CCIE - Motivation

I am back

2011-06-18T00:19:00.001-07:00

After the busy schedules , now its time up for me to taken on CCIE..

Yes...I am gonna start my hunt...

Please wish me all the best....

Thanks

More Routing and Switching CCIE's

2010-10-16T04:33:00.000-07:00

More R and S CCIE's

From INE
Adedayo Ademuyiwa - CCIE #27113 R and S
Emil Patel - CCIE #27005 R and S
Berki Daniel - CCIE #26973 R and S
Abdullah Salem Bedaiwy - CCIE #26965 R and S
Karel Vins - CCIE #26943 R and S
Thomas McAllen - CCIE #26867 R and S
Atta Ullah Meer - CCIE #26779 R and S

From IPE
#27102 Josh Yost (R&S)
#27053 Steve Shaw (R&S)
#27045 Zoltan Balogh (R&S)
#27035 Juan Corrales (R&S)

Story of JayPed CCIE 26850

2010-09-06T03:02:00.000-07:00

My journey began back in 2007 where I started to work for an ISP doing MPLS VPN based networks, prior to starting there I had done my CCNA and was almost done with my CCSP (was working mostly with firewalls before the ISP job ). While finishing my CCSP I started to look more towards the routing stuff, since I was working where I was.

So in august 2008 I tried the written test for the first time and passed it. From then I started labbing on a physical lab provided by the company I work for. At first I did INE vol. 2 labs. In January 2009 i attended the CCIE 1 bootcamp at Global Knowledge in the UK.

In august 2009 I had the opportunity to try the v4 beta written test - and since I still didn't feel ready for the lab I used this to renew my written test. After doing a lot of INE labs and still wasn't feeling sure on (mostly) my troubleshooting skills I joined the CIERS Essentials course. This I found very rewarding as I've mention earlier.For video's I've seen the CCIE360 CIERS VoD. Unfortunately these aren't covering all materials. I know INE has some great video and KnowledgeNet has some excellent e-learning courses on Multicast, BGP, MPLS and QoS. Jeremy of CBT is also worth mentioning.

For reading... uhm, I went through quite a lot (all from Cisco Press): CCNA and CCNP certification library's, Routing TCP/IP Vol. 1 + 2, Troubleshooting IP routing protocols, CCIE Routing & Switching Cert. Guide (v4), Cisco Express Forwarding, Building Resilient IP Networks, MPLS Configuration on Cisco IOS Software, Deploying IPv6 Networks, Cisco Access Control Security, Cisco Router Configuration Handbook, Cisco Switch configuration handbook and Cisco LAN Switching. Well, some of them more than others - my favorites being MPLS config and Deploying IPv6 those are great books, and ofcause the famous Routing TCP/IP. The lab exam I can't say much about obviously .

But what I can say is that the technologies aren't more difficult than what's done in so many practice labs, the hard part is that they're not asking as specificly as many test-vendors are. So in the end you start getting really paranoid thinking 'Am I understanding this correctly, or are they really asking for something different' Towards the end I was almost about to change a whole lot of things just because of this.

I had about 6h20m for my config part - had extra 20 minutes from the tshooting section. I spend approximately 5 hours configuring the lab and the last approx. 80 minutes verifying, asking further questions, etc.

Gonna start the preparation

2010-08-31T12:56:00.000-07:00

Gonna start the battle :)-

My second round.. :)-

The second battle..:)-

CCIE - The change

2010-06-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

Yes..Cisco to some extend won the battle against dumpers...Now there is a significant reduction in the pass rate...That means only qualified engineers are passing...This will increase the value of the certification....

Some sad news personally..Three of my friends who attempted the lab this month got failed..They were well prepared..Couple of them failed in the configuration section and the other in troubleshooting....As per them it is achievable...But you have to give your 100%.....

OEQ....

2010-05-31T13:01:00.000-07:00

hmmm...bye bye OEQ......

Good move from Cisco..Lot of talented engineers lost CCIE because of this OEQ...Yes it was a good move to introduce OEQ to stop dumpers achieving CCIE...But personally i would say it is "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer...

Again it is a good move from Cisco...I am sure , now the Troubleshooting part is little bit harder...I have been preparing very well for the OEQ using Ruhann's short notes , it is really good...I really wanted to appear for my second shot....But you know the work pressure stops my preparation....I am enjoying my work..but other side i am losing my precious time in CCIE preparation...Dont know what will happen...Lets wait and see... :)-

CCIE number crossed 26000

2010-04-25T02:01:00.000-07:00

CCIE number crossed 26000.Who is that lucky one who got the numer 26000..hehe...

Hmmm....So i will be getting a number starting 26.....If i would have got my number in my first attempt it would be 255** ...kidding....

I have to dedicate more time in my preparation.I have been out from sadikhov and other forums for a long time.As i have joined a new company , i am really busy with my projects and other activities. I have to refresh everything and should have to start my preparation soon.

OEQ Waiver....

2010-03-28T08:32:00.000-07:00

Heard that for 360 students there will not be any OEQ section..
In my view , if Cisco decided to take away OEQ, then they should implement for all students.
What is the point in giving a concession for 360 students ?..
This will cost around 12000$ for a normal student.It will be difficult to find this much money for this course for a student from my country.And also this would really affect the mindset of all ccie aspirants..

My thoughts...

Some more CCIE's....

2010-02-08T09:37:00.000-08:00

Again some good news.....

Some more CCIE's

Divin Mathew John - new ccie.. 25905

I know this person, when i worked as a moderator on sadikhov.He used to ask lot of technical doubts.. It is not a surprise for me to know that he got his number..This guy truly deserve it..
Congrats...

Hello all...Get ready...Prepare well..This can be achievable id you work hard...

Some more CCIE's

Zhen Wang

Sargis Minasyan

Daryl Smith

Brett Saling

Some Good News....!!!!

2010-01-27T13:18:00.000-08:00

Yes...Some good news...

Atlast some CCIE success stories...I am really happy to see some success stories.

This would surely motivate some of us.Really happy to see it.Kudos to them...

These were the legends who got their CCIE number (Routing and Switching V4)....

Flavio Provedel

Brian Luers

Steven Clarkin

Branimir Turk

Hadi Esper

As per them , if you work hard , it is possible to clear the lab. It is not at all an impossible thing.
Their success surely motivate all ccie aspirants.

I have started my preparation using Cisco360 labs.

I dont know when i would go for my second attempt.

I strongly recommend all those who were planning to take CCIE RS to go through this cisco 360 labs which were awesome .

Once again Congrats to Flavio Provedel , Brian Luers , Steven Clarkin,Branimir Turk,Hadi Esper

All the best to all other ccie aspirants.

CCIE V4 updates

2009-12-04T21:16:00.000-08:00

CCIE V4 experience...

http://ieoc.com/forums/t/9303.aspx

I debated for some time before I decided to do a write up on my 2nd attempt at 4.0. But I think a part of me just needs to get this out there so I can put it behind me and get ready for my next attempt.

I first took v4.0 on October 23rd, the first week it came out. I did a write up of my experience and posted it here for all to see. I went back to the original place of my destruction (San Jose) exactly 30 days after that attempt, on Nov 23. During those 30 days, I put extra effort into all those areas that were clearly weaknesses for me, namely, some of the new blueprint topics and even a couple of older topics under 7.00 Implementing Network Services and 10.00 Optimizing the Network. Needless to say, I went back with a huge lift in confidence and telling myself that I was finally going to pass. At the same time, I was nervous as hell because I just didn't know what to expect and I was actually fearful that I would get topics that I didn't focus any efforts on (Scott Morris has a saying about this ).

There was one other guy, Vince (I think?), who had just recently completed an INE bootcamp. It was his first attempt at 4.0 and I gave him a quick rundown of what to expect on the new format. I told him my strategy for this time around was to be strict about time management, which was a killer for me the first time. That, and a lot of coffee. When the proctor finally brought us back, I immediately put myself into the zone and started on the test.

OEQs are OEQs. You answer with as short and concise an answer as you can and reread the questions at least 3 times. This is the 2nd time where I re-read a question, realized something was wrong with my initial answer, and changed it (hopefully for the better). Needless to say, I spent about 15 minutes total on the section and once I closed it out, I completely put them out of my mind.

I opened the troubleshooting section and to my surprise, the interface didn't bother me, not even a little. I opened my tickets list, and immediately set about looking for my routers. Later during lunch, I did make a suggestion to the proctor (I wish I could remember his name, cuz he was really cool), that they could use some kind of coordinate mapping system to help find the affected routers and hosts faster. He liked the idea. Anyway, the first few tickets were pretty straightforward and then I ran into my first head scratcher. First off, the interface shown on the map didn't match up with the interface on the router that needed to be fixed. Secondly, I just couldn't figure out why I couldn't get it to work. It seemed like a simple issue. I had given myself 10 minutes to look for a solution and once that 10 minute time limit hit, I immediately put the ticket aside and proceeded with the other tickets. I ran into another head scratcher a few tickets later, did my 10 minute time limit, and went on without a solution. I was able to complete all but those 2 tickets and I had about 30 minutes left. I guess working on the other tickets was helpful in 2 ways: 1) it gave my mind a chance to take a break from the problem, and 2) I was able to get the remaining tickets. When I came back, I tried a couple things and ultimately got a working solution. I even had 10 minutes to spare which I used all of it to double-check all my solutions. I was feeling high and mighty at this point.

As with the OEQs, once I closed the section out, I put all that behind me and focused solely on the configuration tasks. This time, unlike the last time, I actually spent 30 minutes drawing up a map, creating a score tally, making notes, and reading the entire exam. Just as I hopped onto the first switch to start configuring, the proctor called for lunch and we went. As we walked to the cafeteria, I could tell by Vince's expression that he already knew he wasn't going to pass. I was still feeling good and my confidence was even higher, even after reading through the config tasks. There were a couple of items that I wasn't sure about, but I determined that if I nailed all the other tasks, I'd have enough points to pass.

For lunch, I had a burger, some tea, and a Red Bull. In hindsight, the Red Bull was a mistake. I only got it because I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't get sleepy or tired later in the afternoon. That part of my plan worked to perfection. However, since I only occasionally drink Red Bull, the side effect I got from it probably did more damage. Basically, I got really jittery and could not keep my hands still. I can say that normally I type around 50-55 words per minute, but after the Red Bull, I must have been typing around 75 words per minute with major mistakes. With all the backspacing I had to do that first hour after lunch, I probably was averaging only 40 words per minute

Anyhow, we got back to the lab, and I immediately started typing/backspacing/typing with the intention that I was going to have Layer 2 and Layer 3 done in 2.5 hours, which would leave me with 2.5 hours for all the other stuff. I put in my configs, double-checked everything twice, and then BAM , got nailed by my first big problem in Layer 3. I spent maybe 15 minutes trying to figure it out, and it was even on a topic I had spent extra time on (only I never quite set it up the way the Lab had me do it). I backed it out so that I at least had connectivity to everything, then finished up with the Layer 3 section. I was already at my 2.5 hour mark and I did a quick review of the tasks yet to complete. I was pretty confident I could knock them out so I decided to give myself 30 more minutes to try and fix that problem. 30 minutes later, I was still no where to getting it fixed, so I backed it out and proceeded with the remaining tasks .

Unfortunately, even though I had configured most of those remaining tasks at one point or another in my studies, I didn't know them like I did L2/L3 configuration and that's what got me. I ended up spending too much time referring to the command references and config guides, and I even caught myself reading an overview section on a particular feature which I really should have known already. Those remaining 2 hours flew by, but I had at least touched all the tasks I said I was going to touch. I only left 2 tasks completely untouched because I knew I was going to have to look those configs up in the config guides and I was only going to attempt them if I had time. I didn't. But I pretty much knew where everything else was supposed to be, went right to the spot in the documentation, got the config put in, and went on to the next task.

When the proctor called time, I was putting in the last few lines for a task, but by then my confidence about passing the lab had slipped considerably. In my heart, I was 100% confident that I had done what I was supposed to do on only a few tasks. I knew I had achieved most of the task requirements on others, but I wasn't 100% sure. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, a given config task, i.e. EIGRP, may tell you to set it up based on what you see on the map, then apply some protocol specific config, then redistribute it, and finally apply some kind of filter or ACL or what not. In most cases, I was confident I got 3 of the 4 subtasks, but I was never sure if I got that last one. As I tallied up my final score, I realized that I was only really confident about 20% of my answers, unsure on 60% and down right certain I missed those 20% I couldn't fix or didn't attempt.

In any case, I walked out of there light hearted knowing that I solved all the troubleshooting tickets and was looking forward to my score to see how many of my unsures on the config section were actually correct. So, let's fast forward to when I got my test results.

I was surprised to see the email saying my results were in only 4 hours after I had left the lab. I knew I hadn't passed, and I wasn't nervous or apprehensive or anything as I logged in to view my score. I just wanted to know where I needed to do more work. In fact, I had already started a gameplan on what areas to focus studies on for my next attempt. Then I saw the scores and my emotions literally went like this: cool I passed OEQ, WTF!? I failed troubleshooting?!?, I'm sick to my stomach right now!, there's a rain on my parade, WTF!!!, I'm speechless, This is no good, I so ashamed right now, I don't drink, but I could use one now, .

I had failed again, and my so called confidence was all a bunch of nothing. I had failed way worse than before and my score report, due to all the 0% (yes, that' zero percent) was of no use to me. At least my previous attempt showed me that I could at least work on a few areas which is what I did. And as if I wasn't feeling terrible already, I physically got sick, not quite the flu, but like it. I closed my computer, quietly put my study notes away, packed my bag for the next morning's flight, and put Cisco, the test, and 9 months of lab work, out of my mind. Officially, at that moment in time, I had decided that my journey was done and I wasn't going to think about any future attempts...

...

15 minutes later I was online trying to remember all the different tasks that I had problems with and looking up solutions. Over the next 3 hours, I hit all my old workbooks, searched through Cisco's documentation, Google'd stuff, so forth and so on. I finally decided that if I was ever going to pass this test, I'd need to go back to basics, which I'll admit I had taken for granted the past several months. I had spent so much time learning about MPLS (and I still didn't know enough), that I figured it was time to take next month's lab attempt money and invest in some new workbooks. Fortunately for me, INE later ran a cool weekend special for workbooks I didn't have and also a killer deal on lab rental. I took my December money and applied it to that and my intent is to go back to the beginning, but with a fresh, somewhat dated yet new to me look, at the basics. Because that's where I screwed up. I'm not quite sure where I went wrong, or how I could even fix it, but I think a lot of it had to do with me not interpreting what was being asked of me. In hindsight, I really should have annoyed the hell out of the proctor with question after question, but in my mind I thought I knew what I was doing.

So, my time management game plan actually worked out well enough because I threw in a config for everything I expected to. However, I really need to go back to Layer2/3 basics but using a different perspective which I hope to get from my recent workbook purchase. I'm actually more pumped than ever right now to go back and retake the lab, but I'm going to force myself to take 2-3 months of back-to-basics training and really make sure that my IPv6, multicast, MPLS, security, QOS, etc. is as good as my L2/L3. When I retake, my goal is to only go to the documentation site for maybe 10-15% of the tasks. And even then, it should be a quick lookup to confirm that I put the config in correctly. In truth, my goal is to be an expert. Just like Cisco expects me to be.

Until next time...

CCIE R and S New version first impression

2009-11-02T22:15:00.000-08:00

No success stories....

There were mixed reactions from all side regarding the new version change...

From now there is no question papers... Diagrams everything will be computer based....
Trouble shooting - Hard to solve
Lab - Not possible to complete within 5.5 hours..

Changes are good , but what will cisco acheive with all these changes....Cisco has made the exam complex..Cisco closed the doors infront of those guys who have 5-6 years of exp.

As per cisco these moves were against dumps ...
When they introduced OEQ they were telling the same thing... It affected lot of experienced persons... Consider the case of Darby Weaver..He have lot of experience.. He took his lab 6th time..Now he failed because of OEQ .. No one have doubts over his technical knowledge...

Now regarding the recent changes no one will try to experience the exam heat... In turn if there were no ccie's what will be the future of ccie certification..

My suggestion is to make the theory exam little more difficult..create a pool of 2000 questions and ask questions from those..Now i know lot of ccie written passed guys who studied dumps and passed the written...So if it is against the dumpers ,first implement it in theory exam...
If not there will be business strategy behind that which is not at good in educational point..

I am confused, depressed..I spend over 4 years for my ccie dream..I failed in the first attempt... Yes , i accept that.. Yes i am depressed .. I want to get out from that shell.. I want to fight again.. But how will I... All my hardwork everything will be wasted now...

I am 26 now.I started the fight when i am 22...I spend my life time for cisco studies... completed CCNP,CCSP,CCDP and attempted CCIE Lab..
I lost the job because of my ccie lab dream..

Now i failed in front of everyone....Some colleagues have fun regarding my ccie lab attempt.. I want to show my capabilities in front of everyone by passing the exam.I know the technologies..
But making exam untouchable for guys like me who have 5 years of exp. cisco is doing little bit cruelty to us..In some discussion forums some people trying to say that the ccie exam will be only for guys who have more than 10 years of experience...

Now having CCNP,CCSP,CCDP and lot of other certs and real industry experience now i am going to sit in my home... In my country India there were lot of political plays behind a recruitment ..I know this reality from my friends...I am not writing anything regarding that..

If the things continue like this i will be the first martyr to the certification streams who spend his good part in life time for certifications and gaining knowledge and industrial experience.

I am not DEMOTIVATING any one...This blog is created to MOTIVATE everyone towards ccie.
But its m personal experience...

CCIE lot of seats available for V4

2009-09-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

Lot of seats are available after Oct.18

Looks like no one have the courage to take it.

Story of CCIEN #21500

2009-08-15T21:02:00.000-07:00

Congratulations........

His words....

What a roller-coaster ride the last few months have been. At the moment Im just as relieved as glad to have the digits. I’ll be lying if I say I dont want to go again, but for now I’ll be happy to enjoy some free time. Im looking forward to some “bored” moments.

Thank You’s
First of all I have to say thanks for some devine intervention. After the first attempt thinking I passed but failed I realised that I need a bit of help. I needed things to go right, I needed some favors and that is how things turned out on the second run. From day 1 everything went according to plan. Thanks Dad.

Thanks to the best supporter in the world, my best lady for all her patience and understanding. I owe her big time, more than buying something shiny can make up for.

It would also have been very difficult if it was not for my current job/managers. I think it definitely counted in my favor that my first line manager and his manager were both ccie candidates who went big in management. I think they understood what the CCIE lab requires. Every leave application was approved without any questions, a tremendous help, I genuinely appreciate this. Also for the use of company equipment, some devices that were supposed to go into production. I definitely owe my colleagues a beer for making life at work harder for them. After passing the written one manager said that the company would support me as much as possible and I can say they went beyond my expectation.

Preparation
The day I got back home from the first attempt, I looked for seats and was lucky to pickup the Dubai date. In fact I was still in brazil when I start looking for dates. I was quite fortunate to get the dubai date as I booked it within a few hours of it being dropped. I knew that if I could just maintain my level of preparedness for the second attempt and just focus a bit better I could make it. I came up with a plan to just review what I have already done, so everyday after work I reviewed vol2 labs 1-20. I would read the question, think the solution/configuration through, check the solution guide, whether I had the same idea, look whether I missed anything important then move to the next question. It took on average 3 to 4 hours per lab. If I wasnt completely sure about my solution, I would setup a simple scenario and do some testing. This worked well up until a few days before the attempt. I started to think that I need to practise some labs, as I havent done labs for almost a month. I then did the IPexpert sample mock lab, which I am very glad I did. I missed a line in an ACL, or in another question I didnt match the same routes the question asked for. I also lost two questions due to changes I made at the end or reloading the devices. Im glad I made these mistakes, because I made a decision at the end of the cisco lab to look for this type of errors. Again, Im very glad I made those mistakes in the mock lab. This was the only full lab I did before the second attempt. I also worked through the “Lab debrief” of the CCIE RS practical labs shortcut book. I would highly highly recommend working this book. Even if you dont read everything, at least work through the Lab debrief. If you look carefully, there are some differences in the way common tasks are done in this book. I would suggest using this book’s (Cisco) method. After arriving at the hotel I had two days to recover from the traveling, luckily only a 9 hour trip this time, so I started doing some IE vol3 labs. Although I didnt have that feeling you have after getting off a trampoline, which I had in Brazil, I was very tired the day of arriving and the next day. This was mainly due to the flight being during the night and not getting proper sleep on the plane. In this two days I did lab 7 to 10. It was good to get some lab practise, which I feel helped. The core lab is a good concept, but I would not recommend fussing to make your redistribution work as in the SG. One main reason is that the core labs do not have to be graded, so corners are cut. In the cisco lab, there will be very clearly stated how the redistribution should be and should not be done. The redistribution makes sense, as it also has to be graded. After the two core labs a day, I went through Michael Zuo’s notes. Good reviewing material.

Venue
Dubai is hot, very hot, as in desert hot. They say the weather is better in the winter, but I dont know, I think it will still be hot. Two things I will always remember from my trip to dubai: The crane forest and the heat. I had planned to take photo’s of the area to make the scenery a bit more familiar for the next person but got caught up in the moment and totally forgot about this. The taxi drivers all know where the “Dubai Media Center (DMC)”, “Dubai Internet City (DIC)” and “Knowledge Village” are. All three are located close to each other. Cisco Systems are located in building 10, DIC, the driver might confuse DMC with DIC, just something to note. The taxi drivers are mostly from either pakistan or india and work 12 to 14 hours a day with no days off, so to tip is not a bad idea. The 15-20 minute ride from the Ibish World Trade Center hotel to cisco cost about 45 dirhams which is about $10 usd. The hotel is located close to the highway. Apparently you get traffic on the way into the city, but Cisco is located on the way out of the city if I understood correctly. Once you get to the cisco building, if you look like you are lost the building reception would ask you “Cisco exam?” and point you to the 12th floor, after which you get into the elevator and then straight back out because it only goes to floor 4. They will confirm that it is indeed level “twelve” while giving a three finger signal, you get it. Once you walk out on the third floor there is a sign on the right that says “CCIE lab” and “use next door” which points to the kitchen/canteen area. If you are lucky someone will be there already and open for you. Else I guess the next step would be to go to the 4th floor where the Cisco reception is. Once the proctor arrives you go to the lab, no tour or the usual run down, just “Bags there, start time, end time, ok…” Thats the signal to start. He did mention that if any hardware errors are found to let him know as soon as possible. You only get the time back it takes the proctor to fix the problem and not the time it takes for you to determine that it is a hardware problem. I would suggest having a strategy for this as well. If it takes you 15 minutes to determine it is a hardware fault. You go to the proctor to let him know. You go back to your desk and continue with another task, read the lab again, whatever. 15 minutes later he comes back to let you know its fix. At the end you get 15 minutes extra. Use it to your advantage. Lunch was 5 hours into the lab. I would recommend taking some snacks with if you writing at Dubai (and Sau Paulo) as the lunch is not much. At lunch the proctor cleared some common misconceptions regarding the lab and grading. Lunch was a bit short, only 20 minutes and the lab ended 10minutes earlier. Personally I would have preferred a 30 minute break and finish on time.

