Postmortem

After the lab we went to Rio for a few days to unwind, this was very welcome. If anyone travels to brazil to write the lab I would highly recommend visiting this beautiful city, even if its just for a day. I arrived back home today after another exhausting 10000km trip. I reconstructed the lab and was amazed at how much is possible to recall from the lab. I mainly did this to determine where I could have possibly lost points and to determine wether to go for a remark. I dont have my configs but I pretty much know what I did and did not do. I managed to rewrite the lab except for one question, but hopefully I’ll remember this one later. Of course If I didnt pickup a hidden keyword this is not on my reconstructed lab and Im not 100% sure about the points allocation. I managed to reverse the points from the % from the score and questions where Im sure about the points per question. I now have a good idea of how many points I needed to pass. This is in a grey area where I think a remark might do it, but due to the 0.3% fail to pass conversion rate I have my doubts. Also I would guess that Cisco would be very reluctant to change a grade. Before anyone loose their marbles, I took a read through the NDA to see if reconstructing the lab is a violation, which Im happy to say is not, as long as I dont share it to a third party, which of course I wont. That said I can say that the IE workbooks I used have all the questions I had on the lab, maybe not to the exact word but enough to lead me to believe that the IE workbooks are “based” on a mixture of various real lab questions.

About the lab:
The lab is easier than what people make out of it. I made a decision before writing the lab that I would write the exam same information whether I fail or pass. Of course I want to say that it was extremely hard withall weird and wonderful things on. To give the lab a rating of 10/10 would do my shattered ego the world of good but the truth is, it is not. Reading through the questions I have to kick myself. I failed it all on my own. In IE terms I would rate it at 6, definitely not higher than that. Yes, I missed a few key words but that was my own undoing. The questions are to the point, there is no beating around the bush: configure X to accomplish Y without using Z. Judging from the sections where I didnt loose points I can say that they dont look for configuration that was not requested in the question. E.g. The solution to one question did not make real sense, yes, I could see what they wanted me to do and thats what I did. The output from my solution would match the requirement but if a change in the topology would have had to happen, the required configuration would not be enough. I verified this with the proctor to which the answer was: “The lab is not beautiful or perfect, the questions are constructed to test a certain piece of knowledge”. Since there was no requirement to do more than just provide the output in the requirements so thats where I left it. In short, no hidden configuration needed. The hardest question in any lab is probably redistribution and this I would rate at about 7, all sections ranged between level 5 and 7. The lab is short, I checked twice to see if I have all the pages in the binder. The assessor can be considered as a 3/4 or 75% of a full lab.

About the venue:
First impression was horrible. I arrived at 7:45am, 1 hour before, as I understood, the lab was supposed to start (8:45am). Since I dont speak portuguese or spanish it was quite difficult to explain to the building reception that I have to go to the cisco offices on the 26th floor asap. Cisco employees only start to arrive after 9am, the reception arrived at 9:15. At this point I already thought that Im at the wrong place or that cisco was not aware that there was supposed to be a lab on that day. I was wondering whether they expected the lab to be on the 6th as the original arrangement and that they were not aware of the 11th date. Luckily after the reception arrived and notified the proctor things started to settle down. We had a quick “tour” in other words to show us where the restrooms are and to choose lunch. The menu is in portuguese so I would recommend the proctors choice which was quite good. After the lunch was choosen we got the usual rundown most of which we already knew. The lab started officially at 9:34. Lunch was at 12 and ended at 6:04pm. I will post a pic of the building with un update, but due to rushing to checkout and catching the next flight the photo does not say much. I stayed in the Time Othon hotel which is almost literally a stones through from the “Torre Oeste” builing which either I think means “East Tower” but might mean south tower because the sister tower is the “Torre Norte”. Other buildings around are the World trade center and the Hilton hotel. A taxi ride from the airport to cisco will be about R$107 or 43 euro and about R$120 back. It takes about 1h30minutes, but it depends on the traffic. I would not recommend renting a car in sao paulo, the people there drive like maniacs. The taxi driver couldnt speak english but understood two words “crazy driver” to which his response was “first time sao paulo”.

Some pics of the area (Note, just quick pics I took on the way out with my phone, except for the first one ofcourse which is from google earth)

	Cisco is on the 26th floor on the left tower. The time othon hotel is the building in the top right corner. The tower at the bottom is the Hilton hotel. The WTC hotel can also been seen at the top center.
	Hilton on the left, Torre Norte in front and Torre Oeste on the right. Just a glimps of the WTC Hotel on the far right.
	Another look at the Torre Oeste

Lab strategy:
This is probably one of the biggest contributing factors to the failure. The initial plan was to arrive a day early, take as much rest as possible in the off day to compensate for any jetlag. This was not to be, someone left a parcel unattended which lead to the airport being evacuated and therefore all flights were delayed. This lead to missing the international flight to brazil and the next flight was only the next day. This also ment having to deal with lost baggage which were not heading where they were supposed to go. With all the things that went wrong upto the point of the lab I had a bit of a negative attitude, which I was aware of. I knew it was the wrong attitude but I just couldnt get myself motivated. I was physically and mentally tired. My goal hours before the lab seemed to have gone from passing the lab to just getting over with it. The night before the lab I had to remind myself that I need be alert and focus, that the lab is important, that this “getting over with it” was planning to fail and not planning to pass. During the lab I used the restroom a few times to do this as well. I took the lab way to casually, I was less stressed than I was during the assessors and some of the mock labs. The intensity was definitely lacking. I worked at a reletively slow pace, so it felt. At some point I thought I might not finish with time left to verify. That was how the lab was constructed but by lunchtime I had completed my configuration for full reachability, this was about 3:30minutes into the lab. After lunch I tested reachability and all was fine and went on the complete the lab in 5:45minutes. I had just over 2 hours for verification which I did once slowly and then came back to questions I wanted to verify with the proctor. During this two hours I didnt make any changes, big mistake, I spent time on the questions where I wanted to double check my interpretation of the question. I should have spent that time on the questions I was 100% sure I got right, because those are the areas where I lost points. Again, being to casual was a big contributor here. I did not have to use the doccd to find solutions to the answers. I used it on two questions, one to verify that this feature will work in the condition that they specified and the second to check that the option I was using would match the requirement. This was the only optional command that I havent configured before the lab.

Positives:
The lab is most definitely passable. I definitely had the right preparation. I actually think I over did it. One month before the lab I thought I have a chance of passing and I dont think this was way off. Lab is passable for anyone that really wants to pass the exam. It is not how smart you are but more a case of “have you done this before” and being as “articulate” on the day of the lab as possible. The last is probably just as important as good preparation. It is important to include the configuration that cant be verified or not critical to the solution to “make it work”.

Negatives:
Somehow I get the impression that the accuracy required in the lab is like subtracting points for spelling mistakes in a maths/science exam. What I mean is that if you get to the right answer you should receive all the points irrespective if you did the calculation in your head or used a different name to reference a variable, or in networking terms, using a difference process name.

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