From: Price, Jamie (JPrice@xxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Wed Jan 10 2001 - 17:56:32 GMT-3
My horror story from a few weeks ago:
My day 1 was chaos. I had no less than 4 cable defects with my rack, a
flaky patch panel (the proctor admitted this), and unstable routers. Each
issue (remember that on day 1 the rack is supposed to more or less
work....troubleshooting doesnt occur until day 2 if you make it that
far....1 or 2 issues are ok but I had many more than that) took 10-15
minutes to identify, because I had to make sure it wasnt me, and then took
the proctor at least another 10-15 minutes to fix. One incideent stretched
beyond 30 minutes. Some examples:
1. I was tasked with creating an "environment"....no problem....but the
cables that connected 2 of the outlying routers to the core were faulty and
therefore the interfaces would not come up. With no connectivity to the
core, the routed environment, and any subsequent routing loops, could not be
proved/identified. After triple checking to make sure it wasnt a config
issue and that things were cabled correctly, I told the proctor who then
went into maintenance mode. I had 4 distinctly separate cable problems like
this which took them a fair while to fix. Maintenance guys were coming in
and rewiring portions of my patch panel!!! And the cable problems werent all
identified at once either, some cables/ports worked ok at the start of the
day but then went bad throughout.
2. Realizing I was having numerous cable issues I (stupidly) jiggled an
Ethernet cable in the back of a router thinking that that might be the
reason this particular interface wouldnt come up. On doing that the entire
rack shut down and powered back on. Wasnt I overjoyed to find that
everything I had entered on the routers had been lost to me and I had to
reenter it. Luckily I was saving every 10 minutes but it was a pain
nonetheless. But you'll be happy to know that after the power down of the
rack the Ethernet interface came up.
3. The patch panel only had a few ports patched to interfaces.
So...thinking that router A was connected to router B, I was entering
another realm of frustration as to why I was not getting connections.
Admittedly I should have checked straight away but when you lose so much
time because of other physical faults you start to get a bit rushed. This
in fact took the proctor a while to find as he expected them to be cabled as
such too.
There were a number of other rack related issues that arose as well but I
wont go into them - NDA and all. These additional issues totalled about
another 4.
Needless to say the proctor was very helpful and appreciative of the
situation. I was given some more time at the end of the day to compensate
for the lost time in the middle.
>From a personal standpoint though it didnt really help. As each issue arose
I had to move onto the next task (provided it wasnt dependant on the one I
was working on) and return to the original task when he had fixed the
problem. I didnt have time to wait until the issue was resolved due to the
amount of tasks that you need to fulfill in the day.
I ended up having to work on 5 different tasks at once due to physical
failures and/or the dependency of that task on a different router/cable that
had a problem.
That was the sort of crappy day 1 I had. So....to cut an excessively long
story short (for any of you that are still reading)....I arrive on day 2 to
find that I do not have my day 2 folder sitting on my desk. I had some
issues with that. I'm not saying I would have blitzed it but I honestly
believe I would have made it to day 2 had no errors occurred (but then again
you never know). The errors threw a gigantic speed hump into the flow of
the day and as corny as it sounds, "the flow" is an important factor.
Finishing half of one task to move onto another and only being able to do
1/3rd of that while I moved onto another simply screwed me up. I couldnt
prove solutions, test for routing loops, etc until later towards the end of
the day - and then I had to prove/test them all at once.
Geared up for a confrontation I suddenly get called to the side by the
proctor. Before I could say anything he offered some acceptable
compensation. I will not divulge what it was so please don't ask, but
needless to say that both of the proctors were appreciative of, and
sympathetic to, the situation and did all they could within the boundaries
of reasonable actions to make amends (thankfully I didnt pay for the attempt
out of my own pocket or my calmness may have been a different story).
With regard to attitude and confidence though my second attempt was much
better than my first. I had calmed down considerably - in spite of all the
crap - and by slowing the old brain electrons down I read the questions for
what they were, realized that many things were nowhere near as complicated
as I had imagined them to be on my 1st try, planned accordingly, and
actually did well....considering everything else that had happened. Within
myself I feel I would have made it to day 2 had the rack been ok.
Now I'm not saying that I would have passed the entire lab had my rack been
ok - I'll never know that - but I feel within myself that the learning
experience of attempt 1 was very beneficial and applying that which I learnt
in attempt 1 (I'm not talking Cisco stuff here - more strategies and
attitudes) to attempt 2 made me a serious contender for that 4 digit cert.
All in all my 2nd attempt - as frustrating as it was - actually instilled
more confidence in me. Pity I have to wait another 6 months now :)
Thats my brief story.
Jamie
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