Proctor comparison
Proctors do vary. Yusuf the proctor at Dubai is tight, water tight. You either get a “Yes/No” or “What you are asking me is a syntax related question, I can not answer you a syntax related question”. He reminds me of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, for some reason. My favourite response to a question on the day was “Am I the proctor?”. It wasnt funny at the time, but when I think back about it, he has a very dry but cool sense of humor.

Lab comparison
The look and feel of the two labs were totally different. Im convinced they are designed by two different people. One also spell better than the other not that Im a literature giant, quite the opposite, but it was something different between the two. The diagrams also looked night/day apart. The wording was also slightly different, with a few questions adding some additional info through words e.g “users have been…, or the network manager wants to…”. This lab had one or two questions that referred to a feature within a technology that I havent configured before, but gave enough clues in the question to find it on the doc cd. Again the questions were not difficult to configure. The first set of questions were particularly ambiguous. A big difference from the first lab. The proctor could not really help here, so I went with a guess that the questions follow on each other and if they didnt give specifics, the question is probably related to the previous question. This was a guess, I could be totally wrong, but couldnt make sense of it in any other way. This was a big time waster for something I think did not test anything on the blueprint. Maybe I missed a keyword. Overall on a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate the lab a 7, two or three sections a 5/6, one section a 8, but only due to the cryptic wording.

Random thought: Why dont they put less emphasis on wording and more on configuration? I mean the best question I have seen to date was in the CCIEpractical studies shortcuts book. The question says exactly what needs to be done. I thought hard and long about it but couldnt figure it out.

This time round I spent more time reading the lab the first time. I also took care in getting my crt windows just right. Fortunately the resolution was higher than in Brazil, so I could get 4 windows aligned, the same way I did in preparation. I was prepared to change the font size from 10 to 8, but did not need to do this as the resolution was good. The workstation was sufficient. The keyboard was exactly the same rubbish they have at brazil, some logitech keyboard that does not have a dedicated “Insert” button. This was highly frustrating the first time to have to put num lock on and off when copy/pasting. SecureCRT probably has some function somewhere to change the copy/paste keys, but I havent figured that out. I practised the two days at the hotel on the laptop, in other words without a keypad, so in the lab I left the num lock off so that I could use the “0″ as the “Insert” button and used the normal numerical buttons for ip addresses/acl’s etc. This worked way better.

The Wait
After the lab if you have to take a taxi back to the hotel, the best would be to go back to the cisco reception. They have the cab company on speed dial and all the details on a pamphlet what you might need to give the operator. Most people have difficulty sleeping the night before the lab, I didnt have this problem, but for me waiting for the results was even worse. I kept thinking “what if”, what if I missed something. What if I didnt check my verification properly. What if something I did broke something else. Very tense moments. I actually labbed a scenario up and made some changes to see if what I did could possibly have broken another. Sigh of relief, it still works. Just after 3am I jumped up at the sound of what I think was a mail coming in, the results email was there. I think it helps to be half asleep or half awake when checking the mail, cause you dont really think what you are doing. I was dreading that moment scrolling down to that section where the PASS/FAIL is written, but as the window opened my eye caught two “PASSES” one for the written and another, it took about 300 milliseconds to realize I passed. What a relief. Open the score report, which only shows the number. Am I seeing right? 21500? cant be, the night before I was looking at recent numbers on groupstudy and worked out that 21500 will be issued somewhere between the day before my lab and the day after. Thats the one that was available that I wanted.

Story of CCIE #23707

2009-08-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

Congratulations......

His words...........

Obviously I cannot go into many details here, but I do want to share my story in hopes that others will benefit in some way. It is long, but will probably be my last for awhile :-)

First of all, CCIE has to be something you really want. There are many reasons to go for it: better job, more money, etc. That is fine, but underneath it all, you must have the desire to be a CCIE. I made many career choices and mistakes before getting somewhat settled in this industry, so don't ever think this task is too big for you. The industry needs people that have the desire.

I first heard of the CCIE exam about 6 years ago when I started out towards a networking degree. It was never in my mind that I would go for it. It was only for the Elite. My degree consisted of a couple Cisco classes, and that was enough for me at the time. Shortly after the degree, I was doing technical support for Nortel Networks and really starting to dig the L2 and L3 technologies. I mean I LOVED IT! THIS WAS MY BAG! Nortel did not have much rep (or a declining one at least) in the industry and I decided to focus on Cisco networking. I got my CCNA near the end of my tenure there.

The desire to be CCIE started after I was CCNA, when I started going for CCNP. I peaked ahead at the CCIE blueprint and thought to myself, "this is stuff that I can handle, and stuff that I want to learn." I knew CCNP was not required, but I took that path because I knew it would be good preperation towards that goal. It took me one year to get my CCNP and the day I passed my last exam I was already making notes on the blueprint and scouring the Internet for lab tips :-)

I started my blog a few months later because I really had no focus as to what I was doing. I didn't have any workbooks or anything, I just had the written guide, dynamips and my 3550/3560 switches. I played around with my own labs and blogged ideas. Mike Down at IPexpert found my blog and gave me good deal for some rack time and for the Blended Learning Solution. This was the turning moment as now I felt I had a real path to follow. I passed the written shortly after (about 6 months in) and then joined groupstudy and the onlinestudylist.

Around this time, so many people were passing, I felt like time was slipping away! I decided the best thing to do was ignore all the stories and rumors and focus on my own path.

I did all the volume 1, 2 and 3 labs in order. Took me about 6 months doing a couple every weekend, sometimes 3 or 4. Actually I jumped ahead to Volume 3 at times because they were graded and I wanted to see how I was doing along the way. Any issues or new technologies I ran into, I would break down to small scenarios and lab them and blog about them.

On my way to work I would listen to the audio bootcamp. I probably listened to each track twice. After Volume 3 I bought an IE mock lab and did both Assessor labs. If not anything else, these gave me confidence in my last month of preperation. I did well on all of them and the things I missed were mainly because I did not follow the questions properly. I spent my final week watching the VODs with Scott Morris. I watched ALL the videos in the final weekend, probably about 25 hours or more :-)

The day of a lab I had huge headache. I popped some excedrin and some tylenol and refused any caffeine for fear of worsening it. I got to the lab a little early and there ended up being about 10 people there, 4 for R&S. My mind was a wreck, I felt like crap. The one thing that kept me going was my belief in my preperation. I knew what I had to do. If it's one thing you will learn about taking the CCIE lab exam, it is to trust your preperation.

The procotor explained the deal with the open ended questions (to curb cheating) and to be honest, they were very simple. No tricks. He said one or two lines should be enough but you have 30 minutes and no documentation. I finished them in a few minutes with the only bottleneck being my slow typing skills.

I started reading the lab. It was almost 1 hour before I logged into a router. I kept a level head throughout. I heard stories of people saying they were so confident when they left, but the still failed. I understood them now but I did not want to be that way. I could see how this lab could defeat me. After 5 hours I was done, but I stayed until the end verifying everything 1, 2 or 3 times. Pinging everything, saving all the time.

One hour I left, I finally broke for a Mountain Dew! Boy did I need that. I was finding minor issues still 30 minutes left in the exam, I fixed a few but I really had to talk myself into relying on my configurations and instincts. I could see several ways of doing things and I had to pick one. I really think I saved at least 10 points in the last couple hours of verification. Do not leave early!

I watched a movie after the lab with my Dad who was in town that weekend. I got home at 10 or so and checked my email. The score report was ready. I was SHAKING. I had to re-type my ID and crap a few times to get it right. First thing I saw was "submit critique" or something like that. Then I saw "Congratulations..." or something. I didn't believe it. Then I saw "PASS"...I still didn't believe it. Then I saw #23707. It was official.

What a relief. It was wonderful journey and I learned so much. I met a lot of great people that I never expected to meet. I look through my blog archives and see how dumb I was! Just another noob, a little wannabe Cisco networker, a tiny little soul on the path to who knows where, a CCIE to be :-)

Story of 25143

2009-08-15T02:10:00.000-07:00

Congratulations

Read his full story..

Oh where to begin…Lets see Ill start by when I passed my CCIE written back in November 2008. I took December off for obvious reasons and told myself on New Years that I wanted to CCIE by the middle of 2009.

Ok, That’s nice but where do I start? Well I initially looked at IPexert and work paid for the blended learning solution. I watched Scott Morris and listened to his audios for a good 2 weeks. Than I started the mini –labs really without a plan but to dive into to see where I was at..and did I need some work J but I quickly found that *** didn’t really have a guided approach with LAB1. So I went to Internetwork-expert and boy did I love the beta 5.0 vol. I signed up for the CCIE 2.0 program and was on my way (Still in Jan). At this time I had built my own rack at the house which helped a lot..Dyanamips was just a lot of work because I had to change the initial config every time (Im just to lazy).

For the next 3 months I really focused just on the LAB1ver5 labs…I watched every COD and open lecture series by far was the best. I really feel that Brian drives the technology into you….He just goes so fast sometimes that I have to re-wind the darn thing. When he would do each lab I would follow him on my own rack….this helped out a lot since I need to be in there doing/learning at the same time. So I have this plan layed out with each technology that I want to master week by week and than review every other week those technologies. Sometime I would skip around and sometimes not…For the last 4 months I hit the labs hard and than went back to learning the technology when I didn’t understand it. You HAVE to do this or you will not learn what it is your typing J enough of the story....

JOURNEY

I went to go take the lab in RTP on JULY 20^th 2009 . I woke up the day of the test and as you all know posted a blog, and than did some typing just so my hands wont be numb before the test. Went downstairs and waited for the bus, which took us to the location of the Lab. They took us into the lobby where we BS’d around with all the other guys and Howard telling us they hit their quota!! J Everyone had different reactions to that comment. I could care less because I was already focused on the LAB that nothing really bothered me. I was not nervous at all since I kept telling myself that you understand each technology and if a question throws me off than just move on to another…don’t think twice. We went into the lab area put our stuff away and than Howard talked for 5 min and said go. I sat at the computer and looked at my first question…and than did all four. I reviewed them reading every line 10 times just to make sure there was nothing fishy. I took about 15 min on these sections. Than moved to my lab.

LAB

When I was going through the lab I just kept hammering things out….I couldn’t believe how fast I was moving. I re-drew my diagram but not that great so used the ones they gave me since they would do. I skipped a couple questions but was done with Bridging/switching and IGP in 2 hours. I verified this section, than reloaded my lab. When it came back up I ran my TCL script and verified my routes. I did ask Howard about 2 questions during this time just to make sure they weren’t looking for something. You have to remember if the LAB doesn’t specify you don’t need to do it (or you don’t have to have full reach ability). You cannot think to deep into the questions they are pretty straightforward. So the next two hours I finished the rest of my lab jotting down which question I know I needed to go back and look at (only a couple)…I reloaded my rack and he called lunch. During lunch I ran out into the rain to smoke and came back all soaked with Howard laughing at me J I kind of smiled to because I was finished with my lab and everyone else was crapping their pants. Lunch sucked and everyone was thinking on edge…So I get back to my lab and do about 2 hours of verification and reloaded my rack about 4 more times. You need to have this verification time because I would have failed the whole multicast section because I skipped ONE word that made a difference of how to implement it. So I left about 2 hours early and called my sister who came with me and we went out to party!!! I did call Larry Hadrava (you should know him by know) who I was working with and told him I KNOW I passed this lab…so it was just a matter of waiting.

RESULTS

That’s when I got the results. FAILED…I was so shocked I couldn’t believe it. Looked a the lab report and it said 0% in CK…I called BS..The next day I posted to Cisco and requested a re-read. (I will post what I said at the bottom). That is when I was denied a re-read for no reason. I replied back and was denied again L….Pissed at this point because of no explanation I replied back and stated “I paid to much for this lab and the equipment to get denied without explanation” something like that. 2 Weeks later and I finally get a response back saying that they will review my questions. Not 2 hours later I was CCIE…

Story of Dmitriy Litvinko

2009-08-15T02:00:00.000-07:00

Congratulations Dmitriy Litvinko

His story ....

Started to prepare for the lab in November 2008 but after 2-3 month of long hours I had to stop because I was burned out ... took month off and started back in February. Purchased the INE Moc Lab workshop (lead by Anthony Sequeira) in June. It’s a great class for final preparation before the lab. Unfortunately I didn’t get to meet in person with the other instructors (only know them by their voice and now thanks to facebook can add faces to the voices) but you guys are simply the best. When I came back from the Moc Lab workshop I scheduled my lab.

A long time ago I started using NMC as my training material and their awesome ShowIT engine but their labs are way too off-course (redistribution is a killer). Then last year in November I learned about InternetworkExpert.com and purchased their product. This is when I said to myself .. after investing so much money, you CAN'T stop. I have been motivating myself through out my long journey to help me stay on track. My son Ryan was born on August 20th 2008 and I had to dedicate my self to pass the test before his 1st birthday (actually if I wouldn’t, my wife would kill me .... another motivation . It was hard with a little one (crying and feeding often) to get normal sleep but a BIG thanks to my wife and whole family who gave me the opportunity to study and concentrate on what I need to do.

So, no personal life since November ... Sorry a bit off topic ... Going back to Preparation ...

I don’t know how many books I read (none of them cover to cover) but I do have a big library at home of almost all CISCO books that could help me with preparation. I am not going to list them all (but if anyone is interested i can post that) but i found that 1 book which i dont see a lot of people mention (CCIE Practical Studies, Volume II (CCIE Self-Study) by Karl Solie and Leah Lynch (Hardcover - Nov 17, 2003)) to be great material (with configuration examples and theory in one). I watched 10 day CoD and did all WB-I (few times). WB-II i did almost all labs (may be 17 of them) and 8 labs from WB-III. I took the Moc Labs 1-6 and all scores were ranging from 62-70. Not a great score but it showed me where i make the most mistakes and to work on those areas.

Week before the lab i did no configurations. I decided to relax my brain and just review my notes, browse configuration guide and command reference. During my preparation i didn’t goggle any topic until i searched the whole DocCD for answers so i was pretty comfortable with DocCD and finding stuff there. 3 days before the lab i did 1 WB-III lab just to do some typing (finished 4 hour lab in about 1.5 hours).

2 days before the lab i got sick and that wasn’t a good way to start. I am still stick but it is over.

I stayed at Wingate and i don’t know what to say but i think i was not lucky .... wireless was not working, and internet in the room was not. Good thing i brought my notes with me and some stuff on PC.

Lab

Open Ended Questions .... well they are nothing to worry about if you ware prepared for the lab. Read them carefully but don’t overthink .... I had to read each question at least 2 times to make sure i understood it. Level of questions .... Well i can say they were CCNP level difficulty.

Lab ... Well difficulty comparing to INE i would say about 7-8. Diagrams are not the best but can work with them. I drew my own for layer 2, mcast and BGP. IGP i used their diagram which i found to be very very poor. Questions are less vague than INE's but they do throw a monkey wrench once in a while ... I had to read questions multiple times to make sure i understood the requirements. They are pretty straight forward with telling you what they want. Pick the easiest solutions to implement. VERY IMPORTANT .... read the lab Do's and Don't as i had some that i had to go to proctor to clarify. Proctors answer to all my question ... Umm .... it's what Anthony tried to do during Moc Lab workshop (to be evil proctor), is look at you, smile and tell you ... Read the question . everything you need is in the question ... 5 times, the same answer and ... Hmm ... he IS RIGHT :-) what i am looking for is in the question. You are TOLD what to do and if you are NOT told then is there still a question?

Anthony Sequeira has Open Lecture Series about Skipped Tracket List which is GOLD in my opinion. I had been using this method on my own since i started studying in february and this helps me to see my overall progress. Do not spend more than 5 minutes on the Non-Core task, simply move-on. I was finished with IGP and BGP by lunch. Then came back and finished the rest with 2 hours to spare. Spent 1 hour and 15 minutes to verify everything and save configuration and 45 before the end i left.

This was a long and hard journey .... i couldnt have done it without the help of my family (my wife Susan especially) for helping me to dedicate 9 month of my life to this. INE team ... you are simply THE BEST ... Keep up a good work

Oh ... always wanted to tell Scott Morris that one of the other motivations i had was his quote which i love ... "Knowledge is power, power corrupts, study hard and be evil" ... absolutely brilliant.

Story of Zakir

2009-08-15T01:55:00.000-07:00

Congratualtions Zakir

His Story.

With the blessing of the almighty Allah, I managed to pass the CCIE exam in my first attempt at Sydney, Australia! What a relief. It was a wonderful journey of 9 months of dedicated studying, spending large portion of the time on the Cisco devices, spending thousands of dollar on study materials and lab equipments, many hours of frustration, only 4/5 hours of daily sleep, travelling 16+ hours to the lab location, suffering from the Jet Lag, attending the 8 hours of lab exam and finally a 5 digit number beside my name.

So how it started? I decided to go for the CCIE when I started to work for an ISP here in Canada. But that time I was only CCNA. So I took CCNP, CCIP certifications to build up a good foundation for the CCIE R&S exam. As a part of my CCIE preparation, I went through several books (Doyle, Odom etc.), workbooks (IE), mock labs, Cisco documentation, various forums like groupstudy others. I spent thousands of hours on equipments. I was lucky enough to have my own rack of equipments.

Finally, when I planned to book my lab exam, I was unable to find any seat in USA (as I live in Canada). This is because Cisco recently announced to start the new format of CCIE R&S lab exam from October, 2009. So finding no other ways, I booked my lab in Sydney, Australia. I made a 16+ hours journey to Australia and reached there just before the exam day.

On lab day, I was in the Cisco building about 1 hour before the exam time. There were 4 other candidates... we all were waiting for the proctor to show up. The proctor was late, so our exam started at 9:15. The first 30 minutes was for the OEQ (Open Ended Questions). The OEQ questions were really really easy, very basic questions. No need to give any extra afford for those. Accoring to the proctor, those are marked manually by the proctor, and all they look for is the specific answer, they won't care about any spelling mistake or grammer. I was able to finish the OEQ in 20 minutes and started my lab immediately. I used the first 45 minutes reading the entire lab, making task tracking sheet, adding aliases/some common commands which I often use. After reading the lab it looked like a piece of cake to me comparing to the IE labs. I was able to reach "the golden moment" (full connectivity) before lunch. I was also able to do some non-core tasks before lunch. After lunch it went pretty smooth. I only visited the Cisco documentation site only once for a single task during the lab. When I finished my lab, I still had 2 hours left in my hand. So I fully utilized it by verifing every single task twice. In the whole exam I rebooted my rack twice - 1st time just before lunch and 2nd time at the end of the day.

After the exam I realized I have a good chance to pass it. And it didn't take very long. I got my result within 2 hours of finishing the exam. I was completely speechless to see my certified status along with the 5 digit number.

To tell you the truth, I was completely restless for the last 1.5 years. I used my vacation days either for studing or for the exams. So it's time for me to relax for a bit until I start my 2nd track.

So what's next? I am planning to attend the CCIE Service provider lab this December (after 4 months) as I feel like i am already 70% prepared for it. I also want to start playing with the "Security" track.

Finally, I would like to thank my family, my friends, my colleagues and everyone who helped me directly or indirectly along my first CCIE journey.

The key thing is... if you want something really bad you will get it… Motivaton and patience are the key factors… Always remember: "Winners never Quit & Quitters never win!!"

Story of TunerX

2009-07-16T16:20:00.000-07:00

Congrats TunerX

Equipment used -
2x 3560-24TS
2x 3550
Dynamips to emulate R1-R6 and BB1-BB3 (emulated 2691 with WIC-2T)

Material used -
INE dynamips labs
INE V4.1 workbooks 1-3
INE V5.0 wokbooks 1-2
Cisco DocDVD
CiscoPress quick reference guide
CiscoPress official written certification guide 3rd ed
INE Mock labs 2-7
INE COD
IPexpert COD
CBT nuggets

Time involved -
Jan 20 - Jun 18 (6-14 hours per day)

I started January 20th by watch the INE COD and finished those up in about 1 week. Then I switched to watching CBT nuggets. Once I finished the CBT nuggets I did the nuggets practice lab. About the beginning of February I started the INE dynamips practice labs, and finished those in about 2 weeks.

After finishing the dynamips labs I stated INE V4.1 workbook one. I finished those in about a week.

I spent the next 3 weeks doing the INE V4.1 workbook 2 practice labs. Once I finished those I did the V5.0 workbook 1 technology labs. I spent about 4 days doing those then did all of the V5.0 workbook 2 practice labs over the next 5 days.

I then watched the IPExpert COD and went back to the INE V4.1 workbook two labs. I spent the entire time trying different methods to complete the same tasks. This really helped with finding many of the Cisco one liners and doing complex redistribution.

I then went over V5.0 workbook 1 another time.

Then I completed INE mock labs 2 and 3. The results weren't as expected but I knew exactly where my mistakes were.

After finishing workbook 1 I went back to V4.1 workbook 2 and completed labs 1-14. My goal again was to find different methods for completing the same tasks. I packed up my lab on June 18th to send home. I didn't do anymore reading. I figured that if I know it I know it. My goal during my last month of preparation was to be able to do any tasks without having to use the cisco documentation.

Between June 27-30th I completed INE mock labs 4, 5, 6, 7. I scored over the recommended 60 percent on 2 of them. Scored in the 50s on 1 and actually passed one. Again, I spent no time reading. Between July 1 and 8 absolutely no studying went on.

-Lab Day
I woke up at 5:30 ate some breakfast. Yogurt, banana, eggs, and one sausage. Followed with some OJ and a black coffee. I took the shuttle to the Cisco building at about 6:45 and waited outside for about 15-20 minutes. The cisco building is literally 5 minutes away from the comfort suites. I also brought a box of "commits" cherry nicotine lozenges (I am a smoker). Those really helped. I guess I can finish the box and try to quit now.

I finished the OEQ in about 2-4 minutes. Those things really are CCNA level. If you read the books and practice the tech then you shouldn't have a problem with them. I was worried about one of the questions because I thought about it later and thought that I should have added a little info to help clarify.

We started the lab at 7:35. By lunch time I only had one task left. I didn't eat, I just drank some water. After lunch I verified connectivity with a TCL script and finished the last task. After that I re-did the whole lab from start to finish, with verification using the cisco documentation... I did find some mistakes and some areas where I could shorten my configurations; I also used the Doc Site to verify everything. I finished at about 2:00PM. The DocSite probably put me over the top with needed points. There was only one task that I read and felt like a moron for not knowing what to do. It was a minor task so I saved that one until after lunch.

After I finished I felt like I failed. I called my wife to come pick me up and waited by the road until she came. We took the kids to see Ice Age 3 and then went to eat at Chilis. I was worried the whole time and started planning in case I failed. I was going to do the 360 program from start to finish. At about midnight there still wasn't any word in my email. I fell asleep and woke up at 6AM. When I checked my email I saw that my report was available. After logging in I was happy to see my new number and some congradulatory info from Cisco.

-Written
Sometime during the first week of April I started studying for the written again. I spent 1 week and only used the Cisco Press official study guide and DocDVD. I scored a pretty high.

