CCIE success story of "ccietr"

Hi,

I passed CCIE RS last week in Dubai.

I have started working with cisco devices 2 years ago. When i started, my the company has started moving management building, my manager gave me the moving project. We bought new Cisco 6500s. 7200s and 3560s and i learned most of the network during that time.

One of my friends outside of the company was preparing CCIE RS lab at that time. I was asking most of my questions to him. He suggested me to study for CCIE. then i decided to study RS. I did not read any book cover to cover but i must say that i read a lot. I started with IE volume1. It took about six months to finish. I entered the written exam and passed. Then i finished IE volume 2 in 8 months. i have completed IE volume 3 and Cisco`s asset labs.


One day before exam,

I woke up at 5:30 am in the morning as usual ( for 2 years). I spent some time outside and had breakfast. I read my summary notes. Around 5 pm i went outside for dinner. I came back around 8. I told reception man to wake me up at 5:30 am. I wen to bed at 10:00 pm.

Exam day:

I woke up 5:30 and had breakfast. I checked out from the hotel and took a taxi to Internet city of Dubai. There was a guy waiting. I understood that he is there for CCIE. Then other 2 guys came. 3 of them were their second attempts. Mine was first. I asked them about the exam procedures etc.. They were not excited , so am i.. ) I was very excited..

Finaly, proctor came and took us to lab exam room. He told us the rules etc.. I have started Open Ended Questions. They were CCNP level questions. i answered 4/4 with full paragraph. I finished Open ended questions about 15 minutes and passed to lab questions. I read quickly all lab. about 24 pages.

Screen was 22 inch Dell. so i could see 8 console screen at one time.. i started with Layer2 than routing...etc..

Before lunch time, i have finished all lab except BGP. I reloaded all devices. Before lunch, proctor asked us what kind of sandwich... Everyone ordered chicken sandwitch.

After 30 minutes lunch time, I finished BGP in 40 minutes. Then i checked from the begining. I realised that i numbered all ipv6 wrong. Then i corrected IPv6.. I run tcl script to ping each interface.. I re-checked 2 times all lab. i went out before 15 minutes. lab was easier then i expected.

I took a taxi and went to airport. I was sure i passed the exam but there was something inside maybe i would fail.. I came to home around 3 am. My wife was waiting for me.. i checked my emails. There was nothing. I went to bed.

I woke up 6 am.. i opened my eyes and directly went to my study room. I opened my laptop and clicked on inbox at gmail. There was an email from CISCO.. It says, you can check your exam score from this link...I know this link. I clicked then i entered my written exam scores.. I was so excited. i do not remember any time in my life that i got excited like this.. Then i saw magic word.. PASSED.... At this moment i was very happy. I woke up my wife and told her that i PASSED.

Then i went to work. Everyone in our IT department was courious about my exam score. I told them i passed.

Now what?

My position at work is changed. Now i am one of the security guys.

I will start Security Lab.. I hope it will not take 2 years..