Story of Reza Toghraee - CCIE 22518 RS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.