From: Ben Holko (ben.holko@globalcenter.net.au)
Date: Wed Nov 01 2006 - 07:20:19 ART
Congratulations Rado!
If that was a short version, I'm glad you didn't write a long version! And after all that, you left out the most important part - what is your CCIE number?
Ben Holko
CISSP (ISC)2
Networking Team Leader
Datacom Systems
Ph: +61 3 9626 9600
Fax: +61 3 9626 9699
ben.holko@datacom.com.au <mailto:ben.holko@datacom.com.au>
________________________________
From: nobody@groupstudy.com on behalf of Radoslav Vasilev
Sent: Wed 11/1/2006 8:29 PM
To: Cisco certification
Subject: Passed in Brussels
Hi Group,
I've always wanted to write one of those big, inspiring emails that we
see every now and then sent to this group by someone happy enough to
have passed the CCIE Lab exam. But after what appears to be a couple
of hours of sleep in the last two days I'm afraid I'll go for a
shorter version of my success story ;)
So, I passed in the lab in Brussels yesterday on my first attempt. The
experience of the exam was totally different that what I expected we
were eleven candidates that day, waiting at the nice reception,
nervously eating Cisco chocolates and waiting for someone to come and
pick us. Exactly on time our proctor for the day came and we were
given instructions for the lab, shown around, etc.
The exam started incredibly quickly, some five minutes later and
everyone around me started clicking on their keyboards exactly like
everyone has said before in this group -people really start working
right way as opposed to sit, relax and actually read what's on the lab
scenario.
My first warning to all of you guys that are due to go for first time
to the lab don't over-read the tasks and don't loose too much time
for this phase this was my only mistake I did yesterday I started
configuring after one hour and a half of reading and checking. I was
taken by surprise for reasons I can't mention for NDA reasons, but I
can say that you should expect any kind of format for the scenario and
work your way quickly to a format that you're used to from your
preparation. Anyway even after so much time reading, I didn't finish
reading the whole lab I left behind the IP services section,
security, etc because I knew this shouldn't break my lab and I
finally started configuring.
You'll have roughly four hours before lunch time and after twenty or
so minutes for lunch we went back to the room to continue the second
part of the exam. At least in Brussels you can leave the room at any
time and go to bathroom or coffee room.
I thought did pretty bad before lunch as I couldn't finish the IGP
sections I made a poll at lunch time and found out that all of the
people I asked couldn't completely finish it anyway it seemed that
everyone was just about to check connectivity or finish one or two
tasks more. Anyway after lunch you need to wisely manage your time
as you need at least two and a half hours for checking it's
incredible how much time it takes to confirm things you need to
check every little detail for every task if you want to have a nice
confident flight back home something I didn't have as I couldn't
completely finish my second round of testing this is usually when I
find my mistakes made when I originally configured a task I found a
single mistake only and was quite sure that I was missing more from
the last two sections.
So give yourself at least two and a half hours for checking, which
means that you should be able to complete your configuration for four
hours and a half, after one hour of preparation, topology redraws,
etc.
Otherwise I could say the lab itself was pretty straightforward I've
been using InternetWorkExpert workbooks for my preparation and can
definitely say that the lab was easier than their score-8 labs. I
never had to open the Cisco documentation CD throughout my
configuration and for me at least the lab was a clear matter of time
management you have tens of easy things you have to do within eight
hours so hurry up and do them, while checking them one time right
after configuring and one time after a clean fresh reload of the rack
at the end.
As for preparation here are the facts about mine:
I started with IP Expert workbooks they were good but since I bought
them before the ATM/etc removal, I decided to not upgrade with their
newer version and instead got the Internetworkexpert workbooks.
I find the latter definitely the best preparation tool I like the
way the IEWB are structured, I like their general approach, they are
also closer to the lab format. After going through half of their
volume one, I decided to step back and get their CoD product which got
me some additional understanding of the technologies things you
don't usually read in a cisco press book or on the DocCD if you have
some extra money buy it, I'm not saying you cannot pass without it
though. At the time I purchased the IEWB books, I realized that
studying every weekend and in the evenings is not getting me anywhere
so I negotiated with my company to have two extra days off each
week.
This completely changed my preparation I wasn't anymore tired every
day I started working on my CCIE preparation from Friday to Monday
and I could really feel how the labs got easier and easier with every
next week. My preparation strategy was simple don't just do the lab
always stop when you come across something you don't understand
read all possible theory behind the subject, make notes and keep all
your notes this notes are the best last-day preparation tool.
At the end of the IEWB workbooks I realized that the worst think that
could happen in the lab is to have a basic connectivity task I can't
implement for example, what if they ask me to do PPPoE link between
the two parts of the network , or give me an Frame-relay task I'm not
familiar with. That's why I took the Core Workbook from IE and started
working on the ten labs from there. You really want to make sure you
know how to resolve any possible connectivity task frame-relay,
Ethernet, PPP.
As you see, my preparation was completely messed - I started with lab
workbooks, then read some theory again and watched the CoD, then went
on with the corebooks this worked for me and I'm sure something
completely different will work for you!
The lab exam is doable it is definitely not as much as you think
right now, while preparing. Just keep one thing in mind at the end
of the day it's a "Routing and Switching" Exam this is the most
important part of your preparation. Don't expect to have the most
complex tasks coming from the security section or from the IP Services
section. And after all complexity is subjective and always depends
on how you have prepared!
Good luck!
Rado
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Dec 01 2006 - 08:05:44 ART