From: Earl Aboytes (earl@xxxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Tue Oct 10 2000 - 12:08:25 GMT-3
Congratulations Sanjay! I now give you permission to get your life back
into your own hands ;-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Earl Aboytes CCIE #6097
Senior Consulting Engineer
Datatran Network Services
805-498-2450
earl@linkline.com
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-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com]On Behalf Of
Maljure, Sanjay
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 3:04 PM
To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: Hi
Hi Everyone
I am glad to say that I got my number (6286) on friday in RTP on my
3rd try. I will try and give some inputs on how I went about it and try hard
to stick to reality and the NDA while I do it. I have been working with
routers and switches now for close to 3 years. I was a CCSI with my previous
company. I taught ICRC/ACRC/CLSC etc and this gig gave me a great
opportunity to learn the basics of internetworking in a proper way. This is
also the time I made up my mind to go for my CCIE.
My first attempt was in San Jose in Nov'99. I studied for about 20
days. I did not have my own lab to practice. So most of the preparation was
reading the config guides and the usual books. I did badly and could not
make it in to day 2. I had got 28. If I had not done a couple of bad
mistakes, I would have seen day 2. Anyways I came back from the test and
rescheduled for March 2000.
About 45 days before my 2nd try, I took the ECP1 course. It is a
great course and I figured I would need the hands-on because I still did not
have my own lab. This time I studied for a month and a half. I was better
prepared. I did well in day 1. I thought I had aced it. But when I went back
on the morning of day 2, the proctor pointed out a few things that I should
have really noticed myself previously. I must have lost about 10 points but
I still got to move on. So I tried my best with the questions on the morning
of day 2. Well during the lunch of day 2 I figured I had an outside chance
of making troubleshooting. But I was wrong. I did not have enough points to
get in to troubleshooting. At this point of time I was pretty mad at myself
because I had nailed almost all of IP but still did not have enough points
to even make it in to troubleshooting.
I rescheduled for my 3rd try. Postponed it a couple of times. Took
my vacation. And finally I had it scheduled for October 5th and 6th. I
talked my boss in to buying a rackfull of equipment this time. I had also
bought Marc's labs. I started working on it about 30 days before the test.
There were some good days and some bad days. Basically I wasn't consistent
in the amount of hours I was putting in. I even thought a couple of times of
taking the swap offers that kept popping on this list. Thank God I didn't.
Things improved a little bit and the last 10 days were super. I was
concentrating well and getting in to the groove. So when I walked in to the
test I figured I had a reasonable chance. I did pretty well on day 1. Had
enough time to go over the configs twice. There were a couple of things that
I wasn't sure about and I went with my best guess on those. The next day the
proctor told me that I had done a pretty good job and pointed out one thing
as a mistake. I must have lost about 3 points. I did fairly well morning of
day 2. There were a couple of scares though. At a couple of points, I almost
lost my cool and blew it. Thankfully I kept going and figured them out. I
knew I was getting in to troubleshooting this time. I found out I was. I
also did well during troubleshooting. A few tense minutes later, I saw the
proctor and the yellow post-it in his hand. I thought I was going to fly
away.
Some of the things that I learnt during the process:
1. It is hard. I have noticed an interesting thing about the test. People
who do not pass say it wasn't incredibly hard. (I said the same thing after
my first try). People who pass it say it was fairly hard. The thing is you
will not see anything on the test that is really really bad. It is just that
getting it all together in the time alloted is very hard indeed. It needs a
level of knowledge that is truly "expert". And it needs indepth knowledge in
a lot of areas. Not just IP.
2. Get a lab. I should have really cleared this thing on my 2nd try. The
difference was that I did not have my own lab to practice. Well my point was
I work every day on production networks. And I think I have a very good
understanding of the internetworking basics. So why can't we just read the
config guides and go at it. Well the fact is there are a lot of landmines
involved in a lot of topics. And those landmines will be there in your test.
Unless you have come across them in a production/practice environment, u are
going to lose points and time. And this test is all about points and time.
So I got my equipment from Brad Ellis. Great guy and great gear. You will
need it.
3. It is an open book test. What that means is you are only a few clicks
away from what you will need in the test. I did not put in as much time on
the routers as some of the others (not something that I am proud of but just
the way things worked out) and I have about 32 bytes of volatile memory.
Thats it. I used the CD extensively in all my attempts especially on my 3rd
try. Also relying on the CD makes the test a little less monstrous because
we can concentrate on the concepts and look up the commands. It worked for
me.
4. Clarity of thought. I think the key differentiator on the test is how
well we know the basics. There were a lot of times in the test when I had to
ask myself some very basic questions. "why is the packet not coming in to
the router?" And I had to answer the question from the first principles. You
know Comer and that kind of stuff. The reason the test is hard is it makes u
think on ur feet. We could practice all the scenarios and they will still
come up with something which will make us go "uh?" So spend the time in
reading through the "why" It will be time well spent.
5. Stay relaxed. If we choke we will only make it harder. Be very relaxed
and very alert. Don't worry too much about the result. I think a lot of
questions on the test do not give 100% information on how we should go about
them. A perfect situation to make mistakes if we are not thinking straight.
6. This list ROCKS. If it were any cooler, Al Gore would have it banned as
an environmental hazard. There are guys on this list who are total gurus and
there are a lot of willing learners. Use the list. I went through about 3000
mails from the archive a week before my test. If I had not done that, I
would have been posting a much shorter mail for a date swap. The way Scott
answers about ATM or Earl explained about LSAP filters is just awesome.
Makes me want to be like them someday. Paul u are Da Maan for bringing so
many great guys together. A good way to find out if you are ready is to
check if all the posts on the list begin to make sense to you. If they do, u
must be close.
7. Do it for the right reasons. Somewhere in the process, this thing stops
being a certification and becomes something personal. I guess the one thing
I feel good about through the whole process is that I am a better network
engineer because of it.
8. Keep at it.
Resources:
Doc CD
Jeff Doyle
Bruce Caslow
Sam Halabi (BGP and OSPF design guide)
Beau Williamson
Marc Russel's labs and lab time (Totally awesome customer service!!!)
And finally
"Apply cool in all situations
Also, apply cool on all interfaces"
-The Gita v2.2
(Obsoletes RFC 791)
Thanks everyone for answering my questions helping me learn
Sanjay Maljure
(resist the temptation)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Thu Jun 13 2002 - 08:25:25 GMT-3