Graded Labs, LLC

The final step in earning your CCIE is the hands-on, eight-hour exam. (in case you missed our previous article on preparing for a long exam, click here) Getting in the mindset of taking a 8 hour exam can be difficult, and this is why preparing for such a task is very important. It’s not only the time it takes, but also the cost. At $1,400 per attempt along with the cost of travel and lodging it can be very expensive to fail the exam.

The gradedlabs|INE mock lab exam is designed to be a simulation of the actual Cisco CCIE Lab Exam. That is the racks are pre-configured to simulate different network situations. The type and difficulty of these simulations are based on which mock lab you decide to take. Currently there are seven unique mock lab simulations.

The first step into taking a mock lab exam is to purchase 129 tokens or the product here. If you are not familiar with how gradedlabs tokens work, have a look at our article on the definitive guide to gradedlabs tokens here. After you have purchased enough tokens to take Mock Lab, you will need to login to your gradedlabs.com members account.

On the dashboard of your gradedlabs.com members account you can scroll down and see your overall token balance. Following the token balance (1) are the link (2) for scheduling your CCIE Routing & Switching Mock Lab. The next step is to click CCIE Routing & Switching Mock Lab. This will open a new window where we can then schedule our mock lab.

Now we are able to schedule our mock lab exam. Remember that a mock lab exam is 8 hours with enough time for a 30 minute break (to simulate the 30 minute lunch break given by the actual exam). This means you will have a total of 8 hours and 30 minutes to complete the exam. When scheduling, this means that if you schedule for S1 on any date your racks will be booked out for S1 and S2. To schedule your mock labs simply click the desired date and time slot you wish to take your exam (1), check the token balance to make sure that 129 tokens have been spent and then click schedule. If you schedule your exam within 72 of the start of your session you will not be able to reschedule it. However, you are able to reschedule at any time up until 72 hours before your exam.

Note: We know that things come up and sometimes it is impossible to make your session. If you are within the 72 hour window and would like to cancel your mock lab exam please contact gradedlabs customer service and we will assist you in rescheduling at no additional costs.

When booking rack rentals or mock labs, be sure to double check the time that you are renting. S1 starts at 3:00 AM Pacific Time, S2 starts at 9:00 AM Pacific time, S3 : 3:00 PM Pacific Time, & S4: 9:00 PM Pacific time. Also, be sure to double check the session that you wanted to rent in the box on the left. For example the mock lab shown above will start at 3:00 AM (Pacific Time) on August 27, 2009.

After you click schedule, you will receive your rack rental results. For mock labs, this will show that we have been scheduled 2 sessions starting at S1 on the 27 of August.

The functionality now, for the time being, is on INE’s members site. The next step is to verify that your session is displaying with in your INE’s member account. To do this, login to your members account or if you logged into your gradedlabs.com account you should already be logged into your members account. Next, click the tab marked “Mock Labs & Assessments”. The Assessments portion of this link are based on the Poly-Lab Assessment. For more information on the Poly-Lab Assessment, click here.

Perhaps the most difficult decision in this process is deciding which Mock Lab to take. You have the ability to select which lab you would like to take as well as previewing each lab along with the labs difficulty. The difficulty rating of the mock lab ranges from 6 to 10. We have placed the actual CCIE Lab Exam on this scale at a 7. A short snapshot is below for each exam.

Click here, for the points breakdown.

Click here, for the points breakdown.

Click here, for the points breakdown.

Click here, for the points breakdown.

Click here, for the points breakdown.

Click here, for the points breakdown.

Click here, for the points breakdown.

This is a question that we get from time to time, and it’s really impossible for us to answer. If you are unsure about where you are on the overall scale from 0 – 10, then there are few things you can do. We do offer the poly-lab assessment which is a lower investment to the mock lab and depending upon your settings can be much shorter as well. This will give you a better target at where you currently are in your studies. This will also show you the areas where you need more work, and you can take learning capsules in this technology to become better familiar with it. Then you can look at the points breakdown for each lab and take the lab which emphasizes in this area to ensure that you have learned that technology.

To see our section of learning capsules click here.
To learn more about the poly-lab assessment click here.

One hour prior to the start of your lab time, you will receive the login for the rack and the actual mock lab exam, the logical topology, the physical topology, and the initial configs. This is a series of tasks that must be completed within the 8 hours and 30 minutes allocated. At the start of your session you will need to login to your INE members account and click start on the lab you have previously set. This will start a 8.5 hour timer that will countdown. When the timer expires your configs will be saved and you will be removed from the rack.

After you finish your lab it is then graded by a CCIE professional. Unlike the poly-lab assessment, this process is not automatic, but rather is done by hand. It usually takes the grader around 2 business days to complete the grading for the mock labs. Click here for a example score report. Passing is getting a score greater than or equal to 80 points.

Taking the actual CCIE Lab Exam is expensive and time consuming. It is difficult to judge how ready you are to take and pass the exam. Tools like the Routing & Switching Mock Lab Exam and the Poly-Lab Assessment were developed for this purpose, to judge your readiness. It is much cheaper and a better learning experience to find out before taking the actual exam that you are not ready. We recommend that if you score below 80 on any exam with a difficulty of 7 then you should take more steps to prepare. This would be doing targeted learning capsules in the area that you did poorly in or continuing doing other workbook tasks from INE. If you score below 80 on mock labs with a difficulty of 6 then you should focus your studying and repeat the mock lab exam with a difficulty of 7.

