From: sabrina pittarel (sabri_esame@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Oct 06 2006 - 02:55:34 ART
Hi,
I was very moved by the number of people who, on the forum or privately,
congratuled with me for my achievement.
I wanted to reply to each of you with
something more than a "thanks!", "thank you!", or "Good luck to you as well!",
but you were really too many all at once, so I'm going with a common reply and
of course any of you, over time this time, can contact me privately to talk
more.
I want to share with you my trip toward the certification and the role
you played in my success.
I tried my first lab attempt in December 2005
after reading CCIE Practical Studies I and II (which I strongly recommend),
done the 6 Labs of CCIE Practice Labs (which were good) and the 40 Ipexpert
Labs (extremely good).
Well, you all know the result. I was so sure I passed
and it hit me bad when I didn't.
I was very upset with the overall handling of
the Lab, I had no clue of what I did wrong, no one to ask for opinion (god
saves us if we break the NDA), so it took me some time to decide I wanted to
resume my studies.
I started again last July, pretty much when you saw me
become active on the forum. I didn't want to study alone again, I wasn't sure
I had enough energy to do so, and share my struggling with you all it's what
motivated me to go on.
For my second attempt I've redone all the IPEXPERT
labs(which I had readily forgotten), and I bought the new version (v3) of
IEWB.
If you had read an email I sent...yesterday? (I'm leaving in a dream
these days)...you already know my opinion on their material.
Both books are
excellent. I've found IPEXPERT more challenging and it does a great work with
the redistribution, IEWB is more CCIE lab level and they do a great work in
explaining you each session in detail...I cannot comment about any rack rental
since I was lucky enough to have my own.
Mistakes in the books...yes there are
mistakes (who doesn't do a mistake here and there sometime), but if you know
what you are doing you could not care less about them. In my modest opinion
you should not use these labs for learning, you should use them for practise.
If your tactic to pass the lab is simply trying one lab after another...I'm
afraid you are going to see the proctors many many times (of course my wish
for you is different).
This leads me to talk about the day of the exam.
I
took the exam in San Jose. Tong Ma and Tom Eggers were my proctors, they were
both helpful. My resolution for the day of the exam was not to get scared by
any nasty or annoyed look of the proctors for my "too many" questions, and
confirm, instead, any little detail; so I did. There wasn't any nasty look, I
rotated between one and the other and I tried to collect multiple questions
before to go, doing so I didn't have any problem to get the information I
needed.
I've finished the lab in little less then 5 hours, so I had all the
time to check my config, and although I had been extremely careful not to make
any mistake during the first pass I discovered at least 3 or 4 errors. Most of
them were related to missing pieces of configuration.
I found the lab easy
(but what do I know? I found it easy even the time I didn't pass it!). They
were extremely clear on where features (security, QoS) should be applied and
in which direction, which devices should have subinterfaces configured, what
protocol should run on what interface, what to do with loopback
interfaces...no space for doubt there.
I had a tricky redistribution question
(who said the lab redistribution was easy?), and I have to say I'm quite good
with redistribution, so you have to trust me on that.
I had a troubleshooting
question, some faults were put in the initial configuration that I had to find
and correct. I wasn't expecting a question like that, but it wasn't at all
difficult to solve.
I didn't have any surprise about the topics they asked,
nothing more than what is clearly stated in the exam blueprint.
What killed
my "post exam" night was the fear I let one of my interfaces in shut down
state. With the 3 hours of time I spent quite a bit of time in checking my
redistribution and making sure all the routes in my network reconverged
properly after shutting here and shutting there. I was almost sure I left one
interface down...this is something I should not have let happen.
So be very
careful with your extra time....it is good to have some, but don't use it to
destroy what you have done! :-)
Anyway everything went for the best at the
end...and I'm enjoying my free time now...
Sabrina
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Wed Nov 01 2006 - 07:29:04 ART