NSE8/FCX Certification

Beginning of week 5 studying for Core. Let’s start with the tracker for this past week:

This week was an interesting one. I spent the first half continuing to lab VRF and Asymmetric Routing after finishing deep notes for both. After at first deciding that I was done with both topics I did not feel satisfied enough and decided I would really lab out both topics extensively. This resulted in 4 pretty brutal days with the end result being a confirmation that it’s not possible to lab VRF route leaking and beyond my ability and patience (if even possible) to simulate asymmetric routing between three FortiGate VMs. This frustration extended into this weekend when I also confirmed that Azure does not in fact support multicast traffic in a standard configuration. As you can see in the picture directly above, I’ve flagged all three of these labbing issues in the tracker. I’ll simply have to lab out both VRF leaking and multicast scenarios in a physical lab, although this does mean I’ll have to purchase or borrow another FortiGate (for multicast routing at least).

Overall, motivation is still high and I’ve only fallen out of my schedule once this past Friday when I had the chance to go to an event and meet a famous tennis star that I couldn’t pass up. I’m not going to sweat the one less hour of studying this week as I almost always end up spending an additional 2-4 hours each week reading forum posts or contributing to online Q&As. While reading a little bit of a CCIE journey blog I did read a post about a really bad burnout that made me slightly anxious – however I do think it’s simply a risk I need to stay cognizant of and continue to give myself mercy when I slip up on my schedule or decide to take breaks from studying.

A final note I want to make is in regard to a study tactic I have very recently discovered and found quite useful. I’ve already explained in previous posts that I use Claude AI a fair amount to help me map out topics or to review my notes for accuracy. Something I recently told it (it has memory between chats) is that I like when it asks questions like this:

These are the kind of high-level understanding questions that really force you to face whether you understand the topic. The kind of questions you’d find at the end of each chapter in a college textbook. I basically told Claude to ask me these types of questions more, and it usually does. So when I give it my BGP notes or OSPF notes and I have it check them for accuracy, it’ll give me some questions like this and I’ll be sure to slowly and thoughtfully answer them. Claude then gives me feedback on my understanding.

That’s all for this past week. This week I’m going to finish multicast and then begin review of the first section (Routing) and move to the next section likely towards the first half of next week. Cheers!