From: Chris Hugo (chrishugo@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Oct 13 2002 - 20:32:54 GMT-3
Peter. Great Work. Tell Zeb good luck.
chris hugo
Peter Whittle <peter@whittle-systems.demon.co.uk> wrote:By the grace of God, after 2 years of hard work, a lot of money
invested, I have finally succeeded R/S CCIE #10471.
I started over 2 years ago, first of all aiming for ISP Dial, well I
passed the written on the last day it was available but did not manage
to get a Lab booking in Brussels before the Dial lab was closed.
I would like to thank my wife, Ruth & my family for putting up with me
for so long. My two 7 year old sons can't remember when daddy was just
available to play and was not locked away in the dining room with his
rack. So now is the time to rediscover those ball games, how to make
aeroplanes, fly a kite, fix bikes etc.
I would also like to thank Brian and Zeb my study partners for their
encouragement and input. All the best Zeb, your turn tomorrow.
I now must investigate that multimedia device in the lounge, sounds
fascinating.
-----------
My main comments to the rest of you are:
IMHO
1. It is achievable, but it takes a lot more effort than perhaps Cisco
would lead us to believe from the CCIE web page. Be prepared for very
little social life for at least 6 months - 18 months.
2. Study the technologies. Don't even think of booking a lab at this
stage.
3. Do as many practice labs as you can get hold of. I used the usual
sources: FATKID, Solie, IpeXpert, NLI. - Perhaps over the top. You need
some good quality scenarios with realistic levels of difficulty to give
you an idea what to expect. For my 1st attempt, although I had coasted
through the written paper both the ISP Dial & the R/S, and I spent some
time learning the technologies doing 'labettes' I was simply, not good
enough and nothing like well enough prepared for the real thing. Well!
they say experience helps - but at #1500 a try for lab fee, travel &
expenses it is rather an expensive way to gain experience. Save your
money!
4. Practice full 1 day scenarios, as per the end of IpeXpert or in NLI.
Then do them again several times over until you can nail them in under 8
hours. Build your home rack based upon what is needed for your favourite
scenarios. When I started I bought loads of miscellaneous kit on ebay, I
was not entirely sure what was needed other than some sort of Cisco
routers and a switch or two. I ended up with too much of not quite the
right kit in order to build a useful rack. Save your money! Get the
scenario workbook of your choice then acquire the kit necessary to build
it.
5. When you have a realistic idea of effort required, when and how you
will put in some 400 - 800 lab hours plus further reading, then is the
time to book your lab seat and a place on a bootcamp about 6 weeks
before the lab date.
6. Go on one of the bootcamps. I went on Martin Shortland's one. Two
weeks, and money well spent. (I should have done that instead of going
to the lab the first two times.)
7. I then spent 4 weeks going over more scenarios again and again.
You should aim to get all the IGP & BGP done on the lab scenarios by
lunch time. If you can't then you need more practice!
8. Get yourself a couple of study partners and work through scenarios
together. I mean study them and analyse them, not just read the
solutions. Local partners are best, though MSN messenger plus netmeeting
work quite well. In the later stages I found it very helpful to say nail
up the L2 & L3 broken into parts perhaps 20 - 30 minutes at a time. I
would do a part and my study partner would watch and take notes, then we
would have a quick review, eg 'you are dithering on the Frame Relay -
practice & nail it!', 'you are jumping around the routers, you'll never
keep track of what you have completed and what is left to do', 'you are
fumbling the BGP'. 'Come on make it snappy - bang, bang, bang the basic
config is in'. Then we would swap roles.
Try to develop a methodology and follow it. I start with top left and
work your way down to bottom right of the network diagram. If you know
that something will take time to come up eg Frame Relay dlci, then don't
sit there waiting move onto the next router and then come back to it.
Try to practice full time the 2 weeks before your lab date. I used up
most of my annual leave for this.
9. You absolutely must be able to do the standard things in your sleep,
because that is the only way to beat the 'time-deamon' and not have him
chasing you throughout the lab. You need any time that you can win by
being super quick on standard configuration items to give you time to
think about the difficulties and to find the obscure items on the CD.
10. If you are fighting the 'time-daemon' having to debug everything
step at a time then you will never have enough time on the lab. With
practice it is doable, you just need lots of boring, repetitive
practice.
11. If you have won the time on the standard bits then don't waste it.
If you are not getting anywhere, make a note of where you are on the
paper provided and move on. Far better to get all the points that you
can from the bits that you know than may be get one difficult problem
out that you were unsure of. Zeb gave me a useful tip here, use one of
the sheets of paper to keep track of where you are, put down all the
question numbers each on a separate line. When you have finished a
section, tick it. If there is anything that you are not sure of or need
to come back to then make a note of it. Use the highlighter pen to mark
the incomplete questions that you skip.
12. Get what points you can, then go back and solve the problems and
search for things. Know your way round the CD. I found the command
indexes helpful together with the ctrl/F search in document feature to
find things. You need the right keyword, but the detailed syntax is then
easy to find.
13. Don't be afraid to ask the Proctor questions. In my experience they
are great guys. The worse they can do is tell you to go back and read
the question.
I had finished my lab by 3 pm so 2.5 hours to check them over, check
with the CD any item that I was at all unsure about. Qualify any
ambiguities with the proctor. Extensively test the connectivity with a
ping script. I found some oversights with that one! By 16:00 I was
definitely tired, it had been a hard day. Only another hour and a half,
back to reading the configs.
Walking back to the Hotel I had a couple of flashes of inspiration.
eeek! did I really forget to do that? Oh dear! I don't think that I did
that one right! Wonder if I have lost too many points? Obviously I
hadn't but it was going to be tough waiting for the results.
Well enough of my soap box offering. It worked for me perhaps some of it
will work for you.
Remember it is achievable but takes a lot of hard slog.
I wish you well with your endeavours and pray that God will guide you
too.
Peter
-- Peter Whittle--------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos, & more faith.yahoo.com
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