From: Ian Stong (istong@stong.org)
Date: Sat Oct 02 2004 - 17:01:23 GMT-3
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the email. Just wanted to let you know since you last used our
racks we have totally recabled the Ethernet ports to exactly match that of
the lab scenario vendors. The cabling exactly matches that of Internetwork
expert on our rack #1. On rack #2 we also recabled the Ethernets to exactly
match that of IPexpert. Hopefully that will help when studying for those
and other lab vendor scenarios.
Thanks,
Ian
www.ccie4u.com
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
ccie2be
Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2004 3:27 PM
To: Patrick Torney; ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: Re: not ot: POOR SERVICE FROM RACK VENDOR
Patrick.
I'm sorry to hear about your frustrating experience.
I can, however, recommend an excellent rack provider. Excellent in the
sense of the level of service provided. This vendor is ccie4u
It's owner is Ian Strong with whom I have spoken on numerous occasions.
Without a doubt he does everything possible to make your experience good and
goes out of his way to be responsive to your questions and concerns. And,
his pricing is very,very competitive.
That said, I can't wholeheartedly recommend ccie4u if you are planning to
practice the labs from IE based on my experience several months ago. Of
course, since then, it's possible that the issue I had may have been fully
address, so I would check his web site first before dismissing the the idea
of using ccie4u.
Here was the problem I had when trying to use ccie4u's rack to do IE
practice labs.
With ccie4u's rack the mapping of 3550 ports to router interfaces doesn't
exactly match up to what's expected by the IE practice labs. Overall, there
isn't a great deal of difference, but for me, it was enough to throw me off.
When I tried to do an IE practice lab on ccie4u's I ran into a problem doing
the 3550 portion of the lab and after several hours of frustration, I
finally gave up. I couldn't figure out if I hadn't compensated correctly
for the discrepancies in the actual port mappings versus the expected port
mappings or if I had just screwed up with the 3550 config.
In all fairness to ccie4u, the problem may have been some sort of dyslexia
on my part so maybe others wouldn't have any problem where I did. So, if
you're using practice labs from other vendors, then by all means check out
ccie4u. And, even if you're using IE's workbook you may want to give them a
shot.
HTH, Tim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Torney" <ptorney@satx.rr.com>
To: <ccielab@groupstudy.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2004 1:58 PM
Subject: not ot: POOR SERVICE FROM RACK VENDOR
> Hi all:
>
> I am sorry to have to say anything bad about anyone but I am totally FED
UP
> with getting poor service from a particular online rack vendor. I have had
> several incidents of paying for rack access and then NOT being able access
> it during my allotted time. I feel confident in saying that study time is
> precious, and like so many of us I have spent a lot of precious money on
> rental lab time. So, I am writing this so that others in our community
will
> be able to make sure that their precious money doesn't go to waste as mine
> is right now!
>
> The vendor in question is lab-rack.com.
>
> I was attracted to their site at first, because they have the cheapest
price
> I could find. And at first, I had very few problems with them. But then
> incident after incident, time after time I'd pay for weekend access and
when
> it came time to log in, I would get this message...
>
> ===
> LOGIN Authentication
>
> To have access to Lab-Rack.com enter your username and password...
> Username: bozo@iamadumbass.com
>
>
> Password: xxx
>
> "You have been rejected ... if you have bought rack time for this wind
> ow contact support@Lab-Rack.com technical support."
> LOGIN Authentication
>
> ===
>
> I do not want to make blanket statements without providing some rationale
> behind them. But here is one... Their weekend support is terrible.
>
> I have written to these guys to the address in the reject notice above. I
> even wrote them earlier this week (Monday in fact) because I wanted to
avoid
> what is happening now. And yet I never heard from them. But, I understand
> that people are busy. So, I wrote them again and again well in advance of
my
> start time. I tried their email pager system. I wrote directly to the
> owner... Still no response on any front. When a person pays money for a
> service, that service needs to be at least acceptable.
>
> I have paid these guys a lot of money and now I'm almost 2 hours into
> today's precious lab time and I'm locked out and I get ZERO response from
> their so-called support. These guys have great prices, but in this case, I
> got what I paid for... CHEAP!
>
> Perhaps others have had perfectly ok service with these guys, and I do
want
> to be fair. But, I also want others to know what I have experienced with
> this particular vendor, and to be cautious before spending good money on
> their service.
>
> I hope this does not start a flame war. But I feel strongly enough about
> getting jipped that I think it's only fair to the community to weed out
poor
> service, or perhaps to have this be an influence for improving service.
>
> Thanks for listening.
> Pat Torney
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
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