From: Kinton Connelly (kinton@xxxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Tue May 09 2000 - 01:30:53 GMT-3
Hi, all. This past weekend, I made my second attempt at the CCIE lab in RTP
and I'm happy to report that this time I was successful!
I owe many thanks to this list and the people on it. Besides the great
wealth of information available here, the participants are also top notch.
A few days before my test I posted a message asking for any last minute
suggestions. A number of individuals responded and provided me with some
great information and advice.
For anyone interested, here's my CCIE story.
I started studying for the written last September, 1999. My main source of
information was CCO - everything under "Internetworking Technology
Overview" and "Internetwork Design Guide" - and the exam blueprint. I wrote
every single subject from the exam blueprint out in a list and made sure I
read something on each one of them.
Funny story here. I purchased Caslow's book at the very beginning of my
studies (to get myself started - you spend $50 on a book and you feel like
you _have_ to read it). I started reading the book but by Chapter 2 or so,
I started thinking the book was more oriented towards the lab - so I put it
down and spent most of my time with CCO. A couple of weeks before the exam,
I was unclear on a few concepts and CCO wasn't helping me out. So I picked
up Caslow's book and thumbed past the first few chapters. Once I got into
the meat of the book, my jaw dropped open and I realized that I should have
been reading Caslow's book a lot sooner - there was a wealth of useful
information for the written in that book. Oops...oh well...I read as much
as could over the next two weeks and managed to pass the written in November.
With the written down, I started working on the lab. Finally...this was the
fun part.
My main source of prep was Derek Small's site: <http://www.fatkid.com>.
This is a great source of practice/learning labs. Most of the labs
concentrate on one subject at a time - BGP or OSPF or DLSW, etc. - and they
go into some pretty good depth. Probably the best part about Derek's labs
are the solution configs - they're all documented. For me, I was learning
this stuff as I went along. So when I didn't understand why he did
something a certain way, there was usually a comment in the config as to
why he did it. Great stuff, especially for learning.
In addition to Derek's site, I also used the "All-in-One CCIE Lab Study
Guide". This book had some pretty good, if basic, configs. I didn't go
through it cover-to-cover, but when I needed to see how snapshot routing or
dialer interfaces worked, it was great to be able to pick up this book and
flip right to their labs.
And of course, having discovered the value of Caslow's "Bridges, Routers
and Switches for CCIEs", I kept this book by my side the whole time. No
matter how many times I would reread a section of his book, I'd usually
understood something a little bit better each time.
With all this practice and reading under my belt, I went in for my first
lab attempt on March 12, 2000.
It was a disaster. I didn't even make it past day one. And I thought I was
so prepared.
All the gory details aside, what I learned from my first lab experience was
that I really didn't understand how things worked. I understood how to make
them work in general but I still didn't understand the concepts behind them.
The CCIE Lab doesn't just test your ability to make things work, it also
tests your understanding of those things. You may think you know a
particular routing protocol but under the conditions they put you in, you
might discover you really don't understand the basic concepts at all. At
least, that's how it went for me.
So I took this humbling experience and learned what I could from it. I
purchased Jeff Doyle's book "CCIE Professional Development: Routing Tcp/Ip"
and started from scratch on learning how things worked. When something
didn't work in my practice lab, I dug into it. I didn't just wave it off as
a bug or an error in the practice lab or a difference between my equipment
and what the practice lab was using. (Again, thanks to the people on this
list who were instrumental in helping me figure out these things).
I also purchased the CCIE Boot Camp labs from Marc Russell. Fatkid.com's
labs were great for learning and especially for ISDN. But they aren't the
multi-protocol nightmares that Marc's labs are. :-) No joke. That lab 8
still gives me the willies when I think about. I spent two and a half days
on that lab and when I was done I could barely read the lab diagram because
there was so much stuff on it. This is where I learned that $1.99 invested
in a set of colored pencils is a priceless investment.
So after more reading, more practice labs, countless hours spent on the
routers, and huge amounts of help from this list, I was ready for my next
lab attempt.
Here's how I blew my first lab attempt. These are the mistakes I was
determined NOT to repeat:
1. Overthought the questions - I made a lot of things more difficult than
they had to be.
2. Time management - this doesn't just mean "type fast, know your stuff
cold". It also means "know when you're beat". Don't spend an hour on a
2-point question like I did. Set a time limit - 15 minutes, 30 minutes -
and if you haven't solved the problem by then, move on and come back to it
if you have time.
3. Check, double-check, triple-check - even though I had the time, I didn't
go back and double/triple check all my work. I should have and I don't know
why I didn't - I spent my extra time trying to make a couple other things
work. It turns out there were simple errors in my configs that I could have
easily fixed in just a few minutes. But I didn't fix them and I didn't get
to go on.
So on Saturday, May 6, 2000, lab attempt #2 began.
Five of us started on Saturday morning. By lunch time, I was feeling good -
things were under control and I was making my way through the test book.
After lunch, I had enough time to finish all my tasks and then go back and
do some digging into a few things that had me stumped (the things I had the
sense to skip).
Panic set in as I finished my last triple-check of my work. With 10 minutes
to go in the test, I re-read one of the questions and realized that I had
neglected something. I worked for about 9 minutes on the problem and
finally got it working - but I had two solutions to chose from and I didn't
have the time to test each one. So I picked the one that just felt right
and put it in and hoped for the best - just as the proctor called time.
(And yes, it turned out to be the right one).
So I left the first day not knowing if I had salvaged a few points or blown
those points and who knows what else (the way things tend to happen in the
lab with everything relying on everything else). It was yet another night
of worry, anxiety, hope, and not a whole lot of sleep.
The next morning, three of us got to continue on to the second day. We got
through to lunch and the waiting process began. It was about three hours
between when we left for lunch and when we got called back (for various
reasons, I'm not complaining - the proctor had a lot of tests to check -
and besides, it was a nice day to sit outside).
I was the only one who got to continue on to troubleshooting. Needless to
say, it was a terrifying experience, knowing I was close to the goal but
that I could blow it at any time. Panic tried to set in a few times but I
worked through it and by the end of the three hours, I was awarded with my
very own post-it note with the words "CCIE #5867".
I don't need a fancy plaque or certificate...I just need that post-it note. :-)
One word sums up the experience for me:
Whew!
Kinton
CCIE #5867
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