- Final thoughts
The lab is much easier than the INE practice labs with a difficulty of 7-10. This is only if you can complete the labs without having to research anything. The only caveat here is that I have been working with Cisco for the last 14 years. I have studied and passed multiple tests and have gotten certs on my way. In 2004 I started studying for the CCIE reading all of the recommended books and doing practice labs. One of my coworkers failed so I put it off. In 2006 I started studying again this time using IPexpert and NMC DoIt labs. Again a coworker failed so I put it off once again. This time I figured that I would actually start and finish in 2009.

I am well versed in Cisco tech since I have a long history of working with the equipment. I don't know if only having a couple months or even a couple years of experience and using my study plan will help anyone but me.

Dates available only in Japan

2009-07-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

Dates available only in Tokyo.But after august almost all dates were filled

CCIE lab booking only few more days

2009-07-04T13:33:00.000-07:00

Only few more days to go ..i think by july 18 almost all dates will be over

Story of Reza Toghraee - CCIE 22518 RS

2009-05-25T06:44:00.000-07:00

Congratulations.

Read the full story.

Hello

Ok now it’s my turn to write the story. It’s a long story; but I’ll write my tips in the beginning to help easily finding the tricks.
I did my lab on last Thursday, in Dubai.

Tips:
1) if you are going to do mock-lab, print the diagrams in BLACK and WHITE.
2) never get sad, give-up, mad about your mock-lab result. Mock-lab is designed to help you understand the tips.
3) in the lab day, if others told you that its their 2nd, 3rd, 4th attempt and they laugh on you (hey baby 1st), don’t get panic.
4) it’s not important if you are not CCNA, if somebody told you that you are idiot with 0 knowledge, don’t get angry, don’t get sad. Of course some people are delivered from their mother’s stomach while holding a CCNA.
5) ask your all families to pray for you and ask the GOD “God, please give him the questions which he already knows the answer”
6) ask the proctor about how to access the cisco DOC cd.
7) Read the : lab solution guides, cisco DOCs (3560, Security, Routing, QOS, Multicast)
8) IE Vol_1 Ver 5 is a GEM
9) its not important if you are sick, and you have a bad cold and flu. You can do it!

LAB DAY:

I was alone when I reach there, then 2 other people join me. It was their 4th and 3rd attempt. And when I told them its my 1st time, they laugh on me. (heh, baby, long way..) I after starting I shocked!. One of the MOST important things which helped me REALLY!!! Was the Brian Dennis LAB Strategy. In last week I attend the Last video of COD. It’s the LAB Strategy plan. When I saw the video, I told myself, “no I don’t like this was, I’d like to use my own way for management”, but in the LAB, I used the Brian’s method since I couldn’t use my own plan for management of tasks. I suggest all to use this way in your test mock-labs.
I finished about 80% of till the lunch time. And after lunch I finished the rest. I had exactly 2 hours for check and verify. I verified around 50% of the tasks, and I found some faults.
When I came back home, I found my wrong answers one by one. I was very sad, and I didn’t think about Passing.
I received an email from Cisco mentioned Report is available.
I logged in, with too much stress, and saw OH ” UN-CERTIFIED” and there was an icon about score report. I died. But my wife saw that its “PASS” and when I clicked on the report, it was saying congratulations. I found my-self the first ever CCIE without NUMBER. What a feeling.
I called cisco and explained the issue, after a while, she said that the number will come soon.

This is my real story, I tried to write it for people who are in the beginning or mid of the way.
I got 10KG extra weight during these 3 months, now I must do some exercises, (actually study is easier).
I don’t get any benefit from Internetwork Expert, I just wrote my own story, they also didn’t gave me discounts (as their sales person told me that I’ll have 10% discount on my mock-labs) for mock-labs.
After doing the Lab, I face a question, How is the LAB day for Scott Morris or Petr or Brians? How the proctor deal with them? Do they go on red-carpet through their rack? What happens if they asked a question from proctor? I think its vice-versa the proctors will have too much stress when this kind of people go in the Lab.

Groupstudy helped me a lot. I try to stay, and help the new people.

Written Exam:

CCIE is my first certification. I didn’t have any idea about the vendors.
I started my studies in late 2006. But how, I heared from some people that you must read the Routing TCP book.
I started reading the Routing TCP/IP Vol1, I read carefully till EIGRP. Then I saw it’s in very details.
I didn’t know what to read. I post a message in groupstudy, asking for help. Thanks to Brad Ellis who replied me and offered me the NLI written guide. I used the NLI and CCIE RS exam cert guide (Odom) for study for the written. I read cover-to-cover NLI and CCIE Routing-Switching exam cert guide. I was pretty good, because I could answer all the test questions in these books.
I found a copy of testking in a P2P program. I started answering its questions, but I found that lots of my answers are wrong according to their solution guide. Then I realized that this must be written by someone who doesn’t have knowledge. So I didn’t continue reading it since I found it faulty, and made me upset because of bad scores. (after a while I understood that testking is a cheat), any way I passed the written on 18-JUN-2007 exactly 1 day before changes in Blue-print.

LAB Exam :
After passing the written, I didn’t have any idea about the lab, I was thinking just be a CCIE written, but I found that a CCNA, CCNP has much more value than a CCIE written, which you are NOT certified till you pass your lab.
I recommended by a group-study member “Joseph Saad” to get the Internetwork Expert packages, and finally I got the IE end2end self paced program. I received it on SEP 2007.
I started with Vol1. I bought a good laptop to run Dynamips (Duo 2.4 +4MB L2 , 4GB, Kubuntu 64 bit). At that time I was working in a company in spit shift. We were working from 9-13 , 16-20 , everyday between 13 to 16 I used to goto sturbucks cofee, drinking a cap, doing the Vol1 on my dynamips. Also IE COD and listening to IE voice class with Mr. MacGan voice (also I have to say, IE’s COD and voice classes are very good for non native English speaking people. You will enjoy). After around 3 months I started doing VOL2. Started with first LAB. I created a new diagram to make it compatible with Dynamips and NM-16ESW. But it took long time to find idle values. Anyway I face some problems (I remember it was with EIGRP) and pings. Also I bought some special FANS for the laptop. Anyway using dynamips for VOL2 made my very slow, and lazy to do the VOL2.
In March 2008, I bought a full CCIE equipments. And started playing with it. I had a job change so I couldn’t study for around 2 months. And I re-schedule for 30-OCT-2008

Hard Study From 10 AUG to 29 OCT :

What I studied : IE COD , IE VOL2, IE VOL3 (I called it Baby Labs), QOS certification guide (odom book), Cisco Docs (printed version from DOC-CD including : 3560, Multicast, QOS, BGP, OSPF notes, Security, IP services, IPv6 (nat, dhcp, multicast), etc all more than 1000 pages I donno how many)

I started with High pressure on 10th of AUGUEST. Watching AGAIN the COD (I got the DVD version, actually the online version sometimes kills ) carefully with writing notes. Doing ALL the IE VOL2 Labs.
I was studying around 8 - 10 hours per day, till end of the SEPTEMBER I finished the COD, 18 Labs of IE VOl2 and 1 IE Mock-lab with difficulty 7 (I got 54%).
Another Luck which I had was RAMADAN. Our company decreased the working hours to 9-15, and I had enough time to study till 1st of OCTOBER.

LAST Month:

I got a leave from my job for 1 month. From 1st of OCTOBER, I did 1 lab from IE Vol3 every 2 or 3 days and I found my weakness areas which were on QOS and Multicast.
I decided to do all the VOL2 labs Again but only Multicast, QOS, IP services, SYS management.
I broadcast a message on group asking for advise for last months, and many people helped me. Special thanks to Narbik, he sent me his IPv6 guide, but actually I was good in IPv6 and I didn’t have time to read it. He is very kind.
And Mr “Anthony Sequeira” from IE, whom helped me too much in last month. Its great if you feel that someone is watching you, advise you, and mentally help you.
He is a great man.
I reviewed all the IE Vol2 labs, also doing the Baby Labs (Vol3). And Lab_it_up everything which I feel I’m not comfortable. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! If you fell you can do something, but you can not doing it on the LAB, you MUST LAB_IT_UP and do all possible plays with that technology. I spent a lot of time doing Switch QOS, and IOS features.
Its very important to make your mind clicked. If you don’t do DVMRP games, you will never learn it good. LAB_IT_UP to understand.
I did 5 IE mock-labs and 1 NMC Checkit mock-lab. For all the IE labs I didn’t get more than 80, either NMC Checkit mock-lab.
In Last week I realized that I have a problem in redistribution, I attend again the COD redistribution and after some lab-it-ups I found the rules.
I studied till 23:00 the day before exam.

Last night I tried to attend the IE announcement, but my browser crashed, and I couldn’t login again. Today I watched the video, and I heared my name. Thanks Anthony, Thanks Brians, Thanks all the IE people.

I’m the X in “InternetworkeXpert”

Reza Toghraee
CCIE 22518 RS

CCIE success story of Kevin Hatem - CCIE #23838

2009-05-25T06:31:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Kevin Hatem

Read his story

Friday the 13th was good luck for me.

Initial readings included Doyle's TCP volumes I and II, Ospf Design by Halabi, the OSPF Command and Configuration Handbook, BGP Design by Halabi , and the BGP-4 Command and Configuration Handbook. A few others Cisco Press books along the way (frame-relay, QOS, Internet Routing Architectures, etc.) which I thought relevant or just otherwise useful.

I used a couple of vendor products including IE and CCBOOTCAMP. I utilized rack time from both vendors and also constructed my own mini rack with 3 routers and 2 switches. Although I could not do a full lab on this setup, I did use it constantly to run test configs and experiment with subsets of the practice labs.

I created my own library of notes per technology (CATALYST, OSPF, EIGRP, BGP, IP SERVICES, SECURITY, etc.). I have always found that writing down (in my own words) what I am trying to accomplish helps me to learn quicker and to retain the information longer. Additionally, I reviewed my notes the 2 days prior to taking my test.

There are many forums/blogs which I constantly and consistently read. Among those include Sadikhov, IEOC, CCIEPURSUIT, and CCIECANDIDATE. There are many more and many of them are worth the visit.

Basically, read, read, read...lab, lab, lab....read, lab, read, lab...and lab some more...You get the point.

Before the lab started, the proctor handed out our name tags and rack assignments, and explained the rules…He announced the time and that was the starting gun. We marched to our assigned cubes and the fun began.

The lab itself began with the new open-ended question segment. The questions reminded me of the written exam questions but without the multiple choice options. For me the questions were not overly difficult but did make me sit back and think. After I completed the questions I began the lab configuration segment. The lab booklet contains the lab tasks, the do's and dont's, and diagrams of the logical topology, L3 topology, frame-relay connections, and a chart listing the physical connections of the switches and routers.

I logged into each of the routers and switches and added the one alias I use most, "alias exec sip show ip interface brief | ex unass". Then I did a "sip" on each device to check for any misconfigured IP’s. I also looked for any erroneous configs that shouldn't be there such as kron jobs, EEM, etc.

I drew out the physical topology based on the VLANs and physical connections. This helps me to visualize the relationships of the L2 segments, spanning-tree paths, trunk connections, etc. I started configuring the L2 about 30 minutes into it. I redrew the L3 diagram so that I could make notes for myself, but my redraw was nothing fancy. I also drew out another topo for the BGP and multicast sections. Again, nothing fancy—very quick and simple.

At the lunch break, with the exception of two “off the wall” L2 tasks and one L3 task, I had competed the lab thru BGP and on my way into the non-core sections. Lunch was 20 minutes and we were served fish (it was, of course, Friday). Not bad, but no one was really in the mood to eat--we all just wanted to get back to the lab. Small talk murmured the air, though to me, most of it was incoherent. Most of us were finished eating with minutes to spare of our 20. We all waited impatiently at the front of the room, like horses in the gates at the Kentucky Derby. The proctor announced “Alright guys, you can get back to work”. BOOM — We took off, running into each other like bumper cars at a carnival and nearly tripping over each other heading back to our cubes! A few chuckles here and there eased the post lunch tension.

Back “home”, I then breezed thru most of the non-core sections, including the lonely L3 question I had earlier set aside. I postponed answering a couple of other tasks which I simply did not know, but trusted I would have time leftover to search the documentation for the answers (which indeed I did have plenty of time to search, discover, and implement my solution). I also stumbled on a couple of QoS tasks, but again, after searching the documentation I found what I was looking for and quickly finished those tasks.

I had completed the exam with about an hour and a half to go, of course I still had those two off the wall L2 questions to complete. Well, when I figured out the solution for one of them, I realized that an earlier solution for another task broke (my configs conflicted). WHEW! I quickly fixed the botched config and a peaceful calm settled in my bones. The last stumbler took me a while to figure out, and although I do not know if my solution was correct, I did answer it with what I believe to be the correct solution. As many of you know, a lot of tasks are either dependent on other tasks or they are closely tied with another.

With time remaining, I went thru each task again and reviewed my solutions...I checked L2 and L3 again. Checked BGP again. Went thru the non-core tasks again. Check check check. WOW-am I this good or am I just in a fog and can't see the shoreline? Debug IP Routing – looks clean. Debug spanning-tree – great ! Debug IP-need-to-go-NOW – no output so it must be in check!

Then, with about 20 minutes to go, I just happened to flip back the pages and my eye caught a task (don't know why I reread it, but I'm glad I did). The solution I previously configured was wrong. I knew how to correct it. Then the proctor announces "there's 15 minutes left, so let's start wrapping it up". OH F#$K – is there time? Stay calm…I quickly removed the bad config and applied the correct commands and tested it - all with several minutes to spare!!! Save, save save!!! I don't know if those 2 points bumped me over the passing mark or not, but you need every point you can get and I wasn't about to let it go.

The proctor mentioned that we may not know our results until Sunday or early Monday, but I kept checking all weekend long. About 11PM last night, right before I was to hit the sack, I checked again....

CONGRATULATIONS. PASS !!! CCIE#23838...

I think most successful CCIE’s will agree with me when I say that it is very important to read, understand, implement, and test each and every task/solution during the lab. One may question if there is enough time to be so meticulous – the answer is yes.

For now, I need to realign myself back to the real world. My wife informed me that we do indeed have 3 kids now…I vaguely remember the hospital stay, logging into the internet and finishing up a lab.

I’m sure I’ll go for another title; CCDE will be good---it’s what I do and I can apply the knowledge real time.

Victory to all those who endeavor.

Thanks to gns3

2009-05-24T13:20:00.000-07:00

For me it is not possible to attend a CCIE training or bootcamp due to my financial conditions.I got some good work books (old version) from my friends. When i read the good reports about IPexpert,Internetwork expert i dreamed about attending one.But i know the reality as it is not possible.And also when i go through Narbiks CCNP-CCIE gap pdfs i became a die hard fan of Narbik kocharians.I found that material also very useful.Then i watched Jeremy Ciora's cbt nuggets which also helped me a lot for my preparation.

For me taking a rack rental is possible for only few hours.But gns3/dynagen played a major role in my preparation and i always will be grateful for those who worked behind this project.

CCIE dates to remember

2009-05-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

For all ccie aspirants , remember these dates..

CCIE Routing and Switching Theory exam v3.0 (350-001)

The last day to test is 17th October 2009.

OR

CCIE Routing and Switching Theory exam, v4.0 - Scheduled for release on 18Oct09

(Beta exam expected in the July/Aug timeframe)

All the best wishes to all ccie aspirants.

Jo - #22262

2009-05-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

So things have calmed down a little bit for me since yesterday. Firstly I would like to say thanks for all the comments on the site and via email – its great to hear from so many people! Id like to write a little bit about my lab experience in Brussels – it wont go into too much detail about the contents of the lab, but more general covering the complete experience.

Getting there and the night before

I planned to be in Brussels for just one night, but due to a general strike starting on Sunday night for 24 hours I was notified by Eurostar that my return journey on Monday evening had been canceled, so I had to rebook for the next morning. Not a big deal, but it meant I had to take an extra day off from work and pay for another night in the hotel – but at least I would get to Brussels in time, which was the main thing.

The journey was painless from London to Brussels on the train, once I got to the station I had to make my way to Diegem, the suburb where Cisco is located, and had about an hours wait for the connecting train. Once there I headed to my hotel. I booked in at the Formule 1 Hotel, mainly because it was €43 per night and I was on a budget (do yourself a favour – if you are spending $1400+ on the lab exam, spend however much it costs to stay at a decent hotel, like the NH or Holiday Inn, the night before). If I had the choice I wouldnt go back to this hotel, it was pretty basic with no bathroom in the room itself, but out in the hall way cubicle style and shared with all other guests. The TV only had 2 English TV channels (Eurosport and MTV – which was mostly in German). I brought some notes with me and a few solutions guides from IE and IPexpert, and made a start reading through them. I wouldnt recommend doing any last minute cramming, just more of a general read through of some of the basics.

When I got bored with reading (it didnt take long) I got some rest before heading out to check out the Cisco campus and make sure I knew where to go the next day. The weather on Sunday evening was terrible, lashing down with rain and blowing a storm – good job I brought my umbrella. Once at Cisco I had a wander around the deserted campus. The first building I went to I banged on the door and spoke to the security guard who directed me to another building where the lab would be the next morning. I made my way back to the hotel which was a 10 minute walk away – and my umbrella broke under the force of the wind half way there, so I spent the next 5 minutes getting soaked through going back to the hotel. Now that I was umbrella-less I booked a cab for 7.20 the next morning so I wouldnt turn up to the lab looking like a Titanic survivor if the weather was the same.

That night I didnt do any more reviewing of my notes – if I didnt know it by now it was too late – I put the TV on and watched Southpark and Family Guy in German (and didnt understand any of it). I managed to get to sleep somewhere between 12-1am as my mind was racing a little, but thankfully I woke up at 6.30 to get ready for the big day.

Lab day

In the morning I got up, showered went down to have breakfast. The weather was better than the day before but I still had a cab booked which turned up at 7.15 so in I jumped. I was at Cisco by 7.20 and headed into the building. There were three guys there already so we all said hello, but conversation wasnt flowing for obvious reasons. One guy was there to do his R&S lab like me and it was his second attempt, the other two were in to do SP and Voice. Over the next 20 minutes the reception filled up with around 10 of us in total, some people were chatting others were concentrating on the day ahead. We were due to be collected by the proctor at 7.45, but by 7.50 there was still no sign of anyone, which added to the anticipation and nervousness! We all kind of got our hopes up each time someone entered the foyer hoping it was the proctor. Bruno the Brussels proctor finally turned up at about 8.15 and apologised for being late but he was stuck in traffic due to the strike – but we didnt need to worry as the lab is 8 hours based on the start time. We all headed up to the lab, showed our ID and sat at our stations. We were given a briefing by Bruno to check the configs on our racks to see if they tie up with the workbooks. Then the exam started.

I did what all vendors tell you to do and read through the exam – twice. My first impressions were kind of OK – there is a lot of information to digest. Reading the exam twice took about 15 minutes, I wasnt studying it just seeing if I could handle the contents. Once I finished reading I checked over the rack. Initially I was a little confused, there may be troubleshooting tasks in the lab, so I was expecting some errors in the initial config. One thing I wasnt sure about was the level of any preconfiguration that may or may not be applied to the rack. What I was seeing was a fully configured lab in front of me, with totally different IP address schemes. I was thinking to myself I know this is the CCIE lab but this amount of troubleshooting is ridiculous! I jumped up and spoke to the proctor to verify and he said that I still had the config from last Fridays candidate! It turned out that 4 other guys also had the same issue and Bruno may have to grade these labs before clearing the config and giving us our labs. I think its a good job I didnt change anything, and I hope the guy before me passed his lab!

This meant we had to go to the break room for 45 minutes while this took place – we all had a laugh about it, and it gave us a chance to introduce ourselves to each other properly. There was a good mix of people there, a guy from Australia who now lives in Denmark doing his Security exam, a fellow Londoner (via India) who was on his second attempt at R&S, a guy from Norway and a guy from Nigeria (working in Sweden) who were both on their first attempts at R&S. A couple of these guys were flying back to Denmark at 18:45 so were worrying about what time the lab would now end for them, and if they would make check-in for the flight. Luckily for me I was now going home the following day, so no such worry for me.

Once we got the call to come back in to the lab 45 minutes later, we were told that our end time was 45 minutes after everyone else. I made a start on the lab properly. I wont go into any detail about the contents of the lab itself, but it was a solid exam with parts of it that make you think about the solutions. There were a few tasks that I wasnt sure on, but the great thing about this exam is that the answers are all the in the documentation somewhere – its up to you to find it, digest it and apply it appropriately. I know for sure that I used the docs to answer some questions that I didnt know the answer to, but was lucky enough to track down.

I was actually done with the exam (including my first check through) by 15:30, and was due to finish now at 17:43, so I had plenty of time to double check things again. I wasnt 100% confident on all of the solutions, but I had to trust my instinct a little. I was actually really terrified of changing too much, but I answered every question in the lab. My usual weak areas of Multicast and QoS I was sure I had nailed – which was a great confidence booster. I know I missed some points in the core IGP sections, as I had workarounds in place, so I concentrated on these, but didnt change them in the end due to paranoia of breaking other things that I knew were working!

On leaving the exam, I thought I had a good chance of passing. A lot of it is down to interpretation, but I checked a few things with the proctor, who was helpful if you asked him nicely and didnt fish for the answer. He basically would say – ‘what is the question you are asking’ if he felt you were probing too much. The other guys all finished up at 17:43 and we headed out. All of them were sure they would be back for another attempt, and I was feeling quietly confident inside, but never sure. It would be a long wait until I got the result…

The wait

Once I was done with the lab all the remaining candidates went their separate ways and I headed back to the hotel to await my fate. Its a shame I had to go back there actually, as usual there was nothing watchable on the TV, my iPhone battery was dead (with no charger) so there was no music to listen to and I didnt bring my laptop as I wanted to travel light. I decided to head out and go for a walk to find somewhere good to eat. I ended up walking for about 30 minutes along a fairly busy road. The part of Diegem where Cisco and my hotel were located has to be one of the most dull and boring places I have ever stayed in in my life – just hotels and business parks. Anyway – I ended up finding a small Pizzeria and grabbed a bite to eat. I chose to take an alternative route back to the hotel, which meant I got lost in the suburbs of Brussels somewhere – luckily my intuition told me to take a right turn down a random road and I ended up on the other side of a field from my hotel. Thankfully for me there was a footpath down the side of it and I made it to the ‘comfort’ of the hotel again.

I must have been walking for over an hour, so thought I would be tired by the time I got back to the room, but no, I ended up awake until 1am again still replaying things in my head about the exam. This has to be one of the hardest parts of this certification – waiting for the result its a killer.

The next morning I woke up at 8.30, ate and got the train back to Brussels. I ended up going into a net cafe in the station to check my results online. I couldnt remember my gmail password, so logged into the Cisco CCIE site, and saw the magic words of ‘PASS’ – at first I thought it was for my written, then I looked more closely and saw it was for the lab. What a feeling – the relief was so immense. I immediately called my wife and told her the news. I must admit I got a bit emotional – all those months of study finally paid off and this made it all worth it.

Thank You

I would like to say thanks firstly to my wife for putting up with me for the past year or so as I was studying. We only got married last summer so sometimes its been tough. I fully intend to make up every hour of the time I spent studying in special ways – Just dont tell her I will be doing voice in 2009

Also I would like to thank all the vendors who’s materials I used (IPexpert, IE and Narbik Kocharians) – these all played their part in my success in various ways.

