7am: Just a quick post, getting ready for the first assessor lab at 8am. I really want to do well in this lab. I know that some have complained about the grading script, I will keep that in mind. To kill time Im reading up on source specific multicast and bidirectional pim, more on multicast later.
12:04pm: The first 4hour session done. To be honest I prefer the cisco lingo than Internetwork Expert, but I guess IE uses their words wisely in order to prepare for the real thing. That said I dont know what I scored, I could get a nasty surprise like I did with IE mock lab 5. The assessor is only 50 points so 2 or 4 tasks can have a big impact on the total score.
Assessor lab advice: The java interface is unreliable, yesterday I logged in and the utility that checks browser settings said everything is A-OK, but this morning 8am when it was time to rock and roll, the “management page” which is only available after the lab starts, failed to start. The window opened but failed to get anywhere and eventually killed all the other Internet Explorer windows. Only IE5.5 and higher is supported, but im not sure they support IE7 yet. Luckily the application worked on my laptop, so after a bit of rearrangement and 30 minutes later the lab started.
Initial thoughts: The questions were quite to the point. They tell you what to do and what not to, which basically leaves you with one choice. Again, I have no idea what the score will be. I saw two things I havent seen on IE technology labs or workbook labs 1 – 20. Although its easy to figure out, the one required knowledge that is not found on the doccd. Im pretty sure I got that one wrong because I didnt know how to calculate this specific mask. No its not an ip mask. I took an educated guess, but still got a hunch I got it wrong. Im glad I managed to finish after the initial 30minute delay. Im sure an extra 30 minutes could have enabled me to find at least 1 error or figure out the mask. An extra 3 point equals to 6% so 3 questions are about the limit one can get wrong.
The second 2hour session starts at 1pm. More updates later.
1:30pm Ok, I was a bit confused, after logging back in I thought I could continue working, so I quickly looked up the mask in the univercd and then changed it saved the configs and logged out hoping to see some sort of “Ok mark it” button. Its not there, it appears the results get mailed, which I found. A bit disappointing with 74%, but I know if I had the extra 30 minutes I would have got the mask as I got it in the first few minutes of the second session. This is 3 points extra or 6%, just what I needed to pass.
I reviewed their answers. In total I got 3 questions wrong, that is wrong because I missed a piece of configuration. Another three questions I dont quite get why they were marked wrong. Redistribution required a simple task and my output display it correctly, not sure why this is wrong, as it was so simple. Not sure why I got a OSPF question wrong as it is configured as they suggested. Both these questions output match and no indication what is actually wrong. A bgp route filtering is marked wrong because I used a different method than what the script was expecting. The question nowhere says that my method may not to be used. In fact before I started I checked whether there is not a word restricting its use. I read somewhere before starting that there are errors in the lab and that I should check something before starting for updates or fixes, but this also gives the answers away. I thought I would check after the lab, but this is only available on the first 4 hours. This is a bit annoying and puts some doubt about how good the real scoring script is. These three questions total 14%, this would be a disaster in the real lab.
To summarise:
Total score: 74%
I feel I got another 6% as in the first few minutes of session 2, but this doesnt count. Only the first 4hours get marked, only found this out after clicking frantically on the assessor site, it appears its written in the user guide.
This would give me 80, which Im happy with. Until I can find out why the other 7 points are wrong, I’d say another 14% is possible with a proctor overseeing that the script didnt not make any mistakes.
To add more confusion the score report add two graphs. Your score compared to “average final score” and another your report-score compared to “average per-report score”. Not sure what this is supposed to mean. The graphs looks nice, but what is the difference between the two?
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Ok figured it out, it compares either assessor lab 1 and the final score compares the average of both, I think.
