From: Michelle T (mtruman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Wed Jan 10 2001 - 19:14:03 GMT-3
Jamie,
That is just terrible. You have my sympathy for what a crappy day that was.
I have had real life
networking days like that. And they are not pretty. I was thinking about it
last night when I
tried to upgrade code on my 2600 lab router, failed, and then couldn't get
checksum to work
correctly on any of the subsequent 8 or so different codes I tried for the
next 2 hours. Of course
when I realized that I could turn checksum off in rommon and when I realized
how easy that would
have been and that it was 11pm and I was still stuck in the data center down
town, I also thanked the
heavens that this was my lab and not a real production network. I remember
doing conversion projects,
such as one particularly large one from rip to eigrp, where just about
everything you could imagine
went wrong right from the first bell. Needless to say, having a data center
manager and a VP standing
over you screaming about lost productivity and the like can make all this
lab time look more favorably even
if it is frustrating. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Well, I know you will do well on your next try and that more things will go
your way. Law of averages.
Keep the faith!
Regards,
Michelle Truman
----- Original Message -----
From: "Price, Jamie" <JPrice@isgteam.com>
To: "'Michelle T'" <mtruman@mn.mediaone.net>; <ccielab@groupstudy.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 2:56 PM
Subject: RE: Second Attempts
> My horror story from a few weeks ago:
>
> My day 1 was chaos. I had no less than 4 cable defects with my rack, a
> flaky patch panel (the proctor admitted this), and unstable routers. Each
> issue (remember that on day 1 the rack is supposed to more or less
> work....troubleshooting doesnt occur until day 2 if you make it that
> far....1 or 2 issues are ok but I had many more than that) took 10-15
> minutes to identify, because I had to make sure it wasnt me, and then took
> the proctor at least another 10-15 minutes to fix. One incideent
stretched
> beyond 30 minutes. Some examples:
>
> 1. I was tasked with creating an "environment"....no problem....but the
> cables that connected 2 of the outlying routers to the core were faulty
and
> therefore the interfaces would not come up. With no connectivity to the
> core, the routed environment, and any subsequent routing loops, could not
be
> proved/identified. After triple checking to make sure it wasnt a config
> issue and that things were cabled correctly, I told the proctor who then
> went into maintenance mode. I had 4 distinctly separate cable problems
like
> this which took them a fair while to fix. Maintenance guys were coming in
> and rewiring portions of my patch panel!!! And the cable problems werent
all
> identified at once either, some cables/ports worked ok at the start of the
> day but then went bad throughout.
>
> 2. Realizing I was having numerous cable issues I (stupidly) jiggled an
> Ethernet cable in the back of a router thinking that that might be the
> reason this particular interface wouldnt come up. On doing that the
entire
> rack shut down and powered back on. Wasnt I overjoyed to find that
> everything I had entered on the routers had been lost to me and I had to
> reenter it. Luckily I was saving every 10 minutes but it was a pain
> nonetheless. But you'll be happy to know that after the power down of the
> rack the Ethernet interface came up.
>
> 3. The patch panel only had a few ports patched to interfaces.
> So...thinking that router A was connected to router B, I was entering
> another realm of frustration as to why I was not getting connections.
> Admittedly I should have checked straight away but when you lose so much
> time because of other physical faults you start to get a bit rushed. This
> in fact took the proctor a while to find as he expected them to be cabled
as
> such too.
>
> There were a number of other rack related issues that arose as well but I
> wont go into them - NDA and all. These additional issues totalled about
> another 4.
>
> Needless to say the proctor was very helpful and appreciative of the
> situation. I was given some more time at the end of the day to compensate
> for the lost time in the middle.
>
> From a personal standpoint though it didnt really help. As each issue
arose
> I had to move onto the next task (provided it wasnt dependant on the one I
> was working on) and return to the original task when he had fixed the
> problem. I didnt have time to wait until the issue was resolved due to
the
> amount of tasks that you need to fulfill in the day.
>
> I ended up having to work on 5 different tasks at once due to physical
> failures and/or the dependency of that task on a different router/cable
that
> had a problem.
>
> That was the sort of crappy day 1 I had. So....to cut an excessively long
> story short (for any of you that are still reading)....I arrive on day 2
to
> find that I do not have my day 2 folder sitting on my desk. I had some
> issues with that. I'm not saying I would have blitzed it but I honestly
> believe I would have made it to day 2 had no errors occurred (but then
again
> you never know). The errors threw a gigantic speed hump into the flow of
> the day and as corny as it sounds, "the flow" is an important factor.
> Finishing half of one task to move onto another and only being able to do
> 1/3rd of that while I moved onto another simply screwed me up. I couldnt
> prove solutions, test for routing loops, etc until later towards the end
of
> the day - and then I had to prove/test them all at once.
>
> Geared up for a confrontation I suddenly get called to the side by the
> proctor. Before I could say anything he offered some acceptable
> compensation. I will not divulge what it was so please don't ask, but
> needless to say that both of the proctors were appreciative of, and
> sympathetic to, the situation and did all they could within the boundaries
> of reasonable actions to make amends (thankfully I didnt pay for the
attempt
> out of my own pocket or my calmness may have been a different story).
>
> With regard to attitude and confidence though my second attempt was much
> better than my first. I had calmed down considerably - in spite of all
the
> crap - and by slowing the old brain electrons down I read the questions
for
> what they were, realized that many things were nowhere near as complicated
> as I had imagined them to be on my 1st try, planned accordingly, and
> actually did well....considering everything else that had happened.
Within
> myself I feel I would have made it to day 2 had the rack been ok.
>
> Now I'm not saying that I would have passed the entire lab had my rack
been
> ok - I'll never know that - but I feel within myself that the learning
> experience of attempt 1 was very beneficial and applying that which I
learnt
> in attempt 1 (I'm not talking Cisco stuff here - more strategies and
> attitudes) to attempt 2 made me a serious contender for that 4 digit cert.
>
> All in all my 2nd attempt - as frustrating as it was - actually instilled
> more confidence in me. Pity I have to wait another 6 months now :)
>
> Thats my brief story.
>
> Jamie
>
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