Finally Id like to say thanks to all the other CCIE candidates (and bloggers) out there – some have passed and others have not yet, but its great to have this little community all pulling together towards the same goal. To all those that have not yet done it – do not give up and work hard and you will get your rewards.

Shiran's advice

2009-05-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

I have been working on that title for almost 1.5 years this does not include time spent on my ccna and ccnp tracks and experience. getting a ccie was a really hard and fulfilling journey that i am very happy to see these results.

My game plan is:

1) you must constantly learn, to be successful.

2) the first is the most important. - the first what is most important? not sure what you meant here...

3) set your self a goal and stick to it

4) experience experience experience experience

5) don't stop until you understand the subject fully

Note: how do you know if you understand the subject? go into one of the group study web sites and look for questions on that subject and see if you know what to answer. also, if you see an answer, remember there can be other answers. most of the time there are multiple ways to approach a problem.

I see a lot of candidates that take one track after the other: ccna to ccnp to ccie without taking any brake or having any real life experience. once they encounter the real world they stumble. my advice (it is not a rule but a good life experience advice) is- ccna is a basic title and should give you a good starting point if you do not have any experience or any knowledge. now if you got you ccna and you didn't touch a router accept for in the exam course, i suggest you work with the equipment for at least one year or 6 months before you start the ccnp. why you ask?! well, for one you will have some experience that you will need for the ccnp and secondly, ccnp although it is only written test, expects you to be more "familiar" with the technology. i myself waited 3 years before i started studying for the ccie track.

So that is it for now!

Wait! i will not let you go that easy:

here is a small ccna level (maybe ccnp) question:

i have a router in my home, and in my home network i have an ip phone. now i want to set a qos on my router so i will be able to talk on the phone while i giving my brother access to download files from my ftp site. how can i do this? answer forthcoming in my next blog post.

Tip: "think of the priority and packet size"

CCIE 13100

2009-05-24T08:49:00.001-07:00

It took me 3 attempts to nail down CCIE Service Provider track.
My first Attempt was in RTP and i failed by 3 marks. I was almost in depression, But now when i look back i feel good that i failed twice. In my first and second attempt i thought i did everything correctly and i was completely surprised "why did i failed". i always thaught i wish i did some sections correctly.

Based on my my previous experience some of the best practice i followed:
1) Understand the questions correctly, If any doubt please reach out to proctor.
2) "Don't and NEVER" assume things wrt any question.
3) Once the questions is correctly understood, Type the solution and "ALWAYS" cross check whatever you have typed.
4) For anything or everything you typed their will be an effect "Cause and effect" check the outcome of the solution you have typed.
5) You should get a blank paper in exam which you will have to return to proctor at the end of the exam, After every question you typed and are confident that the outcome is right, you can right down on this paper and mark that you have achieved this section marks, This will help you to calculate all the marks at the end of the exam and will not let you reach out to respective GOD for their blessings lol, since you yourself would be confident that you will pass.

This are some of the best practices i followed in my recent CCIE SP attempt on 5th JAN.

It took me almost a year and a half to clear CCIE SP.

I would personally suggest to read the technology stuff in and out.

Also I would recommend IPexpert Proctor Guide.

Last minute preparation always helps.

Story of Daubmanus

2009-05-24T06:59:00.000-07:00

hi guys,

got my numbers. i really gave up on it after the exam because i thought i messed up the open questions, but hey i'll take it as it is.

it has been a long 2 years for me and my written was gonna expire. it took 4 attempts, a wedding, a baby in the meantime. oh yeah, i did get very sick physically along the process as well.

i've finished ipexpert, internetwork expert workbooks, internetwork expert mocks. i've been to heinz ulm boot camp and did his mocks. as a cisco partner i was able to get on ASET labs as well, and this was invaluable rack time because i was able to test small issues here and there without buying expensive rack time. if you're cisco partner you should ask your local cisco office about this.

prior to my last attempt i was able to finish ipexpert workbooks in time prescribed by the workbook. on my previous attempts i wasn't able to do this. what i am trying to say i guess, if you cannot finish the practice in proper time, don't expect you can do it in the lab. i was thinking earlier as long as i understand the material, i am game. but the speed factor has to do a lot with it. so, if i were you, i wouldn't waste time and money on the lab before you can do this. as i said ipexpert was my gauge, but others are good as well. if it says finish exercise in 3.5 hrs, then do finish it in that time or before.

i would definitely advise for the boot camp. however, if you don't have the money, your company doesn't pay, but do have the time, i think it is better just to buy workbooks and do the whole thing at your home. it is crisis after all. i hear a lot of things, like these guys are good, these are not good - but at the end of the day it boils down to sitting and working the examples.

one more note about cert vendors. if you take a cert vendor in order to get access to their racks, problems, workbooks etc, from that reason only this is ok. the issue with the most people taking cert verdors is they get the vendor to teach them how to solve the problem and nobody can do that. what happens people just memorize issues, and go through brainless configuration interations. i believe it is ok for the vendor to PRESENT you with a problem or a set of problems, and is up to you to develop the technique to solve it. that is what the engineering is about.

one advise regarding the preparations for the exam i could give you and perhaps the most important one is: start gradually working the easiest problems first, and then gradually advance towards more complex ones. this would not be a new thing, but for a fact that this builds your self-confidence more than anything else. i strongly advice against attacking the difficult issues first, you will eventually get it, but is such a confidence killer when you have to spend 2 hours on a 10 minute task.

do not quit and do not stress. for the latter i used BEER . this is doable. it is made for the average, but persistent.

now to the lab...

out of my attempts, the one attempt that got me the # was the one i took the time to draw out the lab in detail with ip addressing, interfaces, igps, and all in color. i also took my time to draw the l2 topology, wrote out the vlans, physical interfaces both router and switch. the spanning tree, while doable without l2 topology, can be finished in no time with proper l2 picture. also, if you have a picture like i mentioned, at the end of the day when you're dead beat already, it just takes one look to see what interface you have to apply the acl on, or apply qos. it takes one look to check for the ip addresses or where to redistribute. i didn't even look at cisco diagram once i was done with mine. on my previous attempts i drew out parts of topology, and relied on cisco one. again, while this is not a problem, but it was much more time consuming for me.

i did read the most of the lab, but i skipped through some sections at my first reading. i personally think it is a good idea to read the whole r&s sections, security, and bgp sections perhaps. i don't see how other sections would influence the configs in any way, but hey if you feel like it read the whole exam. many vendors tell you read it, and read it again, but with the new section added there may be no time to do it more than once.

all things said, i didn't start configuring till about 70 minutes into the lab. this is including the new section. i didn't have full connectivity before the lunch. again, people will tell you this and that. but, just keep your pace. reload when you want, and when you feel you need to, not because everybody else says lunch is the reload time.

i was able to finish most of the tasks with about 90 minutes left to the end of the exam. then i went checking. everything seemed find, but i tweaked my bgp literally 2 minutes before the end of the exam. i managed to reload several times during the day.

what i've noticed during my preparations is that all the major cert vendors try to beat this certain template, or proper steps of doing the lab, into you; what should and should not be done to pass and so on. while most of this is ok from a certain point, the ccie lab is not a template, and cannot be passed simply by going through brainless device configuration iterations(unless you cheat i guess). that being said by the guy who did 3 major vendors . but seriously, the moment i took my time to really think what was going on in the lab i passed it. that is it. that goes to show something about the lab (well, about me really )

got my mail about 3 in the morning. something kept me from sleeping and i went to check, and there it was.

what is next for me - well - nothing i guess. i don't want to do this to my family again. a long vacation and then we'll see, but judging by how i feel after all this time of stressing, and uncertainty, i feel like buying a big, big truck and getting away from cisco as far as i can.

Story of Ricardo Martins

2009-05-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

Story of my life:

All started in February 2007 when I decided to take my first IT cetification MCDST. I attended the MCSE course certification at a Microsoft learning center. On the first day, I knew nothing about IT, only windows XP and that was it. After the first lesson, I knew that certifications was my thing and IT would be my passion.

After my first exam I was a MCP and I jumped so much when I got my certification. After the second exam I got my MCDST. After 6 months I was done with MCSE, then I asked myself, now what?? Well I got some old CBT Nuggets of CCNA of a friend in September 2007 and I started to watch the first video. After 5 min I was like…where are the wizards and all the GUI’s? Didn’t like the feeling, but I kept on going because at the Microsft Center, everybody said that being a MCSE + CCNA was the best thing anyone could be. So I used GNS3 and practice a lot so I got my CCNA. At this point I was in love with Cisco. Worth to mention that, I found no use in taking lessons for Cisco Certs as I did for Microsoft. Found that most places are just trying to sell courses for huge price, and most trainers aren’t even prepared to teach.

After that I took my CCNP, CCSP. CCDP, CCIP. I studied day and night for these certs. After this I got a job in Northern Ireland in HP.

In HP, with all the certs and some experience in the pocket that I already had from a portuguese company I was offered that job. Man, the network here is huge…Anyways, I saved some cash and bought my own rack…and started my CCIE journey.

The next 8 months, used Internetwork Expert Vol 2 and spent 3 hours daily in my rack.

After practicing for a while, I started to feel confident so I went for the CCIE R&S Written exam which I cleared it. After this exam I practiced another 3 months just labbing, labbing, labbing and 12th Nov.2008 arrived fast….I was in Brussels…

“I will be your proctor for the day” – says Bruno

…. Ricardo….Rack 11

The exam started….after 4 hours I had only BGP and Multicast left…so I was relaxed. QOS and Security seemed a bit odd to me but there was a good chance to pass. Spent the whole afteernoon checking the configurations, having drinks, I knew I had a huge chance to be a CCIE…16.30…Lab over.

They say, if you were to pass your results should be available earlier, I’m guessing they run a script and if it says you pass, you passed but if says you have failed probably a proctor will check all your configurations and that takes extra time. Again I have no information on this, I am just guessing.

1:48am in the Hotel…the email came through and I had failed but with a good and very very very close score…QOS and Security was horrible…I say good because most topics I scored 100%, then on QOS and Security a disaster. I was actually happy, I knew if I studied those 2 topics, I would be fine next time…Flew back home and scheduled my 2nd attempt for 29th January…

During this 2.5 months I didnt touch 1 lab from start to end. I just practiced random stuff, OSPF, EIGRP and all the normal easy stuff just to make sure I wouldn’t forget a thing. Now the big secret….I opened the Cisco DOC CD online during my preparation, I read from cover to cover, Ip services, QOS and Security stuff and I labbed everything. Man…this was my salvation. I think IE vol.2 is not very good for Security, IP services and lacks some information for QOS as well.

29th Jan. 2009

This time Istvan if I remember his name correctly was the proctor. I was not nervous like the first time or anything and this time….”Ricardo…Rack 10″…I know I had to do it this time. Found this lab a bit more difficult and tricky than the first attempt but I didnt care, just followed the normal cisco procedures for the problems and troubleshooting they threw at me, and before lunch I finished the lab. In the afternoon, after lunch, I checked the configurations 4 times and all seemed ok. I was a bit afraid of the interpretation of some questions but there was nothing I could do. So I just had 3 drinks, Cecemel, this is some chocolate drink with caramel…if u go to brussels drink this…it is awesome.

Well…I think the say is true…this time at 11:30 I got my result and CCIE# 23373.

My biggest tip is, if you want something really bad you will get it…there are no limits, just study, understand the technologies and pass the lab. Motivaton is the key…

Story of zgx

2009-05-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

zgx

Feb 3 2009, 02:37 PM

I just got back after a short but much needed vacation. Last week I passed the R/S Lab in Brussels and got my number (233XX).

- The Lab
================================================================================
The lab was as easy as I had expected and there were no surprises. I knew all the technologies well and everything was pretty straight forward. The first hour was a little bit shaky for me as I was quite nervous. It always takes me a long time to do the L2 portion of a lab if I’m not familiar with the topology and IP scheme used. I read over all the questions before starting and draw a L2 and a BGP topology map. The topology maps included in the lab was not great but acceptable so I did not bother to do any other drawings. Once I came past L2 things started to loosen up and by lunch I had completed IGP, BGP and some other questions. An hour after lunch I had completed all questions and I used the remaining 3 hours to verify my work. I did not really find any errors in my configurations but I found several things I needed to add and that needed to be tweaked to work in the intended way. The feel of the lab was more similar to the Cisco Assessor and ASET labs then to other workbook and mock labs that I’ve done.

I proctors did not help much at all and the most useful comment I got from them was "You need to provide a working solution". The DocCD must have been cached somewhere because it was considerable faster then when I use it at home.

The setup was as everyone else has already described. Old version Secure CRT without tabs and Internet Explorer without tabs. You had plenty of pencils to choose from and they provided you with two papers to write on but you could ask for more if you wanted.

They used full size Logitech keyboards with US keymaps where the "|" is above the small "Enter" button. The insert key was removed and instead there was an extra large delete button. The resolution on the LCD monitors were 1280x1024.

They had soft drinks and fruits in the restroom and the bathroom was near. Perhaps there were snacks as well I did not see.

The food at lunch was great but I restrained myself from taking any desert and tried to not get too full.

There are two Cisco buildings and the correct entrance is the one just opposite the DHL building.

- Accommodation
================================================================================
I stayed at the NH Brussels Airport Hotel that was located just a few hundred meters from Cisco. I could see the Cisco logotype glowing in the dark outside of my hotel room window. It was also just next to the Diegem train station. The room was nice and it cost it about 150 EUR per night with the Cisco discount. I looked around a little and did not really find a much cheaper hotel that did also not also have a much lower standard. Breakfast was 20 EUR. The Internet cost 17 EUR per 24h and it was slow with high latency and they turned it off during the night. They also had problems with their Radius server so needless to say the Internet service was not to my satisfaction. Minibar, bathtub, shower, safe, the usual stuff. The minibar had enough space for 4x Cola cans. The receptionists were nice and helpful.

Diegem where Cisco is located is a place outside of Brussels that is truly dead and there is nothing to do there and I doubt you can find anything to eat outside the hotel. But the trains leave pretty often to Brussels and there is plenty to do there. They had this weird system where you bought the tickets on the train but since the conductor was rarely around most trips was free.

- Preparation
================================================================================
I started to prepare for the CCIE written exam about a year ago. But I already had some experience and knowledge so I did not start from zero.

- I had been interested in computers for the past 25 years and had early exposure to computer communication. I operated several BBS systems in the late 80ies and early 90ies and was an early adopter of the Internet and as a kid I built small networks and managed UNIX servers for fun.

- I have been an IT professional for the past 10 years working mainly with Cisco networking. My current work for the past couple of years is being the lead network engineer managing a pretty large corporate network with thousands of Cisco devices.

- During the last decade I had already completed all professional Cisco certifications but one.

For the written exam I only read the official certification exam guide from Cisco Press. Previous years I had already read Internet Routing Architectures, the Cisco Press QoS book and Routing TCP/IP Volume I. I had recently completed the BGP and MPLS exams so those technologies were fresh in my mind. During my studies for the written exam I also started doing technology focused labs and I tried most of the things that I read about in the exam guide in my lab so I better could understand how it worked. I spent less then two months preparing for the written exam.

With the exception of some mock labs I did my entire study solely using Dynamips and real 3550 and 3560 switches. I had a dedicated workstation with 17 network cards, 2x Quad Core CPUs, and plenty of RAM. Once I started using 64 bit Linux I never had any real issues with Dynamips and it always worked great for me. Instead of using the virtual frame-relay switch in Dynamips I used a virtual router instead to get frame-relay working more realistic. I also used only virtual 3725s running 12.4 mainline in Dynamips so it should be closer to the routers used in the real lab. I hooked up all the real switches with console cables plugged into serial USB-adapters on the Dynamips box so I could reach the entire lab from anywhere in the world. That enabled me to lab during lunch hours, when it was less to do at work, from home and when I was away somewhere.

I spent about 9 months after passing the written exam to prepare for the lab. The last two months before the exam I took out all my saved vacation days and some unpaid leave to be able to focus my studies better. Sadly I was already more or less finished with my preparations by then and I lost some of my focus the last month and probably should have taken the lab earlier instead of wasting vacation days on sitting at home being restless and doing not nearly as much labs as the plan was. At least I got a great number of posts posted here on Sadikhov during that time .

My main preparation for the lab was doing workbook and mock labs, reading documentation and watching instruction videos. I used most of the popular vendors. I went through in total 6 technology focused workbooks and 58 different full workbook and mock labs (most of them 8 hour ones but a few was 4 hour labs).

I still feel like I don’t know nearly enough of most of the technologies on the blue print but I am able to look most things up in the DocCD and I understand the basic concepts of pretty much all of the technologies on the lab. Doing the new IE WBI version 5 on QoS made me realize how little I know about QoS. Reading the DocCD on multicast I realized how little I understand of the more advanced multicast topics. The more you study the more you realize how much there is to learn that you have yet to master.

Looking back passing the lab was very easy. The really hard part was finding motivation to spend a year of my life studying for the CCIE written and lab. Going into the lab I was already a winner. I knew that even if I did not pass on the first attempt it did not matter because I had already gotten the biggest reward. I had developed my understanding of Cisco routing, switching and IOS far more in just a year then I had previously done in my entire career. That was the biggest reward I could get and the number was just icing on the cake.

- Do I feel like an expert?
================================================================================
During my lab I meet a few other candidates. One guy had been preparing for only 2 months and another one had done a bunch of attempts in just the last couple of weeks. Most of the CCIEs I have dealt with have had their numbers in the 2000-5000 range and they have all been veterans with an impressive set of experience and knowledge. For me they have always represented what CCIEs are all about. I know I have earned my number but I can’t help if a small part of me feels like a cheat for only studying the topics on the blueprint and only practicing on the specific routers, switches and IOS versions. I wonder if the people that miraculously pass after 2 months of studies or after doing the lab 6 times the same month feel like they are experts. I know I still don’t feel like one.

- What next?
================================================================================
I still have a professional Cisco certification to take care of. After that I might go for SP or Security but will have to see about that. I’m also thinking of learning some Juniper or some non-Cisco firewall products.

I will probably be around Sadikhov but my post count might not increase as fast as before.

I’m also considering relocating to another country. So if you happen to live in an English speaking country and are in need of a pretty good engineer and freshly minted CCIE let me know. If it happens to be a place with palm trees growing on the beaches count me in!

- Advice for new candidates
================================================================================
In my opinion the key to passing the lab is:

- Knowing the core technologies (switching, frame-relay, IGP, BGP) really well.
- Having a good familiarity with the non-core technologies.
- Having practiced speed and accuracy.
- Knowing the common mistakes you do.
- Being a good friend of the documentation.

To learn the core technologies really well you start with reading books if you are not already very familiar with the technologies. Watching instructor videos can also be very helpful but they rarely cover all the details of a technology so be aware of that. CBT Nuggets are good if you want to refresh some of the very basics. Jeremy is hilarious and it’s very easy to digest. I personally find the Brians pretty dry to listen to and I tend to having problem focusing after some time. But their classes tend to be good but boring. The new video material from IP-Expert should be really good as I do enjoy listening to Scott but I have not seen it myself. If InternetworkExpert release classes with Scott I should go for those as well. I have seen some of NMC videos but with their new learning concept I have no clue what you get if you buy their products. But I liked what I seen so far from them. Clear and short on-the-point videos that does not waste a lot of your time.

When you read a book or watch videos you should have some routers and switches to try things on. The best is if you can setup the lab they are doing on the videos so you can configure every step yourself while watching.

I took a lot of notes while reading books and watching videos to try to organize everything I learned. I think it helped.

Start doing technology focuses mini-labs like those from Narbik or InternetworkExpert. That will help you understand the technologies better. This is important to do.

Go over all of the commands relating to a certain technology in the documentation and figure out what every command does and when you can use it. Try them out in your practice lab.

If you want to you could try and tackle one technology at the time. Read, watch, lab the same technology instead of taking them on all at once. Whatever works best for you.

This part of your studies are probably the most important. You really need to learn how the technology works. There are no shortcuts to this.

Having access to equipment the throughout your studies is really good. It enabled me to study whenever and however I wanted. It would have taken a lot longer with rack rentals for sure. But no need to buy a rack of routers. Use Dynamips together with real switches. That works great at least if you know some Linux. It does cost some but at least it’s not a fortune.

Once you understand the technologies and have done a lot of the technology focused mini-labs your ready to practice on full scale workbook labs. Do as many as you possibly can and practice your speed and accuracy. Use labs from different vendors because your get very accustomed to the IP plan, the physical topology, the way questions are asked and how the topology maps look. This is not good when you come to the real lab where everything is different. I know people that have failed not because the lab was hard but because they were too familiar with the one workbook vendor they had used and didn’t expect the lab to be different.

While it’s fairly easy to grade labs yourself it’s a great experience to do graded mock labs. Do them from different vendors if possible. It’s a good way to find your weaknesses some time before the lab. I became aware of some mistakes I kept doing and was able to work with those. I think the Cisco Assessor and ASET labs are good labs to have done.

You will not be able to find a single book, workbook or video material that covers all the commands and feature of any single technology. There is only one resource out there that almost does that and that’s the Cisco documentation. Don’t use any other resource when you get stuck on a problem. Before you ask a question here on Sadikhov read the documentation and try to figure out how things work for yourself. Reference it as often as you can and at some point during you preparation read it cover to cover. You will face problems on the lab that you cannot answer without referencing the documentation. That’s just the way it is.

Rick Mur - 21 year old double ccie - story

2009-05-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

First of all, thanks to all people that have congratulated me the past 2 days. It’s such a great feeling to receive all these compliments from great people!

About my SP track

After about 2 months preparation for the Written and 4 months of preparation for the Lab I passed the CCIE Service Provider lab yesterday!!

I took my attempt in Brussels (yes, I was one of the few fortunate people being able to book a seat :-P) and I really like this location (apart from that it’s less than 2 hours of driving for me). We had Dell 20″ widescreen LCD’s and the breakroom had a good variety of choice. Temperature was perfect, AC’s did make some noise, but I wasn’t bothered by it. Equipment is behind a glass wall and you don’t hear anything from it (I had the last seat of the room, so my back was almost against the glass wall).

Funny thing was that when I started IE7 I got the good-old UniverCD page as a homepage. I could also access the new documentation, but I found it a little weird that the old docs were accessible as well. I had some benefit from it as well, since the documentation of old releases is not on the new site and the SP lab uses a little older IOS releases.

The overall impression of the lab was tough but fair. You really need to know a lot of stuff and the questioning was quite difficult. The language was not 100% correct English and I felt that some words were added or removed from the sentences, so I had to get up and ask the proctor for making it 100% clear. In total I went to him 3 times and he really helped me with his answers, which he gave very fast, all 3 times I wanted to give 2 possible answers, but he gave me the right direction immediately, so my questions were good enough or I had a nice proctor

My adrenaline level was really high the first 2 hours, everytime a ping didn’t succeed I got so nervous, especially since I got stuck on the third task, which is the only one I skipped. After getting my IGP, BGP and MPLS up and running I got a little more relaxed. At lunchtime (11.50) I had configured everything (except one task), so I got to lunch with a good feeling.

