I agree 100%... do NOT plan out your lab exercises, just wing it... it will
make you a better engineer in the long run... I would say, if it would take
you an hour to plan it out correctly, do it in 10 minutes, max. Then use
that 50 minutes to discover why it is broken. Trust me, you will be glad you
did, your sloppiness now will pay out a hundred-fold when you get into the
real world.
Trust me, I am as lazy as they come (and still have a CCIE (voice, 25309,
thanks)...), and I am telling you, your mistakes will be the best learning
events you will have.
Now, I could go off a giant tangent about how Piaget and Discovery Learning,
but I will summarize it... if you learn something by figuring it out
yourself, you will never forget it. If you learn by wrote memory, by some
instructor or book telling you that you need to make sure the hub is the DR
in those multipoint frame connections, if you ever want OSPF to work, you
will never remember it, but if one of the spokes is the DR, and you spend 3
hours trying to figure out why your crap don't work, trust me, you will set
those preferences to your neighbor commands (and add the broadcast (and I
mean, BROADCAST!!!!!!) command to your frame-relay map statements).
I have a list of commands I enter into a router before I do anything else,
no ip domain-lookup, logging synchronous, because forgetting them annoys me
to no end... when you practice, you will drive in the commands that killed
you for hours that one time, and you will never forget them...
My journey has been odd (CCIE R/S attempt in January 2003, failed, then off
to voice, finally passed in September 2009), but none of this is new for
me... I have been beaten down by little commands ('is a route to null0
generated by EIGRP allowed, or not?')...
Jonathan
On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 12:05 PM, nicholas golden <[email protected]>wrote:
> This is EXACTLY RIGHT.
>
> When things go smoothly, I don't learn. I mean I learn, but it doesn't
> "stick" with me. I was setting up OSPF a while back and the damn thing would
> not work no matter what. I checked my addresses, I checked the area, I
> checked this and that and this and that to find out I had an interface shut
> down............yeah.. Other stupid stuff like forgetting the broadcast
> statement on when doing that awful multipoint frame relay and wondering why
> my EIGRP is not forming.. The list goes on and on and on and on.....
>
> So when you are doing labs, sometimes it pays to be sloppy. Now, you may
> say "Be sloppy?" yes that's what I said. There were Soooooooo many times I
> did a lab or set something up quickly and then realized I screwed something
> up. It wasn't until I failed at setting something up that it became a thing
> to remember. Do that a few thousand times and things tend to "stick" with
> you. I have cleaned up my act since then, but I still find myself fighting
> "self induced" troubleshooting which is the worst and BEST kind of
> troubleshooting you can do. It really makes you think and ANALYZE the
> situation and FORCES you to figure out WHY it's NOT working and HOW to FIX
> it.
>
> So just 'doing' the labs going through the motion is not enough. Every time
> you set something up like why do we use a 0.0.0.0. wild card mask vs a
> 0.0.0.255 mask. Both work right? Why do we do a no auto on eigrp. Start
> thinking about the WHY on EVERYTHING YOU DO. Really break it down to a low
> level and tear it apart from the beginning. After a while, you will be sick
> of thinking this way but then realize you don't really think about it any
> more. What was a chore is just now part of you and your desire to make
> things work.
>
> Now realize I am just starting on my CCIE RS written but the last 510 hours
> of lab time I spent on ccna/ccnp really opened my eyes to things. I know
> they are still mostly closed as I progress to the lab, but I don't know if I
> what I am saying is right or wrong it's just my experience so far.
>
> So take from this what you will, I'm just a guy after his digits and a
> piece of the CCIE pie.
>
> That's my "spill" on it.
>
> I hope that does something for you and makes you realize that if you learn
> by doing making a ton of mistakes you will get there. I hope this helps you
> out :)
>
> To your skills,
>
> -Nick
>
> --- On *Sun, 9/20/09, Jonathan Charles <[email protected]>* wrote:
>
>
> From: Jonathan Charles <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [OSL | CCIE_RS] Query
> To: "Adrian Brayton" <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected]
> Date: Sunday, September 20, 2009, 7:26 AM
>
>
> Exactly... if you do routing and switching enough, the troubleshooting is
> old hat... It also comes down to knowing the limitations of each protocol,
> knowing what are required for EIGRP or OSPF to form neighbor relationships,
> what commands will get around those limitations, understanding why STP is
> going crazy and ensuring who is root...
>
> I think the troubleshooting was added to the test to ensure that you really
> know what you are doing and not just braindumping the lab.... if you have
> real experience, the troubleshooting is probably pretty easy... if you are
> faking it, it is probably nearly impossible... just like those four
> questions in the beginning... if you know what you are doing, you shouldn't
> run into any problems...
>
> That being said, I would make sure you know the nuances of OSPF, BGP,
> EIGRP, STP, IGMP, etc... know what causes them to fail... and Adrian is
> right, if you do enough labs, you will break stuff eventually and have to
> dig yourself out of the holes... I think that the mistakes are good things,
> they force you to discover why things aren't working....
>
>
> Jonathan
>
> On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 7:22 AM, Adrian Brayton
> <[email protected]<http://mc/[email protected]>
> > wrote:
>
>> Hey Piyush,
>> If you screw up as much as I do there really is no need for
>> troubleshooting labs as every lab I do turns into a trouble shooting
>> exercise! I think that by the time your ready there will be more vendors
>> offering this sort of thing!
>>
>> JM2Cs
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sep 19, 2009, at 10:28 PM, piyush dwivedi wrote:
>>
>> Hi Members,
>> I am happy to join this group.
>> I missed out on the dates for CCIEv3 and now preparing for CCIEv4.
>>
>>
>> Please suggest me a book on troubleshooting so that it can be helpful for
>> my CCIEv4 troubleshooting section.
>>
>>
>>
>> Request you to give your expert comments.
>>
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Piyush Dwivedi
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
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>> ._______________________________________________
>> For more information regarding industry leading CCIE Lab training, please
>> visit www.ipexpert.com
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> For more information regarding industry leading CCIE Lab training, please
>> visit www.ipexpert.com
>>
>>
>
> -----Inline Attachment Follows-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> For more information regarding industry leading CCIE Lab training, please
> visit www.ipexpert.com
>
>
>
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