Re: CCIE#8903

From: Sundar Palaniappan (sundar_palaniappan@xxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Wed Mar 06 2002 - 23:25:47 GMT-3


   
Congratulations George!!

Thanks for sharing with us the path you took to get CCIE. Many of us would
benefit from your experience.

I wasn't sure which CCIE training should I go for. Based on your input, I am
going to ask my Company to get me to the NMC class. Did you take both the
NMC 1 & 2 or just the NMC1.

On Solie's book, errors aside, was it helpful from the LAB perspective. I
read Doyle 1, Caslow and reading Halabi now. Would you recommend reading
Doyle 2 on top of these books or is some of the stuff repetitive.

Cheers,
Sundar

>From: "George Zhang" <gyzhang63@hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: "George Zhang" <gyzhang63@hotmail.com>
>To: ccielab@groupstudy.com, cisco@groupstudy.com,
>discuss-it@lists.netmasterclass.net
>Subject: CCIE#8903
>Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 17:57:14 -0500
>
>All,
>
>The title says it all. I took my first attempt at the CCIE lab test
>yesterday (March 5) in Halifax and received the "Congratulations on Passing
>the CCIE Lab!" this morning.
>
>I was the only person taking the lab test in Halifax yesterday. I was told
>that there was another person scheduled yesterday but did not show up. My
>test started about 8:15 AM in the morning. We broke for lunch at about
>12:20PM. By then, I only finished all the IGP stuff and felt some pressure
>on time. But I have already reviewed rest of the test and knew that I
>could
>go through the rest quickly. After the 15 min lunch break, I worked
>through
>rest of the test very quickly. By about 3:00 PM, I finished every thing
>except one small requirement that I had no clue how to do it. I decided to
>skip that item. Then, I started reviewing and checking my config. Along
>the way of reviewing/checking, I spotted and fixed a few issues. Just
>about
>the time I finished reviewing every thing, the proctor walked in and told
>me
>that it' time. I looked at the watch. It was 4:30 PM. My proctor was
>Steve. Steve is a great proctor. He answered quite a few of my questions
>and cleared my mis-understanding and confusion about the requirements of
>the
>test.
>
>I would like to take this opportunity to thank all people who helped me to
>achieve my goal. First, I would like to thank my wife for her support and
>understanding. Without her support, there is no way I could achieve my
>goal. Next, I will give my thanks to Bruce, Val, and Fred of
>NetMasterClass. As I said earlier, the NMC1 class is the most important
>part of my final preparation. Thanks to Katie Wong of Cisco who scheduled
>me to access the ASET racks. Thats my primary resource for hands-on
>practices for the past couple of months. Thanks to Eric Fairfield for
>lending me a few routers when I was in Wisconsin. Also thanks to those
>that
>I've either studied with or have helped me one way or another. Thanks also
>to Paul for putting this great list together.
>
>As far as my story, I started my quest of the Cisco certifications a little
>over two and half years ago. I got my CCNA and CCNP in the first year.
>Three months later, I passed the CCIE written test. I wanted to take the
>lab a year ago. However, due to work and personal reasons, I did not get
>time to do it until now. Last year, I was too busy to do much study. At
>work, as a consultant, I was billing at least 40 hours/week for the whole
>year. At home, my second child was born in February, my wife finished
>school in July, and we moved to New Jersey from Wisconsin in September. In
>October of last year, I foresaw a window of opportunity for me to take the
>lab test early this year. Then, I lobbed my manager to let me go to the
>ECP1 class. By the time my manager approved my training request, I found
>that Mentor Technologies went belly up. However, I learned that Bruce and
>Val founded a new company called NetMasterClass, LLC
>(www.netmasterclass.net) and offering the NMC1 and NMC2 classes. I
>registered and took the NMC1 class by the end January. By the end of last
>year, the project I worked on finished. So since the beginning of this
>year
>I got a lot of time to study. For the past couple of months, I have
>studied
>8-10 hours every day.
>
>As far as how I prepared, I have read most of the books (Doyle I & II,
>Caslow, Halabi, Tam-Nam-Kee, Solie, Satterlee, etc.) recommended by people
>on this list. Among this long list of books, the only one I dont like is
>Solies book because there are too many errors in the book. There are a
>few
>topics I was more confused after reading the book. I dont have a home
>lab.
> So my primary resource for hands-on practice is remote labs such as
>Mentor
>Technologies vlabs (not available any more), Cisco ASET lab. Because I
>dont have a home lab, my preparation included more reading than hands-on
>practice. That actually worked out very well for me. Above all, the most
>important part of my preparation is the NMC1 class taught by Bruce, Val and
>Fred. IF I HAD NOT TAKEN THE NMC1 CLASS, IT PROBABLY WOULD HAVE TAKEN ME
>ONE OR TWO MORE ATTEMPTS BEFORE I COULD GET MY NUMBER. There are a lot of
>things that just cannot be learned from reading books or practicing. So
>the
>NMC1 class helped me to fill in that gap very well. It also helped me to
>access my strength and weakness. So I know what to study on the last few
>weeks. I strongly recommend taking the NMC1 class a few weeks before your
>lab date.
>
>Thanks again.
>
>George Zhang
>CCIE#8903, CCNA, CCNP
>Sr. Network Architect
>Compuware Corpration
>1 Meadowlands Plaza, Suite 1050
>East Rutherford, NJ 07073
>732-494-0288
>
>



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Thu Jun 13 2002 - 10:56:55 GMT-3