From: Robert Slaski (robin@atm.com.pl)
Date: Fri Dec 20 2002 - 22:18:57 GMT-3
Hello all,
Well, the weather in Brussels was awful so when arrived at Brussels
airport last monday I decided to do Brussels sightseeing on my second
attempt somewhen in near future. What a pity! This was a bad choice as
it seems there will be no need for me to travel to Brussels again ;-)
I passed last Tuesday on my 1st attempt. I started to prepare for
written on 1st September, passed it at the end of October and then I
decided to go straight to the lab without making any break. I got
subscribed to this list after 1+ month of awaiting so I had only few
opportunities to post my thoughts in emails here, this will be the
longer one.
One might say that 7 weeks of preparation is rather short period but
that was a time of 12-15 hours per day of chocolate/cofee powered study
with really a little sleep. Additionally I have quite a good experience
in most of networking areas and I had unlimited access to a lab full of
Cisco boxes. Many people have posted their thoughts here before and
because I consider every such an email as invaluable resource, so
forgive me for sending just another one :-)
1. Books:
- I have read most of recommended ones and I find all of them very
helpful, but do not rely on books only. When going deeper and deeper
into studies their value decreases. If you read all the well-known books
and will then feel happy with your knowledge, you'll certainly fail. At
the end of your preparation Doyle or Solie should be just an overview of
topics for you.
- To the well-known recommended list I would add Alex Zinin's great book
on IGP protocols. This is really in-depth analysis of IGP full of
algorithms and IOS pseudocode and if you like programming this will be
teach you lots of hints. If you understand things you will know how to
use them and then you will pass.
- Read as many books as you can. It does not matter that every book
covers the same topics, but every author has its own view of the topic -
this will help you review your knowledge and if you are prepared you
will also be able to find errors in every book easily.
2. Documentation:
- Books are great in understanding the topic and will teach you some
CCIE hints but ony IOS Config Guide and Command Reference will teach you
details. Kill a tree and print most of it including command reference.
This is very important and most overlooked step. You'll need Command
Reference most in the middle and in the end of your studies. Read it at
thoroughly least one time. Of course it's impossible to memorize all the
commands but this will give you feel of what can be and what cannot be
done in IOS and during the lab you'll be surprised how much information
you can recall.
- Print, read and practise _ALL_ IOS new features for 12.0 and 12.1.
Print, read and practise _ALL_ techtips on most important topics (IGP,
BGP, dial, DLSW, etc). These are where the CCIE hints are hidden.
- Some features are documented poorly in 12.1 CG&CR but they are
sometimes well explained in new features section of 12.0 documentation,
that's why I had recommended reading this. Some fetures present in 12.1
IOS are undocumented in 12.1 CG&CR - read 12.2 CG&CR then.
3. Other study resources:
- I used new ccbootcamp labs, there are errors in it, some tasks are
worded poorly and sometimes you have to guess what the author was to ask
you. But if I had the choice I would buy these books again. This is a
great resource and the complexity of labs is very similar to the real
lab (now I can say that some of them are even more challenging). You can
of course choose any other lab book, this is not an advertisement ;-).
- THIS LIST: while I was waiting to be subscribed (1+ month as I
mentioned before) I read all archives since June 2002. This was the best
move I did in my studies as reading other people's questions showed me
how poor I was in some areas and made me focused on these topics.
Reading archives also taught me many, many tips I would not pass
without. If you do not understand 90% of questions and you do not have
at least two ideas how to solve the problem - do not attempt the lab or
you will loose. Read other people's exam thoughts (I appreciate great
Nick Shah's mail especially, thanks Nick!). You can even read this post
to the end ;-)
- MAKE NOTES YOURSELF. Do not use other people's notes. At the end I
have collected 100+ pages of notes I have made for all these few months
and I spent last two days before the exam reviewing them. This will
refresh your memory very well, especially the basic topics you've
started from. Also when you make notes for yourself, each sentence that
you write down and then read after some time, will recall a command, a
problem or a lab you did to overcome given problem. If you use other
people's notes, cram or all-in-one-ccie-in-48h books this will not work
and you will....BANG!
4. IOS
- Practise every command you are unfamiliar with. Walk the router's
console with '?' mark to get familiar with as many commands as you can.
Remember that IOS contains lots of features and is written by thousands
of people. So you should not be surprised that consistency and
implementation of many of the features just sucks totally, especially
the older ones (just consider configuring QoS before MQC era or
wildcard/mask roulette: "does '1' mean care or ignore in this case,
hmmm."). Make notes of it.
