14 days left…

Already into the arse end of Thursday, only two weeks to go!

Since Monday I’ve gone through the switching and OSPF Volume I workbooks. As expected there wasn’t anything in there I was unfamiliar with or needed the documentation for.

I’ve also gone through Volume II labs 1 – 8, but instead of reading through the PDF’s I decided to watch the breakdown videos from start to finish. Basically I’d read the question, and then pause the video while I do the configuration in my head, and then unpause it to see if my solution was right. The advantage of these is that they are for real equipment, so they include the proper switching sections, plus Brian discusses other ways to solve the task. If there was anything I didn’t know how to locate in the documentation, or didn’t get right….I’d find, it and read up on it.

Then yesterday since I was having withdrawals from not doing mock labs I decided that I may aswell do them all before I sit my lab, so I booked in number mock #4. Glad I did too, I learnt a couple of things….mainly how much of an absolute pig it is!

I haven’t got my grade yet, but to be honest out of all the ones Ive done so far, this one had the most ambiguous requirements yet, so its hard to tell what I’ll get points for and what I wont.

It was heavy on OSPF, and mainly due to interpretation and not having a proctor, I probably spent too much time on trying to get it right when there were points to be rescued in all the other areas. Once I’d bit the bullet, I flew through the other sections and got everything done except one question. I had only 15 minutes left for a review that I managed to save 4 points (i think!).

The grade and comments will be interesting, because I have questions for the proctor already if he marks certain things wrong!! :)

Hopefully I get my marks tonight so I’ll post something tomorrow.

The home straight….

Just to recap on the last three days of the bootcamp. We attempted mock lab 3 on Wednesday followed by mock lab 5 on Thursday. Both of these were defiantly harder than the first two as there were quite a number of technology twists that needed to be carefully thought through. I scored 79 and 85 on each of these which I’m pretty happy with.

After the first two labs I knew that the top down approach wasn’t going to cut it for the more difficult ones. It was important to maintain a consistent point average through the lab to avoid getting bogged down on tough questions. If it looked like it was going to take more than 10 minutes, or I didn’t know how to solve it, then it was simply skipped until I felt like going back to it.

This helps with your overall composure during the lab and settles the nerves because you know you’re making progress. Although I haven’t really been nervous up until this point I think it will be important for the big day.

Friday was a review of the two labs followed by some lab strategy, and just generally what to expect on the day.

To sum it up I think the class was worth every penny, it solidified my knowledge in all the core areas and allowed me to do some serious fine tuning of my strategy and configurations. Brian said that he thinks im in good shape to pass, but I’m by no means going to slack off!

This weekend is just rest rest rest and starting Monday I’ll begin the final phase of my study which is focused on staying sharp and recapping on all the technologies. For that i’ll be doing the following:

• Volume I technology labs (for a second time, and any new ones that come out) – In conjunction with looking up each technology in the documentation
• Browsing over all the documentation again
• Volume III Labs 8 -10
• Read through the Volume II labs
• IE mock Lab 6 on Sunday the 2nd November
• IE mock Lab 7 on Saturday the 8th November

IE Bootcamp – Mock Lab Week

Sunday we hopped into the mock labs. Brian started us off with lab number 1 (difficulty 6) and then lab 2 on Monday (difficulty 7). Both of these I’d done previously but he’d made various little changes to the exam so that it even if we could remember it, it wasn’t the same as before.

Then today was a complete review for both exams. We went through every question, dissected every word, other possible solutions, and even challenged some of the questions to try and claw some points back! Brian also pointed out what sections you would solve straight away, what ones you would skip, and what you wouldn’t even attempt unless you had every other question done. All great information and I think it does give you an edge when going into the exam.

For example, In lab 2 there are two questions that have somewhat of a dependency on each other. If you try and solve them both, unless you really know what’s going on its quite easy to get either one wrong and lose 6 points (2 + 4). Instead Brian said that for something like this, you would just break the rule in the 2 point question to quickly solve the 4 point question, and then move on. Obviously things like this are a case by case basis, but that kind of info is gold Jerry, GOLD!

Overall I’m very happy with how things went. I finished lab 1 in 5hr’s and scored 84, and finished lab 2 in 6hr 45min and scored 92. My verification is getting a lot better but even the most simple of tasks can be screwed up because you lose train of thought for 5 seconds….

Tomorrow is mock lab 3 (difficulty 7) and then Thursday is mock lab 5 (difficulty 8). I hope I can do just as well!

IE Bootcamp quick update

Today is day 5 of IE’s bootcamp, QoS, Security, IP services.

Yesterday we spend most of our time on multicast and it really clarified some important points for me. The topology and the questions we had to work with had a number of flaws that made it impossible to solve without implementing various workarounds. Needless to say it created a lot of confusion in the class and not everyone was happy with it. On the other hand I thought it was better than a working solution, it highlighted so many pitfalls on running multicast in the lab (particurally over frame) which required an awful lot of troubleshooting to fix. So rather than just implementing multicast in the exam and hoping that it works I’m now confident that if any issues pop up I’ll be able to fix them :)

I highly recommend IE’s 5 day bootcamp CoD, it actually runs through the same scenario and Brian breaks down the solution the same way he did for us. Check it out.

