From: mmj (groupstudy@users.hotpop.com)
Date: Tue Dec 21 2004 - 18:18:32 GMT-3
Thanks,
That is real motivating!
The part to be honest to yourself is really an eye-opener for me, I always
learnt the "fast" way, because that was easy....
Wow, that was honest.....
I am taking a few months for written renewal, (one lab attempt a year ago)
and the rest of the year for the lab. I as good as agree on your IE quality
statement.
The way it worked for you stands or falls with the careful evaluation you
described!
Martijn
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] Namens McLaughlin,
Jeffery
Verzonden: vrijdag 17 december 2004 4:51
Aan: ccielab@groupstudy.com
Onderwerp: Passed 1st attempt--some thoughts
I passed my first attempt over a month ago at San Jose, #14023. I wasn't in
the mood to do a write-up until now...
I haven't posted to this group because I never felt had anything to say. But
I've been reading Groupstudy since the days of Token Ring switching, and to
all whose posts helped me, I can only say thanks.
Now, what you want to know... How was the lab? Overall, it was tough, but
doable.
I'd been using Internetwork Expert's labs, and I heard that the real thing
is a lot easier. To my suprise, I found it to be about an 8 in terms of IE's
labs. Maybe a 7. It was quite hard. That should should warn you to be very,
very prepared. When I first read the test, I saw a number of things I hadn't
seen before, as well as some questions where I initially wasn't sure what
they wanted me to do. This is why it is so, so important to know the theory.
After my initial panic, I dug in and figured out the answers pretty quickly.
I finished with two hours to spare, and then went back and pinged everything
from every router, fixed a bunch of mistakes. I don't use TCL scripts; my
theory is why waste your time debugging a script when you should be
debugging your lab? It takes only about 15 mintues to ping everything.
Anyhow, I left five minutes early.
The wording on some tasks was confusing. In one case, two requirements were
apparently contradictory. The proctor helped me to sort it out ultimately.
Don't be afraid to ask them questions, and don't waste an hour trying to
figure out a poorly worded question. Talk to them right away.
When I got back to the hotel, I thought I failed. 20 minutes after the test
ended, I got an email telling me to go to Cisco's web site. My friend who
passed in April waited 4 hours, so I thought I was dead. What almost killed
me was that you have to put your written test date and score in to get your
results, and I didn't know mine! I knew it was in April, so I started
guessing at dates until I hit it. I almost passed out during those five
minutes, I'll tell you. If you're traveling to the test site, BRING YOUR
WRITTEN SCORE REPORT WITH YOU!!!
OK, my advice on passing. First, know your theory. I started studying theory
in January, when I started studying for the written. I approached the
written like a research project, poring through every book I could get my
hands on. Read non-Cisco books first: Comer and/or Stevens' books on TCP/IP,
Perlman's "Interconnections", John Moy's book on OSPF, John Stewart's book
on BGP, Huitema's protocols book. I then re-enforced the concepts with
extensive lab work, dreaming up my own scenarios to test the technologies
and protocols.
After I passed the written, I began a six-month lab prep program. I went
through a different technology each week, both reading theory and
experimenting in the lab. Big topics, like BGP, I spent more time on. I did
all of the examples in Doyle's books. As I worked, I took notes. In addition
to general notes, I made flash cards of obscure commands, and made a list of
"gotcha" items--things that had tripped me up or that I tended to forget to
do.
With two months to go, and a solid background and understanding of the
technologies, I dove into sample labs. I settled on Internetwork Expert's
labs as the best, after doing a few from another major vendor. The other
vendor's labs just threw the kitchen sink into every lab to make them
"tough," but they were not carefully thought out. I strongly recommend
Internetwork Expert. Well-designed labs not only expose you to some of the
"tricks" you need to remember for the test, but they should also deepen your
understanding of how complex technologies interact. There were two or three
things on the test I hadn't seen before, and I only solved these problems
because I understood the protocols well enough to think through the
difficulty. The IE labs were crucial in this preparation. My only <minor>
complaint about them is that their solutions guide is distributed in
encrypted PDF format, and I had a lot of problems getting the Authentica
software to work. I'd also recommend buying the Cisco Press lab book (Duggan
et al.) Don't even do the labs, just study the diagrams. They're a lot
closer to the real thing than IE's diagrams. I got tripped up in the lab
because I kept misreading the notation on the diagrams.
I did one or two labs a week, and did not time myself, although I did limit
my documentation to the CD. After I finished a lab I would VERY carefully
grade myself and document my errors. I re-read my ever-growing "lab errors"
doc every night. This limited the chances of my repeating a mistake, and was
one of the keys to my success. Be sure to be honest with yourself about
your capabilities. I mean, I've run into people who are on their third
attempt and still don't know the difference between MED and LOCAL_PREF. You
have to be your own harshest critic, constantly admitting your failures to
yourself in order to correct them.
A month before my test I took the Internetwork Expert Java-based mock-lab
class. I do recommend it, but only if you are well prepared. They will find
and fill the gaps in your knowledge, but if your gaps are chasms, they won't
be able to help. The four labs I did for this class were the only timed
labs I did, and I used the class to develop my time-management skills.
As you start doing labs, you will discover many technologies that you don't
know well, or maybe never even heard of. It can be intimidating, but don't
waste your time learning the nuances of Mobile IP or server load balancing
with IOS. Just focus on the core: switching, NBMA and its oddities,
routing protocols, multicast, QoS. There are too many other IOS features
out there to learn all of them. If you know the Doc CD, you can deal with
those in the lab. One thing that I did that helped with this was to make a
list with the names of weird features I didn't know how to configure, and a
one or two sentence description. I memorized this the week before the lab.
That way, if I came across one of these features, I would know its name,
which is critical for finding it on the doc cd. E.g., it's hard to find "a
feature that verifies incoming packets are coming in on the interface that
they would normally be routed out of;" it's easy to find "Unicast RPF" on
the CD, right?
A parting thought: I see CCIE's selling their racks on eBay after they
pass, but now that I have it that's the last thing I'd do. I'm keeping my
rack and plunging into IPv6 and MPLS; after all, aren't CCIE's supposed to
know everything?
Jeff McLaughlin
CCIE #14023
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