Very informative and articulate post, Aaron.
Thank you.
-Jonathan
"Aaron K. Dixon" wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> This is a brief synopsis of my ccie lab and the tools I used to study. If
> you're not interested you may want to just hit the delete key now.
>
> I just thought that I would take a few moments to share my study methodology
> for the CCIE lab. I've been meaning to do this since I passed the lab on
> November 15th in San Jose, but I always seem to get sidetracked with all of
> my newfound free time. This was my first attempt at the lab and I found it
> to be fairly straight forward. It wasn't as convoluted as I expected and I
> had seen pretty much everything before.
>
> Day 1
>
> The first thing that I did was read through the entire lab TWICE. I
> realized that I knew how to do everything and went to work on my diagram. I
> found day one to be very easy and was done by 2 o'clock. I checked and
> re-checked all of my work and felt very confident in everything that I had
> done. After that I spent time making sure that ALL of my information was
> recorded correctly and neatly on my diagram. I felt very confident when I
> left, but I have to admit as I tried to get some sleep the what if's were
> creeping in my mind.
>
> Day 2
>
> I arrived for Day 2 happy to see the Day 2 binder on my desk and went
> through the same process of reading the entire lab twice. I realized that I
> knew exactly what to do on 90% of the lab and may have to browse the cd for
> the other 10%. Again, I found that there was plenty of time and I had
> completed everything that I knew how to do by 10:30. I spent the next 30
> minutes reviewing the cd and configuring the remaining 10%. I then re-read
> everything and checked over all of my work and made sure that my diagram was
> complete. Documentation is very important in the lab not only for
> troubleshooting, but to ensure that the proctor can see what you were doing.
> The proctor spends all day at the lab and then has to check your work in the
> evening or at lunch for day 2. The last thing he wants to do is spend 30
> minutes trying to read your diagram. Of course, this is just my opinion.
>
> After day 2, I felt real good about my work, but nervous none the less.
> This made for what seemed like a never ending lunch. Once we arrived back
> at the facility I was called first and on the way back to the lab I was told
> that I had made it to troubleshooting and that I had three hours. When I
> returned to my desk I found the paperwork for troubleshooting and for the
> first time found out how many points I had. I had gained 70 of the 75
> points and only needed 10 of the 25 from troubleshooting. At that point, I
> knew that I had passed and just needed to knock out the troubleshooting. As
> I looked around I realized that no one else had progressed from Day 2. I
> spent about an hour and a half on troubleshooting and felt like I fixed
> everything so I turned in my sheet. About 5 minutes later, the proctor
> returned with a yellow sticky note with my number on it. He then asked me
> if I would erase all of my configs and then I left with a huge grin on my
> face. I just couldn't believe that all of my studying paid off.
>
> I met Chuck Larrieu a few hours later for a victory dinner. I knew that it
> would be nice to have some company one way or the other and I was glad that
> it turned out to be for good reasons.
>
> Passing the test was very rewarding, but the journey was just as rewarding.
> It's amazing the amount of material that you learn along the way and the
> many friends that you make. I have become friends with many people that I
> may of never met if I wasn't studying for the CCIE.
>
> Study Materials
>
> I studied the normal books Caslow, Halabi, and Doyle and found them all to
> be very helpful. I also used three other books extensively that I don't see
> mentioned very often. I used the configuring cisco routers for bridging,
> dlsw+, & desktop protocols and the Cisco Press Lan Switching Book. I found
> them both to be very helpful as I work extensively with cisco routers and
> rarely use cisco switches. I also used the CCIEBootcamp labs which I found
> to be an excellent resource for practice. There are a lot of other labs,
> but most of them don't throw everything together like the bootcamp labs. I
> have to admit that I only completed about half of them and never did the
> dreaded lab 8, but I studied all 17 of them and read up on anything that I
> didn't know how to do. It often takes a large amount of time to do a full
> lab, but reading through it and "spotting the issues" can be very helpful.
> About 2 months ago I attended the ECP1 course which was taught by Bruce
> Caslow. I found Bruce's methodology to be excellent and really got a lot
> out of the course. About a month after that I attended Cisco's ASET
> (www.cisco.com/go/aset) program. This turned out to be an excellent program
> as well and I just wished that I would of known about it sooner. This is a
> 3-day lab taught by Jay and Jose in San Jose. The lab is a simulated CCIE
> environment where each student gets a pod with 8 routers, a cat 3920, cat
> 5000, and a ls 1010. Jay and Jose really helped me on good diagramming
> skills and allowed me to sit down for a timed lab. I did very well on the
> lab and this really boosted my confidence for the actual lab. Another
> benefit to the ASET program is that after completing the 3-day mock lab you
> are able to get access to the rack via internet access. I was able to
> reserve 5 days of rack time just prior to taking my lab.
>
> One of the keys is practice, practice, and more practice. It is very
> important that you understand how the protocols behave. If you're just used
> to configuring them based on a manual or cookie-cutter config you will have
> difficulty due to the way the lab has you configure things. If you
> understand the behavior of the protocols then the lab will seem very easy
> because you will immediately see what they are looking for. It is also
> crucial that you have the core topics down pat. There are things on the lab
> that you haven't seen before, but they won't comprise near the points that
> the core topics cover.
>
> Finally, I would like to thank all of the helpful members of groupstudy. I
> have been on the list for quite awhile and the group has brought about many
> thought provoking questions and helped me to see things in a different light
> than just based on what I read or how I interpreted it. I am very thankful
> to Paul for taking the time and money to run this list. I had the
> opportunity to meet Paul and have dinner with him this year at Networkers
> and you can tell that he enjoys running this group and works very hard and
> adding to the group.
>
> I've probably bored you all to death by now so I'll end it here.
>
> Regards,
> Aaron K. Dixon
>
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