To Mike

DevilWAH

mikej412 wrote: »

I've determined that not being able to fall asleep the night before a CCIE Lab exam has nothing to do with sleeping alone in a hotel room and missing my cats. This sucks.

Aww man!! you miss you pussy cats.. that so sweet

Good luck !!

mikej412

Yawn. Time to mainline some coffee. All the house cats are "sleeping in" even though this is their usual breakfast time -- they must have had a busy night.

I've got my Picture ID, my CSO ID, and both my Vue and Prometric ID numbers. And I'm wearing pants.

Road Trip!! I should be home in 11.5 hours.

dynamik

Kill it!

ColbyG

This is stressful! Haha.

Good luck!

APA

Good luck Mike!

I'm certain you'll kill it!!!

jason_lunde

Good luck Mike! We'll be rooting for you.

cablegod

Good luck Mike. Have fun with it Check back in when you get home and have a few of those beers that you eat with a fork......

Ahriakin

Come back with your number, or on it.

Webmaster

Good luck Mike! We'll keep my thumbs crossed the rest of the day

networker050184

Good luck!

ajmatson

Good luck Mike. Knock them out

Sirsamon

He will come back with the Collection complete

TheShadow

It's 5:30pm in Chicago. Luck or not the odeal is over. Now he starts the wait. I hope he slayed it!

NightShade03

I think waiting will be the hardest part of this exam...

SysAdmin4066

The CISSP is a much more brutal wait, I hear you get your results for this in a few days.

cablegod

He's probably chewing on his Guinness now.....

Mishra

Good luck! Not being around I don't know who is going after it anymore.

mikej412

The CCIE is a lot like the CCNA exam -- make sure you know your subnetting and don't spend more than 10 minutes on a sim/individual router configuration.

And one thing I noticed when I started looking over the lab and the existing configuration -- even in my frazzled state of mind after the troubleshooting section -- and even jotted a note about, is probably what killed me (if troubleshooting didn't). If I had followed my gut in those first 10-15 minutes while I was still almost thinking straight, this could have been the one.

Food Run!! Then I'll comment on the "interface"

4E6564

Out of curiousity, why did you take your Prometric number?

TheShadow

In case they could not find proof of a valid written maybe?

4E6564

Cisco is Pearson only isn't it?

mikej412

4E6564 wrote: »

Out of curiousity, why did you take your Prometric number?

In case the Online Lab Scheduling Confirmation email was a secret part of the Lab Exam, I didn't want to lose points for not completing #4 of the General Exam Information section.

4. Please ensure that you bring photo identification, your Cisco CCO User ID, and your Prometric or Pearson VUE ID to the lab.

4E6564 wrote: »

Cisco is Pearson only isn't it?

They are now -- but I did almost all of my exams at Prometric, so I have a Prometric ID.

Since there is/was a lag between passing your first Cisco Exam and getting your Cisco CSCO#, you could use your Prometric, and now Pearson/Vue ID # to log in to the Online CCIE Scheduling System -- but you had to create your free CCO login to get to that page. With the changes Cisco has made with their main site, the Certification Tracking System, and the Cisco Learning Network, everything should now be linked to that CCO login id.

I did use my CCO id to "log in" to the exam -- but they had that on a sheet of paper (along with a nice random password) that was attached to my scratch paper sheets. I actually used that "top sheet" as my troubleshooting scratch paper so I guess I had 3 sheets of scratch paper (and you can always ask for more)

I guess I should mention 2 random bits of information that may be of interest to some people:

We had pizza for lunch -- one was half sausage/peperoni and the other was half/peperoni and the other half was either veggie or "supreme."

I had one blue pen and one black pen. There were no colored pencils. While they may still the odd assortment of colored pencils at the regular lab locations, there was something oddly liberating and "Expert Feeling" about just having the pens -- sort of like doing the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle in ink.

