From: Ryan Morris (ryan@egate.net)
Date: Wed Sep 26 2007 - 04:50:51 ART
Hi everyone,
I sat for my R&S lab for the first time today at RTP today... and passed!
16,921 Groupstudy messages have provided the insight and motivation I
needed to get through in one shot.
A quick overview: I've worked with Cisco equipment off and on since 1999,
intensely for 5 years. Finished the CCNP & CCDP in Spring 2006. I
started preparing for the written in September '06 and completed it in
December. At work I was able to assemble a lab with leftover 2600s and
3640s to mimic the IPExpert lab book, and later I rewired it to match the
NMC DoIT lab book.
From January to September I worked through these two books (I didn't
finish NMC). 2 - 4 hours most nights and days on the weekend. IPExpert
provides a great ramp up on all the technologies and covers most topics
well. NMC provided that last push on things like Catalyst QoS, 4 switch
spanning tree and other things. I would split the labs into two parts,
and perform the core routing and switch one evening and the services,
security and QoS the second. I knew I was getting close when I was
finishing labs in a single evening. Upon completion of a lab I would
review the doc CD on all the topics that had to look up. The NMC answer
key is also a great resource.
I wrote 3 NMC CheckIT labs, once each week leading up to the exam. I
passed two out of three of these and felt I was ready. Honestly, these
labs were much tougher than the actual CCIE lab test I took.
Thanks to everyone who posted to this list, I learned a lot from
reviewing your issues and labbing up the more arcane questions. Thanks to
the lab proctor who sent me back to my workbook 3 times on one question
(the answer was staring me in the face), and thank goodness I found a
really dumb typo at 3:00 in the afternoon that would have lost me all my
BGP marks. And a special thanks to my wife who spent all those evenings
and weekends alone with our (now) 15 month old daughter.
My advice to everyone: ask the proctor. They may be clear as mud, but if
you know your stuff the suggestions will make sense. Second, everything I
needed was right there in front of me, in the drawings and on the
question sheets. When I thought my rack was mucked up, it was all me.
I'm flying home tomorrow for a few much needed days off and time with my
family, and I can't wait to pick up my guitar again.
Good luck to all. I hope my story provides motivation to everyone.
Ryan Morris, CCIE #18953
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