I believe that I had mentioned that I failed my first attempt a month ago, which was quite a shock to my confidence. The most disappointing fact about the failure was that I had this residue the failure was not because of a lack of technical expertise, but rather inability to properly understand the very loose wording of questions. That drove me through the roof, I know that I know my stuff but yet I can not demonstrate the knowledge – that first lab was so vague that I had at least to complete sections where multiple solutions would fit.
So anyways, now about the good stuff. There is a bunch of writeups on what people 'do' to get through successfully. I personally can say about what I 'did not' do -
1.I did not buy any equipment for the purpose of studying for ccie – nada. All I was studying the labs with was my Dell 1850 dual cpu blade server with 4 gigs of memory running Gentoo Linux. Every single lab scenario was run on that box.
2.I did not pay for any Rack rentals or 'Mock Labs'. In my opinion any of those 'mock' labs are graded by 'not your proctor' and not your particular topology. So unless you cant help yourself looking at answers before completing your own lab at home, that would be money well-wasted.
3.Despite what most people whine about not having a life for a period of the study, I did not feel that way. I guess in a sense those complaints make the value of the cert appreciate so much more, but in my case I did not miss out on my normal life activities, at least not entirely.
About the course of the lab itself – I did not create any aliases, shortcuts or any of that auxiliary stuff. I did not mess with any of the default CRT settings either. Neither in the first attempt nor in the second I did not feel any shortage in time alloted for completion of all tasks, if you know what they are asking about – you got more than enough time to get in done. If you are stunned and it is something you'd never seen in your life, only then would it become a time issue. Throughout the tasks, I did not find myself consulting the reference guides. It was comforting to know that they are there, but those only came in handy during proofreading – to make sure the units are correct for example. I did not read more than three-four RFC's, and of course I did not try to memorize every crazy technology out there. Only what is required by the blueprint. As most mention it – your foundation on major topics has to be rock solid, and this is what the lab is testing you on mostly. Again, this is my sole opinion only, but for example I know there is potentially a question on mobile ip that might come up, but I strongly believe that it wont because it is not a 'core' topic. I felt that in both cases 80% of the lab are on core stuff – which is your IGP. The rest is there just to spice it up.
Timewise, the process took me about 7 months head to toe including the written. That time might not be very representative, since I had done my Masters degree in computer networks by that time and I did get a decent exposure at work. On the other hand, both of those factors are all about 'good designs', whereas ccie is totally the opposite phylosophy and I am not sure you can count real experience towards the downpayment for ccie.
There are four and a half invaluable, in my opinion, books which I used for preparation. Those are, of course, Jeff Doyle's two volumes, Cisco LAN Switching, Internet Routing Architectures, and last one is End-toend QOS Network design. The last one has only got select chapters made that book show up on my list.
If enough people voice an interest, I can put up a little tutorial on how to efficiently get going with dynamips. I am a big protagonist of linux, so whatever I explain would be related to pure linux environments. Linux by itself is not a scary thing when it comes to what you need for your CCIE work. In fact, you can get yourself up and running your labs from a blank box in about 30 minutes with linux. Steve [aka FredBloggs] can attest to that
At the end I wanted to thank my friends on this forum for an incredible support and source of inspirations. In particular big thanks go out to Dave, aka ChancesD, Steve, aka FredBloggs.
As the footnote – this thing is very much beatable. Dont dispair if you fail. What matters is the end result and it is totally up to you to finish it where you want it.
And, by the way, stay away from the damned proctors. The Howard guy at RTP is utterly useless sonuvagun.
Cheers and happy coming holidays.
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