From: Ryan Morris (ryan@egate.net)
Date: Wed Sep 26 2007 - 11:25:51 ART
On Wed, 26 Sep 2007, Gregory Gombas wrote:
> Congrats! The CCIE force is strong in the Morris family!
Best praise ever :)
First off congratulations to Wisit Phatchoo #18956 who also passed
yesterday. So at least 4 people got through. Maybe Tuesday is lucky.
I was asked in an offline email about lab strategy and material. The
material was everything you expect, and if you're working through any of
the workbooks the structure was similar enough.
Regarding strategy:
1) I read the whole thing first. I knew I could pass at
that point. It was up to me not to muck it up with typos.
2) I did not redraw the diagrams, although certainly I understand why you
would want to... the NMC diagrams are very pretty and helpful. There was
a big box of coloured pencils on everyone's desk, along with 4 sheets of
paper. I did draw out the BGP neighbour relationships.
3) I used the paper primarily for binary math for subnet masking and ACL
masks, recording notes about each question, and keeping track of
points that might be in question
4) I didn't use any alias commands. Maybe I type fast, I don't know, but
I've never used them.
5) I was done my config by lunchtime (but one major piece was broken),
and spent the first hour of the afternoon verifying all the work I had
done, and the last 2 hours troubleshooting a problem that was entirely my
own fault (1% of the lab, but it would probably have added up to 8 or 10
marks if I hadn't figured it out). In my opinion, having this issue
caused me to be much more thorough in my review of the earlier sections
than I might have been if I had everything working. I found 3 or 4 typos
and minor misconfigs on this review.
6) Ask the proctor! I can't stress this enough. I asked them 6 or 8
questions and they always gave me the right amount of information for me
to go back and solve the problem. This was probably partly due to the way
I phrased my questions "if there this option or that option, is a
preferred solution one that ends up with x or y". That showed that I knew
what I was talking about, and after talking to them I would see where I
was overthinking the task and go back and clear it right up.
7) During my review I popped onto the DocCD to confirm I hadn't missed a
step in the configuration of any of the features.
So what am I saying... be ready, be confident, go in there and own the
lab. If something's not working stick it out to the end (I made a major
fix with 30 minutes left that was probably worth 8 or 10 points).
Good luck to all!
Ryan
>
> On 9/26/07, Ryan Morris <ryan@egate.net> wrote:
> > 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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