From: Arun Arumuganainar (aarumuga@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Oct 06 2005 - 10:08:37 GMT-3
Oops I may catching up with a Older thread !!! Never the less I wanted to
share my experience !!!I attended my Lab in Brussels a week ago only to fail
It was my first attempt and I still wonder how I could fail when the
question paper that I got was so very easy !!! Never the less I just managed
to fail !!!
But the fact is failure teaches you lot more than what success can teach you
Well when I sit up and traced back questions only to realize that I made
simple and stupid mistakes that could have been well avoided...if my
strategy was right !!! Even after failing on two exams ( SP and R&S) I sill
believe that I am strong in Networking Technologies but I made a mess up
with my preparation . I am sending out 3 important things we should do if we
have thoughts about passing in the first time .
FYI : I did not do any of these and failed . I came to know all about this
when I did my post-martum !!!
Here are my learning's .
1) Strategy before and during exams are very much important ...As important
as your command ( or knowledge ) over Networking Topics . I would suggest
every one to go through Brians( both Brians ) VOD on strategy !!! I too did
went through the VOD ...but I never followed it and I paid the price .
2) Practice Sufficiently ( Pls. Note : Sufficient should not be interpreted
as too much practice )
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
R&S is stream has been the most researched track among all the CCIE Track .
CCIE Proctor will find it difficult to set questions that are outside the
things discussed in common workbooks available in the market such as (
IPEXPERT , IE and NMC DoIT labs )
This does not mean we need to manually do 50 or 100 Labs covered by all the
vendors . I would say 10 Labs in any of the above vendors ( I used NMC and
IP Expert and few labs in IE too ) is just sufficient . But we need to
ensure we are fully aware of all the minor variation in each scenario on a
particular technology .
In this aspect I would strongly recommend going through Stuffs like IE's
Advanced Tech Lab or NMC's Tech Lib . Of which NMC Tech Lib needs a special
mention . As they have a special sections added as " SPOT the ISSUE " .. I
like the way they documented the Tech Lib ...in the sense that they think
the way of CCIE Candidate thinks and look for area where we can go wrong and
document those !!! This is beautiful reference which I did not notice until
my first Lab attempt got over .
3) Attend Mock Labs and Work on the results:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At this point I will have to confess I spent most of my time in doing a Mock
But what I missed was follow up work !!! I continued to make the same
mistakes !!! I would say we need to do mock lab and study the graded report
atleast for couple of days !!!! This would definitely help when we start
doing the lab !!!
Some of experiences with my mock lab !!!
To be frank I took 5 Mock Labs
2 :- From IP Expert ( One Day lab exp in the work book ) and got it
graded through my friend . IP Expert do not give graded Remote Labs
1:- From IE
2:- From Check IT labs
All of them were really nice . But I found IP Expert really exhaustive with
to many router and too many questions . Wordings in IP Expert is as tough as
Real CCIE ...I never managed to complete it in time( Questions are too
lengthy and Could not complete in 9 Hrs time )
IE Lab was good !!! Their Lab break down was excellent and they do have VOD
Break down !!! ( FYI : VOD break down runs for couple of hours . I think I
went through only half way and rest I fall back to PDF Break down )
By and for NMC's CheckIT Labs are closest match to real CCIE lab in terms of
no of questions , level of difficulty and Wording . They Feed back is also
worth mentioning . They run a script for valuation which is in line with
what Cisco does . When you run a script you need to be point straight and
margin error is very less . The report is also easy to read and they point
to issue with good amount of accuracy !!! By a click of the mouse you can
get what is correct configuration and what is configured by us !!!
Wanted to share this experiences so that other first time takes would get
benefited !!!
Thanks and Regards
Arun
----- Original Message -----
From: "Khurana, Sameer" <SKHURANA@amfam.com>
To: "Leigh Harrison" <ccileigh@gmail.com>; "KSGoh" <kianseng.goh@gmail.com>
Cc: "Cisco certification" <ccielab@groupstudy.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:46 PM
Subject: RE: study plan!
> Is there much difference in the... All in one CCIE ver 1 and ver 2??? I
> recently got ver 1 book so curious to know.
>
> Thanks,
> Sameer
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
> Leigh Harrison
> Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2005 3:53 AM
> To: KSGoh
> Cc: Cisco certification
> Subject: Re: study plan!
>
>
> Hey there,
>
> There are many, many different schools of thought on this, but the
> general agreement goes:-
>
> Have a look on Cisco.com for the lab blue print - this will tell you
> all of the topics that you need to learn. Beware - some of the topics
> are being removed at the beginning of the year. Print it out and have
> an honest look at where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Give
> yourself an "out of 10 rating" - I found it's best to be brutal here, as
>
> you'll only be cheating yourself.
>
> After that, the study plan I used started at the bottom of the osi model
>
> and worked its way up. Make sure you can configure all layer 2 things
> before moving on to any layer 3 stuff. By all means knock together a
> Frame Relay lab, run very basic routing over it, then fiddle with the
> frame relay, so that you can see the effects on the routing. It's very
> important to know how to be able to tweak the different settings at
> layer 2 to assist in the layer 3 settings.
>
> Thing is - there are only some things you can learn as you come across
> them. So I left layer 2 technologies, when I gave myself a 7/10, then I
>
> moved on to layer 3 stuff. When I was a happy 7/10 with those, I
> shifted to bgp, when I was happy with that, I shifted on to the other
> bits. All the time I was doing different configurations - I was
> learning different things for each layer.
>
> As far as books go - have a look at "All in one CCIE lab Study Guide -
> 2nd Edition" It has some very good labs, that are very simple to get a
> grasp of the basics.
>
> Enjoy it !!
>
> LH
>
> ---
>
> KSGoh wrote:
>
> >could anyone pls help on how could i design a study plan for lab ? i'm
> kindof
> >confused now.. i do know there're a lot to learn.. but i do not know
> where to
> >start and how to measure my readiness on my studies ... can anyone pls
> help ?
> >
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