From: Colm O'Leary (Colm.O'Leary@anpost.ie)
Date: Mon Feb 26 2007 - 15:26:27 ART
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is with much relief and excitement that I can report that I
passed the lab on my second attempt last Thursday in Brussels. After my
first attempt in December, I was beginning to doubt if I could pass the
lab, because on that occasion I felt I did well, and my results were
very high, but I still failed. Thankfully my worst fears will not be
realised.
My history in the network game started 4 years ago when I moved from
my position as a Windows Systems Administrator to a Network
Administrator. At that time I had basic networking experience, and had
learned a good bit of theory while attaining my MCSE. I had never logged
onto a router before then. I took the ICND course with GKN and soon
after did the CCNA exam. Shortly after I began on the road to CCNP and
again with GKN I took the CCNP level Cisco course that were available at
the time [BSCI, BCMSN, BCRAN, & CIT] and took the respective exams
shortly after. My approach when studying for the CCIE written was to
read up on as much theory and try and consolidate my learning with
logging onto the routers and playing with the technologies. While
studying for the CCIE written I covered a lot of wireless and decided to
take the Wireless LAN Field Specialist. I have completely forgotten most
of it now. I passed the CCIE written in November 2005 and started
studying for the Lab in February 2006. I spent the next six months going
through the individual technologies that make up the blueprint and I
went through the various Cisco Press books, looking for any additional
information the authors had on the individual topics and I took notes
on everything I did. This proved invaluable for me as there is so much
content to get through having your own notes outlining your observations
and thoughts I found helpful, especially with topics that I would not
understand, and that I would revisit weeks/months later.
In July I purchased InternetworkExperts lab workbook and began
building a rack based on their topology. I started doing their labs in
August, and I found them very helpful. Again I took notes after each
lab, and I would try and see what did I learn from that lab, and
particular area, the lab showed, that I needed to brush up on. I would
go an brush up on that particular area, before moving on. At this stage
I did not worry about mastering time, techniques etc, just on content.
I took 2 x 1 week courses with GKN in London in October and November.
Apart from the information I picked up on the course, the real benefit
was being able to spend all day on routers, and again at night time back
at the hotel, being able to practice without any interruption from work.
I had my first attempt on Dec 18 and when I got my results I felt that I
was so close that I submitted them for a reread, which took 3 weeks to
get the results of. So around Jan 10 I rescheduled for Feb 22.
My approach to my second attempt was that I was not going to try and
reinvent the wheel all over again and go and buy some other vendor's
workbook, and be critical of my previous methods of study..that would
have been the easy thing to do. Instead I looked at each area and I went
and I picked out the area that sucked, the areas that I hated doing
because I didn't quite understand them, and I could never get them to
work. These are the topics that I focused on for the 5 weeks before my
second attempt. I didn't need to brush up on timing or technique I had
that nailed.
I was much more relaxed the second time around. I stopped studying 2
days before the lab. I flew from Dublin to Brussels the day before the
lab, and did not take any books/notes with me. The day before the lab I
got up real early [0600] and went for a long swim. By the time I got to
the hotels in Brussels all I wanted to do was go to bed, I was so tired.
I had a good 8 hours sleep the night before the lab and I felt that this
is what kept me going and relaxed throughout the day and for me a good
nights sleep was very important.
I read the entire lab from start to finish and drew my diagrams. It
is important to have a high level view of the lab, but I feel that it is
more important to meet the requirements of the individual question, and
ensure that you have the points in the bag before you move. So for each
question, when I was configuring the routers, I just did enough
configuration to meet the requirements of that particular question and
avoided try to do two/three questions at once and thus save on time. I
felt that this approach was more structured and when I did run into
problems it made troubleshooting much easier. After each question I
would go back and ask myself, have I met the requirements before I would
move.
On my first attempt I asked the Proctor 2 questions, the second time
around I asked him at least 10-12 questions. Most of the questions were
on perceived ambiguities I had with the wording of the question and once
the question was asked in an intuitive way, the Proctor was very
helpful.
At the end I had an hour and a half left to go over my configs. I
went through them meticulously, and to be honest I only found one
mistake. So I guess I would not get too hung up about having loads of
time left over at the end to verify things. Also it is important to know
the DOC CD inside out. I spent a lot of time in the last hour just going
through it and making sure that there wasn't some secondary commands
that the feature I was implementing needed.
So that is my 2 cents on the subject. I would like to thanks all of you
who contributed to this list. I didn't do much postings myself, but I
read all of your emails, with great interest. I do hope that you are all
successful in your endeavours and that success will come soon.
Kind Regards,
Colm O'Leary
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