From: Tim Devries (TDevries@cyence.com)
Date: Tue Oct 15 2002 - 15:46:29 GMT-3
Are you allowed to use the documentation CD on the exam?
Pls advise.
Thanks
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Whittle [mailto:peter@whittle-systems.demon.co.uk]
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2002 2:03 AM
To: CCIELab Studygroup
Subject: My Turn #10471 in Brussels
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
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