From: Gary Duncanson (gary.duncanson@googlemail.com)
Date: Wed Sep 26 2007 - 06:00:11 ART
Very well done Ryan, another first time passer, it can be done if you keep
plugging away. Your combo of IPExpert and NMC seems pretty good to me.
Regards
Gary
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ryan Morris" <ryan@egate.net>
To: "Cisco certification" <ccielab@groupstudy.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 8:50 AM
Subject: CCIE #18953
> 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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