RE: #10349 passed on 5th try in SJ (LONG)

From: Hung, Sing-Yu (Sing-Yu.Hung@pccw.com)
Date: Mon Oct 21 2002 - 00:57:13 GMT-3


Hi,

        Congratulations, by the way could you tell me how can I create a
ping script and how to use it?

Bradford Hung

 Pacific Century CyberWorks
 Tel: 288 33125

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Pace [mailto:anthonypace@fastmail.fm]
Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2002 2:56 AM
To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
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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