From: Dennis Bailey (certstudy@snet.net)
Date: Sun Oct 20 2002 - 16:39:01 GMT-3
Congratulations and thank you very much for taking the time to share your
thoughts.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthony Pace" <anthonypace@fastmail.fm>
To: <ccielab@groupstudy.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2002 2:55 PM
Subject: #10349 passed on 5th try in SJ (LONG)
> I passed about 3 weeks ago on my fifth attempt and am hoping that my post
> will help to encourage others who are struggling with the same things
> that prevented me from passing on attempts 1 thru 4. I have seen a few
> posts from some people going through some of the same feelings I had this
> summer after failing on multiple attempts. If you are not in this camp
> this post may be long and boring.
>
> I read the same books as everyone else. Doyle, Halabi, and Caslow, cover
> to cover. The Clark Hamilton book was a great one that I don't always see
> mentioned. I started with the Roosevelt Giles book and I felt it was not
> very helpful. If you are doing purely self-study I liked the "ALL IN ONE
> LAB" for isolated labs. It lets you take "baby steps" for things you have
> never touched and is good on days where you don't have a big block of
> time. I know allot of people don't like it, but I found it helpful.
>
> I will be forty in February and my first computer job was in 1979. I've
> worked with allot of CISCO gear and I began the CCIE effort in 1997. It
> took me five attempts and what follows is what I feel helped and hindered
> me along the way.
>
> Things that helped me:
>
> - UNLIMITED LAB ACCESS: I COULD NOT HAVE ACCOMPLISHED THE CCIE IF I HAD
> TO PAY BY THE HOUR. The "meat and potatoes" of my studies occurred at
> ICTP, a school in Anaheim California. Theirs is the largest and most
> complete state of the art lab I have ever used and I had pretty much
> unlimited access. I would recommend ICTP to anyone who desires to get a
> lot of hands on practical experience with a lot of carrier class
> hardware.
>
> - BOOTCAMP: For me the CCIE had issues that needed to be addressed. Some
> are technical and some are psychological. I attended CyscoExperts
> bootcamp in Lincolnwood Illinois. I would recommend this school to anyone
> looking for that "extra push over the edge", with respect to the CCIE lab
> exam.
>
> - I drew the picture for each section and always used the same color
> schemes. I also took over an hour to make the map on my first attempt. By
> the fifth attempt I could draw the map in less than 10 minutes. Allot of
> people said the maps which are provided are adequate. I had to draw my
> own.
>
> - I used ping scripts. I also found that the best way was to run them one
> at a time and watch them ping. DO NOT try to be slick and run multiple
> windows, or paste the results into a text editor and search on the !!!!
> or ....I found that if most of the pings are going to work then you can
> go with a line speed of 2000ms. If 2000ms craps out, you have issues and
> need to stop the script anyway.
>
> - I became intimate with the DOC CD. This can't be stressed enough. On my
> first attempt I had not even looked at it. There is allot of stuff on it
> and if you know where it is you can avoid allot of stress over your
> ability to do raw memorization.
>
> - Don't look up anything on the first pass through. On my failed attempts
> I always "took the bait" and began researching some little detail and
> usually got it, but usually at the cost of to much valuable time. Once
> you have gotten to the end of the test you are in a much better position
> to "budget your time" with respect to the little "bells and whistles".
>
> - ONE WINDOW: This took some getting used. On my failed attempts I had
> multiple windows arranged on my screen like they were on the diagram.
> This can be helpful in real life when your troubleshooting, but once I
> got used to the one window method I really picked up speed!
>
> - ASK THE PROCTOR NON-TECHNICAL QUESTIONS ONLY: I bet I went up there 20
> times the day I passed. The question has to be worded correctly though.
> Make sure your wording of the question distinguishes you as knowing the
> technology but are struggling with the ambiguity of the questions. I
> think it also helps to suggest multiple solutions that come to mind. If
> they think your asking how to do something they will shut you down hard,
> and tell you to reread the question.
>
> - HARDWARE PROBLEMS IN THE LAB ARE A REAL POSSIBILITY: If you pay
> attention to the proctors instructions at the beginning they "WARN" you
> about it. You cannot afford to spend 90 minutes troubleshooting
> connectivity issues. I personally could not even think about anything
> else on my last attempt until I verified that I could hit the things
> "outside my control". After that I knew I only had myself and the clock
> to beat.
>
> I USED ALIASES: You have to prune them though. If an alias really does
> not help, then dump it. To many aliases can slow down the routers and a
> proctor once said a guy's routers kept crashing because he had over 100
> aliases.
>
> What hindered me the most was my poor time management and getting caught
> up in allot of little details. I became involved in the threads on the
> list about Custom Queuing and FRTS and it's semantics. I read entirely
> too much into the questions on the test. I took 45 minutes to draw a
> really great drawing while failing the test. I constantly was
> intermittently checking connectivity and was always doing "show runs" to
> double, triple and quadruple check things. Getting these tendencies under
> control was the biggest challenge for me.
>
> I hope some of these things are helpful to someone somewhere.
>
> Anthony Pace CCIE#10349
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Anthony Pace
> anthonypace@fastmail.fm
>
> --
> http://fastmail.fm - Access your email with Outlook or over the web
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