Another thing I should mention -- even though I didn't get much sleep the night before, the only coffee I drank was that cup in the car on the way to the Lab. We didn't have to "grab the badge" to get in and out of the "lab room" to go to the break room or restroom, but the only time I left the room was for the lunch break. I drank a bottle of water at lunch (and used the restroom) then, and that was it. You're not going to dehydrate in a few hours, and you can rehydrate when you're a CCIE or done with the Lab.

I probably should have taken a "stretch break" at the halfway point after lunch, but I powered through it. But, since I need a "stretch break" now, I think that pain in the neck (and upper back) is more related to slipping and falling on the ice last week.

Mrock4

What did you think of the lack of printed diagrams? How do you think the new steps implemented in v4 affected you? I've heard a lot of people complain of the "usability" of the new exam format.

mikej412

Mrock4 wrote: »

What did you think of the lack of printed diagrams? How do you think the new steps implemented in v4 affected you? I've heard a lot of people complain of the "usability" of the new exam format.

It definitely took some getting used to -- and I was still "screwing up" all through the configuration portion.

You'll definitely want to read through the articles the various CCIEs who took the beta exam wrote. There was also the Scott Morris article/post/comment on the Cisco Learning Network somewhere. You may want to read through them several times. As a matter of fact, any time you think you may want to spend "studying" for the OEQs would be better spent reading those beta exam articles.

As for the OEQs, unless you misread, misunderstand, or over-think a question, they should be easy to answer for someone ready to attempt the lab.

I brought a printout of the "tables of stuff you know" appendix (on the CD) from the Cisco Press R&S Written Certification Guide to page through in the car while waiting to go into the exam (since I allowed extra time for speeding tickets, accidents, car breakdowns, finding parking, etc). That time would have been better spent taking a nap (and hoping my cell phone alarm worked).

The OEQs application was pretty simple and straight forward -- and pretty much worked as expected. I think on the last question I hit the "previous button," expecting to go back to the 3rd question, and was confused when the "previous button" was "dimmed" and not available to go back to the 2nd question.... On the last question the "previous button" had taken me back to the 1st question. Since I wasn't there to do QA on their testing applications I didn't bother to see if the "previous button" did the same thing when sitting on the 3rd question.

From there, the "next app" seemed to be used for the Troubleshooting and then again for the Configuration portion of the lab. I read the instructions and looked for the "menu" so I could select the "start test" option, but couldn't find it. Since I saw the Internet Explorer "e icon" in the top left corner, I poked around for a bit until I noticed something down from the top near the right edge of the screen. It wasn't the "start test" I was looking for, but it was a menu..... Once I went to full screen, I saw the rest of the "menu" and I could see the "start test" option

Since that poking around wasn't timed, I can live with that.

As for the "usability".... if you want to be slick and program "fly out menus," either drop down when "focus occurs" or display the menu when someone clicks on it. I think it opened the first menu option when you'd click, so until you figure out the person who programmed this thing hates you and that you should hover until it drops to show the options, it can get pretty frustrating.

You launch your terminal sessions by clicking on the device icons in the main network graphic window. I'm a double click by habit person, but a single click was all that was required. As long as you're not a "slow double clicker" it seemed to ignore the 2nd click -- since you'd get a terminal window with an error message when trying to open an already opened device.

Cisco really should publish a "Demo" of the application -- sort of like the existing Cisco Certification Exam Tutorial/Demo.

I should mention that we had 26" LCD monitors, so you have plenty of screen to work with. I think you had the IE zoom options -- but it was also a menu option if you took the time to poke around while the exam timer was running.

I probably wasted 30 minutes on my first incident trying to figure out how best to work with this interface. I had the "sizing" issue again when I opened "all the incidents" -- I could see each one as a "one liner" and had to scroll over to read them, and then scroll back, and scroll right to read that one completely.... Later on when I tried it again, it was formated properly. Without knowing what it should really look really like, I just again assumed that the application programmer hated me and wanted me to fail.