Lunch was great, I had some shrimps with noodles and vegetables, I hope the garlic smell wasn’t that awful the rest of the day

After returning from the lunch I went on looking for the task I skipped. After digging in the documentation I found a great example config which had one command extra and that was the entire trick Silly that one command can drive you nuts.

For the rest of the lab, some stuff was straight forward, other times you got a lot of freedom in choosing the right way to go and some times they brought in some freaky features.

The day ended at 4.50 at which I reviewed and tweaked about 5 or 6 things in my config. Everyone left the room really quiet after the proctor checked our workbooks if all pages where still in it.

When I got home I hoped the result would get in at a normal time, for my R&S lab I got it at 11.45, but at 12.00 still nothing so I went to sleep. Woke up about every hour and checked the CCIE site and at 4.30 I got up and had 1 unread e-mail. The adrenaline level was back again and it seemed to take ages before the page refreshed.

There it was: PASS. I totally freaked out. Wow I was really a double CCIE now, maybe the youngest on the planet at age 21

Today I got congratulated by at least 200 people, which feels really good.

For my preparation I used both Internetwork Expert and IPexpert.
For the written I used MPLS Fundamentals, this is a gold-mine, it’s called fundamentals, but it contains all the Cisco MPLS knowledge you’ll need for the lab. The other books were MPLS-Enabled applications, which is the best book out there to give you a vendor-independent view of MPLS and really learn the theory behind it. The last book I used was Interdomain Multicast Routing, which is the best text on PIM I ever read. I never knew PIM that well untill I read that book, previously Multicast has been one of my weaker points, but after that book I just rush through it.

The Class-on-demand of Internetwork Expert is fantastic!! I used it for my written prep as well, since it teaches you the importance of an end-to-end LSP and all the funny things that IOS has with MPLS. This is one of the biggest resources of knowledge I had for my SP preparation.

Workbook 1 of INE goes over several set-ups of different types of SP technologies, it skips the R&S type labs and assumes you have a good understanding of IGP and BGP. Workbook 1 of IPexpert is quite good as well, this one goes over the basic areas as well and focuses less on SP stuff. So both are good for preparation, for learning SP stuff I would go for INE, since it covers these things a lot deeper.

Workbook 3 of IPexpert is one I wouldn’t advice if you are really up to speed already. The labs are short and easy. The video walkthroughs only show ‘typing in the answers’, there is very few explanation about technology in there. I contacted IPexpert about this and their customer service is the best! They agreed with my arguments and promised to improve it.

Workbook 2 of INE is very good. The labs built up from easy to hard with all levels in between. The real exam is like a level 8 or 9 IE lab, so it’s pretty tough.
The labs cover all the stuff that you need, except the real lab has a little more tasks.

The workbook 2 of IPexpert is fantastic!! If I may advice one workbook that you should buy from those guys it’s this one. The 5 labs are so tough and cover every little thing in each lab. You can’t do these when you just started preparing. First time I did one of these I totally got overthrown. When I got a little more prepared it was a great resource. So much stuff is asked for and they are at least twice the size of an INE lab. So as a preparation for the last month, they prepare you really well for the real deal.

Mid-April I was able to join the INE Online SP bootcamp with Brian McGahan as instructor. I wrote a large article about it on my blog, so I won’t go in to that with much detail. The mocklabs we did during the week (total of 3) were great. They are much more like the real exam and have troubleshooting and even L2VPN. I would change the name to a mock-lab-workshop. Getting a few labs graded was really the push I needed in the right direction, since I never got graded I never really knew if what I did was the right thing. Getting those scores made me confident and I knew I could do it. A want to say a huge thanks to Brian McGahan for his excellent explanations and again helping me reaching the able-to-pass level

Again I’m soo happy passing in first attempt for my SP lab and I think I’m the youngest double CCIE now on the planet.

Next up are first some Cisco DataCenter exams, then JNCIS-ER/M and in a few months I’ll start my CCIE Security track!

Thanks to everyone here and special thanks to Mike from IPexert, Kady Heaton from INE and a huge thanks to Brian McGahan for his great CoD and bootcamp. Also Scott Morris for his great Wb2 labs from his previous employer

Rick Mur
CCIE2 #21946 (R&S / SP)

Story of Panterck

2009-05-21T11:49:00.001-07:00

Hey!

Finally, in my 2nd attempt I passed CCIE R&S Lab Exam in Brussels. If you remember I had some bad luck on my first attempt with only 1% missing for pass.
I requested a re-read of my exam, but there was no update in my score.
So I took another 2 month for studying and finally got it.

For those who are interested, I started with my CCIE preparation in Aug 2008 with CCIE R&S Written Bootcamp at Unitek ( Fremont,California ) and then I took
about 5 months for preparing for the LAB exam and then went to another Bootcamp at Unitek for the LAB exam the last week in January. My first attempt
was in March 2009 where I have failed sadly and then my 2nd successful attempt in May 2009.

I studied the:

- Official CCIE R&S Written Exam v3.0 book
- TCP/IP Vol.1
- IE Workbooks Vol1,2,3
- DocCD documentation
..and some old CCNP materials especially for BSCI exam and BCMSN

I spent about 400 hours in remote labs practising which was quite a lot in this time period, because I also worked full work hours all the time of my preparation.

Anyway...I would like you all for your contribution to this forum, it helped me a lot.

Also about the LAB itself in Brussel, I was both time left with good feeling about the whole day, the ambience is nice, they now have 24' widescreen monitors
on all Racks, the temperature in the room was fine, the proctor was kind and ready to help, although I used him only twice in two attempts.

For anyone going in Brussel I suggest the NH Hottel in Diegem, because it's only 2 minutes walk to the Cisco center and 5 minuted drive from the Airport.

Those who are preparing for the CCIE Lab Exam I wish you all the best and don't be afraid of the Open Ended Questions, if you studied the theory for the written exam
carefully and are familiar with all the techonologies, it shouldn't be a problem.

CCIE success story of "ccietr"

2009-05-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

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..

Story of Matt Hill CCIE#22386

2009-05-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

Matt Hill CCIE#22386

Well… After making the most of my Qantas club membership on Monday night and not being in much of a state yesterday to do anything (Boss sent me home from work) I thought now might be the time to write up about my experience of the 20th…

I wanted to not hit the booze for a few days beforehand… make sure I would be all good. However I was forced to have a beer on Friday night and sitting out the front of the Stag Hotel in Adelaide in 28º weather with the sun setting made that rather difficult. Especially with the “view”. I was able to limit myself to one beer.

Saturday I attempted to study. I went though half a Narbik mock lab and byt about 1pm I thought, “bugger this, I’m over it, and if I don’t know it by now I may as well not bother” So I proceeded to sit on my arse for the rest of the day.

I left Adelaide at about 11am Sunday, and arrived in Sydney at 1:30pm (I think). Caught the train from the airport to St Leoonard’s, and used the GPS in my phone to tell me where the hotel was. Got to the hotel, checked in relaxed for a little. Got something to eat around 3 or so, then realised how dead St Leonards was. Apart from the train station and the McDonald’s and similar food shops there, there is not much to see. I have previously been to Cisco on Chatswood (and North Sydney) for other reasons and there is much more to do there. Shopping Malls, Cinemas, restaurants etc etc. For the traveller Chatswood is a far better lab location. I was forced to return to the hotel and spend $30 and enjoy one day’s worth of Internet. Yahoo. I love the Internet.

My action for the day was limited to rescuing a bird from being hit by a car on the way back to the hotel. The poor/stupid thing was sitting in the middle of the road trying its best to be hit by cars. I went out to the middle of the road and waved the cars past it (Pacific Highway is rather busy!) and then when it was clear enough I picked the thing up then put it in a small garden out the front of an office. When I went back an hour or two later it wasnt there. That made me warm and fuzzy because that was much better than seeing the thing meet its demise by a big truck on National Highway 1.

Had dinner at 7pm or so, and was in bed by 9:30. My plan was to wake up early, shower, brekky and have an hour or so to let the brekky settle and then go to the lab, which was right by the train station (900m from the hotel). The plan was all well and good… until I woke at 2-2:30.

I couldn’t get back to sleep until about 4:30. I knew the whole time I was awake if I could sleep for one more hour I should be ok. All my work for the past decade would have gone down the gurgler if I was tired. Luckily I fell asleep again and my wake up call came at 6:30.

Got up, SSS (Shit, Shower, Shave) then went downstairs to have a delicious eggs benedict for brekky. Back upstairs, pack my stuff, sit down for a bit then went for a walk to the lab. On the way I popped into the chemist and purchased some earplugs, just on case.

Got into Cisco at 8:15. Lab was due to start at 8:30. There were four other guys doing the lab. One fellow was Malaysian (SP), two English guys (R&S) and one other Skippy bloke from Brisbane (Security). The proctor arrived at about 9:10 and by that stage we were all ready to jump out the window. Luckily the reception and lab is on level 3 and we may have survived the jump. I believe the lab in Chatswood was on level 9. I am sure the elevation of the lab was a factor in considering the new location.

The proctor briefed us and gave us all the answers for the lab. I am glad he likes fine Barossa Valley Shiraz.

Just kidding.

We started work, and I proceeded to read the exam book cover to cover. It was in between 1 and 1000 pages long. The pages were made out of paper. There was ink on them, which was dry. The ink spelled out a variety of words. One of them was “Cisco”. I hope that last bit helps you with your studies…

Seriously though, setting up my L2, all seemed ok. Started on L3 and I broke a few things and it all went into a screming heap. Took a little while to fix, but got it working. I took a little longer than I wanted with IGP but I was still on track. I wont say any more about this I’m sorry.

After lunch, I skipped a few sections which I wanted to do last because I knew I could get things done quicker. So bang points per time and all that. There were a few things that I had never seen in my life before, so luckily the ? key and the doc cd are there. I am able to find anything I want in the doc cd in about 30 secs. I strongly advise you to learn to do the same. I think this got me 10 points in the end. I checked all my configs for just about everything in the doc cd just to make sure.

I asked the proctor about 5 questions throughout the test. I think the wording of the questions were ok but the proctor was able to clarify what I was asking.

I was “finished” with about 90 mins to spare. I then went through the whole book again checking everything. I changed two things, worth a total of 6 points. Of course I do not know if my changes increased or decreased my total but to be honest right now I really dont care :P Once I did this check, I had 40 or so mins to go and I did one more check. Nothing else was changed and I thought the whole thing was working ok. 15 minutes to go and I was reasonably happy. Of course I was not 100% that I passed, but I thought it looked ok. Just OK.

So it was time to go. The proctor informed us that the Brussels lab would be marking our labs. Remember this point for later.

Three of us caught the train back to the airport. I immediately took my sweaty stressed out body to the bar of the Qantas club and immediately proceeded to make the most out of my membership fee. By this stage it was about 6:30 and one hour after the lab was over. I set up my laptop, and wasted time on Facebook and other fun things. I also perpetually pressed “refresh” on the CCO page for the lab scheduling tool.

After an hour or so of sinking vodka, lime & sodas and abusing the “refresh” button, a popup says “pass” for my lab. About 30 secs later I got an email telling me to check my result. I clicked the button and my number was not yet ready, however I got a congratulations message. The first thing I did was ring my parents to tell them. There I was sitting down the bloody Qantas lounge with about 8 empty vodka glasses with tears in my eyes in front of my stupid laptop talking to my father. I told him the news but my mother was not home, so I went to call her on the mobile….

BUT!!! now this is a HUGE BUT…..

I clicked somewhere else, and then it said FAIL. FAIL FAIL FAIL. Bad luck but feel proud you paid your money and sat the lab. I was like… “WTF??? How can you do this to me??? You just told me I passed!” I had to run out of the Qantas club, and out onto the tarmac to pick my heart up, which was down in the basement somewhere by this stage. When I returned and refreshed, the page then updated to say pass, but I still had no number. I was very wary. I spoke to Narbik and he said it took a while to sync to all the pages. I called Arden to ask him how long it took him to get his number. He didn’t answer! I was shitting broken glass…. “What if something was wrong and I really failed?” I clicked on every bloody thing I could and all I could see was “PASS”. That was ok. Still no number. BACK TO THE BAR.

Now, my ex girlfriend lives in Brussels. She works in the same area as Cisco. So I called her in my state and asked her to go and visit Cisco and flash her boobs at the Proctor for me to see if that would help me pass. She is rather attractive so hopefully that would work.

By this stage my plane was ready to board and I was a right vulnerable mess. I arrived in Adelaide 2 hours and 3 mini bottles of Shiraz later, logged on at Adelaide Airport the second I got off the plane and still no number. It was 10:30pm.

I got home at about 10:50. I logged in again and kapow. #22386. My ex did a great job.

Now… How did I do it? I really only seriously started in about March or so. The two words you need are Narbik and Bootcamp. The combination of the training plus the workbooks were invaluable. If you know everything in those lab books, you will pass. Thats it. End of story. Also sitting the second bootcamp two weeks ago helped. It was a good refresher and jogged my memory about things I may have missed. So if you want those numbers, go and sit Narbik’s course and get your arse into those advanced tech lab books. it worked for me, it will work for you too.

So… Thanks to everyone who has helped me out over the years, thanks to my parents, Narbik and all you guys who read and post to my drivel.

Oh, and thank you Kathleen for flashing your cans at the proctor in Brussels. I knew they would come in handy again some day!

Story of #20484

2009-05-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

“Dear all:
I passed CCIE lab exam on April 9th 2008. Certificate#20484 in Tokyo.
I’m Chinese Japanese, born in China, Japanese nationality, permanent US Green Card, living in US, trilingual speaking, went to China, Beijing, three times (last time was longest, 4 weeks) CCIE boot camp, totally passed CCNA,CCNP, and finally passed CCIE I in my sixth lab attempt.”

I remain in the trust of many CCIEs and this particular CCIE story comes from the latest female CCIE.
April 9th 2008 is a day I will never forget for the rest of my life! Every time I think about that day it makes me cry with joy. It was a day of joy, but it started very badly for me. I remember vividly that it was a day with so much going on. I passed the CCIE lab exam, which is most difficult and most respected high-level certification in the world!
The morning began at 6:00 AM with the sound of my alarm pulling me out of a restless sleep. I took the Center line of Tokyo from Kunitachi station which is close to my apartment to Sinjuku station.

When I got to the Mitsui Building – CCIE exam location it was 10 minutes before 8:00AM, I found a sign in the lobby that read, ‘Cisco front desk on 10th floor’, so I took the elevator to the 10th floor and was surprised to find there was no one else there. So I thought it was still early so I waited there until 8:20AM, and when no one else showed up I began to panic. Since the exam was supposed to start at 8:30AM I was wondering why there was no one else showing up. So I rushed back down to the lobby and asked security to verify the location of the floor and exam area. I weas told to go back up to the 10th floor and at 8:30 I was in a panic. I took the elevator to the 8th floor which is another Cisco floor and was shocked to find an even smaller sign that said, ”CCIE candidates please push the button”. I quickly pushed the button twice and suddenly the examiner opened the door ,”you are late”, he said, “you cannot start the exam with the other candidates”. Bang, he shut the door. I was left unsure of what to do. I began to look around to see if I could get into the test room. Since I was not told to wait or if I should expect his return I began to feel very badly about my chances of passing the lab this day. I was so frustrated since I had prepared for the lab and hoped to pass it this 6th attempt. I was feeling very low as the time ticked passed and I was late by 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes! I began to think I had wasted the $1,400 fee for the lab I had paid and the 8 hour lab does take all of that time to complete. Would the examiner let me pass today? What a day! I could hear the sound of the other lab candidates typing on their keyboards and I was so distraught as the time passed from 30 minutes to 40 minutes late. I was afraid if I pushed the button again the examiner would be angry and I would really have no chance to pass. God, help me I pushed the button again. The examiner opened the door again at 9:10 AM and he said, “I have to tell you the exam role”. I explained that I had taken the test before and felt I knew the role well. He told me the role had changed and to listen to his instructions. When he let me start the test it was 9:30AM, I had lost a whole hour and now only had 7 hours to complete a timed exam that was designed for 8 hours. If I hurry, I told myself maybe I could still do it. I read all the requirements and then drew a topology with IP addresses out, osph, eigrp, bgp protocol on one A4 paper, and congfigure, configure…WOW! Frame-Relay works! 4 switches… trunk works! BB1, BB2, BB3 works! I can ping them! I built up some confidence and before I knew it it was lunch time. Just then I showed IP routes, I had already almost made all the topology routes works! I checked my watch it was 12:30, I was suddenly very happy and felt I could be pass.

After lunch, I had four and half hours left, think, I was slowing down my typing speed, being very careful and tested everything as I went along, tested all my answers ensure they were correct, I felt very confident! “re-do” the exam. I found some mistakes and corrected them, 2.5 hours left… suddenly I was on the IPV6 question (5 points)… I couldn’t type the IP address in! Jesus, why was that happening? I had no idea! Should I give up? No. I but I could fail again if I could not figure out why I could not type in the answer on the screen. I was afraid to ask the examiner if there was a problem. He might deduct from my score if I made a bad impression. But it still won’t work! If I could type the address init would be correct since I know exactly how to configure IPV6. The examiner announced 10 minutes remaining so I finally asked him to look at my screen and explain why I could not enter the information in the box. He saw my screen and it seems he had never seen this error before. So he returned to his desk and typed in something which allowed me to start entering the information. But I only had 5 minutes left! I had no time to configure all of the IP addresses and then the exam was over.
I went back home that night and I could not sleep at all, no matter how hard I tried. Then it was mid-night and I thought that maybe in the US they might already have the results posted. I couldn’t sleep anyway so I got to check the Cisco website. Pass or fail I had to know. When I checked the Cisco web site, I was shocked. I saw “ PASS” as my result! I began to babble; really? Really? REALLY! I could not believe my eyes! Yes, I passed! I passed the lab exam! I passed the most difficult, highest level exam in the world!
I felt I climbed the highest mountain, I was on the top! Oh my GOD you do love me , I could not contain myself and began to cry. I wanted to yell and scream and announce to the whole world what I had done. “I PASSED MY CCIEEEEEEE !!!!!!!!!” Thank you Cisco where once I was accepted to work as a contractor and exposing me to the this my highest goal. I spend tree years trying to claim this prize, to reach the top of this mountain. I spent lots of money and failed many times:

17-Nov-2005 failed!

12-Apr-2006 failed!

16-May-2006 BGP 100%, Multicast 100%, but failed!..

08-Aug-2006 almost there, failed again..

18-Jul-2007 failed again…

09-Apr-2008 just another day but I passed!

That day finally, I reached my dream! I first thought about my family, I had to thank them for being patient with me and allowing me to travel overseas to the CCIE boot camp three times. They did not even understand the true value of my desire to become a CCIE, yet they still supported me. I had a great professional experience working for British Telecom, Cisco System Inc, Telepacific telecom and AT&T all these companies helped me realize the value of this certification. I will never forget the nice people I worked with either since they inspired me. I wanted to thank especially Joujun an excellent boot camp instructor who becam my mentor. Even after he resigned from his position at the boot camp he remained my technical mentor through all my failed attempts and continued to support me with advice and answers to my technical questions. I also wanted to call Zhengtao Huan who is a CCIE genius with 3 CCIEs. I bothered him many times with questions and he always responded promptly and added value to my quest. I learned so much during this past few years that I really feel it was what gave me the push I needed to pass.
“I was felling my heart is so big! I can see all the world wide!”
“My dream cross over 3 years finally come true!”
“April 9th 2008, I never forget this day and I will put this day to be my special day forever!”

Story of Joe Astorino, CCIE #24347

2009-05-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, it’s official!!!! After a grueling 9 hour wait, most of which was in my hotel room here in Raleigh, I just got my score report, and I am officially CCIE #24347!!!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! The greatest 5 #’s I have ever heard! Keep in mind, that I am 5.5 beers in at this point as I decided around 10:30 that no matter what I was having a 6 pack for my troubles hehe. So what can I say? I guess I will give you my experience today and a little bit about my preparation.

I flew into Raleigh Sunday afternoon, and stayed at the Wingate. The Wingate came highly recommended by the many that have gone before me, and they were right on. I can’t recommend it enough. They picked me up at the airport, and took me right to the hotel. When I inquired about where I could walk to pick up some redbull for the lab the next day, they DROVE ME to the nearest gas station like it was just normal. I guess that is the southern love…being from Detroit, I’m not used to that sort of thing hehe. When I was picked up at the airport I was told I was the 3rd CCIE candidate being picked up that day…they knew exactly what I was there for, and exactly what to do.

The lab started at 7:15, and I was told the shuttle from the hotel to Cisco would leave about 6:30, giving us plenty of time. I woke up at 6:00 AM, threw on my jeans and T-shirt (opted against the sweatpants!!!), grabbed my 3 large size redbulls from the fridge and headed down to the hotel breakfast area. I was too nervous to eat a thing. I chatted up the other 2 candidates staying there and passively sipped a cup of coffee. The other 2 guys were doing voice, so there wasn’t really much to talk about. The shuttle drove us over to Cisco and we were there by 6:45…in total there were about 6 of us waiting outside…it was the most awkward thing EVER….after some brief introductions by a few of us, it was DEAD SILENCE for 30 minutes as we stood outside and waited for the proctor to show up. Our proctor pulled in about 7:10, and took us into the lobby where we were ID’d and given our temp stickers and rack numbers. The proctor gave us all the regular instructions and told us basically where the bathrooms and drinks were, and gave us the general rules of the lab (get rid of any macros at the end of the day, save your configs often, etc…).

I sat down at my pod and started in on the OEQ … the first one threw me….it seemed very simple. All I can say without breaking NDA is that it was some command output and a diagram, and I couldn’t place the answer… I gave it my best shot and moved on. The other 3 questions were no problem at all, although later in the day I feared I might have messed up the wording of one of them….all in all it took me about 5 minutes. Guys, after reading all the posts and fear regarding this I have to say, IF you have studied properly, there is nothing to fear!!!

I moved on to the lab just like I would any other mock lab I’ve been doing for 10 months….followed the method Jared Scrivener gave us at IPexpert bootcamp, which was AWESOME. Yes, I read the entire lab first, which was a good thing, because there were things towards the end that definitely effected how I did other tasks. I made a list of tasks, point values, and notes for every task. I redrew the diagram…I made 1 diagram with all my L3 and IGP information. The BGP diagram they provided was sufficient enough for me, and I didn’t feel the need for a seperate switching diagram. Having initially read through the lab, I felt pretty good. There were only 2 things I had not done before…it was just a matter of implementing all the things I had learned and practiced time and time again, and making sure to pay special attention to detail.

I was not going for speed…I knew one of my weakest areas was not paying attention to detail enough, so I took my sweet time. I knew I had good speed coming in and I’d likely have plently of time.

Just as the proctor called lunch (11:15) I was starting in on multicast and had full IP reachability, so was feeling pretty good. My personal experience on the point system was that all my points added up to 80. At lunch time I had 42 points and was feeling pretty damn good. Lunch was basically silent….they had a pretty decent tasting chicken contraption with soda, water, and salad. It was pretty good. I was actually so juiced up on redbull and coffee that it didn’t really matter, as long as it was food : ) We had to wait through the whole lunch time that was allotted to us. Actually, the proctor let us start working 5 minutes earlier, noting to everyone that we would lose 5 minutes at the end, which I found fair. I approached the proctor more than anybody else in the lab…probably about 4 times. Guys, you are paying $1400 for his time, do not be ashamed!!! Most of my questions were just verification of things to be 110% sure of what they were asking!

