How to prepare for ccie lab exam?

Below are my opinions and strategy which I developed over the past one year!

1) Preparing for CCIE is a far cry from taking a written exam certification. You need to pass a rigorous lab which is of very unrealistic requirements and no partial credits. IMHO (In My Honest Opinion), it is either that you don't start this certification, or when you decided to go for it, be extremely persistence about  passing the lab. You must have a strong desire and the determination to pass ccie.

2) Support from family, friends, colleagues and those around you are extremely important. They will be there to keep you going when you need some directions. If you have a good company to sponsor your ccie track, it will be better than having to do it all by yourself. The exam itself is stressful enough, don't make it harder if you can. This certification also costs lots of money and require you to spend immeasurable amount of  time on reading and countless hours on the lab practice. 

3) Don't expect to take a week ccie prep course and pass the lab. Most people spent months studying. However, with training, it will make your journey easier as the training will provide you a good road map for future development and a good feel of the lab exam. Those highly recommended are CyscoExpert, NetMaster Class, CCbootcamp and Heinz Ulm.

4) Practice, Practice and Practice. There is no other way. Don't bother to look for shortcuts.

5) Fail to Plan = Plan to Fail . You need to prepare for your big day. For myself, I had a total of 28 alias to improve my speed. I use Ping Scripts to check network connectivity. Learn to use debugging commands, this will help you in your real life experience too. Secure Layer 2 physical connectivity and proceed to layer 3 for your interior routing protocols, then the rest will developed in a logical manner.

6) Speed is of no concern to most people, especially when you know the technology to the core. Therefore, make sure you know the core topics such as BGP, IGP, Redistribution, ISDN, FR, CAT and DLSw cold in the head. And spent time to practice on 2nd level topic such as IPsec, IPX, Voice, ATM, Bridging, Token-Ring, Queueing, ACL. Follow on, expose yourself to independent features such as NTP, DHCP, Mobile IP, Multicast, NAT etc. Finally, you can't know everything, so learn how to use the Doc CD effectively :) , this is your only resource in the lab.

7) CCbootcamp lab subscription is a good buy. IPexpert Lab are great if you are new. Fatkid offer free labs scenarios. And a number of websites have a great collection of ccie information. Of course, books such as CCIE Practical Studies, CCIE Lab Practice Kit, CCIE Lab Study Guide can also help to build up the fundamental. Finally, short topics lab from Jeff, Caslow, Halabi and others are good for weekday night's practice. 

8) Thank to Paul that we have GroupStudy discussion group. Many doubts of mine are solved when I checked against the archives. And there are some very knowledgeable people such as Howard, Brian Dennis, Brian McGahan, Jason, Chuck, Parry, Kim, Ahmed Mamoor, etc . Thank for imparting and sharing so much of your knowledge, I really learnt a lot from you people.

9) Get something to help you sleep better, especially the night before the lab. You need all the rest you can get for the rigorous lab exam. Imagine getting only 2 hours of sleep the night before, chances are that you will be too tired to spot small minor configuration errors which could deny you of your digits. Eat well too, you wouldn't want to visit the washroom every half an hour or feel too hungry to think in the midst of the lab.

10) Experience is part of the ingredient for ccie. It does not measure by the years, but by the intensity of work done. Imagine 3 years as a system administrator as compared to a environment with volatile pressure, the latter's experience will pick up exponentially. Do not avoid the opportunity to troubleshoot a network or upgrade the firmware, this form of OJT (On-Job-Training) will certainly make you more prepared for the lab exam. "Network is down, what must you do?" and "I can't get this thing running, what is wrong?" Remember Howard's advice :" What problem are you trying to solve?"

11) Self-Study is the most important factor in ccie preparation. You need the time, the desire and the discipline to keep studying for months. Define your objective and never steer away from it. Sometimes we lose hope, we had our usual mood swings, we got depressed, disappointed, angry and frustrated, but so long as we are still clinging onto the dream, it will become a reality one day.

12) Know yourself well. Know your level of understanding in the topics. Know your weakness and strength. Know the lab environment and the pressure you will be facing. Change those weak topics into strength topics. No one know yourself better than yourself. And only yourself can help yourself. The rest of us can only pray for you.

13) 80 is as good as 100. If you miss one task, you are still fine. Continue with the rest of the sections and spend time on the difficult ones when you completed majority of the questions. Do not get struck too long in one single section and missed out doing other easy points. Finally,  make sure you get to check and re-check all the configurations. 

14) This is just a test. What I want to say: if you fail - you fail. It is not the end of the world. Try to stay calm. Don't get too disappointed (it's hard I know that). If you fail because you didn't know something - fine, but if you fail because of carelessness- not fine. In both ways, you need to review yourself for the next attempt, do not commit the same mistake again. Life still goes on ... stay positive.

15) DON'T QUIT! Things go wrong as they sometimes will. When the funds are low and the debts are high. And you want to smile but you have to sigh. Rest if you must, but don't you quit! Stick to the fight when hardest hit, NEVER QUIT.

For those who are taking the lab in Singapore, notepad is not allowed, so I use banner motd to store my ping scripts :). The Proctor in Singapore is very professional :). Good Luck to you!

Failure is not an option.

Go back to Basics, Memory can fail you

Nothing Good ever comes easy.

Cheers
darry 

Secret Weapons - Download this ZIP file to increase your desire to become a CCIE.

Please email me at darrytan@hotmail.com if you have better suggestions to improve this preparation guide. 

Thanks in advance!

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