First CCIE attempt is over


So, let me start by saying that I don't know my result yet, it's nearly 11pm on a Friday night. I have a thumping headache, and after getting only a couple of hours sleep last night, I am feeling very tired.

Let me also say that I won't be breaking any NDA in this post (or outside of the post, so don't ask for any lab details).

That said, here's how my day went.

I got very little sleep. My body has a tendency to wake me up super early if I have something important to do, today was no exception. My alarm was set for 7am, brain woke me up at 5am. Screw you brain. Thanks a bunch. Managed to get an hour or so sleep after that, woke up feeling very groggy.

The shower at the hotel was decent enough, so that woke me up a bit, I got a coffee from Starbucks, and drove over to the Cisco campus.

The campus is very nice. I didn't take any pictures, already the nerves had kicked in, and I turned my phone off and stored it in the car.

I arrived about half an hour early, one of three candidates, the other two were taking the DC track.

We sign some paper work, and head up to the room.

I have got the most wobbly desk. It's like typing on a boat. I also have one of those keyboards with a really small enter key, and a \ next to it. So very frequently I pressed \ instead of enter, which got really infuriating for a while, but seemed to get easier (a little) later on.

We only have putty, no SecureCrt, or superputty. This is a little annoying, but you get used to it. The screen is a decent size though.

First up we have the troubleshooting section. I am whizzing through this, the first seven questions go really well, and the last two went well also. I did have to ask the proctor at one stage, but he couldnt help me. Everything was working fine, so it's my issue. I did solve that one myself though, so that was OK. Question 8, however, I could not get to work. It kind of worked, but not 100%. So I reckon I failed on that one. The annoying thing is that the first bunch of questions I whizzed through. Got stumped on #8, did 9 and 10 then went back to 8. Still couldn't get the output to match, I had bags of time, and even went into the 30 mins that could be used for the Config section. Still couldn't get it to work.

CCIE brain explode

At this point I got really angry and stressed at myself. Routes were there, just things were taking the wrong path. I spent ages going over and over it. Getting more and more stressed. In the end I decided to move on, and save the time for the config section.

As a side note - I know a lot of people have mentioned that there is a fair amount of lag in a remote lab, but I found it perfectly fine.

Then we have the Diagnostic, which I think went OK. Again, I havn't got the scores yet, so it might have gone ok, or I might have bombed out completely.

Its about 11:30 by now, so I start the config section, covering all of section 1 before lunch.
The cafeteria at Cisco is very nice, but I just opted for an orange juice. Nerves had hit hard by then. I was till angry over the question I had failed to solve in the TS, so was stewing a bit.

The config section went pretty well (I think, we'll find out at some stage). I didn't leave any questions un-attempted, and the outputs matched what was required.

I finished with about 2 minutes to spare. It was close, and I know I picked up a couple of points in the IPv6 section that I would have otherwise missed if I had not had those extra couple of minutes that I chose to "lose" from the TS section.

So although I know I lost some points in the TS, I gained some in the config.

I walked out feeing very uncertain. If I had got all of the TS tickets, then I am sure that I'd have a passing grade, as it stands now, I really don't know.

I then spent about 2 hours on the M25, before getting home and meeting my wife and kids at the family-do at the local cricket club.

Now it's 11:20pm. I am tired, a little drunk, and off to bed. Still none the wiser as to whether or not I have passed. Though the title of this post should be an indication of how well I think I did.

Before I go though, I'd like to say a big thank you to all of you who have wished me well for today, either through the blog, through twitter, or via any other means. It meant a lot, and thank you.

Night all.

CCIE #49337, author of CCNA and Beyond, BGP for Cisco Networks, MPLS for Cisco Networks, VPNs and NAT for Cisco Networks.

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1 comments:

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Anonymous
10 July 2015 at 16:26 delete

Honestly, you sound like you passed. Hope that's the case and you get your number. I can tell you that if I make a review of my two attempts, it wouldn't sound so positive as yours.

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