My CCIE Journey – Chapter 4

The First Lab Attempt

I felt really good. I was consistently doing well on INE full-scale labs. I could answer questions in our RouterGods CCIE study group without any trouble. I had taken a hit to my confidence by failing INE’s Graded Online Assessment, but I felt like the extra time I had taken afterward had addressed my deficiencies (it hadn’t, but that’s how blind spots work). I booked my lab feeling like even if I didn’t pass the first time, I’d get close.

At this point, I expected to feel nervous and manic. I’d read all sorts of stories about how booking the lab made them feel trapped and committed, but I wasn’t feeling that. I wasn’t nervous, I was excited.The day before my lab, I ignored the advice about not doing any studying right before the lab. I spent the day doing one of INE’s mock labs – which included a TSHOOT, DIAG and CONFIG section. I did pretty well. I went home, had dinner and even managed to fall asleep at a normal time – and more importantly, I managed to stay asleep. The night before my very first attempt at the CCIE R/S exam, I slept a full 8 hours. I woke up at 5 AM, took a shower and ate a small breakfast. I’d never felt so calm… which was weird to me. All the stories said I should be freaking out. Blood pumping. Heart pounding. Nervous and energetic. I took it as a blessing.

I got to the exam center in RTP about 20 minutes before 7 and let myself in, since I have a Cisco badge. I ended up letting in some other candidates (it was January after all) and we all waited together. When David (the proctor) showed up at 7 we were all waiting.

Now, David is a character, and people either love him or hate him, I’ve heard. I fall firmly in the side that loves him, he’s a good guy, a good proctor and he’s as straight with you as he can be. People have said he can be abrasive and I can get where that complaint comes from, but it’s important to understand the difference in importance between a candidate’s day and David’s day. The average candidate places great importance on their lab day, for good reason. They tend to be more apprehensive, nervous, and generally have heightened emotions because of that. Meanwhile, this is like, CCIE Lab Day #4697 on David’s calendar. He’s not there to take the test, it’s just another day. He tries to loosen up the candidates and it doesn’t always work. Some people aren’t there to loosen up. Some people think it gives them an edge.

The point is, David is a proctor. He’s not there to help you unless there’s something wrong with the test. If a candidate thinks something is wrong with the test, they need to understand, again, that this is David’s #4000+ exam. He’s probably seen 99.99% of all the issues that can possibly happen. And he is a proctor, not a resource. If a candidate thinks the lab is broke, it’s on the candidate to show that to the proctor, it’s not on the proctor to divine the issue.

I had met David before lab day, but that didn’t save me from his ribbing. I was a bit jumpy come lab time. I forgot to put my Cisco badge in the locker and he called me out. Rather than take offense at it, I just went and put the badge in the locker. Exam day is not the day to have a chip on your shoulder, believe me. It’s literally your time to lose – except it’s also the other candidate’s time as well.

The Lab Begins – TSHOOT

After getting to my assigned desk and grabbing a pencil, as well as the supplied paper, I was ready to go. I clicked the Start Exam button and launched directly into the TSHOOT section. Now, it’s probably no surprise to anyone reading this, but I’ll cover the breakout anyway. The TSHOOT section has 10 questions and lasts two hours, with the ability to borrow 30 minutes from the Config section if needed. What happens is that after the clock ticks down from two hours, a popup appears and asks if you want to extend your time by 30 minutes. If you agree, the clock resets to 30 minutes. If you do not agree, the section closes. If you choose to extend by 30 minutes, you can use all or none of that time. If you accidentally clicked the button to extend, you can immediately click End Section and you get back any unused time. The reason for this is that the config section lasts until the end of the day. Because of this, every minute (up to 2.5 hours) spent on TSHOOT is technically borrowed from Config. The DIAG section is hard-coded at 30 minutes and can not be ended early.

When I started my TSHOOT section, I felt ready. My strategy was to read each ticket first, and try to identify the easier fixes. Then I would circle back through on the harder ones, especially the ones worth more points. The CCIE exam is all about scoring points after all. Each section has a minimum amount of points that are needed in order to pass the section, and there is another minimum needed overall to pass the entire exam, referred to as the cut score. So, in theory, if each section had 10 points possible (totaling 30 points available in the entire exam), each individual section may require a minimum of 5 points, but the overall score neeeded to pass might be 20 points, which is 5 points above the minimum score needed to pass all three sections. It’s not enough to simply pass each section, you must score above the minimum overall score to pass.

With this in mind, I had two main goals in the TSHOOT section. First, score at least the minimum score to pass the section. Because of the fact that different issues are worth different points, this requires some serious consideration. Some questions can be skipped entirely if running out of time, but the section is structured in such a way that no more than one high-point question could be skipped in this fashion, usually. So identifying which issues will be easier to fix than others, and their point value, are part of the TSHOOT strategy.

I scribbled down some details about all 10 tickets along with what I thought might be the issue at first blush. Then I picked my tickets, weighing tickets that I thought would be easier at a higher value to start.

