From: ccie2be (ccie2be@nyc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Jul 03 2005 - 09:59:30 GMT-3
Ray,
I'm a very strong of tech focused based study.
As far as I'm concerned, the lack of tech focus practice labs is the biggest
gaping hole in the prep resource market.
Unfortunately, at the moment, there aren't any good alternatives. The best
one can do, is go through the existing workbooks on a topic by topic basis
but that's admittedly a poor alternative to having practice labs workbooks
which are designed to take you through a topic from the basics to the
complex.
Right now, besides using the workbooks from IE or NMC or others in a way for
which they weren't designed, the only other choices that I'm aware of come
from IE and IPExpert but both of these choices, IMHO, are woefully
inadequate.
In both cases, the coverage of any given technology is spotty to say the
least. For example, just consider this. In the 3550 Config Guide, there
are about 40 chapters. Now, some chapters such as Spanning Tree easily lend
themselves to a dozen or more practice labs.
How many practice labs does IE or any other vendor have that focus on 3550
functionality? A half dozen ? A full dozen?
IMHO, the limited number of practice labs, hardly begins to scratch the
surface of what you need to know and practice in order to be fully prepared
for the real lab. And, even if you allow that any given practice lab
consists of multiple tasks covering multiple sub-topics of a given
technology, you're still left mostly unprepared.
Now, the degree to which the coverage of a technology is inadequate does
vary by topic. For example, if you take all the sections of Frame Relay or
ATM as a whole in the IE workbook, and know how to complete all these tasks,
you will be well prepared for that part of the real lab. And, the same
argument can be made for other topics as well.
However, as you observed, if you go through the labs on a lab by lab basis,
you tend not to build the foundation needed to master an individual
technology. And, instead you end up trying to memorize how to config
individual tasks which depending on how good your memory is may or may not
work that well for you. It didn't work for me.
Another problem with the lab by lab approach is you tend not to see the
patterns that exists that can make your mastery of a topic much easier.
The 3rd problem with the lab by lab approach is that after completing all
the labs, there will still probably be glaring gaps in your skill level of
the topic. Even though you may have covered all the important features of a
technology by the time you complete a workbook, will you remember all the
details of how you found a problem and fixed it when you did labs 1 through
3?
Most likely not.
So, to the extent possible, I agree that preparing for the real lab by
focusing on individual topics is a far better way to prepare, but that right
now good resources don't exist.
HTH, Tim
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
22Cent@gmail.com
Sent: Sunday, July 03, 2005 7:49 AM
To: Group Study
Subject: Technology based study
Hello Group,
I would like to get the groups feedback on a technology based study
approach rather then doing a full 8 hour lab scenario. Has anyone
tried this approach using any one of the vendor labs ( i.e IEWB ) ?
Any feedback would be great. Thanks in advance.
Ray
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