The only frog on this planet with CCIE# Not joking, frog went 4th time to the CCIE lab in Sydney and this time asked to the proctor;- hey, I have been to this lab for 3 times and u never been kind enough to gave me the #. This time he got serious and thought a while, then he tabbed frog's head and put his hand in his pocket and gave frog a brand new CCIE#. Frog hopped in pound again! who's going to use his CCIE#? no its damn wastage !
Seriously if someone want to hire frog in Sydney , PM him. I finally got my shiny new number after studying hard for the past 9 months with my full time job. In Oct, 2005 I started studying for R&S lab but after a few month of preparation I though its not enough, end of the day its vendor cert. I decided to leave CCIE for a while and gain a Masters Degree in "Networking" first. I took an admission in Charles Stuart University Sydney and then finished it in a year & a month [jan 2006 to feb 2007]. Then I had nothing to do so I thought to go back and do CCIE cert. I took a few months break from study and then thought seriously about which CCIE track I go for. I finally made a decision do the toughest exam first and then easier ones, so I hopped on CCIE voice horse. At the beginning I started studying 2-6 hours per week for CCIE voice written after june2007. I passed the voice written exam in august 2007. After that it was a real challenge for me to arrange routers switches, servers and softwares for the home lab. It took 2 months to arrange routers, servers for unity, call manager etc. I started labbing from nov, 2007 and binded up my study on 20th of July,2008 [ in 9 months]. I have logged about 1700+ hours of labbing and studying. 80% labbing and 20% studying on the forums, workbook, cisco.com/unvercd etc. To be honest, I didn't sleep properly for the last 4 months. I used to get back to home form work at 6pm, start labbing until 3-4am. If I remember correctly I didn't sleep for more than 3-4 hours per day, after that get up early morning7am, get ready and go to work. I found it worked for me but the drawback of this is - in middle of the week I used to collapse completely due to not enough sleep. but end of the day, hard work pays! Thanks to everyone who've helped me. Special thanks to my boss, and my employer for supporting me - yes they paid for my 4 attempts and about $30K for my lab gears [lucky me]. Oh yeah, proctor at Sydney lab is very helpful [that doesn't mean that he gives you the solutions]. I have read many threads on GS or other forums saying that proctor changes config during lunch break or something like that. Hey, the fact is that the proctor goes with you to have his lunch as well so who is there to change the configs? all hoax! Also, in Sydney lab proctor were very helpful in provide the DocCD docs [the link which were not working]. Thanks Scott for your help and I won't forgot those nice eggs sandwiches. Now I will take a few weeks break before I start R&S track. Here is the list of my study materials; ---------------------------------------- This forum [voiceie.com] was very helpful and was the main tool [along with cisco.com/univercd] for my study. IM study mates; this is a must tool for everyone, make your MSN/yahoo study partner. This helps when u run into trouble and your available resources gets short. U can instant ask the question to your study mates. I had 2-3 good full time 24/7 study mates. without them I couldn't have done it. FYI, I never attended any bootcamps or institute for VoIP training. I am working in IT for the past 8 years [mainly in R&S, firwalls, iptel stuffs] so it was easy for me to nail all topics of voice exam. I have used a MOC lab from Robert Hockley [kiwi guy] http://www.ccievoice-assessor.com/ that was helpful and I came across knowing many thing which I wouldn't have normally picked up by myself. its was about $450 bucks but after I did my 8 hours full lab, we [robert and I] went through all scenarios, questions and discussed on the phone for more than 5 hours. WoW.... u can ask him anything virtually.. Apart from above, I used ccbootcamp's volume#1 and technology workbook. the technology workbook was helpful when i was starting to study. so for new aspirant its good to use ccbootcamp's technology workbook. Thanks Brad and Avner for such a wonderful quick reference book. COD – Fasial khans and Mark snow/Vik's free online class. Take free online from these experts, its worth. Specially Vik's IPMA tricks [ a must see]. How to do ipma using single partion. Thanks VIK for that, really helpful. I also used IEmentor's voice workbook as a reference and to simulate different scenario. Also bought a few books on call manager, gw/gatekeeper but found them helpless. If you are thinking to buy one of those books, i would rather advise to buy ccbootcamp's technology book. Those books still on my self and badly need dusting. [image: [Razz]] ) Remember, you've to come up with many scenarios as possible. The last thing is, never give up. If you fail ride on the horse again. I used to have 1 week break and get back on the routine study. If time permits, I will be on this forum and will contribute to other guys who are still on the journey. Keep the hard work up and one day you all will get your CCIE#. FROG CCIE#21569 (voice)
