From: Guyler, Rik (rguyler@shp-dayton.org)
Date: Wed Sep 26 2007 - 08:25:53 ART
Way to go Ryan! I bet your family will be glad to have you back for at
least a little time. ;-)
Congrats!
Rik
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of Ryan
Morris
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 3:51 AM
To: Cisco certification
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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