Michael Hilton, the youngest candidate ever for the CCIE Enterprise certification, is still hard at work preparing for his exam. Here he shares his most recent accomplishments.

I've been doing very well and I'm still on track to earn my CCIE Enterprise certification.

Recently, I completed the Advanced Technologies Course (ATC) on INE, for the CCIE Routing & Switching v5.1 exam. Going through the ATC course really helped me understand the technologies better than I would have, if I had only been pouring through documentation. Brian (McGahan) does an amazing job of laying out new technologies and then explaining them clearly. You can easily follow along with what he's saying even if you have no background in the said technology. Brain also gives some great trips on prepping for the actual CCIE Lab Exam.

I've had several "aha!" moments throughout my journey working on the ATC course. Those happen often when Brian goes into detail about how something, like the BGP path selection process, works. Some of the other resources I've worked through never really went into as much detail as Brian does. When he explained why certain BGP path attributes are chosen over others, the whole path selection process clicked.

Now that I've finished the ATC course, I'm starting to work on reading some books and documentation on the technologies I need to improve on. Currently, I'm reading the CCNP/CCIE ENCOR book.

Some of the technologies I've worked with that I enjoy are EIGRP, OSPF, and MPLS. On the flip side, some of my least favorite technologies are Multicast and QoS. I'm quite honestly looking forward to working on some of the new technologies on the blueprint like SD-WAN, SDA, SDN, and programmability topics.

When I'm not nerding out on my Cisco studies, I enjoy spending time with friends and family and I also enjoy reading non-technical books.

Until next time!

Leave Michael a note of encouragement or words of wisdom in the comments.

Are you keeping up with your studies?

{{cta('f83c1e1f-f6cc-423f-9c46-0f2648c8f3ae')}}