I placed my order for Volume 3 of the new workbooks/box set/Blended Learning Solution on Monday, May 12th. The .PDF files were loaded onto my Ipexpert account on Wednesday, May 14th. (There is one .PDF file for the ten lab scenarios, and then ten .PDF files for the Proctor Guides for each of the ten labs.) At my request, Mike Down also loaded the updated Workbook volumes 1 and 2 into my account at the same time (I believe that the upgrade for those is free if you have previously purchased the old v4 workbook from Ipexpert, but check with the Ipexpert sales guys on that.) However, I have not even opened those files yet - I was more interested in the new practice labs in Volume 3.
I was warned at the time that it could be up to three weeks before I received the hard drive with the video walkthroughs, and that proved to be precisely correct - I received the hard drive two days ago on Monday, June 2nd. The lead time may be less now that the process is worked out - if time is critical to you (like if you have a lab date scheduled for late June or early July), then ask before you submit your order. I was at a point that having the labs themselves and the proctor guides was as important to me as the video walkthroughs (my last attempt at the Voice lab exam was May 8th and my next attempt is in two weeks on June 18th). So I went ahead and ordered, knowing that I might only have two weeks with the video walkthroughs before my next attempt. First, an overview - there are ten labs. The first five are MGCP (for the BR1 gateway) and Mark does the video walkthrough. Labs six through ten are H.323 for the BR1 gateway and Vik does the video walkthrough. There is a good mixture of all the possible scenarios you might face for the other elements (various Gatekeeper zones and restrictions, different multicast or unicast MoH scenarios, different IPCC Express scripts, IPMA, B-ACD, different QoS scenarios, etc. etc.) During the last three weeks, I have done five of the ten labs. Four of them were during 7:45 hour Proctor Labs vRack sessions (which actually work out to be about seven hours of actual work time if you take breaks and eat a meal). I found them to be remarkably similar to the actual lab exam experience - it was certainly a challenge to complete all the tasks in seven hours, but it was possible to do so. For the fifth lab I did, I wanted to nail QoS, so I booked a double session (fifteen hours and 45 minutes). I used about four hours to configure the lab up through Dial Plan, Media, and High Availability, and then spent a good eight hours going through every QoS question in all ten labs. I would do all the QoS configuration for one lab, go look at the proctor guide for that lab to check how I did, wipe it all out, and then move on to the QoS questions in another lab. That twelve-hour day may be the key in whether I pass my next attempt at the lab exam or not - QoS has always taken way too much time for me and I wasn't sure I had it right - I feel much more confident now. Since I received the hard drive two days ago, I have made it a point to view the video walkthroughs for the questions that I was not 100% positive I had configured correctly while working on the five labs that I've been through. The menu is very easy to use - you pull up the video walkthroughs by question (see the demo), so you can just easily just watch what you are currently working on. For those of you who have taken the Ipexpert Boot Camps, this is very similar to the solutions that were provided on the USB key, except that you have audio as well as video, and there is a video file (with sound) for every single question, where the USB keys often just had a text file for router configuration. The explanations are very thorough and clear - again, those of you have who have taken the Boot Camps, or even just watched the live vLectures, know what a gift both Mark and Vik have for teaching. This is like having Boot Camp broken up into little snippets so that you can go straight to the piece you need when you need it, and repeat as many times as necessary until you throughly understand it. I have two more weeks to do the other five labs before my next attempt at the actual CCIE Voice lab exam. If I don't pass this time, it will not be due to a lack of exposure to all the right material - I can't imagine what they could possibly put on the lab exam that isn't covered in these ten labs! If you discipline yourself to do these labs in less than eight hours, they also offer a good simulation of the time pressure of the actual lab exam. I'll keep you posted - if I do actually pass in two weeks, then obviously this testimonial will be more credible. But with my three weeks of exposure to the labs and proctor guides, and two days of exposure to the video walkthroughs on the hard drive, I honestly believe that the $700 I spent for Volume 3 is the best investment I've made yet in my preparation for the CCIE Voice lab exam. Jane Jane Ryer, CCIE # 3333 Network Consulting Engineer Cisco Systems Advanced Services team
