From: James MacDonald (j4m3sm63@yahoo.ca)
Date: Wed Sep 26 2007 - 06:47:10 ART
Ryan, congratulations!
It's nice hearing about someone putting in the effort
and have it pay off so well by passing on the first try. I think that's
everyone's goal of course but it can get a little depressing hearing all the
multi-attempt horror stories ... so I appreciate the positive story.
Thanks
for providing the motivation to keep plugging on.
I raise a hot coffee to
you and say cheers as I settle down for another early morning study session :)
------------------------------
Jim MacDonald
j4m3sm63@yahoo.ca
------------------------------
----- Original Message ----
From: Ryan Morris
<ryan@egate.net>
To: Cisco certification <ccielab@groupstudy.com>
Sent:
Wednesday, September 26, 2007 3:50:51 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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