Re: R & S Lab experience

Nate
Well done!!!
Great write up. Enjoy it you earned it

Larry Hadrava
CCIE #12203

-- Sent from my Palm PrD
On Apr 5, 2010 11:22 PM, Nate Lee <natetlee_at_gmail.com> wrote:

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 - 06:39:51 ART