My journey began back in 2007 where I started to work for an ISP doing MPLS VPN based networks, prior to starting there I had done my CCNA and was almost done with my CCSP (was working mostly with firewalls before the ISP job ). While finishing my CCSP I started to look more towards the routing stuff, since I was working where I was.
So in august 2008 I tried the written test for the first time and passed it. From then I started labbing on a physical lab provided by the company I work for. At first I did INE vol. 2 labs. In January 2009 i attended the CCIE 1 bootcamp at Global Knowledge in the UK.
In august 2009 I had the opportunity to try the v4 beta written test - and since I still didn't feel ready for the lab I used this to renew my written test. After doing a lot of INE labs and still wasn't feeling sure on (mostly) my troubleshooting skills I joined the CIERS Essentials course. This I found very rewarding as I've mention earlier.For video's I've seen the CCIE360 CIERS VoD. Unfortunately these aren't covering all materials. I know INE has some great video and KnowledgeNet has some excellent e-learning courses on Multicast, BGP, MPLS and QoS. Jeremy of CBT is also worth mentioning.
For reading... uhm, I went through quite a lot (all from Cisco Press): CCNA and CCNP certification library's, Routing TCP/IP Vol. 1 + 2, Troubleshooting IP routing protocols, CCIE Routing & Switching Cert. Guide (v4), Cisco Express Forwarding, Building Resilient IP Networks, MPLS Configuration on Cisco IOS Software, Deploying IPv6 Networks, Cisco Access Control Security, Cisco Router Configuration Handbook, Cisco Switch configuration handbook and Cisco LAN Switching. Well, some of them more than others - my favorites being MPLS config and Deploying IPv6 those are great books, and ofcause the famous Routing TCP/IP. The lab exam I can't say much about obviously .
But what I can say is that the technologies aren't more difficult than what's done in so many practice labs, the hard part is that they're not asking as specificly as many test-vendors are. So in the end you start getting really paranoid thinking 'Am I understanding this correctly, or are they really asking for something different' Towards the end I was almost about to change a whole lot of things just because of this.
I had about 6h20m for my config part - had extra 20 minutes from the tshooting section. I spend approximately 5 hours configuring the lab and the last approx. 80 minutes verifying, asking further questions, etc.
