Pavel Stefanov’s Blog

Yes!!! I did it. I nailed it on my first attempt on February 4th, 2009. I am now one of them.

Ever since I got into networking, I always wanted to be a CCIE and looked up to those guys. It was a dream and I realized it.

I took off from Sofia on February 3rd with the Hungarian Airlines. I had a connecting flight in Budapest as I was travelling with the Hungarian Airlines – Malev. I landed in Brussels and arrived at the hotel around 8.30 pm. My plan was not to study on the day before the exam. The only thing I read a few times that day was my plan for attacking the lab. What I usually do before exams is listen to some music and concentrate. During the two weeks before the lab, I slept like 5-6 hours a day because of jet lag from my trip to the US, lengthy sessions with live hardware, stress, and thinking what’s gonna be like if I pass or fail. When I arrived at the hotel – Holiday Inn Express, which is very close to the lab itself, it was about 23 hours without any sleep and all I wanted was to get some sleep and be fresh for the lab. In addition, my brother had given me a printed map with the CCIE lab location so I had nothing to worry. I ate a few Zingers and went straight to bed setting the alarms of two clocks :D Now when I think about it was probably good I hadn’t slept much in the week prior to the lab because I was completely knocked out in the evening before the lab and was able to sleep fine.

In the morning, I took a shower, dressed up, and had breakfast. It was 7 o’clock in the morning and the lab starts at 8 (gotta be there at 7.45) so I read once again my lab plan as I intended, and listened to some music. I was ready to go at 7.10, but as I already mentioned the hotel was very close, I’d been given a map, and it was very early to go.

7.20

I got my passport, phone, MP3 player, and chocolate and set off to the lab. It was dark and kinda cold. I got to the place marked on the map in about 10 minutes, but I was shocked – there was no CCIE lab building or any sign of the CCIE lab location. My brother had told me it was a different building than Cisco’s one so I ignored the Cisco buildings in the distance. I didn’t know what to do. There was nobody out on the streets. Luckily, I met a woman, but she had no idea where the CCIE lab could be. I found one or two more people, but they had no idea where it was. I was sure I was at the exact location marked on the map so I called my brother. He was of no help either. I had to be there at 7.45 in the lab and it was already 7.42. I was completely desperate, I thought “What a joke!”. I then decided to go to Cisco’s building and find someone who might know where the lab was. Fortunately, a guy (THANK YOU) told me it was Cisco’s second building on the back of that one. Anyway, I got there at 7.50 and thank god the proctor wasn’t there yet, otherwise I would’ve had to wait maybe an hour or so for the proctor to walk me in.

The Lab

I was very relieved of stress when we entered the lab, probably because of all the running like hell for 15 minutes :)

Cisco had just made changes to the written and lab of the R&S track and introduced open-ended questions so that was the first thing you have to do in the lab. I revised some very basic stuff the week before the lab as I thought I should’ve acquired enough knowledge by that time to cope with the questions. There was, of course, some tension because this update was introduced just three weeks before my lab and I didn’t know what to expect. I did okay with the questions and it was time for the real lab. I read the lab twice as that was my plan, drew a table of four columns – Task, Points, Y/N, Notes, copied the running configs in flash, opened the Doc CD for routers and switches and started slowly. I knew there was no reason to panic so I configured, verified, and if needed, troubleshot everything calmly. I was done with about 60-65% of the lab by lunchtime. Food was okay, there were some bizarre meals being offered, but I stuck to an ordinary hot dog, it was definitely not the time to experiment. During lunchtime, I built my strategy for attacking the rest of the lab. I was thinking of which tasks to complete next in order to get a pass mark.

I finished with the whole lab in exactly 5 hours so I had 3 full hours to verify and troubleshoot the whole lab. That was kind of boost and I decided to take a brisk break for refreshments. I managed to make two full verifications of the lab and although I found a few mistakes I’d made, I was sure I configured the tasks correctly. TCL scripts and macros are a great help and I highly recommend making use of in your preparation and in the real lab. I ran the scripts the whole day and that helped me a lot. I also asked the proctor a LOT of questions for things I considered vague and although he was a bit grumpy after my 10th question, I didn’t really care about it :) Anyway, I had 20 or 30 minutes left and nothing to do, but as Brian Dennis suggests “Never leave the lab early, drink as many free drinks as you can if you will, but never leave the lab early”. So I drank as many free drinks and ate as many fruit as I could. I was a bit paranoid at the end that I hadn’t answered all the open-ended questions in the morning, but after a bit of thinking I remembered all the questions and was very relieved.

Walking out of the lab, I thought I had a great chance of passing the lab. I met another Bulgarian, who was doing the SP track, and chit-chatted a little bit. Then it was time to drink a few beers as per my plan and relax. If you ever go to Brussels, drink Stella Artois. I don’t know if it was the beer or not, but that felt like the best beer I’ve ever drank :).

I woke up in the morning, had breakfast and went straight to the nearby hotel, where there is a free Wi-Fi, to check my results. My heart was beating like hell, and before I logged in to check my result, I said to myself “Even if I haven’t passed, I will be back and pass the second time”. I logged in and I saw:”Brussels CCIE Pass”. I didn’t believe it at first and thought I was looking at something else, but after reading going over it a few times, I was jumping in joy :D I felt as happy as I felt relieved I wouldn’t have to go through the same thing again, but also felt a bit sad that it was over.

I would like to thank these people for helping me out on my way to the CCIE certification:

• My brother
• My friends and family
• Jun Kim
• All Dynamips and Dynagen developers and contributors
• Joseph Brunner
• Vladislav Atanasov
• Nikolay Abromov
• Himawan Nugroho
• Brian McGahan
• Brian Dennis
• Scott Morris
• Petr Lapukhov
• Scott Vermillion
• Gary
• All CCIE bloggers
• Cisco Press writers

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