From: Jon Campbell (jcampbell2000@earthlink.net)
Date: Sat Aug 07 2004 - 16:06:53 GMT-3
Hello all,
Yesterday I finally passed the CCIE Lab. It was a long journey. I have
been in the networking arena for 15 years building networks all over the
U.S. And until I started this journey of obtaining my CCIE 3 years ago,
I thought I was a pretty smart network engineer. Not until I started
the CCIE process did I realize I was an absolute idiot (ok, maybe not
absolute, but pretty close).
I started like most people, Cisco Press. Talk about a wealth of
information. At work I built a lab consisting of 10 routers, 2 3550s,
Adtran 800, and an LS1010. I ordered labs from CCBootcamp and IPExpert.
And like many, I started doing lab after lab. I began to realize
quickly that I was wasting time on the labs, because I didn't understand
the concept details well enough. So, I read and I read, and I wrote,
and I wrote. Things that I didn't understand I setup in the lab and
made it fail and made it work. While I still did labs, I started doing
configs in a notebook and then set them up to see if they would work.
This technique made me think, not just blindly type in configs.
All of this I learned by trial and error. But for some reason it wasn't
enough, I came extremely close to passing 2 labs. So, close as a matter
of fact, that I asked for re-scores on both. But I received nothing
from either. So at the suggestion of Micah Byers (whom I thank), I
decided to spend 2 weeks at CyscoExpert. There, experts like Mitch,
Bocho, Bahram, Peter, Tom, and Naran helped me fine tune the little
details I was over looking.
Now that I have this 300 pound weight off my back, I am going to start
living a little.
Jonathan Campbell MCSE, CNE, CNX, CCNP, CCIE #13772
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