Re: CCIE: A Dream became Reality

Awesome news!!! Congrats!!!

Regards,

Joe Astorino
CCIE #24347 (R&S)
Sr. Support Engineer  IPexpert, Inc.
URL: http://www.IPexpert.com
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Khurram Noor <engr.khurramnoor_at_googlemail.com>

Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 19:18:14
To: Cisco certification<ccielab_at_groupstudy.com>
Subject: CCIE: A Dream became Reality

Yes! Thats true. I still cannot believe that i have become a CCIE. My CCIE
number is 24419. It was a long awaited and struggling journey.

First of all I want to thank GOD for all the courage and strength to prepare
for this exam (arguably the toughest in IT). Secondly thanks to my family
and especially my parents who stood by me and prayed for my success day and
night. Then I want to thank all of my friends, Nehal, Farhan, Nauman and Ali
 for their support and love for me. The GS entire members, who guided me
whenever I ran into any confusion or problem. Special thanks to Ron, Salah,
Jared, and whoever that helped me in any ways. Thanks to Internetwork Expert
for all the workbooks, Dennis, McGhan and Anthony you people are real
experts.

Scott Morris, man I will never forget your beautiful voice, actually I think
if you were not a CCIE, then you could have become a real good singer,
something like Bryan Adams. I listened to your audios a lot and every time I
found some new thought, you have a Beautiful MindJ.

Narbik your workbooks are great asset to all the people preparing for CCIE.

I cannot forget the days and many sleepless nights I spent infront of
dynamips practicing and working out on different technologies. I slowly
build the stamina to sit and work for long hours without getting tired and
it helped a lot.

I used IE Vol4&5, Narbiks, IPexpert. For video training I used IE Class on
demand, CBT Nuggets CCIE Jeremy (this guy is a cool instructor) and off
course Scotts audios. For hands on I used dynamips, I set up two powerful
machines on linux, which ran all the topologies smoothly without any
problems. For practicing switching and other things that couldnt been done
on dynamips I used Rack rental. I mostly relied heavily on IE labs and used
all others for references and cross checks. I made my personal notes
separate for each section of lab, in which I wrote all of my understandings
which proved to be very helpful in the end. I will feel happy if they can be
helpful to anyone of you, anyone want them can unicast me.

I studied real hard in last 3 days, I tried to go through all of the
material and my personal notes once before sitting in the lab and that
worked for me. I couldnt sleep the last night before exam and kept on
praying. I sat for lab in Dubai on 21st May 2009 and fortunately attained
the number in the first attempt.

For the people out there preparing for CCIE, I wanna say that you people
along with studies should learn to control your nerves, As CCIE exam is also
a test of your skills of time management, non-tiring mind then just
knowledge. You should be capable of delivering the best solution and you
should always be ready for surprise questions. They can ask you anything and
if you dont know that then there is a fair chance that it can spoil the
rest of the lab. The best way is to note down such question and forget about
it, until you are finished with the questions that you can solve. The
non-core part of the paper is the Danger Zone, so everyone should give it a
good amount of time for its preparation. Open-ended questions are no Ghost,
the one who knows the technical concepts about technologies can easily solve
them so no one should be afraid of them.

Overall, doing CCIE was a great experience. The sights of Dubai and
traveling were great. I hope to find a good job soon and move on with my
career in Cisco networks.

--
Khurram Noor
CCIE # 24419
http://www.linkedin.com/in/khurramnoor
Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net