From: Jim Graves (jtg@xxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Tue Apr 24 2001 - 15:06:42 GMT-3
I just took my first attempt at the lab in San Jose. It was a bit of a
roller coaster for me -- went home from day 1 thinking I'd bollixed it all
up, then actually made it to day 2. Day 2 morning went great, and I took
off for lunch feeling pretty good. Troubleshooting killed me, though (or,
rather, I didn't do as well as needed to make up for a crummy day 1).
I got a brand new lab setup to troubleshoot. I found a lot of problems,
and had marked down over 40 different things I'd found and corrected. I
must be mislabelling what counts as a fault, though, because I was told I
missed 9 points on the troubleshooting part. I'm still a bit befuddled at
that -- I must have some fundamental misunderstanding of how the problems
are counted. The proctor (whose name I forget) unfortunately didn't give
me any guidance at all in his explanations.
(Question for the group: do you know how they count these things? If
something's not working and there's three things misconfigured that keep it
from working, is that one problem or three? What about problems with no
symptoms? If I see something not to spec but it's not actually keeping
anything from working, is that something to correct, or ignore? What about
misdirection tricks -- do those count as official problems, or are they
just logs thrown in the way to make life even more fun?)
Mistakes on day 1 killed me. I finished basic configuration around
1:00-1:30 in the afternoon, then spent the rest of the day fighting a
couple of issues. That was a bad idea -- I probably should have given up
on one of them much sooner, and spent the rest of the time looking for
problems in the things I knew.
Instead of the long suggestions sections, I only have one: KNOW THE CORE
PROTOCOLS. Everyone says this. Believe it. I spent a lot of my study
time on topics I never saw in the exam, because I had less experience with
them. In retrospect, it's more important to know the core protocols
inside, out, backwards, and upside down. There's certain protocols we know
we're going to have to deal with: OSPF, IGRP, EIGRP, RIP, and BGP. You
should be able to configure just about every conceivable combination of
these things in your sleep.
I felt I knew the core protocols pretty well--and I do know them pretty
well. But "pretty well" isn't enough.
I've spent about three months studying using just about everything
available -- all the usual books (Doyle, Halabi, Caslow), ECP1, and every
practice lab I could get my hands on: fatkid, ccbootcamp, some internal
practice labs from Lucent, and some of the labs from the new CCIE Lab
Practice Kit book. I've also had the good fortune to have hands-on access
to a local Cisco lab rack at my office.
So. Anyone have a date in late May or June they'd like to trade for
sometime around Christmas? ;)
------------------------------------------------------
Jim Graves
Alphabet Soup: CCNP, CISSP, MCSE
Network Systems Consultant
Lucent Worldwide Services
Alpha Pager: 1-800-467-1467
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