My very first ticket was a cinch. Done in three minutes. I felt great. Then came the next ticket. That one took 12. It was fine, my time budget per ticket was about 13 minutes and so I was still ahead. But this is where I started to slip. I would spend 6 or 7 minutes troubleshooting an issue and feel like I was close. But when the solution eluded me, or it seemed like I was breaking a restriction with my solution (and would not score the points) I had to try something else. And by a thousand cuts, my time was bled away. I finished several more tickets, including a high-value one. If my point counting was accurate I was only one or two tickets from passing the section.

Then the popup came up. Do you need more time? I hadn’t panicked at all up until then, and I still didn’t, but the gravity of my situation became clear. I was borrowing time from config and I wasn’t as close as I needed to be. Since I knew I’d fail the section (and the test) if I didn’t take the extra time, I agreed to use the extra 30 minutes. I redoubled my efforts and when time ran out I felt like I had scored the bare minimum to pass the section. It wasn’t my finest hour, but I was sure I was still in the game.

Here Comes DIAG

Everyone says DIAG is the easy section. They’re not wrong, but the time crunch is deceptive. I had two tickets needing multiple answers and only 30 minutes to fill in all the blanks. The first ticket was tougher than I expected. I’m not sure what it was, really. I understood what I thought were the answers, but I just had trouble making a final diagnosis. I made choices and moved on to the second ticket, which was cake. I was done with that one within 5 minutes. With 5 minutes left, I went back to the first ticket to try and see if I could do damage control there. I unselected a previous answer and it unselected all my answers, with a minute left. I rushed to fill in that first ticket again, finishing just in time to have the DIAG section close on me, launching directly into Config.

Config – Now the Real Marathon Begins

In terms of raw difficulty, I would place TSHOOT far above the Config section. TSHOOT is a time crunch, there’s a ton of moving parts and it’s somewhat frantic at times. Meanwhile, Config is more like a marathon, and it requires a marathon runner’s speed and endurance. It’s the longest part of the day by far, and the pace should never be quite as frenetic as TSHOOT. In TSHOOT it’s required to shoot from the hip to get things done. In the Config section, shooting from the hip is how you lose – at least, before the point of the exam where you are trying to hunt the very last points possible.

The Config section can be tackled in any order, and, indeed, it should not be tackled in a top-down order at all. While it is impossible to do most layer 3 configuration before the layer 2 section, it is possible, depending on the scenario, that some underlay/overlay solution (which appears later in the exam) needs to be completed prior to some routing configuration much earlier. It is the job of a CCIE to be able to interpret a list of tasks, draw out the intent, and formulate the most efficient way to tackle it.

The exam consists of multiple sections, each section equivalent to a section of the CCIE Lab Exam blueprint. The tasks within each of the sections will cover some aspect of that blueprint section, and be worth several points. Some tasks are necessarily dependent on others (as mentioned) and the points available can only be attained by resolving dependencies.

I started the Config section fairly confident that I could make up for lost time, and since I had done so many INE labs, I felt like my Config strategy was great. I would read through the whole lab once, document dependencies and corner case tasks, and use those to formulate my strategy to tackle the exam as a whole.

I spent 10 minutes reading through the tasks and writing down some notes. I didn’t feel it was as effective in informing my strategy as I would have hoped, but at least I had my head wrapped around the expectations. I launched into the Layer 2 section, which, honestly, started kicking my ass until I found an effective way to deal with the curve balls I hadn’t seen before. I finished the Layer 2 section and had just started Layer 3 when it was lunch time.

Lunch as a Milestone

I was told by multiple people that by lunch time, I should have the Config section to the point where I had basic connectivity over most of the topology, if not further. Seeing as how I had barely begun the Layer 3 section, I knew I was behind. But I was in high spirits. I’d learned a lot already, and I hadn’t lost my cool. I was fairly certain a pass was going to be really tough for me, but I resolved to push hard and catch up. I ate a good lunch, though not too much. David did what he could to engage the group in conversation, it was clear that some candidates were shell shocked. Too quickly, lunch was over and it was time to get back to work.

Config – Finishing the Day

The afternoon felt like it took forever. I pushed through the config section, getting connectivity everywhere, skipping one or two tasks I felt would take too long, and got stuck on a couple more. Luckily, no task was a showstopper for me. I finished the day feeling pretty good. I was fairly certain I hadn’t passed, but I did feel like I should be close. I handed back the paper, thanked David, and went to the parking lot. There, I pulled out the notebook and colored pencils I had in there and started drawing, just dumping out as much as I could remember. I especially focused on the Config topology, and the technologies that had really caused me problems. I went home, exhausted, but in high spirits.

Later that night, I got my score report. I’m almost embarrassed to show everyone, it was such a poor showing, but I think it’s important that other CCIE candidates understand that failing isn’t the same as being a failure.

There’s a stigma associated with failing the CCIE exam that we all have to fight against. This was my first attempt. I blew chunks. But I took some very important lessons away from this attempt. I had now seen the lab. I understood the format. And the lab had shown me my blind spots. Most importantly, the disconnect I had between how I thought I had done, versus the score report, finally taught me the lesson I’d needed to learn: Attention to detail! I hadn’t taken the lesson to heart with my INE Graded Online Exam, but now, it clicked.

And so, armed with a list of my weaknesses, and having learned a huge lesson, I set out to regroup and change how I would study. I gave myself two months before I’d try again.