From: Kirk Byers (ktbyers@xxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Sun Oct 08 2000 - 07:47:13 GMT-3
I sent this last week, but I don't think it went through because of email
problems with the list. So it is being posted later than I would have
liked, but oh well.
On September 23-24, I was passed the CCIE Routing and Switching lab in RTP.
This was my second attempt taking the lab. I took my first attempt in May
and was able to pass Day1, but didnt make it through Day2 morning. I
thought the subject matter was fair, but there were several topics that I
had not studied in sufficient depth. On several of these topics, I had told
myself that, Oh that wont be on the lab, and then I opened up the lab
book and there it was.
So I scheduled my second exam for September, took about a month off, and
then got back to studying. I added some additional equipment to my home lab
including an ISDN BRI line from Bell Atlantic and a 2504 (thus bringing my
home lab total to 7 routers, 1 switch, and 2 MAUs). Using the single BRI
line with an external NT1 that had 2 S/T interfaces, I was able to set up my
2 2504 routers so that they could place a call from one router to the other.
I found this very valuable for practicing the ISDN configuration tasks. I
also purchased the practice labs from ccbootcamp.com and used these to
sharpen my skills. These labs helped me provide focus to my studying, and
they also improved my speed in configuration tasks. I worked on quite a few
of the labs (probably about half of them), but not all
During the last 2 months I spent a considerable amount of time studying the
areas that I thought I was particularly weak on. I rented some space on the
ccbootcamp.com racks for 2 days so that I could practice many different
aspects of ATM. I also drove to a nearby facility and practiced voice, ATM,
and Token Ring switch configuration.
During the last few weeks I heavily reviewed what I viewed as the core
subject areas of the exam. I created a review document, and went through
every tasks that I thought could be covered in these areas (focusing on what
I thought was most important to least important).
During the lab, I felt good about Day1. I had much better time management
than I did the first time. I spent a lot of time verifying that I had
everything working the way I wanted and felt pretty confident. On Day2
morning, I started to get pretty nervous about ½ way through as I still had
a lot of exam left. I really started to pick up the pace at this point.
Several of the questions, however, ended up being considerably easier than I
had expected and everything fell into place. I had some time to review my
answers and I felt pretty good.
The proctor told me I had a pretty good margin going into troubleshooting.
I thought troubleshooting was easy. It would have been fun if I wasnt so
paranoid at that point in time to not over look anything. The instructor
told me I passed and handed me my number. And that was it.
>From beginning to end, I spent a little over a year studying for the CCIE
written and lab combined. My knowledge of both Networking Theory and how to
implement it on Cisco Routers has increased tremendously in this endeavor.
I am glad I did it. Good luck.
Kirk Byers
CCIE #6243
KPMG Consulting
ktbyers@hotmail.com
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