Lab Date!

In between Cisco looking at my case I kept checking the lab date scheduler and a suitable date popped up. November 14th, which is exactly 3 weeks after the bootcamp.  Excellent.

Weekend stuffs

Another successful weekend of doing absolutely nothing but study. Friday after work I gained access to some 3560 switches that I’m allowed to use for a month or two. I went through some foreign concepts like DHCP snooping, IP source verification, dynamic arp inspection, and port security.

Yesterday I tackled IE’s VolumeII Lab 7 for the second time. Based on some comments made numerous times by Brian Dennis, he reccomends on the lead up to your exam start doing lab’s 1,7,8,9,10,11 over and over again. Since I redid number 1 about a month back, number 7 was next off the rank with a difficulty rating of 9.

Even though it was quite a while ago, I could still vaguely remember what I screwed up and what I had to look out for. On the first pass I ran out of time and failed on about 13 questions. This time I finished in 6 hours and 45 minutes getting all but 4 questions right. Redistribution was still an absolute nightmare and I think I may have wasted 30 – 40 minutes on it. In the end I just removed some of the two way and moved on…heh should have just done that to begin with!

Today I was planning to do number 8 but as soon as I checked my email to find that IE released the IP services beta v5.0, I adjusted my schedule. Out of the 54 or so tasks planned for the final release this had about 36 of them which I managed to complete in the afternoon. The DHCP and NAT sections are pretty comprehensive and I learnt quite a few things that I just couldn’t understand when reading the on-line documentation.

This coming week is my last for this contract and it may only consist of a couple of days. Following that I’ll maybe do another lab or two, and then get plenty of sleep for next weeks onslaught (IE’s bootcamp).

The “new and improved” lab scheduling policy….

My lab date was originally booked a day after my written exam in April for the 11th of December in Brussels. I hadn’t paid at that point.

About a month ago I pondered the fact that my lab date was possibly too far away after the IE 12 day bootcamp. So I decided to get my friend to check for lab dates and see if there was one about 3 weeks out from the IE bootcamp finishing. There were plenty…

Once Cisco decided to bring in this new lab scheduling policy there were a lot of questions raised about changing dates, paying, not paying, etc that no one seemed to know. So I decided to call Cisco and just confirm that if I decided to change my lab based on how I went at the bootcamp, would there be any penalty? After 1 hour on the phone with them, to put simply, ‘no’ was the answer. Good I thought.

While labbing away a about a month ago, I get an email saying that my lab date was dropped because I hadn’t paid due to it being within the 3 month period. But I was specifically told that because I booked ages ago my lab date wouldn’t drop unless it was within the 1 MONTH DATE. Awesome.

This may not seem to be too big of a problem if you have $1250 US dollars laying around, but at the time I didn’t, and two weeks later when I did, there were no dates available until January 6th 2009….

Luckily I was scouring the IEOC forums and someone was offering their lab date because of visa issues. This one was for the 26th of November, perfect! I quickly dropped him and line and asked that he hold it for me.

Today we were all set so I could grab the date once he dropped it, but as soon as he went to, he got an error telling him that he needs to call Cisco before it can be released. Nothing is ever fucking easy, is it?!?! So I decided to do all the ground work and call Cisco to sort this shit out.

We ended up raising a case, giving Cisco all the details, and my lab date is currently in limbo at the whim of Cisco cert support.

What I don’t get is, why the hell was my lab date dropped and he still had his?? We were both within the three month period, and we both hadn’t paid. Doesn’t sound like any sort of consistant policy to me.

The whole thing is fucked, if I dont get a lab date around the end of November, I’m gonna have to spend a heap more money to fly somewhere else for my exam. I simply cant risk getting closer to the date hoping that something comes up; and I cant wait until next year to sit it. I sincerely hope Cisco come through with the goods.

So…..current lab date and location = UNKNOWN. Bah!

New York

New york was absolutely fantastic. I already have plans to go back, but next time it wont be for business. Didn’t really get to do a lot of sight seeing since most days I was working, and when I wasn’t, I simply couldn’t be bothered. But we did go out to restaurants and bars every night which beats sight seeing anyway!

The project was a success, but it wasn’t without dramas around every corner. All I have to say is that a rather large telco starting with ‘V’ have a bunch of people working for them who couldn’t give two shits about commitment dates and their customers.

So I’m now back in London sporting a decent case the flu that I think developed due to eating poorly, drinking every day, and not getting enough sleep. It’s kinda shit, but I’d rather be sick now than in a week and a half when my 12 day bootcamp with IE starts. I seriously can’t wait!

Tomorrow I’m hitting the study and will do for most of the weekend aswell. IE and IPexpert are both running vLectures on CBAC and Security for the R&S lab which should prove to be most helpful. I might do some labbing but depends how I feel.