Hello Aaron,
Congratulations and thanks for the additional insight into the lab exam.
John L. Watson, MCSE, CCNA, ACP
Professional Services Consultant
IBM Global Services
My PID is Indigo Montoya. You kill -9 my parent process, prepare to vi.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
Ole Drews Jensen
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2000 12:40 PM
To: 'Aaron K. Dixon'; GroupStudy LAB; GroupStudy
Subject: RE: CCIE #6460
Hello Aaron,
First, a million congratulations to you - it sounds like you did a really
good job on the lab.
Second, a million thanks to you for your "story" which I found anything but
boring. Even though I am only halfway on my expedition towards the CCNP
certification, I have often wondered what actually went on behind the closed
doors at the CCIE labs, and you have now blown away 90% of the dark clouds.
How long did it take you to become a CCIE after you got your CCNP cert?
Thanks and enjoy your free time,
Ole
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ole Drews Jensen
Systems Network Manager
CCNA, MCSE, MCP+I
RWR Enterprises, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.oledrews.com/ccnp
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NEED A JOB ???
http://www.oledrews.com/job
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron K. Dixon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2000 12:33 PM
To: GroupStudy LAB; GroupStudy
Subject: CCIE #6460
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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