From: Jason Edelman \(jaedelma\) (jaedelma@cisco.com)
Date: Thu Nov 17 2005 - 18:39:10 GMT-3
All,
I'd be more than happy to share :) First and foremost, it is definitely
attainable.
My CCIE studies began with a 1 week bootcamp taught by Scott Morris in
the second week of September. After the bootcamp, I still did not begin
my studies full time. On October 1, it began...Studying became a
full-time job - I was a mad man. From Oct 1 until my lab date, November
16, I used the Class on Demands taught by Brian Dennis and Brian
McGahan. This was absolutely instrumental in making it happen and
understanding the technologies. Along with the CoDs, I was doing
practice labs using IEs material. If you can understand the technology
in both workbooks, the lab will not be a problem from a configuration
standpoint--the problem is making sure you read the question more than
once and to really understand what they are asking for. I completed
approximately 25ish labs and 90% of the CoDs by November 5th studying
around 8-15hrs/day. Starting on November 7th, I attended the 1 week
Mock Lab Workshop, again taught by the Brian's :) In the MockLabs, I
was making several very very very stupid mistakes like configuring the
wrong router, not copying and pasting ACLs when doing QoS policies, just
stupid stuff. Aside from them, I realized my strengths were core
routing and switching, and I needed to focus on some of the Adv IP
features, Sys Mgmt, etc. Now we are at the weekend before the big date!
I spent all weekend reviewing the workbooks just seeing if anything
stood out that I did not understand. Monday came, I spent more time
specifically reviewing the latter sections of the labs of Security, Sys
Mgmt, IP Svcs, etc, and then browsed the DocCD on these technologies to
see the commands associated. If I wasn't sure how to set something up,
I tested it. For example with a time-range, I did basic testing to see
when it times out and learned it is the 59th second of the minute you
specify (as I see Scott just said in an email as I'm typing this :) )
Now Tuesday is here, just one day before the lab, I had a light day,
only about 7 hours or so, studying all my notes that I had taken and
spent some extra time doing the CoDs on DLSw because I didn't focus too
much time on that during my studies.
I left work, went to buy a dvd, came home, reviewed my MockLabs, and
then watched the movie just to clear my mind. I then lay there in bed
trying to fall asleep. I woke up about once or twice an hour, my nerves
not letting me sleep...
Now for some details of the big day!!!
Ok, so I walk into Bldg 3 in RTP to take the lab. As I walk in, the
proctor asks, "Here for the lab?," as I'm dressed in my sweats, hoody,
and baseball hat. I respond with a "yep" and then give him my name and
he states, "Ok, you'll be on Rack 3." This is when it began - my
confidence grew. Now, for most of my practice labs I worked on Rack1 so
my left ring finger got really quick hitting the 1 whenever seeing an x
in the lab manual. Luckily, the week before in the MockLab workshop, I
was Rack3. Now my middle finger became extremely fast on hitting that
3. hehe, stupid, but honestly, I was worried I was going to make
mistakes with typos. Being Rack3 the week before and then for the real
lab just boosted my confidence a bit. A few mintues later the lab
began...it was on.
My first problem of the day. Diagrams, diagrams, diagrams. IE's
diagrams are awesome, I was so used to using them, seeing something
different kind of threw me off. That sucked. I'm usually quick on
getting all of Layer 2 up. Unfortunately, not yesterday. I did my
normal reading of the lab, drawing of the diagram...but it still was not
the same. After about two hours or so, layer 2 was finally up. After
this, I knew I needed to speed things up. While studying I always
troubleshot until I got something working. I did that yesterday only if
I knew I was on the right track. When I got a question that I was going
to have to look up and it wasn't Core, I skipped it. I went through the
IGPs (skipping 3pts) and then was onto BGP where I ran into more
problems. The lunch break came. I ate and thought about BGP for 20mins
and realized my mistakes. 20 minutes after the lunch break was over,
BGP was perfect. At this time, I knew I had around 3 and 1/2 hours to
go with almost 40-50% of the test left. This was a good thing
considering mostly everything else is a quicker configuration. I then
did multicast, done in about 15mins, with full tests. I was on my
way...I skipped another 3 questions going through the final sections.
At this point, I have around 2.5 hours left and 12 points to go! I
picked 2 of them, went to the DocCD, and bam, found what I was looking
for. Took the next question and worked through it- this I didn't have
to lookup...I just knew I was going to have to think for a little while
about it. At this point I have 3 pts left and I worked for about
15-20mins again and could not get it right. I said screw it, it's 3
points and skipped it. I now could only lose 17 pts to PASS. So what
now? I reviewed all configurations that I wasn't a 100% sure on and
clarified with the proctor. The proctor was great, I would suggest
asking as many questions as possible (I did this throughout the exam).
This helped tremendously. I actually changed configs in the last 45mins
of the exam after clarifying with the proctor. I was then a pinging and
rebooting mad man. I rebooted just about every device (not all at once)
and made sure to maintain connectivity. Time was up! Shit! Did I
remember to do that, did I do that at all...damn, I just couldn't
remember the details? I started second guessing myself and thinking who
am I to pass this on the first attempt. I just kept thinking odds are
against me right now (but ya know what, who cares about odds anyway. I
never did like them :) ). After a nice shower and awesome steak along
with a few beers, I was feeling confident again. I got home around
midnight and saw the email that had arrived at 8:52 pm. I opened it,
clicked the link, and then logged into CCO.
I close my eyes for a few seconds and then slowly open them. I see a
Status column and I don't see the word PASS anywhere. I was getting
nervous, my heart was beating, my nerves were going crazy. It did not
say PASS or Congratulations, but I saw the word/number I was looking
for: Certified (CCIE #15394). I went crazy...this is truly
unbelievable. Of course from there, went the emails, text messages, and
IMs :) It is unreal I tell you...and feels absolutely amazing.
Anyway, enough about that. From a basic test taking strategy, I found
it extremely helpful to read the lab before starting as everyone always
states. For me, I only read through Layer 3 and very lightly skim
everything else. The reason I do this is I don't want to see any
advanced IP Features I'm unfamiliar with to freak me out early in the
exam. I always draw an IGP protocol diagram and a separate BGP diagram.
Typically, I re-use the BGP diagram for multicast to simplify things.
And that's my story folks. I truly must say the Brian's (IE) workbooks,
Class on Demands, and of course MockLabs were just GREAT.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask...as I still have
many questions to be answered. :) I realize the more I study, the more
I actually don't know. I've only been on GS for around two
weeks...Scott actually told me about it. Thanks man! GS has been
great, and I wish I knew about it before :)
All the best and stay FOCUSED,
Jason
-----Original Message-----
From: Melwani, Manoj J [mailto:melwanim@citigroup.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 11:50 AM
To: Jason Edelman (jaedelma); FORUM
Subject: RE: CCIE #15394
Congrats Jason. That's great that you cleared in your first attempt...
Please share your approach...
Thanks,
Manoj.
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com]On Behalf Of
Jason Edelman (jaedelma)
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 11:27 AM
To: FORUM
Subject: CCIE #15394
GS,
I just want to say I passed the lab yesterday on my first attempt.
Absolutely passable!!!!
Thanks to those who have helped. You know who you are!!!! If anyone
wants to know how I prepared, just let me know :-)
-Jason
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