Contingency Plan

I really hope I don't fail. I feel as if I've learned pretty much everything I'm going to learn from the IPExpert an Internetwork Expert labs. I'll be a little unsure as to where to turn next. With the typical CCIE difficulty metric being a 7/10, I feel my knowledge is about 8.5/10 at this point.

I've told my wife I'm only taking 5 attempts. If I don't get it by then I'll give up. That gives me 4 attempts left.

I do get a little frustrated with IPExpert and IE labs. There are a number of mistakes that are obviously from failure to properly upgrade their workbooks over the years. I personally find this to be detremintal to my studying. I've had to get use to assuming things might need to be a little different than they way they are worded. On the actual lab, this is BAD. I need to make sure to assume absolutely nothing.

I don't feel there's anything else to learn with a free retake of the IPexpert bootcamp. Perhaps taking it with Scott for a different perspective would help.

There has been a lot of "testimonials" on the Narbik bootcamp lately. It's to the point that I'm actually steering away from it. From the reviews I'm reading, it's sounding more like he's teaching "stupid router tricks" than anything else. My impression could be wrong, so I'd open up some discussions on Monday if I need to.

I really feel the best preparation for me at this point is the Mock Labs. I've taken all but 2 of the IE mock labs. Another option would be to take the IE Mock Lab bootcamp.

Another possibility would be to swtich to NetMasterClass. A lot of people seem to recommend using them in tandem with IE. Their CheckIt labs are pretty expensive though--$250 each or 3 for $635. They also have a DoIT volume 2 plus 5 CheckIt labs package for $1324, which is about the same cost as a lab attempt.

Since I have been successful at studying at home, I think this would be a good approach to take. It would give me 1 graded lab a weekend and 1 workbook lab a weekend with 5 weekends before another attempt.

So that's my plan of attack. Purchase the $1324 package from NMC and reschedule for a month out.

Knowledge Assessment

So here I am, 2 days out from my second attempt. All in all, I'd say I'm feeling pretty good, but I certainly wouldn't say I'm overconfident. I didn't feel the lab itself was too hard last time. I finished the first run at about 6 hours and was only confused by a couple of tasks. Through further studying, I've realized I did a couple of other tasks wrong and probably should have asked a few other questions.

Here is a list of things that I still feel I could use some work on:
-Catalyst QoS mutation maps
-OSPF NSSA Type 7 suppression
-Reachability Verification--I always seem to miss a BGP route somewhere
-MBGP
-Multicast Troubleshooting--I'm still slower than I'd like to be
-PIM Mapping Agent placement
-CBAC and Reflexive ACLs--I'm still gunshy to implement these
-NTP--remembering to apply the trusted key to the ntp server
-Extended login options

Since my failed attempt

Here is what I've completed since my failed attempt

IPexpert labs: 1
IE labs: 5
IE Mock Labs: 2
Cisco CCIE assessor labs: 1

That's 72 hours of rack time in the past month.

IE Lab 17 breakdown

Not much to complain about. I knew I missed a couple of the oddball system management and security pieces. I spent a heck of a lot of time verifying bgp and igp. I found a few additional issues in doing that. Even with all that time I still finished with an hour to spare.

IE Lab 17

This is quite possibly my last practice lab before the real thing on Sunday. In light of my weaknesses, my plan is for the following:

Take extra time verifying every single last thing
Don't worry too much about time
Take extra time playing around with multicast
Do each QoS question using MQC and Legacy formats
Play with NAT

7:15 start
7:41 diagram complete
7:54 readthrough complete
8:18am 1.1 complete, 3 points
8:18am 1.2 complte, 3 points
8:19am 1.3 complete, 2 points
8:23am 1.4 complte, 2 points
8:27am 1.5 complete, 3 points
8:31am 1.6 complte, 3 points

Switching complete, 16/16

8:48am 2.1 complete, 3 points
8:48am 2.2 complete, 3 points
8:48am 2.3 complete, 2 points

Frame complete, 8/8, 24/24

8:54 3.1 complete 3 points
8:59 3.2 complete, 3 points

PPP complete, 6/6, 30/30

9:08 4.1 complete, 3 points
9:17 4.2 complete, 3 points
9:23 4.3 complete, 2 points
9:28 4.4 complete, 3 points
9:41 4.5 complete, 2 points
9:45 4.6 complete, 2 points
9:49 4.7 complete, 2 points
9:57 4.8 complete, 2 points
10:06 skipping 4.9, 0/3 points

IGP compelte, 19/22, 49/52 total

10:24 complted 4.9

IGP complete, 22/22, 52/52 total

10:29 pingtests complete

10:56 5.1 complete, 3 points
11:13 5.2 complete, 3 points
11:41 5.3 complte, 3 points

BGP complete, 9/9, 61/61 total

12:26 pingtests complete

12:39 6.1 complete, 3/3
12:55 6.2 complete, 2/2
12:55 6.3 complete, 3/3

Multicast complete, 8/8, 69/69 total

1:00 7.1 complete, 3 points
1:08 7.2 complete, 3 points

IPv6 complete, 6/6, 75/75 total

1:10 8.1 complete, 2 points
1:14 8.2 complete, 3 points

QoS complete, 5/5, 80/80 total

1:27 9.1 complete, 2 points
1:32 9.2 complete, 2 points
skipping 9.3

Security complete, 4/6, 84/86 total

1:38 10.1 complete, 3 points
1:38 10.2 complete, 2 points
skipping 10.3

System management complete, 5/8, 89/94 total

1:59 11.1 complete, 3 points
2:05 11.2 complete, 3 points

IP Services complete, 6/6, 95/100 total

Lab complete, 95%, under 7 hours

CCIE Assessor Results

I cannot get into many details here due to restrictions.

I did not pass. I broke this down into three reasons:
40% stupid mistakes
40% not enough time
20% not enough knowledge

Stupid mistakes hurt me on switching and redistribution. The main fault here was lack of verification.

Lack of time hurt me on Multicast and IP Services. I mostly blame this on not looking things up on the DocCd. If I had more time I would have looked them up and more than likely got correct.

Lack of knowledge hurt me on Multicast and QoS. There were items here I more than likely wouldn't have got correct, even if I had enough time.

So what does this mean? If I make no stupid mistakes, verify everything, and use the DocCd exhaustively for anything questionable, I can barely pass.

I have 8 days left until my next attempt. I need to get better with Multicast, QoS, and IP Services quickly. As far as stupid mistakes--VERIFY EVERYTHING!!!

CCIE Assessor

6:45am Lab Started
7:03am Diagrams complete
7:14am Readthrough complete
7:22am 1.1 complete, 2 points
7:30am 1.2 complete, 2 points
7:38am 1.3 complete, 2 points
7:41am 1.4 complete, 2 points
7:44am 1.5 complete, 2 points

Section 1 complte, 10 points

7:49am 2.1 complete, 3 points
8:09am 2.2 complete, 2 points (unable to verify)
8:19am 2.3 complte, 3 points
8:25am 2.4 complte, 3 points
8:30am 2.5 complte, 2 points
8:32am 2.6 compelte, 3 points
8:35am 2.7 complte, 3 points

IGP complete, 19/19, 29/29 total

Pingtests complete, 8:47am

8:53am 3.1 complete, 2 points
9:14am 3.2 complete, 2 points
9:17am 3.3 complte, 2 points
9:23am 3.4 complete, 2 points
9:25am 3.5 complte, 2 points

BGP complete, 10/10, 39/39 total

skipping 4.1
9:27am 4.2 complete, 1 point
9:37am 4.3 complete, 1 point