ccie-blog

I am very happy that I passed my CCIE lab in Dubai on June 29! My number is #26323.

I’m back from my Lab at San Jose, pretty sure that I failed. Due to NDA I’m not allowed to tell a lot – sorry! Now waiting for the score report.

Long silence   I’m currently at the Reno airport, waiting for my flight to San Jose. The Internetworkexpert bootcamp was great, Marvin Greenlee did a great job! On monday is the “big day”: 1st lab attempt! I’m curious about what Cisco wants me to configure, how the tasks are verbalized and….about the OEQ! Since there are no examples from Cisco about the open ended questions.

Since the averade attempt rate is 3-4, I’m not going to be that sad if I fail. It’s only an exam, fortunately. And you get lunch for $1400

Below you find some picture. Unfortunately the quality isn’t the best, I took it with my iPhone.

Hope to be able to put an CCIE# under my name when I’ll posting next time

I’m working on full scale labs now. I feel that I improve more when working on full scale labs. The complexity any details lead to gain more knowledge. Just a little picture of the lab that I’m working at the moment. Early stage diagram.

I arrived back in Germany last sunday. The plan was to update my blog day by day during the boot camp, which was impractical. Following my thoughts about the boot camp:

- Vendor: IPexpert
- Instructor:Tyson Scott
- Location: Columbus, Ohio
- Class participants (me inlcuded): two

The surprise (when I arrived) was: only two participants? Hmm, would be a cool class. Tyson is a very good instructor. We followed this schedule: work on a full day lab exam Tyson provided to us (ProctorGuide included), next lab when the first was finished. The first lab was very hard, Tyson would give it a 9 in a chart from 1 to 10. So it did shock me!
We worke two days on the first lab, startign from 9AM to 10PM. Lunch was catered to the facility. I used to take enough time an not “rush” through the labs, taking advantage of the ProctorGuide too fast. On wednesday we began our second lab and got out to lunch with Tyson this evening, talking about various topics – relaxed eating out Tyson demonstraded an NAC implementation on thursday to us. Cool stuff, hard to implement with those various involved components.
We attacked the third lab on friday, but didn’t work until 10PM. But we (I and the other attendee, whose name I forgot) went to the mall. I bought four Levis jeans for $175 – great deal! Saturday mordning I left the hotel and took my two flights back to Germany. Overall: it was worthwhile! I learned a ton. But I wonder if I could pass my exam in September. First time passing rate in only 13% and I got enough topics with weakenings. The complexity of a full lab shouldn’t be underestimated. But we’ll see – it’s only a test.

I finally arrived in Columbus yesterday evening or better, night at 09:45 PM. So this is more the scond day. Hotel is good, couldn’t checkt out the breakfast today since I slept until 11AM

My jorney startet in Muellheim, traveling to Freiburg via train. Then via ICE train to Frankfurt airport, flying to Chicago. A 6h stopover in Chicago (but I got wireless access for $ 6,95 for 24h), followed by the last flight to Columbus. Completed by an 20 minute cab drive.

The airplane from Frankfurt was fully booked. Lufthansa service is ok. Compared to it, Air France does offer more drinks and that much more often. Today and tomorrow are pure relax days. Ordered pizza today (couldn’t remeber such an great pizza), browsing the web and so on. It’s very rainy today and the front desk got no umbrella for me. I forgot mine. Who thinks about an umbrella when flying to the US in during summer?

I’m ready to go! My plane is leaving from Frankfurt to Chicago, then straight to Columbus. Train leaves Muellheim at 04:52AM – puhhh. Next post will be from the US

How time flies! It’s almost July and my bootcamp at IPexpert in Columbus is moving closer. I’ve been last time in the US in May 2007. I’m so happy to get there again! And over again in September

I’ve finished reading Router Security Strategies: Securing IP Network Traffic Planes , have been working on the IOS firewall lab (Lab 2A) of the IPexpert workbook the last days. About 2/3 finished, it’s hard! A lot of new topics, I have to gain more knowledge of it before continuing with the lab.
Anybody knows a good book covering the advanced IOS firewall features, redundancy, ZBF and such stuff? Ciscopress has very little books available relating to those topics.

“Thank you for choosing to stay with Hyatt Hotels and Resorts.” Santa Clara is a pricey place – puh. The Hyatt Hotel will be nice, I hope.