RE: R & S Lab experience

Congratulations Nate (#25988) ;)

-----Original Message-----
From: nobody_at_groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody_at_groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of Nate
Lee
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 8:51 AM
To: Cisco certification
Subject: R & S Lab experience

Hey everybody, took the lab on Friday, March 26th and wanted to do a quick
writeup on it before it fades from my memory faster than OSPF with a dead
interval set to minimal.

A bit of background on my preparation.....

I bought the INE Vol I and II workbooks but had a problem getting dynamips
running that many routers on my laptop, so I didn't get too far with that at
first. I signed up for Narbik's bootcamp last November (I wrote up a review
of that, it should be in the archives somewhere) and received his advanced
workbook to start work on as part of the bootcamp package. This is more or
less equivalent to the INE Vol I workbooks. As I stated before, Narbik's
bootcamp was great and a terrific value on top of the quality. He is a
great teacher and has really been there every step of the way helping me out
in a personal manner that you don't find too often these days. Going
through the workbooks before attending the bootcamp really helps so you
aren't trying to learn everything from scratch in 5 days. I did it in
November, but I think taking a boot camp 4 - 6 weeks before your lab date
after you are already familiar with all the topics would probably be the
best way to go so you aren't hearing it for the first time in class.

After the bootcamp I went through Narbik's books again, and the last 6 weeks
before my lab I broke down and rented rack time from Narbik (again, a smokin
deal, $400 for the entire month 24/7 if you have attended his bootcamp). I
mostly did INE workbooks for those last 6 weeks, Vol I for the topics I
wanted to get stronger on and Vol II to get a feel for a full lab. I didn't
have much time, so I only did the difficulty 8 and 9 labs once through. I
gotta say, you INE guys are some tricky bastards! I had a ton of fun
solving some of the more....esoteric tasks in your labs. They were like
puzzles that you have to really press your brain to work on. Good times!

That being said, I thought the Difficulty 8 and 9 labs were decently more
difficult than the actual lab. They helped a ton by making it less
stressful once I was in the real lab as it seemed easier than everything I
had been working on. THAT having been said, I don't know if it is ever
possible to feel TRULY on top of every topic for the lab. I felt solid, but
some of the tasks on the Diff 9 labs worked me over like a drunken
chiropractor. My hat's off to you guys, some of those left my brain twisted
in a knot and really reminds me that there is always something more to
learn.

I also bought Ruhann's short notes which are spectacularly done, but alas, I
printed them out and then promptly forgot them on my desk at work so they
didn't get used for review. They are really great though, probably better
than the CCIE Exam guide for last minute review, definitely something to
check out.

Now onto the meat....

I arrived in San Jose a couple days early and visited some friends and
family on Wednesday and then went for a 12 mile hike over in Big Basin State
Park on Thursday to clear my head climbing waterfalls and checking out the
redwoods. Very peaceful and relaxing, highly recommended.

The night before the test I ended up having to take some Tylenol PM to get
to sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about the test. I studied a bit,
but honestly, the entire week of the test I had a hard time studying. You
just feel overwhelmed by all the possible things that could be on the test
that you could know better and 3 or 4 days hardly seems like it will matter
at this point. I tried my hardest but wasn't able to get much done but some
light reading and a bit of playing around in Dynamips.

The day of, I arrived about 15 minutes early and all the candidates were
already waiting in the lobby. Weird vibe. Nobody talks because everybody
is so nervous and trying to gather their thoughts. There was a couple R and
S, a couple voice, a guy doing Sec and a guy doing SP. They gave us the
brief rundown of how everything works and then set us loose. The chase was
on.....

The OEQ started and I found out that any time you have left from that 30
mins you can add to your config section, so there is a 25 min bonus. Maybe
there is some luck of the draw, but I can't imagine anyone who feels they
are prepared for a CCIE lab having trouble with the questions being asked.
 I didn't do any particular preparation for this section other than review
the written exam guide the night before. If you know your stuff, don't
sweat this section.

The troubleshooting section was pretty cool. Nothing too hard in there at
all, most, if not all of the problems were staring you in the face, but
finding 10 of them with the clock ticking means you need to have a
troubleshooting methodology dialed in. I think this section will really
weed out those who have in the field experience from those that don't, its
kind of hard to teach that without accompanying experience. Don't worry
about the size of the topology, everyone talks about how huge it is, but it
is really manageable and not that difficult to find where you are at. I
thought I had 8 of 10 when I still had an hour left but decided to double
check and realized I had actually broken something else so I spent the next
45 minutes double checking everything and went on to the configuration
section with a total extra of 35 minutes (25 from OEQ and 10 from
Troubleshooting). I left one ticket hanging that I just couldn't find out
what was wrong, I'm pretty sure I nailed the rest of them.

The configuration section was the one that I was most afraid of going in
just because of the sheer breadth of what could be there. It actually
seemed easier than I thought it was going to be. No crazy ninja stuff like
you see in the hardest vendor workbook labs. I think the thing that will
kill a lot of people are the little details. You might configure the whole
BGP section correctly, but if you read through too fast and miss one detail
of what they are asking for you can kiss those four points good bye. I got
a bit lucky because I got bored in one section that took a lot of work for a
few points and decided to skip ahead and grab some easy points. It turned
out that I needed to do one of those easy tasks first anyways or I would
have to redo a bunch of previous work so that definitely worked out in my
favor. I finished the config section at 2:30 with 2.5 hours to spare (!?)
and spent the last time double and triple checking everything. This is
pretty much what saved me as I found 3 or 4 mistakes that would have cost me
3 or 4 points each, this could have easily been the difference between
passing and failing.

After the test, I had a friend pick me up, we drove up to Lake Tahoe for a
few days of snowboarding while I awaited the results (Friday test results
come in Sunday night). The email came in Sunday around 11 PM and after 10
minutes of trying to figure out how to use my friend's Mac (way harder than
the OEQ), I was able to login and get my report. #25988! To top it off, it
started snowing that night and dropped 40" of snow so the week was all that
much better.

I am just now adjusting to all the time I have back. You forget all the
stuff that you used to have time to do. I have never enjoyed being in my
backyard cleaning dog shit more than I did last week.

To cap it off, i'd just like to say thanks to everybody on the board who
selflessly helps others. Without the community here, knowing others were
going through the same trials and tribulations, it would have been so much
harder. Of course I have to thank my wife, I'm not sure I'd be that cool if
she locked herself in a room for 6 months to play with a bunch of fake
routers running on a laptop. The guys at INE helped out with a bunch of my
questions and their hardest labs left my crying on the floor :) Narbik and
Janet over at Micronics have been very helpful and Narbik's bootcamp was
really a turning point for me that helped a ton of stuff really click in my
head. If you get a chance to attend, I couldn't recommend it highly enough.

To everybody out there studying, keep it up! It is 100% doable, absolutely,
no question! Of course it is a hard journey, it wouldn't be all that cool
if it was easy, would it?

Thanks again everybody!

Nate

#25988 <-- I still haven't gotten over how cool it is to be able to write
that :)

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Received on Tue Apr 06 2010 - 11:34:46 ART