From: Colm O'Leary (co.oleary@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Feb 26 2007 - 16:31:55 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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