From: DAN DORTON (DHSTS68@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Thu Feb 07 2002 - 13:58:00 GMT-3
I took my lab in San Jose in Feb.
Unfortunately I failed, but it is a doable test.
I made some major mistakes (Mostly due to nerves) that cost me big
time.
I had one hell of a time getting there.
I went to the airport, forgot my tickets.
The wife had to drive them to me, by the time she got there I realized
my flight was delayed to the point that I would never make my connecting
flight.
Drove to the other airport & got stuck in gridlock traffic.
I made it to the airport 35 minutes before my flight was going to take
off.
Luckily I made it.
Ciscos directions to the lab in San Jose from the airport sucked in my
opinion.
I drove around for a couple of hours to find my way & finally went to
the hotel to relax.
The westin was great.
Anyways, to the nitty gritty.
Time is of the essence, You have to be able to configure your core
layer2 & 3 very very quickly without mistakes.
Explainations are extremely vague, interpretations of the questions are
a killer. You must not only know how to do them, but why you need too.
At the end I had a couple of hours to go back & fix some things,
unfortunately there were a couple of things I have never seen before.
Imagine that... 7 months of doing nothing but this stuff & there was
still stuff I have never seen.
Make sure you do not second guess yourself, I could have made enough
things work to pass, but instead I tried to do things differently than I
would have because I thought that was what they wanted.
I also changed some things at the very end that I shouldn't have that
probably cost me some points.
Again interpretation is a killer.
The proctors were great & pretty fair... Answered most of my questions
right away.
If you have a doubt... Ask the proctor.
I only have one MAJOR complaint.
Excuse me for being vague, but I don't want to break the NDA in any
way.
I had some equipment that failed at layer 1.
I pointed it out right away, but they were unable to fix it.
They told me to configure it like I thought it should be & they would
take it into CONSIDERATION. (Too my surprise I did very badly on this
section when I checked later!)
Unfortunately that left me at a VERY big disadvantage, because
troubleshooting as you go is part of the test, but I didn't have that
luxury on a VERY LARGE part of my test.
This happened to me right after lunch which basically screwed my entire
thought process & made me about ten times as nervous. As if I was not
nervous enough in the first place.
It was something that I had torn apart a hundred times over in my home
labs & I KNOW if I could have tested it that I would have been able to
fix it, but again... I did not have that luxury.
My advice to you is that if you have equipment failure on your lab that
you stop & insist that it is repaired, before you go on. I really wish
that I had done this.
Overall it was a gut wrenching experience, but again the test is very
passable. I believe that if my equipment had not failed & I had not let
my nerves override my experience that I would have passed. In fact I was
fairly confident that I did pass until I got home to see the horrible
results.
I will be going back in a few months to attempt it again & hopefully my
experience will be a little better this time.
After this e-mail the proctors that are watching will probably have it
out for me, but I wanted to try to save some other people the problems
that I had if at all possible.
Anyways, good luck on your attempts & see you in CCIE land one of these
days.
Dan
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