- Cisco says that during the lab you can be asked to do anything that is
configurable using Cisco IOS. This is true, read this sentence one
again, THIS IS TRUE. Period. Anyone that attempted the lab at least once
will agree. ANYTHING. So do not focus only on core technologies or
you'll certainly fail. That's why I have advised to read all CG&CR at
least once - if you'll not be able to remember everything (which is more
than likely) you can only try to remember some abbreviations and their
location on the CD.
- IOS is not made by God, it's made by man (I believe there are lot of
women IOS coders as well :-). That's why it's so buggy. If something
does not work but you're sure it should have to - reload then. If
something works but you think this is just impossible - reload then
again :-)
5. Strategy
- Sleep well before exam. If you can't sleep that's probably because
you're getting nervous. Relax then, practise hatha yoga, listen to the
music, drink some light beer, get calm, get in killer mood ;-)
- You can do this. Some people did that before. Even me ;-)
- If you think you'd scored 100% that's probably because you've missed
lab objectives. So do not be so happy leaving the lab. If you cannot
check your mailbox immediately after leaving the lab review all the lab
in your memory once again. I did that and the night in a hotel room
after the lab was the worst in my life, believe me.
- Your first step after logging on the router should be entering 'deb ip
routing'.
- Use aliases but only If you've been using them for at least a month.
They speed up debugging things, especially if you make typing errors.
You should be able to debug and solve problems not only using 'sh'
commands bu also looking at the configs. Thats why one of my favourite
aliases is 'alias exec sro show runn | ^beg router ospf'. This will show
you your OSPF config. The same for BGP, EIGRP, IS-IS and RIP. Along with
'show runn interface <if>' you should be able to find config errors
_much_ faster than just looking at output of various 'sh' commands.
- Read a whole lab before you start - this may be just an overview of
technologies you are required to use, but this might save you surprises
when you are forced to go back 2 hours to change your FR setup because
you cannot set up IS-IS in the topology you had chosen before.
- Draw a picture of routers, how they are connected, where the routing
protocols work, put switch port names on it. Do not put addressing if
provided in your lab book. This will save you time on searching thorough
the lab book ("should e0/0 on R5 run area 45 or 54? And where the hell
it was connected to? fa0/5 or fa0/15? And on which switch?").
- Tile your console windows so that you'll see at last a part of each
window. You can easily verify if there are any routing loops, if all
routers saw the prefix you've just redistributed etc.
- Remember my post regarding IOS-based ping script? Recall it, this
might be useful if you like ping-scripts :-)
- Do not hesitate rebooting the routers and go for a lunch (just only
remember to save configs ;-). Back from the lunch and you'll see that
some of your interfaces are no longer up, your frame maps went wild and
most of virtual links are down ;-)
- If things go wrong, stay calm, if you get nervous, you'll start making
stupid mistakes. Go out the room for a minute, breath fresh air, drink
another free coke they provided you and start over again. You'll be
surprised how stupid you were just two minutes earlier.
- If you won't finish at least an hour ahead of time you'll likely fail.
You have te review your job once again and you'll find errors in your
configs and you'll recall how to solve some tasks you skipped because
you had no idea how to fix it before. I've managed to review most of my
work, this was probably the most important part of the lab and the
points I had earned then probably allow me to write such a long post now :-)
- Do not eat much during the lunch or you'll get asleep at 15:00. During
the break eat a banana, drink coffee with double extra sugar and rethink
the problems you encountered and the tasks ahead of you.
- Time is critical, but if you think you have to have a coffee-machine
or WC round-trip time under 10s - slow down, do not panic.
- Ask the proctor any little doubt you have, complain and cry every time
your router locks up. It's his job to answer your WISE question and
reset your router for 101th time over and over. I was the one walking
back and forth to the proctor's desk every 30min.
Well, thank you once again for your support (you were even unaware of
;-). Now as a subscriber I'm checking this list quite often so sometimes
you'll have to read my answers or stupid questions ;-)
Good luck to all, especially those still on the road to their number.
mikrobi,
--
,
Robert Slaski, CCIE #10877, CCNP/CCDP, ESE
Network Integration Department
ATM S.A., Grochowska 21a, PL-04-186 Warszawa, POLAND
+48225156285, fax +48225156600, http://www.atm.com.pl
.
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