Over the last couple of days I have been taking a look at some of the training materials offered by vendors for the CCIE lab. There appears to be 3 main vendors on the scene offering quality materials, Internetwork Expert, IP Expert, and Narbik.

IP Expert offer a blended learning solution which at the sale price is USD$1,499, which gets you;

• Volume 1 Workbook and Detailed Solution Guide: 34 Focus Labs
• Volume 2 Workbook and Detailed Solution Guide: 15 Multi-Protocol Labs
• Lab Mentoring Kit with Video Tutorials
• Video on Demand Lecture Series
• Audio Lecture on Demand Series

My initial thoughts on the product are that its a really good price and you get some nice materials for your money but there aren’t aren’t that many labs as Volume 1 are all focus labs eg mini labs to get exposure to most of the technology and there are 15 multi protocol labs in Volume 2. The material gets shipped on a 100GB hard drive which sounds appealing but I would be a bit concerned about it getting out of date.

EDIT: According to one of the comments below you are able to get updates to the product online

Internetwork Expert offer a roughly equivalent product called the CCIE 2.0 program which the cheapest electronic version is USD$2246 with the 25% discount on their site. For this you get ;

• Poly-Lab™ Assessments
• Core Knowledge Simulation – Online Simulation
• Lab Workbook Volume I PDF Version
• Lab Workbook Volume II PDF Version
• Lab Workbook Volume III PDF Version
• Lab Workbook Volume IV PDF Version
• Advanced Technologies Class-on-Demand Online Version
• Open Lecture Class-on-Demand Series Online Version
• Lab Meet-Ups Class-on-Demand Series Online Version
• Advanced Troubleshooting Bootcamp Class-on-Demand Pre-Order
• 5-Day Bootcamp Class-on-Demand Online Version
• Poly-Lab™ Mock Lab Exam
• Discounted Rack Rental Sessions

Initial thoughts are its a fair bit more money than the solution from IP Expert but you do get more for your money, but I wonder how much of the material I would actually use. Its not included in the cheapest CCIE 2.0 package but I really like the sound of the CCIE Routing & Switching Lab Meet Up Series, which is a Class on Demand or weekly meetup for a couple of hours to go over one of the labs in the workbooks. If money was no object I would go for the CCIE 2.0 program with the lab meet up series, but unfortunately it is.

Narbik also apparently has some good workbooks although he doesn’t appear to offer a package or any of the other features such as video or audio classes as his focus appears to be on bootcamps. Narbiks soup to nuts which seems equivalent to the focus labs is only USD$35!

I think my method of studying will start initially with focus labs and then move onto the multi protocol bigger labs accompanied by some form of video lectures or bootcamp depending on my budget. I don’t think I will go for a package deal purely as it is a big single expense which I just cant afford at the moment as much, therefore I plan on getting various items from multiple vendors when I feel ready and can budget for them.

There was several blogs which condemned IE’s choice of using a program called LockLizard which provided DRM for their PDF’s. LockLizard is a program which only runs on Windows and requires and periodic internet connection to ensure that the user opening the LockLizard PDF has the rights to do so.

I am entirely for IE maintaining their intellectual property and preventing piracy but as a native Linux user this had previously totally ruled out the option of using their material for my training, this didn’t concern me totally as there are similar products available from IPExpert which I have been looking at. Sure there was the option of me dual booting or running that virtual XP machine I have to use from time to time but its such an inconvenience.

But they finally announced that they will no longer use LockLizard and use standard PDFs instead in this blog post, they also announced some new anti piracy measures such as stenography and anti piracy bots. For me this is a great, when I start looking at solutions for my CCIE lab, I will review their material.