Congrats again Bill.
Piggybacking off of your excellent point. The difference between my passing lab and last lab were two things. One, I got myself ready for any question. All of my customers run CUCM and Unity/Connection or that is at least the only thing they have questions about and engage me one. So coming into this, I never setup CUE, CUCME (back when it was still ITS), GK, CUBE, CUCCX, CUP, QoS(CCIE Lab QoS J ), or read sdi traces. I finally took the time to not accept any weaknesses. CUCCX was the hardest to learn from scratch. You cannot go in there PLANNING to leave points on the table. Second. I had a study partner. Like Bill said, there are so many ways to do the most basic tasks. Having a study partner will expose you to different methods of doing things. These methods you have not thought of can speed things up or maybe even show you that you were completely wrong. The same thing that makes questions vague makes the lab strategy either. They rarely give you restrictions so it is up to you how easy or how hard you make fulfilling a task. Congrats again Bill! From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bill Lake Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 3:38 PM To: CCIE Study Subject: [OSL | CCIE_Voice] CCIE Hello All, It has been a tough, long and challenging journey but one that has made me a much better at my job. Today I got the great news of passing my lab in RTP. My feedback is as follows and I do hope that it will help someone turn the corner and pass their lab. Cory earlier said to create note pads, I agree that is very helpful. While I don't do everything in notepad it makes it much easier if you find a mistake to fix, first no the bad command and then add the good one. I actually do it basically like he said, one for each site, one for the switch and I add one for services and a temp pad for cut and paste items that need to be adjusted. I would also say that one of the biggest things that I did to help is practice as much as possible on live lab equipment. This helps you recognized where the issue is, if you can't set up a full lab then surely get one router and as many phones as you can and do hardware VPN Next practice your base configs until you see them in your sleep, know where you tend to make mistakes and find any copy and paste resources you can to help. Never shy away from a subject because you are weak at it, focus on getting better all the time. I used to dread complex dial plans but now I find them pretty easy, I tried to find as many creative ways to solve every problem and requested design. This give you flexibility you will need on the lab. Trust me, you could easily have a freeze moment where you know how to do something but just can't remember it. But if you have a second way to do the task, you will more than likely remember one of them. Even shortcut items might not get you the points but if your out of time and have to try to get something to work, give it a try it can't be any worse than not doing it. Now that you are got your base in place, practice adding everything you can think of to them, so if someone says can you do this, say sure but I can also do xyz, a perfect example of this would be something like setting up a meetme conference, can you have it announce the name of the caller, can you make them dial a different number then be rerouted to the conference when they enter their pin. Things like that, again you learn where you make your mistakes (everyone does) and be able to fix them quickly and effectively. Last recommendation is prepared for the unexpected, so what do you do if everything looks like it should work but doesn't, have a system for solving that. Everyone will have a different path but having the knowledge, ability to apply that knowledge and a little luck will help you be a CCIE. I would especially like to thank Vik, Kevin and the crew at IPexpert. I would like to thank Randall and Michael as they were both very helpful in me bouncing ideas and thoughts off. Finally and most importantly I want to thank my wife and daughter who sacrificed their time with me to have me study endlessly (it seems) to pass this test. Bill
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