Later in the day I felt a bit less confident, as I hit my weaker areas (QoS, Multicast)… I felt 75% sure on about 75% of these tasks….maybe 85% sure…like you know you are right or very close to right, but the kind of thing where you want to look at the solutions guide to double check yourself. No solutions guide today gentlemen : ) I completed all the tasks by about 2:00 and started verification, which was SOOOOO important to my success I can’t even explain! I went through task by task and did the appropriate show commands to prove I had done it right. What I found was suprising. It is a little unnerving to have already marked down points and with 90 minutes to go find you have one section broken completely, and a routing loop somewhere else , as well as about 3 other stupid minor mistakes. Had it not been for verification I don’t know if I would have made it out OK. I wasn’t in it for speed…I stayed until they called time verifying and reverifying with my trusty TCL scripts. At 3:28 the proctor told us we had 2 minutes left and to save our configs, remove any macros and TCL scripts (which I don’t get because TCL scripts are not saved), return all the devices to priv exec mode and reboot our PCs. I found it a bit alarming that they didn’t say something like “OK you have 30 minutes left” but just like that BAM , OK you are DONE in 2 minutes! Oh well…I got about 75% through re-checking everything.

I counted up about 68/80 points I thought I had for sure….and I had about 8 points “on the fence” that I just wasn’t sure about…so I felt pretty good walking out. I felt like I probably had a good shot at it.

The worst part of my entire day was the waiting game…I am staying the night here in Raleigh, and have no car and nothing to do…I coudn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat much…I pain stakingly sat here refreshing my email and watching TV for about 4 hours….finally I decided to go take a walk. I walked about a half mile to a gas station and bought a 6 pack of beer while listening to the new Dylan album on my iPod. When I got back I killed some time talking to a friend on the phone….right before he hung up the email came in…I checked it live on the phone. I HAD PASSED!!! CCIE #24347! Obviously, I couldn’t even describe how I felt, but it was a great experience to share with a friend!

Wow this is getting long, so let me tell you a bit about my preparation. I am a straight forward kind of guy and I am not on here to promote any company over another, just to tell you my experiences. As far as vendors go, I uses STRICTLY the workbooks and blended learning solution from IPEXPERT. Their blended learning solution came with all 3 of their workbooks (1 technology focuses, and 2 workbooks of full scale labs), as well as the full Scott Morris Video On Demand / Audio on Demand series (When Scott was still with IPexpert.) This was my bread and butter guys. I passed my written at the end of July, 2008 and immediately started on the material. I read most of the usual recommended books cover to cover, and really tried to grasp the concepts…I went through the entire video on demand, and listened to the audio portion countless times. In fact, my wife even does here Scott Morris impersonation now : ) Thats how you know you have a keeper hehe….Anyways, I worked through these labs with all my heart and soul for 10 months. I got involved in the various communities, and I can’t say enough about them. Groupstudy especially…there are so many guys on here that you can learn from, it is just awesome!

Just when I thought I was ready, I booked an IPexpert 5 day instructor led bootcamp just to touch up my weak areas and hope that it would be mostly review and a confidence builder. I did this 2 weeks before my lab date, and it was well worth it. You can read my review of that that I posted earlier as well. Jared Scrivener was our instructor and he was at the top of his game…just a really great experience for me.

Going into the lab I felt confident…coming out of the lab I can honestly say I was exteremely well prepared.

And now the obligatory thank you section : )

Big thanks goes out to — Scott Morris — Dude, no matter what shirt you were wearing you were ALWAYS willing to help me with my issues, and I can’t say enough about how much I appreciate that. Weather it was a question on a lab you had authored at previous jobs, or an annoying IOS bug I was struggling with, you helped me. Even when you had moved on professionally, you gave me honest and productive support. Yes, your voice is forever etched in my brain from the VoD and we know you don’t pay for therapy!!!

Huge thanks to Jared Scrivener, Tyson Scott, Mike Down, Sean Orr, Wayne Lawson and the ENTIRE IPexpert team, who have been with me from start to finish. These guys have been just awesome…from Mike and Sean in sales, to Tyson and Jared with the technical material. It’s been a fun and good experience! I got what I expected — world class training, support, and customer service, and THAT is hard to find these days! A special thanks personally to Jared for his excellent teaching methods, and willingness to go the extra mile time and time again, and for giving his students personal 1-1 support!

Huge thanks to cciejourney, the guy that runs our blog at sunpenguin.net! Carl, I couldn’t have done it without you buddy, and you WILL get your digits soon man! We will all still be here pulling for you, and don’t forget it! Carl was nice enough to give me a login here, and a place to dump my thoughts.

Group Study and the OSL — You guys have been my life for the past 10 months…I’d read the threads every day, and hopefully I helped a few people along the way. It is so awesome to have a community of people just like me, willing to help just because well, we love it and enjoy giving back to the community. Special thanks to Scott, Narbik, Anthony, Petr, and so many others that have chimed in. Bryan B, who achieved his CCIE # just a month or so before me…we were study partners and bounced things off each other all the time…good times! Thanks to everybody that helped me along directly or indirectly weather I mention you by name or not.

Last but certainly not least, my family and friends for their unwavering support over the past 10 months and ESPECIALLY my new beautiful wife Beth. I know everybody says this and I know when I read these threads it was usually the part I said “yeah right” and moved on but seriously…they have given up SO much to support me and let me pursue my dream. There were many times I had to come home from work, eat dinner, and by 6:00 PM tell my wife goodnight, I won’t see you until tomorrow after work because I have to study 6:00 - 2:00 tonight, or do a mock lab, or read the docCD or whatever…to my friends, congratulations I am back : ) I have not had time to do many of the things I used to like to do lately, and now I am looking forward to hanging out more.

I guess thats it guys…I know this was long, and thansk for anything that got through the whole thing…this whole post is sort of stream of consiousness at this point. The CCIE is doable, but like many before me have said, you have to seriously want it, and put in the time, effort, and sacrifice to achieve it.

- Joe Astorino, CCIE #24347

Story of beavis

2009-05-09T06:29:00.000-07:00

Hi All,
Well, Ive been an avid reader of this forum throughout my CCIE studies and promised myself that, if I were to ever get through the lab, then Id make a post so here goes ...

Did the exam last week and am still coming to terms with the fact that I made it through first time round. I still check the Cisco site daily to make sure that they haven’t made a mistake. Start to finish took me about 9 months (inc written) on top of 7-8 years experience. I made the decision to hit the exam hard rather than dragging it out. First bit of advice I can give is not to under estimate the amount of time, energy and work that this track entails. This exam has dictated my life throughout with waking up early before work to get an hour in followed by more time in the evenings. Weekends were planned round study. Friends/family/partner also felt the pain that the exam brings Ive read blogs where people have somehow managed to make the exam a secondary concern. I did it the other way round based on the info given to me from other candidates. Fortunately there are three other CCIEs in the office so they were a great source of advice on how to approach the CCIE. I was also lucky enough to be able to take two months off work (unpaid) so have spent that time doing 14hr days surrounded by only books and routers.

Anyway, the new format. When they first introduced it I tried to cancel the lab and get a refund. There was that much fear. To be honest, Id never thought Id be saying this, but Im now an advocate of the open ended questions. When I heard I split my study 50:50 between theory and practical. The theory has obvious benefits to the practical and I was a better candidate for it. If it stops people cheating their way through then this is a good side effect. Its also hugely beneficial for candidates. Theres no other part of the lab where 21 points can be gained in just 30 minutes. Get this right and thats almost a quarter of the points obtained before 9 o clock. As Cisco state, a well prepared candidate shouldn’t fear these questions. (Please don’t ask for the actual questions – this exam has drained me and Ive no intention of breaking the NDA and giving it up).

Actual lab itself can be daunting. Ive watched the class on demand videos and read advice on what to do (ear plugs/diagrams/TCL etc etc) and I went into the lab telling myself Im going to do XYZ. Its easy to think this with a calm mind but can be in a different proposition with adrenaline. To be honest, as soon as I got in the lab the only thing I did was read the exam from cover to cover to try and catch any requirements that had dependencies further on. Diagrams were already done for you and the exam room was quiet enough. Dont get me wrong – I can see the benefit of doing diagrams but for me this would have wasted unnecessary time. Just my opinion. Another thing to remember is not to be complacent about time. Eight hours goes amazingly quickly. I also promised myself not to get dragged in to wasting time on any single questions. If it didn’t work then move on. Easier said that done and I fell into this trap and it almost cost me. I finished with just 10 minutes to go. Ive also read that the exam is about speed. This, in my opinion is incorrect. Speed is worth nothing if its wrong. Accuracy is whats important. Getting it right first time is half the battle and will save time and troubleshooting.

With regards to prep – used the IEWB labs and bought all the gear of Ebay and managed to scratch enough together to get some 2600s, 2520s for the frame switch, a term server and 4 3550s. If I were to do it again then Id probably add at least a couple of XMs and a 3560. These all cost extra money and my set up did 90% of what was on the blueprint. The other 10% I learnt the theory and then made use of ccierack.co.uk to get some exposure to the 3560s and unsupported features on the 2600s (good set up and Marks a helpful guy). Also invested in the CiscoPress TCP/IP vol 1 and 2, CCIE R&S guide, QoS and internet routing architectures. All great books esp TCP/IP. If buying only two books then make sure its these. I also spent a lot of time reading the Cisco Doc CD. Print it out, read and reread. This has the obvious benefits of learning the technology and knowing where to look if called upon in the exam. There were a couple of times that I needed this just to double check.

I was freaking out with a couple of days to go before the exam. Its difficult not be nervous. Best bit of advice I had was to “expect to fail the first time, enjoy it, take in the environment and to allow for a second attempt – only be nervous if its attempt 5 or 6”. In retrospect this was spot on although thought it strange at the time. Most exams it would have been words of encouragement. When I left the lab I wasn’t sure how I did but was strangely confident that Id make it through if I had to do it again. First time round theres a lot of additional stress such as dealing with the topology and coping with an unknown exam format and procedures. Giving up after just one go just wasn’t an option with the amount of time and energy invested.

Results came through within about 12hrs. Time seems to stand still while the page comes up and when it does theres an initial feeling of disbelief followed by a sense of sheer exhilaration and relief. The last few days have been a bit strange .. theres suddenly a concept of free time. In retrospect wish Id have done the exam earlier in my career. I always thought the CCIE is an unachievable goal held by a few network gods. The CCIE has improved me tremendously as an engineer and actually made life at work easier . Do I consider myself a network god .. not a chance. It just takes time, motivation and a hell of a lot of dedication ..

Story of ciberkot

2009-05-09T06:28:00.000-07:00

As I posted a couple days ago I successfully passed the CCIE R&S lab from the first attempt.
Here I'll try to summarize my experience to CCIE (but please don't expect much and fluent story ).

I'll start from the end - on 21st of January in Brussels on 7:30 we met wiht other 9 candidates (4 or 5 RS, 2 VoIP, 2 Security or SP and one Wireless (didn't know before that there is the Wireless CCIE track ) ) on the lobby. Two of the candidates were CISCO employees.
at ~8 o'clock we were gathered and followed to the lab-room, where we were given short instructions. Room with some drinks, coffee, tee and snacks was opposites the lab room, one could go outside so often as needed.

Some people says that in reality the lab exam much easier as expected, but I should say here, if one really spent one year to prepare for the lab he should know about 70% what to expect there, you're not going to meet there something new, if you did, it simply mean that during the preparation you missed something. For me it was exactly so difficult as I expected - I didn't meet there any new technologies or approaches, it's more about interpretation the questions and solving the issues, which are generated for you specially during the lab. and I'm pretty confidential - I'm not genius, and if I would meet the lab with difficulty like 9-10 (according IE scale) I would fail, with level 8 I think I'd be right above of the 75%.

Ok now to my approach and experience.
Actually it's quite difficult for me to give the exactly amount of time which I used for preparation, because during last 3-4 years I was preparing for different Cisco certifications: CCNA - CCNP, then CCDA - CCDP and CCSP. it means that for the written exam it took me about 2 months without big stress.
I started my first part of lab practice (IE Advanced Technologies lab and may be 4-5 lab from the Main part) on March 2007, but during this time I was mostly busy with building my test lab. I started with real-hardware (I had a few cisco's routers on my own ) but then I realized then dimamips gives me exactly what I need + flexibility. I took Dell 2650 with Double-DualCore 2 GHz and 4 GB RAM, install there all necessary tools and it was enough to run 13 routers + FRS. On my working place we have a test lab and I used it for the practice on the switching tasks. Unfortunately I didn't have any 3550 or 3560 but enough 6500s .
I played around with my test lab until I managed it to a very flexible and stable envenoming and then middle of May I started to prepare for the written part. It was for me the easiest part, after all certifications which I was preparing for, I didn't see or learn anything new, may be only QoS was for me a "dark" area. I read the official Cisco's CCIE written lab guide and one of the Cisco's QoS guides and I passed written test without big problem and stress.

After written part we traveled with my family for one month to our parents, of course this month was completely out of the preparation plan.
Ok, Middle of August we were back I started to plan my journey. I wanted to take the first attempt on December, but the first available date was 21.01.2009 and I said - OK, it's better then, because the X-mas and NewYear time are not going to be very productive anyway. After the first labs I realized (and I supposed to be) that my strengths are L2 switching and BGP (it's my work where I could master this topics), the weaknesses are QoS and Redistribution (sick!)
The plan was following:
- the first 10-12 weeks I had to finish the second part of IE completely
- next 4-5 weeks part 3 of IE,
- next 2-3 weeks rent some racks to play around with 3550/3560 and then to finish 4-5 Mocklabs.
- If time is still there try other study materials (In my case it was I P Expert v9, I managed about 10 last labs, one lab a day).

of course life and family make their own "tuning" to my plan, accidentally traveling, friends visits, X-mas and NewYear but at the end the plan was 100% complete. According to my plan I needed to spend 5-6 hours every day until the time X, and I think I was pretty much close to it. In the last 6 weeks before the lab we were surprised that our company is going to be closed in half a year but from the other side the exam fee and the travel was already paid J and thank to that fact I could spent my working hours completely for the lab preparation, I think last 4 weeks I spent around 8-10 hours per weekday for practice.

The first 5-6 months (including the written part) was the months where I really leant some new technologies and approaches. As I said for my work I was pretty experienced in L2 switching and BGP by the rest should be yet mastered. I read a tons of materials from DocCD and some external sources, like IE blog (very very useful information hxxp://blog.internetworkexpert.com/category/ccie-routing-switching ) and IE forum (where they discussed the labs solution), and dozens of CCIE forums and blogs, including our favorite sadikhov
The last 2 months was the time when I practiced my speed and accuracy. At the end all basic tasks (L2 switching, Frame-relay, basic IGP and BGP) where done by my fingers without the head.
The IOS application/services are the topics which one should simply know that are exists somewhere and to know the way (from DocCD) how to configure them.
QoS should have been practiced a lot (at least for me) in order to get really understanding
Security was not so difficult for me because I have some security backgrounds, of cause the way of configuration should be practiced.
IGP redistribution - sometimes I thought my head is boiling , but at the end I decided to follow the advices to not loose too many time and efforts to do the redistribution which is requitered by a task and simply do only the necessary redistribution to get the full reachablity
IPv6 was pretty straightforward, without MP-BGP it's not so interesting

ok, to my lab:
I lost too much time reading the Task book and trying to solve the issues and the beginning, It was really enough just the look through it and notice some relationships between tasks. I found out, the L2-L3-IGP part was about 75% of all tasks regarding time and efforts. Services,IPv6, Security and BGP were pretty straightforward (but I got into pitfall there anyway ). At the lunchtime I didn't finish my IGP part completely, redistribution task with some really strange requirements was left, proctor couldn't help much, but at least he tried. He answered another couple of questions and I was pretty satisfied, there were not too much what I wanted to ask him anyway. After lunch in 2,5-3 hours I finished all tasks and for me left 1-1,5 hour to check everything again. I did a short break for coffee and some fruits. During the re-check phase I didn't find anything what I could improve , but in the last 5 minutes I realized (BGP section was the last one this time) that my neighbor AS don't see the prefixes from one of the BBs! Here I got some panic, but could very quick found out that one of iBGP neighbor missed next-hop-self option, after I put it on the placed and restarted the BGP session all prefixes were there! God....
Ok from my own calculation, if I take only really 100% tasks (where the interpretation and solution were correct from my point of view) I reached 85%, plus 8-10 points on the questions where my interpretation could be correct, and a couple of question where I didn't see the way how to meet requirements (one strange question about STP timers and shortest ACL).

After the lab three of us went to the same and had a chat. For the one of them it was the third attempt for the second it was the first as well, we discussed a little bit the exam and then I went to my room to get a little bit rest. The results were available at 2:00AM but I was at this time completely sick I think I had 39C and couldn't sleep at all, I checked the status, called my wife and she was very proud of me. I was really satisfied and fill better

joshatterbury

2009-05-09T06:25:00.000-07:00

"This post is all about detailing the time from my first attempt up until today. Disclaimer: I have done very little editing so it is me rambling.

On 15-Dec-08 I failed my first attempt at R&S, I was devastated that night and for half of the following day, The hardest part about the entire experience for me was showing up at work the next day and answering all those questions with ” I failed”. I’m not entirely sure if I was just unlucky or lazy, But If I had to pick then laziness/arogance would have been the one.

About lunch time on the day after I had enough of sulking and feeling sorry for myself, So I decided to come up with an action plan on how I would attempt the lab next, From my previous study and failed attempt I realised the following :
- Speed was not an issue for me,
- I needed to learn the doc cd better
- In reality my only weak areas were qos ( particularly switch based ) and some of the multicast concepts.
- The rest of the content I was very comfortable with and wasn’t to concerned.

Based on this, My new study plan started on the 5th of Jan and at this stage I hadn’t booked my second lab as this time I was going to wait until I had that feeling that I was ready.

First thing I needed to do was cover qos and mcast from the ground up. I used the CiscoPress QoS guide and The TCP/IP guides ( Which ever volume has mcast in it ). First I went over the theory, This was accomplished by writing out the concepts and operations in a notebook. After that I then went through every single command available for Qos. By this I mean I verified the operation of the command, then where it’s found in the doccd and finally created simple scenario labs on the fly just for the specific command to truly understand it. Once QoS was finished I basically did the same thing for multicast but focused on igmp, pim, autorp, bsr and anycast.

After this section of my study was done, I then pulled out Narbiks Advanced tech workbooks, Now the plan was to not *do* a single lab in these books. Instead I read the labbooks cover to cover. I read the qestions, The solutions and then researched the doccd for every section covered. Anytime I ran across something I didn’t remember, It was straight back to the doccd to firstly find it and then hit the examples and configs. During this time there were definately moments when I wanted to give up as reading workbooks isn’t the most exciting thing to do, But I forced myself to as there was no way i could handle failing twice.

This study regimn took about three weeks and finished around Wednesday Jan-21, So I booked my lab for the following Wednesday Jan 28. I managed to get from the 22 till the 28th off work which was great, The following is an overview of each of those days.

Thursday the 22. I didn’t do to much study on this day as I felt I needed a break and spent time with my girl.

Friday the 23. I had 2 x 8 hour ProctorLab sessions booked back to back, As I hadn’t done alot of lab work in the last month I did two mocklabs this day for endurance purposes.

Saturday and Sunday 24/25. Relaxed again, Friday absolutely fried my brain. spent more time with my girl

Monday the 26. Today was a repeat of Friday, Another 2 mocklabs done back-to-back

Tuesday the 27. One day before the lab, My plane left at 5pm, So I bummed around for most of the day with my girl. Arrived at my hotel around 7pm and had an awesome dinner with a few beers at the hotel, I managed to get to sleep about 10pm.

Wednesday the 28.

So Today is Lab day, I woke up about 7am and as the Sydney Lab is a 5 minute walk I took my time getting dressed, This was mainly to slow down and focus on getting my nerves under control. After that I had breakfast at the restaurant and checked out of the hotel around 7:50.

I think the walk to the Lab center is always going to be a fairly solemn event, I Just tried to focus on what was coming. I arrived at the Lab center at 8:05 or so and waited in the foyer for the proctor ( Scott ) who came out at around 8:15. He checked our id, handed out the visitor stickers and herded us into the metting root area. In there we had the usual rundown of rules. Btw Scott’s a funny man, He tried to pretend that the new open ended questions had been moved forward and were being introduced today :). Two of the candidates got quite nervous at that stage.

And then into the lab we went, Officially we started at 08:29. I followed a similar strategy to last time, Except this time I didn’t do any large scale drawings, I used the provided diagrams for large scale reference and only drew specific components as I needed them, I think this made a slight difference. As I read the lab there were a couple of tasks that I thought would give me a headache but otherwise it looked good.

Everyone knows what comes next. I started configuring my devices, The tasks I thought might be problematic turned out to be very easy and that boosted my confidence a bit. I think out of the entire day I asked the proctor to clarify 3 points in total. Now there was one task that for some reason I just couldn’t get working properly, It wasn’t a core task so i decided to leave it till last.

I wasn’t really paying attention to the time so I was very surprised when it was lunch time and I only had 4 tasks to complete. Thats it, Only 4 including the problem task from earlier. I had already completed a very large majority of the exam.

Lunch was ok, Not worth paying 1500$ for though All the guys were pretty chatty which was good for a distraction.

Then back into the lab we went, I finished 3 of the remaining tasks within 30mins, So I Now went back to that problem task from earlier, I still can’t identify why it wasn’t working for me and it had me stumped. At this stage we still had 3hours to go and it was verification time. I double checked everything and found one task where i had missed a key word, Promptly fixed that up and went back to the problem task again.

Still I couldn’t get this task to operate properly so after about 30minutes of hair pulling I decided to forgo those points. I believe that if I kept at it I would have broken something else. I decided to sacrifice those points for the good of the lab ;).

By this stage there were two hours left. I had verified all tasks multiple time except the problem task. Now I know everyone advises to never ever ever ever leave the exam early, Well I got my nerves under control and I ignored that advice. I packed my booklet up, walked out of the lab and upto the proctor and said I’m done. The Proctor was great, He asked me a million times if I was absolutely sure, and then asked another million times just to clarify. I think you all know the rest of the story from here.

Reflection Time:
I am still in shock and this hasn’t fully sunk it. Now the term “Router God” which I used in the title. This term has held a very special meaning for me for a long time, Ever since I first heard about these people called CCIE’s, very rarely did they have names in the stories and the stories were always told with awe. Router gods are those people that have been there, smashed the lab and know their stuff. I’ve made it and this feeling is awesome.

I need to thank Melissa Forro. She is my girl and has put up with all my continual study, stress and general crankiness that often results from a journey like this. My wish was to get those digits before Christmas as I planned propose to Mel on Christmas day and I wanted to be able to be there fulltime for her. Unfortunately it wasn’t so, Yet I still proposed and she said yes, So babe I’m sorry this took me away for a little longer but its over now. We made it."

