From: Brian (signal@xxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Mon Aug 20 2001 - 12:40:33 GMT-3
Well, its my turn to write this letter! I got
CCIE #8036 in RTP yesterday, and it was a very
humbling experience. Here is a little bit of
the journey, and maybe a few pointers.
I have been in the ISP business, as a technical
lead, for a very long time. Starting around
July '00, I started getting my Cisco certs, just
to start getting some documentation of my knowledge.
I got my CCNA/CCDA/CCNP/CCDP all within about 4 months.
Then by January '01 I had obtained by Voice, ATM and
Security specializations. Then I passed my written in
November '00.
I read anything I could get my hands on. Alot of the
stuff that everyone seems to read: Doyle, Caslow, Saterlee,
etc. I attended ECP1 with Bruce Caslow, which was the best
money spent on the journey, worth every penny. Bruce is more
than a master, he communicates very well, and is an exceptional
teacher.
I spent about $35k in equipment, but it does double duty to help
me in consulting for customers, I am able to run scenerios etc.
I own a business on the side, which is a Cisco Premier partner,
and does equipment resell and consulting, so I basically just bought
the stuff with profits from that company. ATM, Voice, ISDN, etc
are all in my lab. You definitly do not need a Cat3920, ATM in
your lab, this can be learned remotely by spending a few days on
each, hopefully within close time of your lab. I highly recommend
ISDN however, ISDN is a very large area when it comes to all the
different things you can do with configuring it, that its definitly
something one should consider.
I paid for all my equipment and fees myself. My first attempt was
last month, and I came very close to passing. I made it thru
troubleshooting, but came up just a little short. The second
time I took the lab, I had a strategy for troubleshooting. This is
important. Have a plan of attack!
Keeping your cool and communicating with the proctors is also very
important. Sometimes there are equipment problems or things that
aren't quite right, so by communicating you can find out if things
are the way they should be.
I started day one with 5 people, 2 of us went on, and passed and
got our number.
The best advice I can give is avoid carelessness. Don't be over
confident. If your configuring something you know very well,
don't be too confident. Its the little mistakes you make, and
things you forget in your configs that will do you in. Almost
all the points I had lost on both attempts, were not because
I didn't know how to configure something, but because I had been
careless, and made mistakes I should never have made.
I found the Ciscopress books to be some of the best resources,
although there are always exceptions, like Caslows excellent book.
I couldn't imagine pursuing CCIE without a prep class like ECP1.
Its not that you learn everything there or anything like that, but
it definitly gets your mind setup, and teaches you an approach and
way of thinking.
I took a year off of my life to do this. I stopped doing almost
everything I enjoy: photography, racquetball, reading books that
aren't related to CCIE, etc. I am glad that it is over. You
learn so much on the way to CCIE, about all sorts of technologies
and some of them I have wanted to pursue more in depth, but my
focus on the CCIE, kept me from doing so. Now that I have passed,
I can start reading books and studying areas of networking that
I find interesting.
Special thanks to God, who definitly intervened and made this
possible for me.
Brian
-----------------------------------------------
Brian Feeny, CCIE #8036 email:signal@shreve.net
Network Engineer phone:318.222.2638x109
ShreveNet Inc. fax: 318.221.6612
**Please read:http://www.groupstudy.com/list/posting.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Thu Jun 13 2002 - 10:31:54 GMT-3