Chuck,
Sorry to hear about the outcome of your practical exam. Take solice in the fact
that so many people have to retake it. It is a testament to the certification's
value, and to the ability of those that make it. Persistance separates life's
winners from life's losers. At some point, you'll get there, and the sense of
satifsafaction will be delicious. :)
Speaking of persistance, I know a guy that bills himself as "The World's Worst
CCIE." He took six attempts to pass the written exam, and then took six trips
to Raleigh for the practical. He was not being sponsored by his employer
either... That's $7200.00 in various exam fees alone, not including travel
costs. I worked with him on a project for several months, and he was no dummy.
By my estimation, Murphy's law comes into play. A lab candidate will invariably
draw the lab scenario for which he is least prepared. That's just how it seems
to work out.
I read your report more than once, and with great interest. Thanks for taking
the time to provide your insight and observations. One of the frustrating
things about preparing for this, particularly gearing up for the first attempt,
is the uncertainty.
For instance, I'm pretty good at DLSw. I've been fortunate enough to use it in
a very large production environment. In my implementation, we used TCP
encapsulation exclusively, with static peering. Is it enough that I know about
the other means of encapsulation, or dynamic peering? My environment was SNA.
I haven't used it with NetBIOS... Is the behavior identical? Can I skip
preparing for DLSw because of my experience with it, or do I need to reserve
some of my precious time for DLSw experimentation?
Another example: I'm a whiz with Frame-Relay. Until a week ago, I was in the
midst of a huge frame deployment, some 1500 sites. That said, it was a fairly
vanilla environment. Nothing special about it. Looking for confidence, I was
looking at the Frame Configuration Guide on CCO last night, with the expectation
that I was gonna know most of it. It was a big mistake. There were so many
commands that I had never used, nor did I know they even existed. I knew I'd
want to revisit frame the old fashioned way (I've been using
subinterface/point-to-point for so long, I hardly remember building frame-relay
maps by hand), and revist split horizons, but geeze...
I could spend from today until July (my 1st lab exam) covering these two topics,
topics that I feel good about, and still not get close to what I'd consider
"Full Mastery."
Understand that I'm not a paper anything. I don't have my CCNA ot CCNP. I
passed the written exam with virtually no studying, because I have been working
with Cisco routers since '94, and because I have never been satisfied knowing
how to do something without having a pretty good understanding of the how/why
what I was doing worked. I came into this process with the expectation that
because of my background, I'd have a more difficult time with the esoteric
detail of the written exam than I would with the lab. I am a hands-on guy.
Accounts, such as yours, are an invaluable resource to me, not because they
remove the uncertainty, but I feel like they help me manage the uncertainty. I
hear what I need to hear: If you're good at what you do and you prepare
effectively, you can and will be successful.
Thanks.
Alan~
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Larrieu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Cisco Mail List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2001 9:34 PM
Subject: CCIE Lab Report - unsuccesful
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