily and getting into work to study from 5-8am on M-Fri, then on the weekends I would devote 5 hrs on both Saturday and Sundays. This gave me approximately 25 hours per week of pure study time.

My first attempt in early November was met with thinking that I was prepared, but after a fairly low score, I was able to see where my weaknesses were in what the exam was testing on. I went back and studied the blueprint item by item. I discovered that this is really the only way that you can prepare yourself to know what will be on the test. Do not trust a training provider to cover everything on the blueprint. Don’t trust that the Official Certification Guide will either. The CCIE blueprints are the best source to find out what will be on it, and my main guide has been looking through the configuration guides in the Cisco documentation site. Honestly, every answer on the test is in those documents for the most part.

This isn’t to say that the recommended reading lists don’t have a treasure trove of information, they most certainly do. But I have found such a great resource that I hadn’t tapped into until after that first v5.1 fail that I wish I had earlier. Now it’s time to buckle down and start to prepare for the lab. I’m tentatively hoping to make my first attempt at the lab in the late-May/early-June timeframe. Hopefully I can get a pass before Cisco Live and attend the CCIE party, but that’s a pipe dream at this point.

To everyone who is working towards their certification, whether it’s CCxA, CCxP, or CCxE level, keep studying. There are great resources and people out there who will help you to find motivation that you didn’t know you even had. The list of people who have been a major part of this so far are too many to list, but this is only the beginning and I’ll save those thank you’s until I have my number.