From: Swan, Jay (jswan@sugf.com)
Date: Tue Apr 17 2007 - 13:43:47 ART
Hi folks,
I've only posted a few times here, but I've lurked on and off for a few
months now.
I passed yesterday on my first attempt at San Jose. It's been a long
road. I've been doing Cisco stuff full time for about 7 years (and
server-side stuff before that for quite a while, mostly Unix), first in
a smallish ISP, then as a CCNA/CCNP curriculum instructor for Global
Knowledge for 4 years, and now in enterprise networking for a couple of
years. I first passed the R&S written exam in 2001, but I hated token
ring so much I never got motivated to study for the lab. Last year I
needed to recert my CCNP and CCSP, so I took the written again, not
really intending to take the lab, but when my 18 month deadline started
to loom I decided to finally do it.
I only focused specifically on the lab for about 3 months, but I had a
very strong background in switching, IGPs, BGP, and security from
teaching at Global Knowledge. Everything in my experience in athletic
training has taught me that it's more important to focus on weaknesses
than on strengths, which is what I did during the last 3 months. My big
weaknesses were QoS, multicast, newer switching features, and knowledge
of the documentation, so I focused on those. Everybody always wants to
know about study materials, so here is what I used:
1) I have a lab at work of 3 switches and 5 routers. The routers are
rather lacking in interface density, so I had to get creative. I used
this extensively for practicing switching and for building topic-focused
mini-labs of my own design.
2) NMC practice labs. These are phenomenally written, but I only
ended up doing about 4 of them, and all in Dynamips/Dynagen. I felt like
I was spending too much time focusing on my strengths with these. This
is not to say anything bad about them at all-the instructional quality
is amazing; I just felt like I didn't have time to utilize them
effectively.
3) NMC frame relay and IPv6 video-on-demand. Also excellent. I have
been working with FR and IPv6 for quite a while and felt pretty
confident on them, but these still gave me a few insights that were
important. Great stuff.
4) IP Expert practice labs. I got these mainly because Amy at IP
Expert is a good saleswoman, and wouldn't give me the bootcamp
"guarantee" if I didn't. I did most of the technology-specific labs,
again in Dynamips/Dynagen, but I didn't have time to do any of the
multiprotocol labs.
5) IP Expert bootcamp with Scott Morris. I picked IP Expert for the
unscientific reason that they had the most convenient schedule, but it
turned out that this was an essential part of my final preparation. I
took it about 5 weeks out from the lab. I thought it was pitched at
exactly the right level for someone with my goals and experience: I went
in fairly well prepared, and the bootcamp allowed me to find exactly
what my weaknesses were with respect to the lab itself. I also figured
out a bunch of ways I could screw up and waste time-avoiding these was a
valuable lesson. Scott was one of the best technical instructors I've
ever seen (and I've seen a LOT), and I really got a lot out of the
class.
6) Cisco Assessor Lab. I took this early in my preparation (before I
really started to get serious about studying), and it helped a lot. This
is what taught me how bad things get if you don't verify as you go. :-)
The difficulty level was comparable to the real thing.
7) Books. In addition to the usual suspects, I found two slightly
more obscure books to be indispensable: the Cisco Frame Relay Solutions
Guide, and End-to-End QoS Network Design, both from Cisco Press. I also
got a lot out of Optimal Routing Design, also from Cisco Press.
After the bootcamp, I spent almost all my study time working on
mini-labs of my own design, focused on the weaknesses discovered in the
bootcamp. I also spent a lot of time on the documentation website.
In the lab itself, I stuck to the basics: do *exactly* what it says,
nothing more, nothing less. I finished the tasks with about 1.5 - 2
hours left for error checking, and I used all of it; I found several
small mistakes during this time that would have surely caused me to fail
if I hadn't caught them. I left feeling like I had a chance of either
passing or failing. It was quite difficult, but there wasn't anything
totally insane.
Many thanks to Scott from IP Expert, and *especially* to all the folks
at Global Knowledge who helped me out in my instructor days. Oh, and for
the dude who likes to look people up in the verification tool: my legal
name is Jerold.
Jay Swan, CCIE #17783 (R&S)
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