From: Giveortake@xxxxxxx
Date: Mon Dec 24 2001 - 04:17:30 GMT-3
I have further questions on addressing. While not wanting to violate any
NDA agreements which is always my goal, I feel that sometimes directions are
not clearly stated. Having taken the exam once I am unsure of what exactly
they wanted in some instances.
Same holds true for the practice labs I have taken. Once I look at the
solutions to the practice labs I undertand exactly what they wanted, but
while trying to do them without looking at solutions I often times end up
providing configurations that seem to provide the requested solution yet end
up not matching.
There is multiple ways to configure many things. I just wonder what kind of
grading scale is in effect. That no doubt depends on the individual proctor
that grades. This again goes back to my previous comments about learning
how to take a test vs. knowing enough to be a CCIE............
Is this a fair test? Can it be done without having NDA type information
availble or without taking it multiple times? Is it cheating to try to
gather NDA information in an effort to try to pass at less than the 2.7 times
average since the costs to test are so significant and after all once you
take it 2 times you have a really good idea...... This on top of scheduling
which in my opionin intentionally limits the # of CCIE's. Which as a side
note I am glad for since I will soon be one of them...
Is it unreasonable to try to save $3,000 per attempt to get a better
understanding of what is required by consulting with those that have taken
it???
Irrespective, the bar is still high as the barrier to entry still requires
more than the typical Microsoft exam which only requires a PC and some
bootlegged software. This exam even with the best "cheating" requires
thousands of hours of work with expensive equipment.
I state these things only out of frustration: Frustration at so many
things. My inability to pass after tons of work and the thought that some
one would consider my efforts "cheating" and out of what some one labled as
immaturity.
CCIE's are not the holy grail. They are not necessaily the smartest computer
guys in the industry, they are simply the most dedicated to learning a
specific aspect of the networking world. This particular specialty happens
to pay significantly better than the average network admin person... Thus I
guess CCIE's are the smartest since they are willing to devote so much of
their time to that wich will give them the highest ROI for their effort.
This is why I spend my time learing Cisco IOS. When and if another more
lucrative well adopted technology evolves, I will leave my IOS skills in a
heartbeat.
For now I continue to figure out how to become the best IOS engineer and
continue to promote the most widely adopted platform in the
business..................
Do we really think that CCIE's are smarter techincally than so many server
techs or is it just that the barrier to entry via number of hours of
experience working on expensive equipment is the true barrier???
All and all I could care less as I being smart enough to follow the cash have
decided to take work opportunities that spend my time working on the items
that have the best financial return for me. This is called capitalism.
As a secondary note, when I took my exam, I showed up at 7:30 AM all hyped up
for my 8 am test time. The proctor didnt show up until 8:20 and basically
said it didnt matter since he would give us the specified amount of time
anyway.
Whle I didnt feel slighted, it didnt go a long way to helping my thoughts of
total professionalsim among the testing process. That and the fact that the
lab was equiped with at least 10 workstations and there were only two people
attempting the exam. Myself and one other. Why were there so many seats
open and yet none showed up on the online scheduling???
Maybe it had to do with 9/11 cancellations, or maybe more so that Cisco is
for whatever reason working to slow down the number of CCIE's it graduates?
Perplexing questions that I dont expect anyone other than Chanbers to
explain...
One Mans Impressions.
David
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