Congratulations Jay and thanks for the input. This is definitely a boost for someone who's starting to study (again) from scratch. Enjoy it!!
Angel. On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Jay Taylor <[email protected]> wrote: > Pi day (3/14) was good to me; I passed the routing and switching lab to get > my digits! CCIE #28391 > > I stayed at Comfort Suites this time rather than the Wingate next door and > was happy I switched. Much nicer hotel - cleaner/newer room, better > breakfast and free beer from 5-7pm (Mon, Tue and Wed only I think.) They > will shuttle you to other nearby places but I didn't ask about the lab. > Regardless, I recommend renting a car so you don't have to rely on someone > else on such an important day. > > Overall I felt my lab this time was more difficult than last time but I was > more prepared. Strange how a day can feel like it is dragging on forever > yet > going by so quickly at the same time. I felt much more rushed on this > attempt and was very aware of the clock throughout the whole day. For my > last attempt I also said that I was having fun for about 75% of the day and > that was not the case this time. I had a number of times during the day > where I was rather stressed about either mistakes I'd made or not being > able > to think through the solution I wanted to use. > > I struggled more with the troubleshooting section this time than before and > ended with only 2-3 minutes to spare (after 1 round of verifying all the > tickets at the end.) One good thing about the TS section now is Cisco is > VERY clear about what you need to accomplish in order to consider a ticket > solved. Even so, there were a couple tickets that I felt I made too drastic > of changes to fix the problem and wasn't sure if I'd get the points for > them. Even though my solution matched the output they wanted I wouldn't be > surprised at all if I missed points on those. > > Config section was more complicated than my first attempt but there was > nothing in there that I had absolutely no idea how to accomplish. There > were > several topics I needed help from the DocCD and I asked the proctor quite a > few questions again. I got off to a fairly slow start and by lunchtime > wasn't even done with IGP config. After lunch it felt like things were just > getting worse as I struggled with a couple sections and started making some > really stupid typos. In the end I had to scrap all my BGP config and start > over due to non-technical mistakes. By then I was freaking out pretty bad > and before starting BGP over I took a bathroom break and tried to 'reset' > myself. I pushed through the rest of the routing config and by the time I > started on services and misc topics I didn't think I had enough time to > finish. Somehow I was able to knock all those tasks out in a pretty short > amount of time and still had an hour left to verify. Line by line I went > through the entire lab and verified points for each section. In the end > there were a couple tasks that I wasn't sure if I'd get points for but the > rest I felt very good about. I did go back and change a few things in that > last hour and had a freak out moment in the last 15 minutes when I couldn't > get something working again that I tried to fix. That last change took me > right up until the last 5 minutes. > > You hear it all the time from IPexpert instructors and I can't stress this > enough - READ THE ENTIRE LAB BEFORE YOU START. Tasks at the end can have a > big impact on how you do things early on. If you don't read the whole thing > you will likely be rebuilding some of the basics to allow later tasks to > work correctly. > > Two things that stood out to me about my lab day: > > 1. Had a router pull an 'R2' on me twice throughout the day when I > rebooted it. The proctor was clear that this was my problem to fix even > when > the router didn't recognize it's flash memory. > 2. A task was worded using KB for a function that clearly required Kb. I > asked the proctor a couple times and she insisted that I should configure > it > as if it requested Kb. I almost started the task by converting bytes to > bits > and that would have been completely wrong based on what I was told. After > the lab she agreed with me that the lab wording is misleading. > _______________________________________________ > 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
