From: Robert Thompson (rthompson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Sun Jul 18 1999 - 23:35:14 GMT-3
Since people are talking about this "trip to hell" that is the lab, I'll
throw my $0.02 in from my lab experience.
1) Don't panic although you will want to. By that I mean you *must* remain
effectivly solving your problems. Don't thrash around going over old
ground that dosen't work. Be able to zero in on solutions, or recognise
something is taking too long and skip it. Time management is a key to
victory, as others have observed.
2) Don't be afraid to use the CD and know where to look for things. I had
as many as 4 searches at a time going and would check them every so often
to see if they had a clue to what I was having trouble with. It costs
little time to start a search I found, and if I framed the parameters
well I sometimes got the clue I needed to break the problem ("Hey! That
command - I remember that practice lab scenario now!" type stuff).
3) Be ready. You *will* forget things, you *will* have a tendancy to start
to panic. The pressure is intense but if you are ready for it and the
performance reduction you will suffer under that pressure you will do ok.
Many failed CCIEs have said "...and I knew the answer but it just didn't
come...." or "....I missed reading part of the question, so I just got
it wrong...." which says to me they were suffering stress problems with
all the bad tricks your brain plays on you. If you are compensating
for this you will do better. I forgot things, went blank, etc, and it was
just another problem I had to cope with.
4) When you need to, ask your proctor. If you frame your questions right
you can get a lot as even negative information can be usefull. One of my
most usefull questions was to quickly describe how I understood a
troublesome question (the ones I had trouble understanding Cisco's
version of English) and ask "have I understood the question correctly?".
Often the answer was "yes" but sometimes "no". This told me really quickly
what I had to rethink - before I'd got into attempting the config. I wasn't
into wasting time if I hadn't understood the question. Didn't stop me
getting some tragically wrong, but stopped me going off in the wrong
direction because of a misunderstanding. The proctor is a very usefull
tool if you can make use of him without trying to overstep the bounds.
I passed first time not because I knew everything (I only properly
understood BGP at a lab level in the practice lab beforehand - my time
pressure was pretty tight), but because I didn't waste my time in
there, I put every minute to use. Which incuded time where I simply
stopped and made myself read the exam and *think* for awhile before
starting on a problem. I got stuff I'd never seen before and for
some of the things I'd had, it was more complex than anything I'd
ever practiced. My lab was last March and I hope it was the toughened-up
lab because I can't imagine what it'd be like made even harder.
Still it would be great to try such a harder lab, I learned a lot in
mine and would have liked to be able to do all the lab exams just to
try my hand at the problems. Problem solvers pass the CCIE lab,
anybody else fails I think.
It is doable, and is really a lot of fun.
I think most people fail not because they don't know their stuff, but
they have all the reduced performance that comes with such pressure -
forgetting things, not working efficently, etc. And most people pass
later as it is then a familiar enviroment and they handle it better.
For everyone headed to their labs, good luck and don't forget to have
fun doing it.
And yeah, I got a bigger DLSw scenario that I'd ever seen (or imagined)
before like Hank & others. I got a lot of other protocols also, even
a non-IP protocol in my first day (for about 10% of the first day marks -
I was surprised), so be ready to face anything.
---------------------------------
Robert Thompson, CCIE #4500, MCSE
Business Integration Solutions
44 Ellingworth Pde, Box Hill 3128
Australia
Office +61 3 9899 5111
FAX +61 3 9899 7671
Mobile 0407 368 154
Internet: rthompson@busint.com.au
---------------------------------
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com]On Behalf Of
> Hank Burgos
> Sent: Monday, 19 July 1999 2:36
> To: Hammond
> Cc: Scott Morris; ccielab@groupstudy.com
> Subject: Re: CCIE Lab
>
>
> My thoughts exactly!!! Although my hardware was operational, I
> did get the DLSW
> from hell.
>
> Hammond wrote:
>
> > Man, can I relate to your comment about your expectations on
> your first try.
> > I never figured myself for average either and by the time I
> went to the exam
> > I could do re-distribution in my sleep (as a matter of fact,
> I'm almost sure
> > I DID do it in my sleep). I concentrated on BGP the week
> before so much I
> > was really proud of myself. "Dude, I thought, you're there". I was so
> > confident. I looked at the lab. "Hey, I thought, I know this
> stuff". Then
> > I noticed a Token ring switch. what the *** is this? Oh well,
> I'll look it
> > up. Let's see, in the product guide,. Whoops, no that's sales shit. damn
> > where did they hide that? Oh yeah, read, read, read... ok,
> next. I breezed
> > thru the first few scenarios. Then a serial port went south
> and I spent a
> > lot of time convincing myself it really was broke. The proctor
> was pretty
> > cool once I told him. Shoulda called sooner, he said. Oh yeah, They also
> > happened to be the highest number interface so OSPF was pretty
> hosed too...
> > Let see, get rid of all OSPF statements and do it in 5 minutes,
> I can still
> > do it, I thought. I looked up and I had 1 hour to go and a BGP scenario
> > from hell to do. That's pretty much when I melted.... just one
> more hour.
> >
> > That was 2 weeks ago, and I'm almost ready to try and get a lab
> together and
> > try again. A lot of people told me that you learn a lot on the
> first trip
> > to the lab and I thought they were just making excuses for
> themselves. Turns
> > out I was wrong, wrong, wrong. I did learn a lot. It's doable.
> It can be
> > beat. Hopefully, by me in a couple months.
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Scott Morris <SMorris@tele-tech.com>
> > To: 'Ben Rife' <brife@bignet.net>; <ccielab@groupstudy.com>
> > Sent: Thursday, July 15, 1999 6:54 PM
> > Subject: RE: CCIE Lab
> >
> > >snip snip snip>
> >
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Thu Jun 13 2002 - 08:21:42 GMT-3