What is Reddit's opinion of CCDE In-Depth?

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I ended up passing it my second attempt, and took the Practical on August 31st. Won't know if I passed the practical until early November though, according to Cisco.

Anyway, I read quite a few books in order to prepare me.

I started off with CCDE: In-Depth by Orhan Ergun. The writing style is a little hard to follow some times, but it gives a great overview of the various technologies that you'll find on the exam. I feel like it's more geared to the practical, but the case studies he provides are great for preparing you for the simple questions on the CCDE Written.

After read that, I was rather intrigued and I had a lot of personal design questions and ended up reading a few Cisco Press books.

1. CCDE Study Guide is great for both the written and practical. It doesn't really cover how the technologies work, just the design. So you'll need to look up some Cisco docs, RFCs, or some other material to learn any protocols or terminology you might not already know.
2. CCIE/CCDE Evolving Technologies was an ok read. In my experience, it's only intended for the Written exam. I would recommend reading it though, especially if you've not done Python scripting, automation, or you aren't familiar with NFV.
3. Optimal Routing Design is a MUST READ. If you plan on passing your practical exam, you really should read this book to make it easier on you.

Look up the CCDE Learning Matrix, and do a self assessment. Someone at Cisco did a good job providing a starting point for your studies.

My career has mostly been in Enterprise, with a couple years in Service provider. My traffic engineering and MPLS design was pretty fuzzy, so completed INE's "The Network Engineer's Guide to MPLS" learning path. It was absolutely amazing and actually covered everything I encountered on both the written and practical when it came to MPLS.

Hope this helps you out. Let me know if you have any other questions!