It’s been a while since I wrote something to the blog, reason being is that it’s not easy to juggle your time between too many things at the same time, yeah, even if you are studying a lot for it does not mean that you can write that much on your blog! My lab is in SJ, Oct 17th, I’m going to crash at a friend’s that lives in SF, I’m charging that whole week to vacation so I don’t get swamped into work related stress that is always there to start off with. Overall, how do I feel at this point? and the truth is I feel great, I can pretty much do any type of lab that they can ask off me. I still have weak areas, but nothing that can’t be done by practicing a little more, just a little more.

I’ve logged in nearly 350-400 hrs of rack time up to date, most of it in CCIE2BE and some in CCOnlineLabs, I setup a virtual lab following the instructions from http://www.andersonalves.net/ but I have not used it at all, I got to say that their gear for the Netmetric Security Workbook is just great! The approach to follow for me was simple yet very effective:

  • Individual Labs in Sections 1 – 5 (June-July) until you know how to type them by heart, in my case this helps tremendously, because I get to understand the technologies as I play with different examples, most of the time it’s easier to digest the theory for me if I know the steps ahead of time, yeah I know, sounds backwards, but hey, it works for me!
  • Section 6 aka Super Labs 1-3, 7-8, 10-11 (August-September) I did these at least once each, try to get someone that is willing to help you grade your results, avoid using the videos or peeking at the solutions all you can at this point. It’s very important to keep track not only of your grades but also your timing both per section and overall, so far I’m spending no more than 70-90 minutes on the longest sections (VPN and Firewall) and finishing within 5-6 hrs depending on the difficulty level of the lab, as far as score goes I am above 92% for the last 5 labs. That is from taking almost 8 hrs and scoring just below 80% on the first two.
  • The last thing I am working on is reviewing whatever I can’t remember by heart, locating the path in the documentation, in case I don’t remember the exact commands or syntax (AAA on IOS, DMVPN, EZVPN, etc).