Beschbach

2009-05-09T06:22:00.002-07:00

First I would like to thank everyone who responded. And this wouldn't be possible without the support if my wife and family. Plus my wife owed me since I supported her during the bar exam I have been a "passive" member on the forum for a while now and it is exciting to see so many people accomplishing their goals. I know I will sound like a broken record so just bare with me. I started the whole journey in April of this year. I started with the recommended book list and started reading 6 hours a day. I took and passed the written in the beginning of June. Shortly after I scheduled the lab for DEC. 18th in RTP and bought practice labs from "The Brians". Now this is where the broken record part come in....

I was very fortunate that my employer had a full scale lab at my discretion. I took advantaged and labbed every moment I could, over lunch, nights and weekends were spent in the lab. Any question about a technology I had I would lab it up. But first understanding the technologies before labbing anything is a must. You will definitley learn the most by labbing but you first must understand how the protocols function and how they interact with each other. You did this by reading books and forums as well as Video on Demand, from the vendor of your choice of course. But as soon as I read the materials and had a really good base knowledge of the fundamentals it was time to lab. And oh did I lab. My rack time is estimated to be around 1600 hours over the course of 6 months. I also continued to read when I wasn't labbing. I lived, eat and breathed the CCIE. I would go to bed and think of scenarios in my head and try to solve them (my wife didn't like this very much since I would toss and turn most nights). I wanted to be prepared for anything that the lab threw at me. So having an expert level of knowledge for the core topics is a must.

When I first started labbing it would take me 12 or more hours to complete the first 6 labs. I took my time and really made sure that I understood what was asked of me and that I properly interpeted the tasks correctly. As I continued to lab I became faster and solutions would come to me a lot quicker. After completing about 50 labs I could complete a lab around 5.5 or 6 hours. And I could solve pretty much any core topic without hesitation. This came with the number of hours I spent on the rack. I also created "mini" scenarios on specific technologies like Multicast or Qos to focus on my weak areas. This was to ensure that I was at least familiar with most of the non-core topics. And believe me the DOC-cd is your friend throughout the whole journey, not just in your lab. As the time grew nearer I spent more time focusing on my weak areas such as Qos, Security and the dreadful Redistribution. Please tell me if you have ever seen a "real life" network where you have 3 routing protocols. But, the CCIE isn't real life scenarios, it is everything else. I really doubt that I run IPv6 over frame relay but if there is a chance that I do I will be ready:)

Alright so that was a little background on the preperation so lets get into the fun stuff....Lab Day

I took the the lab in RTP. There is a video I think was posted a while back from Cisco that did a walk through of the lab in RTP I believe. But everything is pretty much spot on. I showed up about 6:45 at the front door and there was 5 other candidates waiting outside to get inside the lobby of the building. One of the proctors showed up shortly after and we all sat down in the lobby to wait for everyone else. Around 7:05 the proctor came back out and gave us our badges with our rack numbers. After a briefing on the facilities and the lab environment I sat down at my cube. All cube walls are short and there isn't very much space to spread out all of the pages you need. Plus the monitor takes up quite alot of room on the desk. So after a quick read through of the exam I logged into the CRT sessions. I used the individual CRT sessions for each device, I found it to navigate alot easier. I then drew up my diagrams and my task list with points per task. And I was off....

I approached the lab like any other lab I was doing on my rack. Of course it was different than what I was used to but it didn't take me long to get settled in. My goal was to complete layer 2 and layer 3 with full reachability by lunch. I was fortunate enough to obtain that goal and I got half through the IPv6 section. So when it came for lunch time I estimated that I had around 70 points which was a HUGE relief. Knowing that I had 4 hours to get 10 points was a weight off of my shoulders. I did a quick wr mem and reloaded my rack. Lunch was actually pretty good the food wasn't bad and they had chocolate cake, but leave some for the proctors. I sat and talked with one of the proctors for a while about Cisco in general. Just so you know if you take the lab in RTP your rack will most likely be in San Jose. The environment is a little noisy with constant fan noise. I believe the storage CCIE racks and some of the security racks are in RTP. So after lunch, I sat back down and I hammered through the rest of the exam. I finished with 3 hours to spare, so I did a wr mem and reboot again. I took a coffee break, told Howard, the Packers loving proctor, that the Bears rule and I started going through the exam again. I found 3 small mistakes that could have cost be 8 points but knowing I had the time in the end to triple check everything was a huge confidence booster. I went through the entire exam 3 times and tried to solve each question everytime to make sure I came up with the same solution and that I completed the tasks correctly. I did ask the proctor some clarification on some "loose wording" and they were both helpful, even for a packers fan So with an hour left in the day I was getting pretty antzy. I felt pretty confident that I did well but task interpetation was the only thing standing in my way. I did a final reboot and full reachability test at the end of the day.

After the exam I went back to the hotel to un-wind and ran to get some dinner. About 1.5 hours after I walked out the exam I recieved the notification in my email that my score report was available. But I was pretty confused because it was a very short time that I just got done so I figured the worst like my rack crapped out and I would have to take it over. So I logged in and that was the longest 3 minutes of my life. I scrolled down to see the PASS next to the R&S lab and I jumped for joy, for real. I jumped on the couch of my hotel room and started shouting. I then contacted my wife and family to tell them that I actually passed the lab on my first attempt. This has been a career long journey, this is something I have always wanted to accomplish and I did it. If you take the time to fully understand the technologies and you develop the speed, you can pass. This is exam not only tested my technical knowledge but my time management skills. Like everyone says "SPEED IS VITAL". If you can complete the lab and have time in the end to double check your work you will be one step closer to passing. I hope this write up provides some sort of inspiration for those who are studying. But, the exam is passible and fair. If you study your butt off and remain motivated and positive, good things will come. Good luck to all of you who are studying, I am truely grateful for going through this journey. I feel that I am a better person for it.

Story of Igor M

2009-05-09T06:22:00.001-07:00

Past two weeks have been very intense for me, I put it almost 12 hours a day of straight labbing, but it eventually paid off.
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.

Story of ChancesD

2009-05-09T06:20:00.002-07:00

How I passed the CCIE Lab.

On Monday 29 September 2008 I reached the pinnacle of my Networking career thus far, accepting my CCIE (RS) digits after almost 3 years of preparation and painstaking blood, sweat and tears - literally. I would like to share those moments from start to finish with you so that any aspiring candidate can learn from my mistakes and glean anything useful from my studies.

Background
=========
All you need to know is I want my numbers, and I will get them that’s the background driver for this.

Challenges
=========
The biggest challenge I faced on my journey was being a father. Before my son was born last November I had time, but soon as he entered this world that time was sacrificed. I do NOT for one minute regret this, I just found it a challenge to be a Dad, work full time and find time to study. When your 10 month old wants to rip the cables out your switches, it’s hard to say no. I just was the Muppet that had to put them back in!!! No harm done.

Materials Used
============
I started off with the usual recommended reading, Doyle, Parkhurst, Solie, Odom etc. This I found was not for me. I just could not spend more than 15 minutes reading about a serious technical subject with nothing to tie it to. I paused on that and started to rebuild the remnants of my CCNA/P rack. Eventually I took the decision to build it around the NetmasterClass workbooks. I purchased them and before starting any of their labs, cabled it to their standard rack. You will find all vendors have a fixed physical topology.

The final rack was:-
2 x 3560 - Enterprise IOS
2 x 3550 - Enterprise IOS
4 x 3640 - 12.4 - 2xWIC-1T, 2x 1FE-TX
2 x 2621 - 12.3 - 2xWIC-1T
1 x 3620 - BB1 - 1xNM4-AS, 1x2FE-2W
1 x 2620 - BB2 - 2xWIC-1T
1 x 2611 - BB3 - 2xWIC-1T

1 x 2511 - Terminal Server
1 x 2522 - Frame Relay Switch

2 x APC9200 - Remote Power Distribution Bar
1 x 877w - Internet facing Router/Firewall for remote 24/7 SSH access

Built and cabled by me into a 19U cabinet, this rack to me was indispensable. It was relocated twice, from house to house, carried up and down stairs with great difficulty with personal injury in the process – The Blood.

The DOC_CD, need I say more? I spent 15 minutes every day learning to navigate this, finding what I needed. Not once during my attempts did I spend more than a few minutes locating the information I needed. This is the ultimate resource, it’s right up to date and free!!!

Cisco Assesor Labs – I did both of these and found them really, really good. 4 hours mini-labs from which I learnt a lot about the way the grading script works.

Audio – Scott Morris Audio boot camp. On the way to work, I put on a few of these CD’s and it stuck. I was really against this, thinking it is not possible to learn from audio – how wrong I was.

The Preparation, the relentless Labbing' and the disappointments
==================================================
I then started the practice labs in the order based on their (vendor) recommendation, and initially it took me best part 14 hours spread across 1 week to complete the first lab. But this was fine, I was in the very early stages and time at this moment was not an issue. I managed to complete the first 5 labs but was not happy; they were just too dammed hard and peppered with obscure solutions that were not asked for. This was so off putting as I felt I had not learnt anything even after cross referencing it with the books mentioned earlier. So I stopped there and went through the IEATC CoD videos from InternetworkExpert to attempt to fill these gaps. I watched the videos twice and each time I practised small scenarios from it on my rack and gained then a better understanding of the technologies - and that's the key. I didn't want just to pass the CCIE, but also to be a better engineer.

Having completed them I went back to attack the practice labs. I knocked off 5 more NMC labs, with an average rating of 8 and then left the other 15 or so and moved onto InternetworkExpert. I did the first 10 whilst still reading through the books and re-watching the CoD at which point I booked the lab.
I booked it January for a June slot - 6 months to get it all together. During which point I did 5 more labs, 10 rating. 3 from NMC and 2 from InternetworkExpert. First real lab attempt, fail. This is documented on another thread. Down and demoralized, I spent 1 day away from it, back onto the Cisco site and booked second attempt.

Fail. Dammed, this one I knew I had passed, well I had not. I completed the lab in 5 hours as planned, 2 hours verification. Walked out the room to the airport drank a couple of beers feeling like this was it. I got home, showered and fired up my laptop to see those four letters burn my eyes F-A-I-L. What now? I had not made it, fact, nothing was going to change that, and a re-read is just an excuse for Cisco to pick another 300 USD from your pocket, statistically I did not stand a chance. Let it go. I just dissected in my brain why I did not pass, and after days of reciting the lab I realized I made small mistakes that cost points and collectively this put me under the 80 point bar. Petty mistakes, mistakes that you can ill afford. I needed speed from my first attempt but I also needed deadly accuracy.

I decided to go back, I will not be beaten for love nor money. I scheduled attempt 3 a little ahead and this time I changed materials to get a different perspective. I used the Narbik Workbooks to go over the mini-scenarios he presents so well. Again, on the rack practicing the little labs. But not only that, but breaking them too. If OSPF works, then break it - forcefully break it with a odd command and see what happens, debug it and see why it broke, not just how.

The Day it happened
===================
If one was ever to get off to the worst possible start then today, 29 September 2008 was it for me. There is a saying, "the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry". After I failed my lab last time I wanted to leave nothing to chance, my preparation this time had to be military precise. I changed hotels, I arrived earlier to acclimatise etc. I decided I would travel scruffy and the day of the lab I would wake at 5:45am, have a shower and a clean shave, eat a light but filling breakfast. Clean appearance, clean mind, that was the plan.

Wrong. My alarm failed to go off, I woke at 7:20am - 25 minutes before I was meant to be in the Cisco office!!!! In fact other guys were there sitting, waiting whilst I was still dreaming of...let's not worry about what I was dreaming of, whilst stuck in a hotel in a foreign country, without my wife. The first 4 words I spoke after I saw the clock when my head peered out of the bed sheets are simply un-repeatable and defy the laws of human nature. I jumped out of bed, threw my old clothes back on, no shower, no wash, no shave, no clean clothes, no breakfast. Nothing. Threw everything into my backpack and within 3 minutes I had left that hotel. No checkout, just ran like a mad man down the street towards the Cisco office hoping I would make it in time. I was never in danger of not making it to the centre, I just had to make it for my own mentality. I arrived sweating like a pig, flustered and just not right. I managed to swing things back into my favour and get my mind right. - The Sweat

There on in I attacked the lab.

Step 1 - Environment. Log onto Terminal server and apply my standard config. I always do this in real world and force of habit meant I did it again. Just no ip domain-lookup, alias, screen colour, re-mapping keys etc. This had to be right and it was. Wobbly fingers were still there, just not for so long. I was experienced now remember?

SecureCRT Ammendments:-

Re-map key F6 -> CTRL+SHIFT+6+x
Re-map key F5 -> CTRL+SHIFT+6+6
Re-map key F11 -> Clear Console Screeen
Re-map key SHIFT+Z ->Mapped to produce the '|' (pipe). I had problems with this first time as the keyboard is US.

Change Font to FixedSys with Yellow on black Foreground/Background.

Alias Commands/Basic Config:-

no ip domain lookup
ip cef
logging console
!
alias configure ro router ospf 1
alias configure re router eigrp
alias configure rb router bgp
alias exec c conf t
alias exec sibe sh ip int brief | i eri
alias exec sibn sh ip int brief | i net
alias exec sibl sh ip int brief | i oo
alias exec srr sh run | b router
alias exec sion sh ip ospf neigh
alias exec sibs sh ip bgp summ
alias exec siro sh ip route ospf
!
line con 0
history size 100

TCL Script:-

foreach ip {
1.1.1.1
2.2.2.2
3.3.3.3} {ping $ip}

Macro Ping for Switches:-

macro name PING
do ping 1.1.1.1
do ping 2.2.2.2
do ping 3.3.3.3
@
macro global apply PING

Step 2 - Read the entire lab slowly. It's very tempting to go in, and in fact I did last time. This time I sat and read the entire lab from start to finish and at the same time tied it to the topology. For (a fictitious) example, the IPv6 task wanted R1 to do this to R2, so I visualised it onto the diagram to see how that would work.

Step 3 - Diagrams. I did 1 from the start, and then 2-3 later on. The first was a re-drawing of the main diagram but I put all the IP information on, as well as a note as to which switch each port was hanging off. As I progressed through the lab I did smaller diagrams, for example, a inter-switch diagram when I got to the Switching section, an IPv6 one when I got there, and a Multicast one when I got there. Just showing the relevant devices. I got this idea from NMC, and it worked perfect for me.

Step 4 - Target and time management. I decided that by lunch, I wanted to be on this task and I worked to that by deciding on how I would answer the questions. I did not to the top-down processing approach, instead I went for my strong areas to get the points on the board first and then pick off the others. I came to 2 questions that had me puzzled, but onto the DOC_CD a bit of digging and I managed to formulate a solution. Approaching lunch I ahead of schedule. I ran a tcl and everything looked good, I had end-to-end which was huge step, I had the rack under control and I was in control of it. During lunch, I recited in my head what I had done, mentally annotating each task and ensuring I did not miss anything.

Step 5 - Post lunch. Target was to complete the whole lab, sounds odd I know, but I did not want to leave a single question unanswered. I had time on my side, and with a content stomach I was on a high. I raced through the remaining sections and completed the whole lab by 1:20pm. Run my tcl script and macros and picked out a few IP's that were not playing as a result of a later task, fixed that and I managed to get end-to-end again. That’s' start to finish in 4 hours and 40 minutes. Leaving me lots of time to check. Fantastic, I felt unhygienic on the exterior but my mind was fresh and now I was ready to test.

Step 6 - Verification. Before doing this, I went to the breakout room and grabbed some drinks and some fruit to just get away from it. It was as if I wanted to stare at my lab now from a different perspective. But first a reload, my first of the day. I was confident I had no loops as I had taken care of that but a reload but prove it. I wanted to do one before lunch, but decided not to and leave my rack as it was. A quick reload, it took seconds, they are fast devices another tcl and macro, everything looked good. I was in confident mood and was not tired, after all I had a great sleep remember?

I carefully went through every question again and verified each task against my rack and I recovered, I would say 9 points. In the grand scheme of things this could have been the difference between a pass and a fail. Wow, 9 points. Silly errors, petty errors, trivial errors - last time I missed them, this time they were there for the taking and I took them.

Step 7 - The final run. Now I’m bored, the lab is done, I had done my tests, everything pinged and I was content. What do I do? I have 1.5 hours to kill, and I did not want to kill my work, so do I walk out - no way. I am NOT coming back again for this bitch, that's what I told myself. I did another reload and another tcl and macro ping and then I had some fun with the proctor. I asked him some really random question and he looked at me and laughed and said, "go back to your rack and check everything again - with a hint of sarcasm" I did, and when time was up I walked out and thought, who knows - pass or fail - now I don't care I want some fresh air and I want a shower.

4:50pm Brussels---------->>Home 9:30pm

I walked through my front door and my wife said "you stink" I just did not have the energy to respond. I just wanted to see my son and then have a shower. Little man was asleep and I was stopped from going to his room. My wife told me to check my result, I just wanted a shower!! So I compromised, grabbed a beer, Stella ironically and I logged onto the Cisco site, my heart was pounding as if that smelly Gorilla was thumping me. As the page eventually refreshed I saw the # symbol and the words certified, I just dropped my laptop stood up and told her, I’ve got it. I really cannot describe to you the joy and emotion that I experienced the time I saw my result. My journey had come to a magical climax and I shed an emotional tear, the only time I did this before ever in my entire life was when my little boy was born. - The tears.

The aftermath - Lessons I have learnt
=====================================
Shortcuts. There are not shortcuts to passing your CCIE lab, there may be for the written, but not for the lab. You need time and dedication, those that don’t have those attributes will fail, those that do will pass, maybe not at first but eventually.

Complacency. Don't become complacent and lazy, if you think it's wrong then the chances are it is. If you think it's right, chances are it's still wrong!! Check it, and check it again. And when you have finished checking the checking, verify it.

Speed and accuracy. To pass the lab in sub 8 hours you need to be quick and accurate, in my failed attempts I was not quick and I was not accurate. On my winning lab I had the speed and I had the accuracy. I had the lab topology where I wanted it, under control from start to finish. How do you get to that state? Practice, practice and more practice. If you can write configs' in notepad without the ”?” then you are on the right track. I remember in my run up to the day, doing the IEWB labs partially, I would do up to the core as fast as I could, and then stop. I did this for labs 8-13 I think. Just to the point where I had Bridging/Switching and IGP and then stop. I managed to clock it down to an average of about 2 hours.

Vendor Diversity. One vendor workbook in my view is not enough, you need 1 and a half at least. One main one for your labs and then a second one for a different perspective. You can become far to accustomed to one authors way of writing.

Getting help. The DOC_CD is the only help you get in the lab, and the only help you need. If you can find a core topic in under 1 minute 15 your in control. a non-core obscure feature in 2 minutes. Nice

Make friends. Before, after and during the lab make friends. Flying to Brussels, or any location is not cheap, on top of that you have the cost of the lab and the hotel etc. Shop around, as others, hotels in Brussels near Diegem are expensive. The Holiday Inn Express was 65 Euros when I went last, this time they wanted 165.00 Euros, for the same little room. I stayed at Etap this time and it was cheap and clean, and walking distance.

Get some rest and watch what you eat. This is the biggest and most important thing. I hardly slept the night before my previous attempts. In fact, I slept too early. Having arrived at the hotel after my flight I had an afternoon sleep and it meant I was not able to sleep later on, big mistake. When you are tired you make mistakes, and these mistakes cost you points. After lunch you are the most vulnerable. Ever been had a meal and felt tired after you sat down? I’m sure Cisco do this on purpose, give you a free meal ticket and say have what you want. A large lunch, chips, chicken and a nice sweet dish after is a cocktail to make you tired. And when you are tired you make mistakes!! Eat light and keep your body hydrated. You are not there to sample the cuisine, you are there do an expert level job, right?

It's good to talk to save money. After each lab attempt I had a chat with the other candidates, not violating the NDA but general chat, and as a result I managed to get a free taxi ride to the airport saving me 20 euros each time. See, most people there are going home right? Most people head to the airport right? So, I just shouted out "who’s heading to the airport" I get a response, offer to help with the taxi fare and they turn round and "say no problem, my company is picking up the tab, you can share with me". Nice. Same goes for the shuttle to the hotel, if your hotel does not have this service, or you missed the bus, then jump on some other hotel's bus. Most hotels in that area are near each other, maybe 5 minutes walk, so just jump onto another hotel's bus as no one checks.

Don’t give up. If at first you don’t make it go back, no need for me to explain this. I have failed and passed the lab, and as a result I am a better and more knowledgeable as a result of failing it. I think there is more shame in not going back than there is to not passing.

The thanks
=========
This forum has given me so much and it’s difficult for me to give praise to individuals, I don’t like to do this, but it’s fitting that several people here made it possible. So – thanks to, MarkinManchester, DarkFiber, ZGX, Igor_M, Darby Weaver, a61971, Hotdogs, N00b13, georgevzz, FredBloggs, toofast, Lord Flasheart, Route-Reflector, richerich, sabbione, Ciscocool, Lethe, Cisco_Master, Ford_Mustang, Big_Evil, -.-, airflow, Russian macho et al.

And Finally FS for reinstating me!!! Cheers mate.

What Next
========
Another CCIE? You bet!! Security.........

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I had preparing it, please feel free to ask as many question within the confines of the NDA as possible. I have sacrificed a lot to get my numbers, and I am not going to lose it so you can get yours!!

Story of hungsonbk

2009-05-09T06:20:00.001-07:00

I have just passed my CCIE lab exam in the first attempt, and I am quite disappointed about the exam because it is much easier than I expected. I spent 6 months for the written exam and another six months for the Lab exam. I didn't study any online class, don't try any Mocklab, so before I took the exam, I am quite scared about the exam, this is because many guys here said that the exam is difficult, and getting CCIE is the greatest achivement that they can have. It took me 5 hours to solve the exam, with just simple questions and if you practice Workbook 2 or 3, you will see that the lab exam is easier. I really don't know why many guys have to take the exam for 3 or 4 times to pass. It just means that they don't know where they are, don't have a good planning for the exam, or maybe they are too scared?

Here is my experience:
CCIE is not about the exam, it is about the time your prepare for the exam, it is a very good time for you to study the technologies. Many guys just takes a few months to study the written exam, because they think it is too easier? and when they come to the lab, they failed. With me, even when I am practicing for the Lab, I am still reading the technologies. So where we can study the technologies? It is the DoCD. If you don't understand a topic in the DoCD, go to find a book, ebook, or whatever documents, read it and try to understand it. What happened if you are doing a practice lab, and you don't know a question, a technology? you can look into the answer, but after that you have to find a book or what ever document to read and understand it. Try to solve the question yourselves. Then later time, when you have the similar question, you will know how to answer.

Try do solve the questions in the practice lab by your own solutions, don't just look into the answer book and repeat it. When I was prepering for the lab exam, I did InternetworkExpert workbook1,2,3 then moved to IP__EXpert, then Soup to the Nut. these are all the Lab I can get from this forum, I don't have that much money to study in online class. With me InternetworkExpert Workbooks are brilliant, the best workbooks that you can have. IP__Expert is a waste of time. I hate that workbooks very much. The way they draw the network diagrams are studpid so I always have to draw it again. Soup to the Nut is good. When I praticed InternetworkExpert, each day I did a lab so I can take you 25 to 30 days to finish Workbook 2 and 3. One month before the exam, I started doing internetworkExpert workbooks 2 and 3 again for the second time. This gave me the excitement, When you do the second round, it is quite easy, this is the time your need to control the time, and develop you own strategy when doing the real lab exam. In the last week before the exam, I just went swimming and drinking with my friend, don't have to worry to much about the exam.

everybody said that to pass you have to practice, practice, and practice more, this is just a half of the truth. With me, reading, reading, and reading is also very important. If you don't know the technologies well, when you come up with a different type of question, you will not know how to do it. I read the DoCD too times, I read IOS 12.3 and IOS 12.4 topics. So I know exactly what the technologies are. When doing the exam, I don't have to open the DoCD to find the answer. This will save you a lot of times.

