Re: Sob Story

Hi -

I'm not an active participant of this group (lurcher) :-); however for some
reason I feel the need to respond to this due to the fact that I've been
where you are at now.

With regards to the proctor talking on the phone, that doesn't seem right to
me; however there are plenty of other distracting sounds such as fellow
candidates feverishly typing away, farting, burping, slurping, sighing and
other indescribable sounds emanating throughout the lab. Oh ya and don't
forget the hum of Cisco gear running in the background. :-D.

I'm sure if you would've let the proctor know that his jaw-jacking on the
phone was distracting you, he would've respected that and would've ceased
said jaw-jacking. I dont believe it was a deliberate attempt to trip you up
(not that you said it was), they're really not out to get you.

The sound-proof cubicle sounds like a good idea; however I don't think it
would be economically feasible from their perspective and whatever monies
they have for/from this program would be better spent in other areas...

That being said, a request for some sort of "cone-of-silence" apparatus that
allows you to communicate securely and directly with the proctors would more
than likely get squashed. :-D

If you are easily distracted from external sources that make you lose focus,
perhaps you can do your studying in a public place where free Wi-Fi is
available or study with the radio on in the background to acclimate yourself
to being able to focus on your tasks at hand with external distractions,
just some thoughts. It's been proven that humans are not good multi-taskers
even though some of think we are. In fact women are better at multi-tasking
than men are!

As for myself having my own equipment humming away, portable AC and talk
radio in the background, I believe (unintentionally) better prepared me for
the type of situation you described.

With regards to the program policies, they can be found here:

http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/ccie/policies/index.html

Written Exam: Expiration

Candidates must make an initial attempt of the CCIE lab exam within 18
months of passing the CCIE written exam. Candidates who do not pass must
re-attempt the lab exam within 12 months of their last scored attempt in
order for their written exam to remain valid. If a candidate does not pass
the lab exam within three years of passing the written exam, he or she must
retake the written exam before being allowed to attempt the lab exam again.

With regards to MPLS, I agree it's more of an SP requirement; however as
customers migrate their WAN infrastructures to a providers MPLS VPN (they
have and are) I can see why this is being introduced in the R/S.

Albeit the provider is not going to extend the MPLS domain down to the CE
(at least not yet, hehe), customer's are connecting up to providers L3/L2
VPN networks (it's a fact).

In todays environment from an enterprise customers standpoint you need to
understand some of the issues that can be introduced when integrating a
providers MPLS VPN with an enterprise customers internal routing domain or
if you work for a provider that offers managed-services in one form or
another.

Being that customer's are connecting up to provider's MPLS VPNs it would be
advantageous for you to learn this technology at least from a fundamental
standpoint and at a minimum know how to implement and/or incorporate
multi-vrf in a design on a CE device to take advantage of a providers
product offering and/or to accommodate a requirement to segregate your
public address space from your private address space, segregate different
business units traffic locally on the CE when transiting the CE on through a
providers network to a remote CE device or it could be possible that
whatever company youre working for are looking to you to come up with an
MPLS architecture to replace their existing core infrastructure, just some
examples on why it would be advantageous for you to learn this thing known
as MPLS (mipples) and the technologies that can be implemented on top of an
MPLS enabled netwwork in todays environment. <<-- mipples, hehe

That being said, why not just go ballz out and learn it, and you if have
aspirations of pursuing the SP track as I do; itll be one less thing you
have to study! :-)

Who knows what the industry propeller-heads are going to come up with in the
next ten years whatever it is, Cisco will adjust the program to accomadate
the market demands and we'll have to adjust right along with it.

So, dood I wouldnt waste time pursuing any litigation which more than
likely will take a lot of time, energy and money (you will lose). What you
should do is take a step back, re-group and hit the reset button and
re-direct whatever time, energy and money youre going to waste pursuing
litigation towards obtaining this certification.

Just my 2cents,
Steve Ohnmacht  CCIE# 22923 R/S, JNCIS# 196
"we cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust our sails"

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 9:09 AM, Shaibal Mitra
<shaibal_mitra_at_hotmail.com>wrote:

> Thought I should share my sob story with fellow sufferers.I passed the CCIE
> written in Mar 2007 and then took my first Lab attempt at Sao Paulo.All
> through the first attempt the proctor kept on talking over the telephone
> and I
> was not able to focus.Cisco charges an obscene amount for the Lab isnt it
> logical they should provide a Test environment which is quiet and necessary
> for a 8 hour battle.Perhaps we should file a PIL so that the company wakes
> up
> and realises they are not fulfilling their obligations by not providing the
> required Lab environment.My experience in my subsequent two attempts were
> hardly any different.Ideally there should be sound-proofed cubicles for
> each
> test-taker and take my word for it ear-plugs and ear-muffs DO NOT work.What
> I
> found from my subsequent desperate research is even if you use
> ear-plugs/muffs
> speech gets conducted through the head bones and of course they will not
> allow
> you to play music to drown out the speech.
>
> Also when I took the written test there was no rule stating that one had to
> take the Lab at least once a year or the written exam would become
> invalid.Again perhaps a PIL...
>
> Very frankly if the correct exam environment is provided and the company
> didnt
> keep on playing with the exam format/contents etc. there would be many more
> CCIEs.Which is obviously why they resort to these nasty methods.What is the
> logic of introducing MPLS VPNs when the topic is already covered in the
> Service Provider track?
>
> PIL anyone...?
>
> Just in case my language is as convoluted as that of Cisco by PIL I mean
> Public Interest Litigation.
>
>
>
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Received on Wed Aug 19 2009 - 19:01:39 ART