From: fixi mixi (mfixi@xxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Sun Sep 03 2000 - 10:52:39 GMT-3
Hi,
This is the story of my lab exam.
I flew to Brussels feeling no chance on the exam next day. My goal was to
make it to the 2nd day.
So I went there on the next morning feeling not particularly excited knowing
the final result anyway. Then we got the questions handed out. I looked
through it and I didnt find it too difficult for the first sight. At that
moment I got excited. Can I make it for the 2nd day? So I did my best. At
the end of the day I felt that I wouldn't be surprised if I was told to go
on next day too.
The proctor graded our work and called us one by one. We went trough
together on my configs. The proctor asked me questions pointing out my
mistakes. Since he didnt asked me serious questions I assumed that I made
the first day. My assumtion was right. He said that we will see eachother
the next day. He didnt tell me points.
Next morning I went there knowing that I reached my goal, the 2nd day. The
questions were not too difficult again, so I thought I have even chance to
make it for the troubleshooting? At lunch time I was pretty confident that I
can go for troubleshooting. And I thought, what is troubleshooting, there is
nothing to it, a few passwd recovery, playing with vlans on the cat, a few
ip address changes, intf shutdowns, ospf area changes and it works. So it
was so. After lunch it turned out that 3 of us can go for ts.
There was only 2 hours for that. I started. Two pwd recovery, seems nothing.
I changed few params on the cat which were crucial and i even changed back
the hostname. I thought it was important. In fact it was not. I went for the
routers. I spent a few minutes with changing nonsense (hostnames,
passwds...). Then I thought lets make the connectivity work. I realised that
they changed lots of ip addresses. In fact they changed almost all of them.
I looked at ospf. It was totally messed up. Redistribution between routing
protocols? Filters for redistribution? Nothing worked. I didnt even dare to
look at bgp.
So frankly speaking I had to reconfigure the whole IP staff with routing. I
had to reconfigure the whole framerelay stuff. Delete subintfs which
involves to reboot your routers again. (3mins)
IPX and Apple were also in bad shape. None of my previously configured IPX
addresses and apple cable- ranges were correct. ISDN needed reconfiguration
too. I was correcting ip ipx apple addresses during this two hours but i did
not get to the end.
So I failed because of the ts. During this 2 hour I corrected at least 50
errors all together and I see at least 20 more (not counting stupid passwds
on vty and hostnames)
At the beginning of the ts i thought that i will be given some tricky erros
which need debugging and correct the problem. It was not so. The errors were
obvious. They didnt test your knowledge. They tested your typing ability an
copy-paste ability. They tested how fast you can type. I was quite upset
about this stupidity and unfairness. This is not a question of knowledge,
this is just to make the passing rate to 15%.
At the end of ts i asked the proctor what they grade on ts. He was preaching
me about some sophisticated methodology how to approach the problem etc, and
he told me that basically they grade connectivity and anyway he is new at
proctoring on the ccie lab. Yes, i sad, but in my case it ment that i almost
had to do the same thing in two hours which i was doung for two days before.
I wanted to ask him if he think that the ts is for human beings, but i did
not want to ruin my chances for the nex try so i kept my mouth shut and
tried to smile.
Later on i talked to the other proctor (there were 2 groups taking the exam,
from 12 people only 1 passed) and I asked him how many errors they put all
together in one persons config. 50-60, he answered. I had more than that.
Final conclusion. My proctor was not willing to tell me (not only me) how
many points i had reached in the different sessions. He said he didnt know
because he was a beginner and it is not important anyway since i have
failed. (that was nice of him)
The other proctor told everybody the points.
I dont know the practise in the states but in brussels it is just crazy how
they do ts.
I dont understand if they have such a strict rules on us how to do things on
the exam why do they have free choice either telling you or not your points.
That is stupid. That was a self made up rule by my proctor.
My oppinion that ts in brussels is just insane and not realistic, with other
word, stupid.
Derek
ps: lots of thing depends on the proctor, do not upset him
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