You will also need a good plan for your study. For example, you can plan to study this technologies in two days, after that you move to other topic. This is a short plan, you can have a plan for a month, two months, think about what will you do in that time, study what you think that you do not understand, etc. Then you also need a plan when doing the lab exam. Think about what will you do in the lab. What will you do first, if you don't know how to answer a question what will you do. You will leave it to the end of the lab or open DoCD to find the answer? You need to prepare for that. You also need to have confident, try to talk to the Proctor, other candidates, don't think about the exam too much, this will give you more comfortable, less stress, and enjoy the exam. In my exam, all other candidates look scary, they didn't talk to each other and the Proctor, some fo them were taking the exam for second time. If you are not confident, and worry too much, you will fail immediately. So just relax and enjoy the exam.

Don't listen for some guys, they said that you have to learn to type the keyboard very fast, this is studpid. When I took the exam, when the protoc said that we can start the exam, I could here the sound of the keyboards. I didn't know what the hell they were doing, they typed the keyboard very fast, and you know what, after 30 seconds, a guy logged himself out of the device and he cannot login again. So the protor had to make a phone call to America to help him.

During the time you are doing the exam, there will be some security questions that will break your network. You must be very carefully when doing these type of question. You may need to reload the router, not only 1 or 2 times, to make sure that everything is working correctly. If you can't do that question, leave it, don't try to solve that question, because you don't need 100% to pass CCIE, only 80%, and when you pass, they will not tell you how many percent you get, they just say that you pass it.

The most important for me is understand the technologies, preparing for the exam will give you the chance to build up your knowledgement. The exam itself is easy, so don't worry about it too much, just enjoy the time you are studying.

Story of greez (Airflow)

2009-05-09T06:19:00.000-07:00

Hi there,

this week I had my first attempt for the security ccie, and I'm glad to tell you that I passed on the first attempt!

My preparation was
* 4 years experience in the area at work
* two month of very intense preparation (got "free" from work from my employer and could basically learn from the morning to late at night)
* creation of a "knowledgebase", where a added every bit of information I didn't knew before, or was hard to "get" and understand, and was worth noting. I think this is a must for two reasons: first you memorize things better and easier when repeating them and putting them into your own words and writing them down, secondly it's good stuff to go through all this again shortly before the lab to see again all "pain-points" you had and their solution
* the 10 mock-labs from internetwork-expert (very valuable!), which are harder than the real one to my mind - together with a real lab where you can train of course
* a great day on the day of your exam, where you are relaxed, not too nervous, confident and having the support of your friends and family in your background.

This is what I had, and what obviously made me pass it. Good luck to all the others!

Story of Gobind Singh Gill

2009-05-09T06:17:00.002-07:00

Hey Guys!

At last with the blessing of GOD, I manged to pass CCIE exam at brussels.This was my third attempt.Yea,I am 20 but I am not boasting but rather feeling proud for this accomplishment in the conditions I been through while preparing.Its been a long journey.I want to say Thanks to Brians,Darby for this tips and Scott,Narbik for their endless help rather it be direct or indirect as most of the help and information I got to my problems was by searching the old archives and most of the archives were from Scott and Narbik .Also want to say thanks to Alexie for his posts in Netmasclass,the thing in which I was getting which was redistribution,he pulled out a topic from Group Study posted by Bruce from Netmasterclass way back,it was huge post on Redistribution which really opened my mind in that particular area.I can post that link later if someone is interested.Also want to say thanks to Eric and Bruno,the proctors of Brussels which really helped me(Cheers! if you are reading this post and to Manoj for talking with me on phone for helping me out in my problems and giving me tips for the Lab.

This is a Huge post.I just want to tell everyone that never ever give up!!.Always remember:-

"Winners never Quit & Quitters never win!!"

I struggled a lot during my journey to CCIE.It took me 3 years! I started studying for CCIE back in 2004 after passing my CCNP when I was just 17.My career started when I was studying in 9th grade and was working as part time in my areas's local ISP company.I use to do installations of Modems,cables for New customers.My interest started to grow after I saw Network Engineer f our company configuring RIP on Router.My ambition started to grow,I wanted to be like him,sitting on chair and configuring Network Equiptments remotely.Then I asked him how to learn those kind of things and then he recommended me Wendel Odom's CCNA book,that's when my career in Cisco started.I managed to pass CCNA and started helping that same Engineer in his work of configuring routeres and learn new things from him.Later on I managed to pass CCNP.

My hunger for Networking started to grow,that's when I joined a big company out of the state where I was living,which really helped me in studying.I worked there and meanwhile started studying for CCIE in 2004.But at that time was also most worst part because when people use to lookup at me in India(thats where I worked and grew up) they use to mock me "17 year old kid doing CCIE?!!! HAHAHA",They use to mock me on my back which also worked as spilling petrol in fire for me in my studies due to which my determination grew and I wanted to show them that I can do it.But at that time I was not upto the mark for CCIE.I took traning in Bangalore,it was 2005 mid by then.Then I got know about IE's Brian and I saw their sample labs and then I realized that there was so much out there to learn.But I didnt had that much finance to pay Brian or for my training.So I made up my mind to work hard and collect money.After doing 9 to 5 job,I use to Design Websites and do Web hosting for many customers.

That business really boosted my income and till the ended of 2005 and with some financial help from my parents I planned to buy my rack and then I posted at GS in Dec 2005 I believe for getting help for setting up Rack,Then brian McGahan came forward to help me and I bought full Rack of routers and CCIE End to End from Brians on which they gave me discount after due to my financial condition.I am really grateful for them.I started learn technologies more deeply by studying Brian's COD and their workbook and meanwhile studying CCIE Practical studies Vol 1 & 2(I already completed TCP/IP Vol I & II by this time).

But finance was always problem for me,so I had to work meanwhile for collecting money for CCIE Lab exam.But 2006 wasnt really good year for me.Due to some personal problems at home I had to sell my rack.My CCIE written exam was going to be expired.So I gave my written exam again and then I needed to practise on Rack.But the Rack rentals price for 20-30 days and training of Bangalore for CCIE turned out to be same,HAHA,So I thought I should rather go to banglore,this way I got rack access for 1 month physical access (My employer really helped me and gave me leave).

But then after reading that how people fails in GS,I was really shocked and I made up my mind to take Bootcamp.My friend Manoj whom I met in GS recommended me to go Cyscoexpert where Naren Mehta who is Co-Author of Book "CCIE Routing and Switching Official Exam Certification Guide" and bahram were giving one to one training in US.So I decided to go there,so I started collecting money and did various projects meanwhile and did programming/designing for website,also hosted Live broadcsting events.At last I was ready to go.

But before going I did Rack rentals from Chris from CiscoLabs,he gave me Rack in damn cheap price.I am thankful to him.I took my training in US from CyscoExpert.That training was just awesome! It really helped me and I thought I was ready for exam and I would pass it.I appeared for my lab on 15th may 2007 at RTP,This was my first attempt and I failed.I was really shocked that what happened as when i came out of the lab I thought Iwas passed.It really shook me.I did't knew what to do.I posted my experience in Lab during then.When i returned back to India,I met those guys again mocking at me even 2 years after saying that I cant pass the labs.So I felt so guilty and thought I couldnt pass it and they were right.But my parents supported and girl friend supported me and told me to give it another try.After 1 week time my I decided that I wont give up and booked my lab date on 5th July,2007 in Dubai and guess what I failed again which almost made me thing that CCIE is not meant for me and I dint even had the courage to post in GS or appear in GS again.I was really broken in pieces and started to think that those guys were 100% right that CCIE is unattainable for Kid/Teenager like me and I dont deserve that.

But after 2 months I really thought that what am I doing?! Even after doing so much I am quiting?! So finally I decided to give one more attempt again and see my luck.I decided to take Narbik's bootcamp under his special offer but due to some personal problems I was not able to attend it.I decided to do Netmasterclass,Also Chris from CiscoLabs and my old friend Manoj gave me advise to do it.So I bought Netmaster DoIT and rented Rack from Chirs and started practicing and whole December I practised DoIT,especially on Weekends and during Christmas/New Year Holidays.

By this time my lab was booked on January 29th at Brussels.I went to IE's COD again.Read the redistribution part which really sometimes put me in trouble from Forum's of DiscussIT of Netmasterclass by Bruce posted by Alexie,Thanks again for that!! And not to forget my favorite post from Darby in GS with Subject "Lab Approach - Getting Ready for the 3rd Shot at the Title" which really helped me in my 3rd shot .Thanks Darby for that.I got problem in many things but it was mostly previously discussed in GS before and was mostly answered by Scott and Narbik,Thanks Narbik and Scott!!!

I also remember the topic "Attack by proctor" from GS which said the Proctors esp. in Brussels do attack in rack,many CCIE candidates came forward and said it.I was also prepared for that even i thought it was stupid thing,thinking that maybe sometime in middle of m lab I would get problem,hehe

So the Final day,when i entered the lab I was totally freeked out.I calmed myself and started my lab and I finished my lab in 5.5 hours which was really good sign for me,then i verified the solutions from first question from Question one to last and then came out of the Lab.I left for the airport from hotel at 5pm.

Now the **Golden Moment**.My Girl Friend called me just after 1 hr 45 mins,after my lab,exactly at 6:15 pm(as she was checking my result) and here what she said "Sweetheart, 19910.." and she stopped.I understood that were my digits and I was like NO WAY!,Tears came into my eyes with happiness.I couldnt believe I passed!! Then i called my parents and gave them the news.That was the most preciuos moment of my life.I thanked GOD which blessed me.

As per my expeience in Lab there is nothing known as attack by proctor in MIDDLE of LAB.And yea Bruno & Eric(Proctors of CCIE Lab,Brussels) are not my friends and they neither gave me Belgian Beer to say this,hehe.

The people which really helped me from Day 1 when I started preparing for CCIE are Brians which helped me technically and also financially when I needed help by giving me huge discounts in my bad times. GOD Bless you. guys!

Maybe I bored you guys with my story.But I just want to tell you that no matter how hard the time can be if you want to attain something then go for it,no matter "Whatever it takes".Even in my case I was being mocked due to my age or even I failed 3 attempts even my financial condition was not good as I was not earning in $ but in India Ruppee which really makes difference,believe me.My pay from past 3 years and money which came from my business of Web Designing/Programming and Broadcasting over IP,all went into this studies.Yea I was stupid enough for this because I just had this one aim in front of me.I took two tranings in bangalore,Rented more than 600 hours of Racktime from different vendors,mainly from Chris,Bootcamp in US,three attempts,End to End from Brians's CCIE and DoIT from Netmasterclass.I know it looks insane but I was crazy enough to put my 100% efforts as well as finance in this exam as it was my goal and also shut the f**k up of those guys who mocked at me due to my age.They use to say that that they had 12 years of experience(they were CCIE themself) which was nearly equivant ot my age(I was 17 at that time).I respect that they had so much experience and had CCIE but they did not had any right to mock at me.

But I have attained what I dreamt for even it took longer than I expected but I attained it.

My Next Dream .... "CCIE Service Provider"..hehe.. Now I have to dig the way of studiying for this cerfication.I am going to start studying for it in few days time.Any advice or guidance would be helpful .

Thanks again to Alexie,Bahram,Brians,Bruce,Chris,Manoj(Thanks for taking out time for solving my problems),Naren,Narbik & Scott for their help and support in whichever way I got from them

Gobind Singh Gill

Story of Cisco4lyf3

2009-05-09T06:17:00.001-07:00

I am not going to talk about books or lab workbooks too much, because the vendors don't really matter that much. I have used Internetworkexpert (my preferred), NMC and Ip-Expert. I could have passed with any one of these had i known then what I know now.

I put in crap loads of hours. I had no job, so that helped. I put in approximately 300 hours a month for the last couple months. I probably invested about 2000 hours over the last couple years. The last few months of preparation, I really learned to study. Its not about quantity, but its about quality and keeping a routine. In hindsight, I could have passed this exam much faster had I managed my time more appropriately, and not slacked off the routine.

Learn the technologies.

I don't know how many times I had heard and ignored this. I started this journey with the attitude that just doing the practice labs were key to learning. It is so far from the truth. I kept getting hung up on the same topics in the workbooks. I finally stepped back and regressed to the Internetwork Expert technology labs. My final month of preparation, I did not do any full labs (I failed the lab on my first attempt the month earlier). I spent lots of time working through the technology labs over and over, and using the Doc CD. By far learning to use the Doc CD is what really pushed me over the top on my 2nd attempt. The answer to almost any question is right there for the taking. On top of that, I constantly built new dynamips labs and did concept testing on everything I had trouble with. Debug everything so you can see how it really works, and don't take anyones word for it. Go see for yourself!

I have read a lot of books over the years, but honestly, the only topics I went outside of internetworkexpert (WBs and CODs) and the doc cd were QOS and multicast, just because I needed a better understanding. If you do the tech labs, and the WB labs, topics like OSPF, BGP, EGIRP, etc... will be pretty easy to you, if you are studying well. BGP is a monster of a topic, but trust your IE workbook. They test you on what you need to pass the exam.

For QOS I read a few books and watched the Knowledgenet vids.
For multicast, I watched the knowledgenet vids as well. Their multicast vid is actually quite good and in depth. It gave me a different perspective and filled in a lot of the gaps from the IE COD.

Ultimately, focused study was the key to me passing. Rather than wasting 4 hours going through a lab and building core, just so you can study the topics you suck most, don't do it. Do the tech labs or build your own topic by topic, until you feel you have a really good understanding of each topic, then do full labs. Even after that, i would go through the IEWB vol 2 workbook and read over only the stuff from the topic I was working on that week, and solve them in my head.

Routine.

Don't fall off the wagon. I studied in 4 hour blocks, with almost no exceptions. Your dog needs a walking? Too bad. He has to wait. Baby drop a bomb in the diaper? Your gonna have to smell that shit until your study block is up Having at least an average intelligence and good old fashioned routine are what you need for the knowledge to sink in. Also, no matter how smart you are, you might not pass on your first run. Shit happens. You make a typo and configure Lacp instead of pagp, you just lost 3 points. Those things happen to the best of us, this is where the routine helps. Practice at your best, do not slack in any one thing. Test as you go. Go back and retest in the end. I found a crap load of errors after I completed everything and went back through it. Just stupid stuff, where I might have changed a parameter to test a feature, and forgot to change it back to what the lab asked for. Practice at home and simulate your lab day. Certainly putting in 8 hours a day might be impossible for most people, but 4 hour slots are not that bad. Sticking to the schedule is key.

I did not use a bootcamp, and did not have any funded training. I would have loved to go to a bootcamp, but just did not have the money or support through work when I was working.

Besides the message boards, CCIE study is a lonely endeavor. Unlike going to college, where you have structure forced upon you, CCIE lab study is all on you, and your ability to force the routine. I know I sound like a broken record, but this is just a test and you have a good study routine to pass it. You don't only have to want it bad, you have to make rules for yourself and stick to them.

Cisco4lyf3

Story of Maniks

2009-05-09T06:16:00.002-07:00

Couple days ago I passed CCIE lab exam. It was my second hit. As you already know I tried it in the december for the first time, and I was just couple of points under the line. It was very frustrating, but I made break for 3 weeks, and after that I started again.

I used these lab preparation materials in the last 10 months:

1) IEWB 3.0 - I did all 20 labs twice. WB should be used as resource for getting to know real lab format questions, not to learn technologies.

2) I had my small home lab in wich I practised IEWB scenarios and warious routing tasks that I could invent for myself. I tried to find out what should I see in debug output if I have working configuration or if I had non working configurations.

3) I did not practised switching a lot, because I am having it a lot of it in my daily job, and switching in both my attempts was no problem for me, so that is the main reason why I did not chase IEWB 4.0.

4) I never find a good QOS book that will meet my requirements: precise explanation, good diagrams and clear sequencing of QOS mechanisms, so I use everything I could find about QOS and read it (evry QOS book that I could find on GS and tons of files from CCO).

5) I mastered non-core topics from DoCCD."DocCD is your friend" - this is 100% true .

6) I did not use any rack rentals, I used only my home lab and ASET labs.

7) I went to Heinz Ulm's 3 weeks CCIE R&S bootcamp. I heard very useful tips and tricks on the bootcamp, and find out that I should improve my time management. BTW, time management was the reason for my first attempt failure.

I hope this guidelines will help someone who is starting with lab preparation, and I wish you all good luck on your lab exam!!

Rodrigo Hernandez

2009-05-09T06:16:00.001-07:00

Books:
Routing and Switching certification guide, its from Cisco Press.
Routing TCP/IP Volume 1 from Jeff Doyle, also Cisco Press
Volume 2 of the Jeff Doyles Book

First, I read the routing and switching guide and then the Jeff Doyle's books, but I reccommend doing the opposite, the Doyles cover everything in detail, so you want that first, then the cert gudie, covers everything with less detail and adds some new features that the other books dont cover.

After reading this 3 books I did and passed the written test, this took like 1 or 2 months.

Workbooks:
I used internetwork Expert's core lab workbook and volume 1&2 complete workbooks, thats like 40 labs and lots of hours.

I first did all 30 labs from the workbooks and then the core labs, but, again, this is not what I recommend, its better if you do all Vol.1 labs then all cores and then all Vol.2 labs, if you can do some of them 2 times, do it!

I did from 2 to 3 labs per week, did 1 lab and the next day I graded it. One week I did 4 labs and the last study week I did 8 (from sunday to sunday, exam was on wednesday)

*note: this will be what gives you all the practical knowledge, so do it!

Videos
After my first lab attempt, I realized I had much more to learn, so I used some videos, this were the CoDs form Internetwork Expert and the CBTnuggets.

The CBTnuggets were the first I saw, they are short and can teach you some things with out boring you. Have some mistakes, so you need to validate some things, but they are OK and short. Wont hurt if you use them.
Then I used the IE CoDs, those are some good videos, but if you are like me and used to sleep at school when the teacher is talking, it will be hard, I couldnt finish the videos because they are too big, so I slept in most of them. If you like taking class, use them!

Mock Labs
I did the 4 Internetwork Exper Mock Labs, they are really cool since they are actually graded by people, not an automatic script. I did one after the 20 Vol.1 Labs and 3 on my last study week, gave me a good feel about the exam and how it is graded.

*note: Be careful, sometimes IExperts fall down the schedule and send the results like one week after you make the exam.

Racks
Didnt have a home rack, so I used the IExperts one, they are ok and perfect if you are using their workbook, since you dont have to config the FR switch and have exactly the same topology. They have a good customer service also.

DocCD
VERY IMPORTANT! use it daily, use it for work, use it for studying, use for everything! why? maybe you wont use it at all for the exam (I used it for 2 questions) BUT will give you a huge boost at work, you can find everything there, so use it! know it! 2 questions can be either a pass or fail.

Tips before the exam
-The week before try doing some labs, but dont over study. I did labs daily, but if I was tired I stopped.
-Try doing some labs without a PC, do it on your mind and just see if your thinking was right, this is less stressful and if its your last study day (or days), you wont learn anything new (if you did study well)
-Arrive to your hotel 1 or 2 days before the exam.
-Take some books to the hotel, maybe you wont even open them, but it wont hurt you.
-Take the workbooks to the hotel and if you want to study a little, do some labs in your mind, do it fast, you can finish one in 30 mins, BUT DONT MEMORIZE THE ANSWERS!!! THINK!!!!
-The day before dont study, go to eat, watch a movie and sleep. No need to be nervous.
-The day of the exam, have a nice breakfast! get a shower!
-Dont fly the same day.

Tips for the lab
-Read all the lab once and quickly
-Check the diagrams (I didnt draw them again)
-BE CALM
-Ask any doubt to the proctor
-Resolve everything quickly so you get lots of hours to check answers
-READ EVERY WORD!! AND PAY ATTENTION!
***VERY IMPOTANT: ENJOY!!!!!!!!

The best thing I can tell you is enjoy the exam and the study and you will become an expert. If you work at something you like, its not hard.

I passed the lab with 5 months of studying, less than one year of field experience, was 23 years old and passed on my first attempt, so dont listen to those recommendations

DONT DO THE EXAM IF YOU DONT ENJOY CHALLENGES AND NETWORKING!

Story of Nooch

2009-05-09T06:15:00.000-07:00

I studied the CCNP and CCIE track from March 05 until July 06.

Books
========

Routing
Routing / TCPIP Volumes 1 + 2- Ciscopress - Covers topics: Basic routing principals, TCP/IP, BGP, EIGRP, OSPF, Advanced Routing, Multicast, IPV6, and etc. Not a one stop shop but basically a bible for routing.

OSPF Command Reference - Ciscopress - Basically the DOC CD in printed form. Is a little older.

BGP Command Reference - Ciscopress - Basicall the DOC CD in printed form. Is a litle older.

Routing and Switching Written Certification Guide - Ciscopress - Very good book as it summarizes all topics in Routing / Tcpip in my opinion. Also covers all topics on written blueprint

Switching
Cisco Lan Switching - Ciscopress - A little outdated but the fundamentals still apply.

Multicast
Developing IP Multicast Networks - Ciscopress

IPV6
IPV6 - hxxp://www.ccbootcamp.com - their IPV6 book is very good. It is 40 pages of theory and about 60 pages of nothing but IPV6 labs. I liked it and learned all I needed to know from this book, and the DOCCD.

Lab Books
Internetwork Expert Practice labs
NLI / CCBOOTCAMP Practice labs
Netmasterclass Practice labs
and repeat... ;-)

Videos
Internetwork Expert Class on Demand - Priceless, they want you to learn the material and not just pass the lab.
CCIE R&S CBT Nuggets - It's like Diet Soda VS Regular, it comes up light. It is OK maybe for the first stages of CCIE training. Not informative enough.

The following from Knowledgenet:
BGP Module, Multicast Module, and a few others... I forget for now.

Classroom Training

Unitek - CCIE Written - 5 days intense lecture. I was prepared for the written before I went, but work covered it so it was a cool refresher. Passed written exam on site.

Unitek - CCIE Lab - 6 days intense configuring - lecture after each lab. There were 6 people in the class but the training itself was one-on-one. The labs were outdated and included ATM/ISDN so we had to take the time to edit that stuff out. Not impressed by it considering it was in May - 5 months after stuff was removed from the lab. The instructor however made up for it and was pretty good. His name was Rahim Roufi.

Aside from that I lived, ate, and breathed the DOC CD. The configuration guides and command references are priceless.

What this blog is all about ?

2009-05-09T06:09:00.000-07:00

This blog is all about motivating ccie aspirants...The stories of hard workers who achieved their ccie numbers.....Please read each story and motivate yourself....Hats off to all these legends...All the best to all ccie aspirants.....