BSCI Passed

Passed on 1/4/2009 with a 910 after failing the week before with a 786. Went in on a whim the week before just to see how hard it really is. BGP smoked me, scored a 0%. Everything else I did fairly well on. Hit the books and lab hard with BGP and knocked it out. Studied for roughly 2 1/2 months and would have passed the first time if I hadn't blown BGP and multicast off.

Study Material:
Cisco Press: Self Study, Official Cert Guide, Lab Portfolio, CLI command
guide and CBT Nuggets.

On to BCMSN now which shouldn't be to bad since I work in an in depth Layer 2/3 switching environment. Work is giving me 3x 2960 and 2x 3750's to play with at the house for prep.

That also brings me to another point. I have a small router lab here that I will not be needing anymore, would much more rather see someone here get it instead of throwing it up on ebay. 2x 2610xm, 1x 2650, 1x2520 (FR). 3x Smart DCE/DTE, 3x WIC-4T cables, all 2600's have 1x WIC-2T module plus standard stock stuff. SDM and CME plus a brand new copy of the official cert guide. Cisco sales rep gave me one then mom gave me a copy 3 weeks later, lol.

To all of you out there studying for this exam. Relax, digest the material, implement it, break it, and troubleshoot it. Before you know it you'll be pumping your fist on the way out of the Pearson Vue testing center.

Find more posts tagged with

Free for TechExams community: Cybersecurity salary guide

Compare cert salaries and plan your next career move

Button

Comments

ColbyG

Congrats, it's a beast! Your company is awesome to let you use that stuff for your lab.

After digging into BGP did you start to like it? It's definitely the coolest routing protocol, IMO.

Chipsch

Yeah it is really an amazing protocol with some awesome capabilities. When I first started studying for the exam I only skimmed the BGP topic. Very bad idea btw, hehe. After hitting it very hard for a week, multiple labs, resources, etc. for 2-3 hours a day I started hoping we would decide to get another path other than the 60 meg pipe so I could play with it in a production environment. OSPF is still my baby though, although I am partial since we run that in our CAN and I take care of it. Yeah work is definitely being great to me with the gear. Gonna grab some SFP's also just to say I was running fiber in my home lab. Our cisco sales rep is kicking all the cisco press stuff my way also, so I am extremely fortunate.

networker050184

Congrats!

burbankmarc

Congrats, stay motivated. My BCMSN has not gone as quickly as I hopped due to motivation.

jovan88

burbankmarc wrote: »

Congrats, stay motivated. My BCMSN has not gone as quickly as I hopped due to motivation.

You can say that again, I'm in the same boat after passing the BSCI lol

Forsaken_GA

Don't let it lapse too long, boys. I let my motivation lapse for 3 years, and the only thing it got me was the opportunity to take BSCI... again.

burbankmarc

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Don't let it lapse too long, boys. I let my motivation lapse for 3 years, and the only thing it got me was the opportunity to take BSCI... again.

I'm progressing through the Self-Study book, but just not as focused or fast as I did the BSCI. I got all the BSCI studying done in about 5 weeks. It's been about 6 weeks on the BCMSN and I'm still not done with the book, let alone labs and what not.

btowntech

Congrats!!

It was a tough exam for me too.

billscott92787

First of all, congrats on the pass! Secondly, Do you have any recommendations for me? I take mine in 18 days. From your post I can definitely see too recommendations, know BGP and multicast, so I'm going to hit them hard this last 18 days.

Chipsch

In response to Billscott, know everything! BGP and multicast were my toughest departments because I don't have any experience with them. Labs and seeing the show command outputs, knowing what is going on under the hood makes a huge difference. It's the little things that will get you. A good practice if you can't lab to grasp the commands would be open up notepad, formulate a scenario, and input the commands through the text editor. Proof it afterwards and see where you stand. Also saw someone in the CCIE forums post something about a command memoriser for practice, but practically the costly version of using notepad from what I understand. You can also fill in some gaps through cisco.com. Some valuable info in there. Might have been burbankmarc that posted some links some time back that were useful through the cisco website. Don't have access to them at this time but I would be glad to post them when I get to my other computer.

As far as BCMSN it looks like it might take a while depending on what happens with us getting this possible 10 gig core MPLS solution. Will have to do a lot of homework and will probably nearly get fired in the process of the implementation, lol. Will be excellent experience towards the CCIP down the road though. Time will tell.

billscott92787

Chipsch wrote: »

In response to Billscott, know everything! BGP and multicast were my toughest departments because I don't have any experience with them. Labs and seeing the show command outputs, knowing what is going on under the hood makes a huge difference. It's the little things that will get you. A good practice if you can't lab to grasp the commands would be open up notepad, formulate a scenario, and input the commands through the text editor. Proof it afterwards and see where you stand. Also saw someone in the CCIE forums post something about a command memoriser for practice, but practically the costly version of using notepad from what I understand. You can also fill in some gaps through cisco.com. Some valuable info in there. Might have been burbankmarc that posted some links some time back that were useful through the cisco website. Don't have access to them at this time but I would be glad to post them when I get to my other computer.

As far as BCMSN it looks like it might take a while depending on what happens with us getting this possible 10 gig core MPLS solution. Will have to do a lot of homework and will probably nearly get fired in the process of the implementation, lol. Will be excellent experience towards the CCIP down the road though. Time will tell.

I do have the ability to lab, so I plan to hit BGP and Multicasting hard the next 17 days to practice even more than I already have. I appreciate your recommendations! Hopefully in 17 days, I can say that I'm moving on to the ONT