Once I moved on and got used to it, it seemed to work okay. To have an incident task open at the top of my screen and read it while working, the main window couldn't be maximized, so I couldn't see the exam timer while still displaying the entire network diagram.

Once you get used to it, it isn't too bad. A demo would go a long way to helping with the usability issues. And it should be a functional demo, with fake terminal session windows, all the document/diagram windows with realistic samples, and the "zoom stuff" so I could figure out if that's useful for anything.

Now for the stuff that should be fixed.

I can live with losing an occasional terminal session. Since you're using an access server, you can get back to right were you were, so that isn't a big problem in itself. But you can't do the "open all windows in order" trick and select your router/switch from your open sessions on the task bar. When you have all the switches open and lose the session for switch 2, it comes back as the 4th task bar terminal item. So with multiple session open, you have to come up with your own "system" for keeping track. A couple times when I was getting sessions mixed up while comparing the output of show commands (and couldn't see a host name prompt) and trying to see one of the diagrams, I'd just close everything and "start over" just opening the terminal sessions I needed.

Some times when I'd click on the main application network diagram to bring it forward to open another router terminal session, I'd get a different device open. It seems their "single click" worked if you hit a router when the main application didn't have focus.

When I was working off one of the diagrams and not the main network diagram application, I found it annoying I couldn't launch a router terminal session from there. I'd have to maximize or restore the main app to open a session to a device and than minimize it -- or select all the devices/diagram(s) from the task bar to bring them all forward again.

When one of my lines locked, I figured out what the Comms Server device icon was for. That's one of the nice things about using real hardware, I knew what to do to clear the line.

Right now it seems like trying to figure out how the testing application works and how best to use it is part of the lab -- and it shouldn't be.

I did try a copy and paste from the exam to notepad -- and it worked. That at least reminded me to copy and past as much as you can to minimize typing errors.

Oh -- if they are going to keep the exam in the "online format" -- they should at least lose the "yy" fill in your rack number b*llsh*t so that you can copy and paste more. At one point I did "switch the number" in my head and did some configurations that I had to remove and do again.

And my final gripe for this post -- the desktop online documentation link takes you a page with a redirect. Seriously -- what did we all do to the people who program this and setup the desktop kiosk testing environment that they hate us so much?!?!?!?!

pitviper

Damn, sounds as much as a trial of patience as it is of skill.

mikej412

pitviper wrote: »

Damn, sounds as much as a trial of patience as it is of skill.

Yeah, and you also need to -- wait, I saw it somewhere....

Mrock4 wrote: »

Stay focused!

You'll make a type and have to catch it and recover, oops, I meant typo. You have to stay focused -- and verify your work.

There was only one WTF task -- and I decided it wasn't important or needed to pass the exam. If I hadn't of been caught by that one issue I had noticed in my first glance at the configurations (and forgot about in the heat of configuration) I probably would have spent any time left at the end of the exam double checking the 95% of the stuff I knew how to configure, rather than opening the docs to read about a feature and hope for a copy and paste example to modify.

Oh, and there was one "time sink" I hit that was caused by something you never had to do on the previous versions of the Lab Exam. I went through all the proper debug procedures and came to the correct conclusion -- and then reread the task, looked at the diagram for that section, scratched my head , and saw what I had "overlooked" -- and decided whoever wrote that task hates anyone who prepared for previous versions of the CCIE R&S Lab (but likes people with real hardware lab experience). I will add a comment about that when I do my post-lab feedback form.

SysAdmin4066

i was thinking the same thing. Doesnt seem fair to have to fight with the effing interface while taking such a seriously technical exam. That wouldnt be acceptable in something like the bar, and this is just as important to us.

snadam

I know I am a little late to the party, but good luck!

NightShade03

Do you think that the lab was what you had imagined it would be or was it completely different?

mikej412

NightShade03 wrote: »

Do you think that the lab was what you had imagined it would be or was it completely different?

Yeah it was exactly as I imagined it would be.

I expected it to be a b*tch -- and it was.