From: ccie (ccie@tisolutions.biz)
Date: Fri Dec 17 2004 - 05:54:29 GMT-3
Hi Jeff
That was very enlightening and useful. Congrats on the pass
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: McLaughlin, Jeffery [mailto:JMcLaughlin@sfchronicle.com]
Sent: 17 December 2004 03:51
To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: Passed 1st attempt--some thoughts
I passed my first attempt over a month ago at San Jose, #14023. I wasn't
in the mood to do a write-up until now...
I haven't posted to this group because I never felt had anything to say.
But I've been reading Groupstudy since the days of Token Ring switching,
and to all whose posts helped me, I can only say thanks.
Now, what you want to know... How was the lab? Overall, it was tough,
but doable.
I'd been using Internetwork Expert's labs, and I heard that the real
thing is a lot easier. To my suprise, I found it to be about an 8 in
terms of IE's labs. Maybe a 7. It was quite hard. That should should
warn you to be very, very prepared. When I first read the test, I saw a
number of things I hadn't seen before, as well as some questions where I
initially wasn't sure what they wanted me to do. This is why it is so,
so important to know the theory. After my initial panic, I dug in and
figured out the answers pretty quickly. I finished with two hours to
spare, and then went back and pinged everything from every router, fixed
a bunch of mistakes. I don't use TCL scripts; my theory is why waste
your time debugging a script when you should be debugging your lab? It
takes only about 15 mintues to ping everything. Anyhow, I left five
minutes early.
The wording on some tasks was confusing. In one case, two requirements
were apparently contradictory. The proctor helped me to sort it out
ultimately. Don't be afraid to ask them questions, and don't waste an
hour trying to figure out a poorly worded question. Talk to them right
away.
When I got back to the hotel, I thought I failed. 20 minutes after the
test ended, I got an email telling me to go to Cisco's web site. My
friend who passed in April waited 4 hours, so I thought I was dead. What
almost killed me was that you have to put your written test date and
score in to get your results, and I didn't know mine! I knew it was in
April, so I started guessing at dates until I hit it. I almost passed
out during those five minutes, I'll tell you. If you're traveling to the
test site, BRING YOUR WRITTEN SCORE REPORT WITH YOU!!!
OK, my advice on passing. First, know your theory. I started studying
theory in January, when I started studying for the written. I approached
the written like a research project, poring through every book I could
get my hands on. Read non-Cisco books first: Comer and/or Stevens' books
on TCP/IP, Perlman's "Interconnections", John Moy's book on OSPF, John
Stewart's book on BGP, Huitema's protocols book. I then re-enforced the
concepts with extensive lab work, dreaming up my own scenarios to test
the technologies and protocols.
After I passed the written, I began a six-month lab prep program. I went
through a different technology each week, both reading theory and
experimenting in the lab. Big topics, like BGP, I spent more time on. I
did all of the examples in Doyle's books. As I worked, I took notes. In
addition to general notes, I made flash cards of obscure commands, and
made a list of "gotcha" items--things that had tripped me up or that I
tended to forget to do.
With two months to go, and a solid background and understanding of the
technologies, I dove into sample labs. I settled on Internetwork
Expert's labs as the best, after doing a few from another major vendor.
The other vendor's labs just threw the kitchen sink into every lab to
make them "tough," but they were not carefully thought out. I strongly
recommend Internetwork Expert. Well-designed labs not only expose you to
some of the "tricks" you need to remember for the test, but they should
also deepen your understanding of how complex technologies interact.
There were two or three things on the test I hadn't seen before, and I
only solved these problems because I understood the protocols well
enough to think through the difficulty. The IE labs were crucial in this
preparation. My only <minor> complaint about them is that their
solutions guide is distributed in encrypted PDF format, and I had a lot
of problems getting the Authentica software to work. I'd also recommend
buying the Cisco Press lab book (Duggan et al.) Don't even do the labs,
just study the diagrams. They're a lot closer to the real thing than
IE's diagrams. I got tripped up in the lab because I kept misreading the
notation on the diagrams.
I did one or two labs a week, and did not time myself, although I did
limit my documentation to the CD. After I finished a lab I would VERY
carefully grade myself and document my errors. I re-read my ever-growing
"lab errors" doc every night. This limited the chances of my repeating a
mistake, and was one of the keys to my success. Be sure to be honest
with yourself about your capabilities. I mean, I've run into people who
are on their third attempt and still don't know the difference between
MED and LOCAL_PREF. You have to be your own harshest critic, constantly
admitting your failures to yourself in order to correct them.
A month before my test I took the Internetwork Expert Java-based
mock-lab class. I do recommend it, but only if you are well prepared.
They will find and fill the gaps in your knowledge, but if your gaps are
chasms, they won't be able to help. The four labs I did for this class
were the only timed labs I did, and I used the class to develop my
time-management skills.
As you start doing labs, you will discover many technologies that you
don't know well, or maybe never even heard of. It can be intimidating,
but don't waste your time learning the nuances of Mobile IP or server
load balancing with IOS. Just focus on the core: switching, NBMA and
its oddities, routing protocols, multicast, QoS. There are too many
other IOS features out there to learn all of them. If you know the Doc
CD, you can deal with those in the lab. One thing that I did that
helped with this was to make a list with the names of weird features I
didn't know how to configure, and a one or two sentence description. I
memorized this the week before the lab. That way, if I came across one
of these features, I would know its name, which is critical for finding
it on the doc cd. E.g., it's hard to find "a feature that verifies
incoming packets are coming in on the interface that they would normally
be routed out of;" it's easy to find "Unicast RPF" on the CD, right?
A parting thought: I see CCIE's selling their racks on eBay after they
pass, but now that I have it that's the last thing I'd do. I'm keeping
my rack and plunging into IPv6 and MPLS; after all, aren't CCIE's
supposed to know everything?
Jeff McLaughlin
CCIE #14023
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