From: Adam Quiggle (aquiggle@xxxxxxxxx)
Date: Fri Mar 29 2002 - 17:18:23 GMT-3
Hi everyone,
Well I got my email bright and early this morning (it was postmarked just
after midnight, but I didn't get it until 6:00am). As everyone has said,
the waiting is a killer. I had convinced myself that I had failed and was
prepared to reschedule the lab again, but when I opened my email and say
that "Congratulations on passing the CCIE Lab" I jumped out of my
seat! :-) Needless to say I've been on cloud 9 since early this morning.
As to pointers for those pursuing the CCIE here are some of the things I've
done.
1) Read, read and read some more. There are a lot of different books out
there and I don't have any new books to add to the list, although there are
a few that I did appreciate more than others: Ciscopress Internetworking
with SNA (Sackett), Doyle vI and vII, Halabi (starts hard gets easier once
you get past the NAP concept) and Caslow.
2) Practice, practice and practice some more. I used the bootcamp labs for
a good understanding of what to expect. I did several of the FATKID labs
and even created some labs to explore the various technologies. The
bootcamp labs frequently took me much longer to do than I anticipated
because I frequently went off on tangents to explore "what if's".
3) http://www.cyscoexpert.com I went there before my lab when I thought I
was ready and had done most of the bootcamp labs with minimal
problems. However, they kicked my butt into gear and there is no doubt
that I would have failed if I hadn't taken this "class". It's really not a
class, as it is customized training. While many of the CCIE classes are
during the week and have a regimented approach, this one was customized to
your weaknesses. The first day they run you through a practice lab and
subsequently evaluate your performance and you go from there. There was
always one and almost always there were two and sometimes three CCIEs
during "class", which was from 9am to 10pm. In addition they were open
through weekends (9am to 10pm), so you can go during the weekend, which is
a definite bonus. They are really nice people there to boot!
4) Time management is critical. It's all true true true. Several times I
looked at a problem and couldn't figure it out quickly, so I made a note
and kept going. If I remembered how to do a little bit later I would go
back and add it, otherwise I waited until the end.
At lunch time I was barely half way through the lab. I don't know how
other people get done by lunch, but my methodology was "how I can integrate
this concept/technology into the network without impacting the core". I
was always looking for problems as I went along, because nothing is worse
than trying to deal with multiple problems at the same time.
All was well right up until five minutes before he called time and I found
that my routes were recalculating every 10 seconds..ugh...giant routing
loop...now I'm really hosed! How am I going to find a routing loop in less
than 5 minutes??? I'm not sure if I got lucky or if it was just experience
that led me to find what routes that were looping, but I managed to find
the problem and correct it just before he called time. Here is a tip,
start shutting down interfaces one at a time until the recalcs go away and
then focus on how that stopped them. Sometimes you have to shutdown
several interfaces (one at a time) to figure out the exit and entry
points. I walked away knowing I didn't get 9 points (didn't fulfill the
criteria) and thought I have 11 points to play with. Must have been my
lucky day. :-)
5) Keep track of your progess. I wrote down every question on a piece of
paper and the number of points, with a space for notes:
Num Pts Notes
2.1 2 Check for routes on R6
2.2 4 Look at authentication
This is important when it gets toward the end and you start to make sure
you've nailed the questionable stuff.
6) Don't overthink the problem. That is a direct quote from the proctors
who were great. They are there to help and they do their best to calm your
nerves before the lab and during lunch. However, make sure you ask the
right question, don't ask a "how" question, but if there is a requirement
to filter "LSA Type 5's" you might ask "Is it ok to filter Type-3 and
Type-4 LSA's".
7) Aliases. I'm a 60 words a minute typer and I found that I had about a
dozen commands that I aliased so that I can access things quickly and build
from that. For example:
alias exec sio show ip ospf
can be used as:
sio n - show ip ospf neighbor
sio v - show ip ospf virtual-link
sio i - show ip ospf interface
In addition, for setting up the core I would recommend using the commands:
so - show run | begin router ospf
se - show run | begin router eigrp
sb - show run | begin router bgp
These work great on the 3640's, but tend to be slow on the 2500's. However
you don't have to go scrolling for what is missing.
8) Groupstudy! Almost every question you can think of has been asked and
answered on this list and can be found in the archives. I used the
archives extensively, which is probably why I didn't post that much. Huge
thanks to Paul Borghese!
Well, that's all I can think of. Good luck to those pursuing your
CCIE. I'll be here in the flanks continuing to listen, learn and hopefully
extend a hand to others. :-)
Later,
AQ
**********************************
Adam Quiggle
Sr. Network Eng II
Managed Network Services Worldcom
CCIE #9409, CCNP, MCNE, MCSE
**********************************
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