Took the exam today and passed with 922/1000.
I must say even after pressing "End Exam" I was feeling troubled. I have been nervous this whole week because of this exam.
My problem was basically that I havent used the technologies and I didnt have access to equipment to practice during my studies. i labbed a lot using GNS3 but the impact of PSTN tecnologies in the program is big. I had to memorize a bunch of stuff and im not used to that. The fact that I have never been exposed to those technologies made it really harder.
My study material was The official Cisco press book which is very good and offers an excellent coverage of the exam. I got 65 questions and I didnt know a couple of those, but i'm sure the material was covered in the book and CBT nuggets.
If you learn all the memory tables in the cisco press book Im sure a perfect score is possible.
This is the exam breakdown:
Describe and configure CUC architecture to support VoIP 100%
Describe PSTN components and technologies 85%
Describe and configure gateways, voice ports and dial
peers to connect to the PSTN 78%
Implement UC500 using CCA 87%
Implementing CUCME to support emdpoints using CLI 90%
Perfoirm basic maintenance and operations tasks
to support teh VoIP solution 100%
PSTN is my weak link
.
I studied for more than 130 hours and I felt I was ready at some point when I had only about 60-70hours. The insecurity with the PSTN and general terminology made me delay the exam and study more. It was a good decision.
Learn the basics and expect a mostly theorical exam. As i said, the coverage of teh official certification guide is excellent and if your learn all the key topics passing shouldnt be a problem.
NOw i should be able to post a pass score for the BCSI in about 3 weeks. I am unemployed and have way tooo much time. I also have been studying for it for the passed two weeks and read the whole self study guide about 6months ago.
A lot of people said this certification was going to be a door opener. I hope so!!!
Thanks for all the valuable help!
P.D.: A friend has giiven me a new perspective: "$#%$ routing, stick to voice." I could go after CVOICE...I overstudied for this exam. I downloaded a lot of documents from cisco.com and i know a lot more than the exam blueprint, I might be able to pass CVoice easier now than say in a year when im done with the CCNP...the only problem is that i really felt uncomfortable with those topics I could not practice, even knowing them for the exam level as the results showed. What do u guys think?
