From: Howard C. Berkowitz (hcb@gettcomm.com)
Date: Sun Feb 23 2003 - 14:13:52 GMT-3
>Great post!
>
>You are so right about adopting good time-saving configuration techniques.
>Using aliases did me a world of good, because I am not a touch typist, and
>did not have time to learn to be one.
And also know your strengths -- if you are a touch typist, spending
lots of time on aliases may not be worth the practice effort.
>Adopting a technique during practice
>where I made each session number match the number of the router saved me a
>lot of time and mental energy (and physical energy) in my home lab and
>allowed me to learn more in those precious weeks before the lab.
Absolute agreement. I sometimes run into people building lab
simulators and virtual lab shells who don't want to enforce this
"because it takes away flexibility". So does wearing eye protection
when welding or looking into a laser.
>
>I also found it helpful in my prep to use circles with R1, R2, etc. in them
>to designate routers in my diagrams. It was faster to do this and put the
>IP addresses outside the circle, than to make big squares and try to fit
>lots of info in the squares. Certainly no one should waste time trying to
>draw the cylinder shapes that are used in Visio diagrams. You would not
>believe how much time my inefficient practices cost me over those mnay
>months before I took the NMC-1 class and got some sense talked into me.
>Yes, I know a lot of people figured this sort of basic stuff out very early
>in the game, but not all.
You've hit a pet peeve of mine. The sooner Cisco hockey-pucks and
other abstract symbols, or cute Visio pictures of equipment, are
banned from network diagrams, the better off everyone will be.
It's kind of a tossup between circles and rectangles. I'd probably
use circles for something hand-drawn, but rectangles if I were using
a computer where I could work with different fonts.
>
>I really think that some folks might benefit from a basic,
>"out-of-the-starting-gate" CCIE Prep course or book. You could get much
>(but not all) of the benefit of this sort of course or book by reading this
>distribution list for a few weeks, but a lot of people don't even know about
>this list, or don't realize how valuable it is. Some get put off by seeing
>two or three really basic questions, or one less than perfect response, and
>reject the whole list as being beneath them or merely a waste of time.
>
>Tom Larus
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