Hi Guys, I also had the fortune of passing last week (in Brussels on Monday), following Justin's lead I thought I'd share some notes on my study experience with you. I've split it into two pieces, the first (below) talks about my study experience and how it changed over time. The second (to follow in a minute) talks about the approach I used in the lab , which may or may not be insane but worked for me.
Many many thanks to everyone for their help and advice over the last many months. Regards Kevin CCIE #36651 *How I Studied* It took me three attempts to pass the CCIE, and after each of my failed attempts I made a number of adjustments to my approach. This was all personal study, I did not take any classes, but I did get some great support from my employer paying for materials, rack rentals, exam fees, allowing me some study leave and being very encouraging and supportive throughout. *Attempt One (March)* For attempt one I used the Cisco 360 materials. Of these the lab workbooks were very good and the online racks were the best I’ve seen in terms of setup (mainly because they’re the only ones I’ve seen with a remote phone control solution that actually works even remotely well). The other materials, a ‘library’ which seemed to consist of docs mostly available for free elsewhere and some videos which were ‘presented’ by a synthesized voice, were very poor. However there were only racks available for the last 10 of the 25 labs (the first 15 being technology labs like IPexpert WB 1) and it didn’t seem possible to purchase additional rentals. There were also 5 assessed labs – I really liked the idea of these and they did help, although they were graded by a script that sometimes went wrong. In fairness their support was good and they did give me extra sessions when things went wrong. My biggest criticism of the 360 stuff only came after my first attempt. I arrived in the exam room to find the exam looked nothing like the 360 labs. So where the 360 stuff had tables the exam had prose. The technology demands of the lab were very different from that of the 360 labs and there were quite a few things missing. Having been practicing with one set of workbooks I’d also become accustomed to a particular naming standard and IP schema as was surprised how much this threw me. I also suffered from the unfamiliar US keyboard layout and spent a considerable period of time correcting typing errors. Needless to say I ran out of time and failed. I took time at the end of the exam, having realized I failed, to reread the paper, and took good notes after leaving the room to ensure I would learn all the things that threw me. *Attempt Two (June)* After attempt one I purchased the IPExpert WB2 and 5-lab workbook and worked through them. I was struck by how much closer to the real thing they were, especially the 5 lab book. I also purchased two US keyboards (one for work one for home). I didn’t get on with the Proctorlabs remote phone control, so bought an 877 router, an old switch and a few phones (7960) – I also managed to borrow 4 7965 phones. I found this worked well for me and kept this hardware setup frpom this point in. I also collected together a list of things that I felt I needed to know from memory, such as various URLs, page numbers in the SRNDs etc. and committed these to memory. I went through two workbooks just once – although I read and took notes on each scenario a couple of times to practice understanding and interpreting the questions. In the end I was completing the 5-lab scenarios in a little over 6 hours. I felt confident, I’d have perhaps liked a little longer to prepare but had booked a date months in advance to make sure I committed. This attempt went much better, and I felt I knew the technology much better. However I still ran out of time and did not finish the exam. I was left with the distinct impression that whilst the 5-lab workbook is a good reflection of the exam the scenarios are much shorter than the real thing . *Attempt Three (September)* This time I decided that I knew the technology sufficiently well, and that the main problem was speed. I decided to practice only the 5 lab workbooks, but went through and added several questions to each. These were a mix of questions from WB2 and questions based on my memories of my two failed attempts (no excuse for getting the same thing wrong twice!). I adopted several strategies to improve my speed, including - · Used an online typing tutor (http://www.sense-lang.org/) to improve my typing speed and familiarity with US keyboard - · Added to my list of ‘things to memorise’ and loaded these into a flashcard program (Anki http://ankisrs.net/) which I also loaded onto my smartphone (AnkiDroid) - · Created a number of ‘recipes’ for common configurations (Router Qos, T1/E1, MGCP/H.323, media devices, CME, SRST etc.) and tuned these to contain the abbreviated version sof commands (e.g. ‘mg ca 10.1.1.1 s m v 0’ instead of ‘mgcp call-agent 10.1.1.1 service mgcp version 0.1’). I also loaded these into Anki and practiced by typing into notepad. - · Used remembered IP addressing from the Lab in my flash cards, rather than the IPExpert practice lab addressing - · Use the shortest possible names for everything in CUCM e.g. ‘A’ rather than ‘Site-A-Phones-CSS’ - · Use the shortest possible media device names (6 characters) ‘aaaxcd’,’bbbcfb’ etc. The repeated letter is just laziness and easier to type! - · Type into notepad then cut and paste into IOS – especially where anything is remotely reusable. I decided this time not to book the lab until I could get my times down to sub 5 hours. When I achieved this I booked the lab for a Monday, and took the Friday off work too. I did two labs each day on Friday/Saturday – the last of these I completed in under 4 hours even with my extra questions. On Sunday I travelled to Brussels and used time on the train to cram from my two flashcard decks. Once I got to the hotel I chilled out with a couple of beers! On the day everything went to plan, I fell into a couple of traps that probably cost me an hour and finished with an hour to recheck – I re-checked everything except SRST – mainly because there were only a few minutes left and I didn’t want to risk leaving anything not registered. This confirmed my suspicion that the real lab was longer than the workbooks! I left feeling that I had nailed it, although kept that opinion to myself until I got the result through!
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