Back in 2007 I promised myself I would become CCIE RS by the end of the year and then go on with the Security track afterwards, so I started to read on for the written part while I finished my last few months of studies towards my Master’s degree. A month after graduation, I passed the RS written, it wasn’t very difficult to go through an exam after reading so much stuff.
I started my lab preparation with the buying of material from Internetwork Experts, it was very good, cause I actually got the core labs, which was where I felt I was weaker, even ended up getting their Vol2 workbook together with the walkthrough videos. This ended up being a rip off, cause a year after I got those they haven’t released all the videos, even worse they just changed their pricing and new customers now can get the same I paid for at a much better price. What I hated the most out of the videos was not the price or that they ended up changing it after so many of us got it at the original retail price a year ago, it was that one of the instructor (now you will have to figure this one on your own cause I don’t want to type his name even though it’s shorter than this rant) attitude, which was pretty stupid to say the least.
Even when you are at a high level in your studies and you understand a lot of the stuff that is going on inside routers and switches there is a high probability that there will be stuff you are not familiar with, or plain and simple you don’t understand after reading it a few times. It could even be that you don’t like a certain technology, the point is, I see no reason in insulting the student by even mentioning the fact that you shouldn’t be at X level because you don’t understand this or that. Why would you be in the training in the first place? cause you are so capable and understand everything and you just go to hear it again? come on, we all go for training to polish ourselves, become better at everything we can swing at, so it’s just bad taste to watch a video where the instructor is always dissing students cause they have a low level, little or no understanding of a certain technology.
So I just had a bad time with the videos and ended up watching half of them, the ones that didn’t have the not-so-good teacher of course. I tried to practice the other stuff on my own, read on and so on, but I simply was not able to get to the proper level on my own, and let the insults take the best part out of me. I failed my first attempt at RS not only because I wasn’t in top shape for all technologies but because I was sooooooo nervous, so it ended up being a cool experience, and gave me the confidence I needed for a second shot. I polished myself even more for a second attempt, but didn’t do enough in the areas I was very weak at, two months after I failed again but this time I felt I was a lot closer to get it done, it really taugh me what I needed to pass it the next time I go at it.
Since I wanted to do the Security track next and I have always been very confident about myself I did not spare to have me signed in for the Netmetric Solutions Security Bootcamp, went to LA to meet one of the best teachers I’ve had in life: Khawar Butt…