If you scored greater than 80 on any mock lab with a difficulty of 7 or greater, then congratulations. You are in good shape for the actual CCIE Lab Exam. We would suggest one more attempt at a mock lab 2 weeks prior to your actual lab exam. This way you can brush up on your timing and troubleshooting skills. Click here to view the product page, and for a limited time check-out with discount code AMIREADY to get your mock lab for just $99. That is a unbeatable price for this great product. The material for this mock lab exam is from the author’s at Internetwork Expert (INE).

When you are preparing for an exam, any exam, the key is to know what you don’t know. No matter what stage you are in your preparation, it’s good to get a grasp on what you know and what you don’t know. This will help you to focus your efforts on areas where you need more time. This is key when studying effectively. This is exactly what the R&S Poly-Lab Assessment was built for. This is a product like none other on the CCIE market.

The poly-lab assessment lab was designed to assess how proficient you are on the topcis covered by the actual Cisco CCIE Routing & Switching Lab. The lab itself is dynamically generated from a enormous pool of tasks.

You can generate a lab from your Internetwork Expert’s members account. Shown in the screenshot above, it is located at the bottom if you click the tab labeled “Mock Labs & ASsessments”. Generating a lab requires 25 tokens and is free for customers who have purchsed the CCIE 2.0 program. Once you are ready to generate your lab, click the link labeled Poly-Lab Assessment homepage.

You can also get to this link by clicking the link in your gradedlabs members account dashboard. The direct link to this location is here.

Following the FAQ (Frequently asked questions) for the poly-lab you will see this section. Note: This poly-lab is generated based on a self-assessment of your knowledge of the different technology topics covered by the CCIE Routing & Switching Blueprint. For the most part, each lab generated is unique to you. Due to the nature of networking, you may see similar patterns appear in your labs as well as some task duplication.

Once we are at the screen shown above, we are ready to generate our specialized lab. It is durning this process that we must assess ourselves to judge our knowledge on these topics. If you have just passed the written CCIE, then you should probably set these sliders to beginner. Doing this just after passing the written exam is a great way to judge where you are with these technologies and where you should focus your studies. If you have been studying for some time now, then you should use the sliders to estimate your proficiency in each technology area. Don’t worry about the SAGE Rank just yet. This will be shown after we have taken the lab.

You will see this when you have placed all your sliders and click “Generate Lab”. To proceed click ok and 25 tokens will be deducted from your account.

After about thirty seconds or so, the page will refresh and you will see the new lab in the My Assessments section. Clicking preview, will show us our newly created lab. Based on my settings it seems that my lab will take 5 hours and 45 minutes. This is an estimate based on the points for each task.

There are 7 sections to the lab, each contains a series of tasks that need to be completed in order to have my lab graded. The next step is to rent a rack session. Since my lab has a suggested duration of 5 hours and 45 minutes, I will be booking out two rack sessions back-to-back in order to complete this lab. Note: Before you start be sure that you are on the same rack for both sessions, this will insure that your rack does not get reset durning the break between sessions.

Once you have rented a session that will cover the duration (Step 1), then previewed the lab (Step 2), and if you have a current session you will see the setup button (Step 3). When you’re ready to take the poly-lab, first click “Setup”.  This process will load your poly-labs initial configurations onto your active rack.  Setting up takes about 15 minutes.  After Setup is complete and you’re ready to start the poly-lab, click “Start”.  This will start the timer for your poly-lab. Once we have finished taking our poly-lab, then click the “Stop” button.  This save your configs and will grade your poly-lab. This grading pracess can take around 5 minutes or more.

We now have a new section in our INE members account, under the Mock Labs & Assessments Tab, “Labs I’ve Completed”. As you can see we now have a score summary in this section. I scored a 96% on my lab, but where did I go wrong? By clicking the More Info… link, we can get a breakdown of every task.

To begin with we have a simple breakdown for each section. This gives us a overall summary of where we should spend more time studying, but how well are we actually doing?

The first thing we have is the Points Per Hour (PPH). The PPH expected for the actual exam is 10. Scoring better than 10PPH is a good idea since you need 80 points to pass the exam and the exam is 8.5 hours of which .5 hours is a lunch break. (1) I have scored 27PPH and (2) the system has broken down my rank by each technology.

The next thing shown are recommended next steps. These are products which can help me getting a better grasp on the specific technology. Though not listed on recommendations, we suggest that you look at our learning capsules if you need more work on a specifict technology. Click here to see a list of our learning capsules.

Ok, I call this the fun part, but it’s really educational. The next part of the score report is a task-by-task analysis. Clicking on the icon next to the score gives you a break down of each assertion. This isn’t to fun if you got the task correct, but if you managed to mess something up, then this can be really quite useful.

It seems that I have missed everything on EIGRP Hub and Spoke. Now, let’s take a look at the assertions.

It seems I have missed R2, and my output is shown in the box. Next I click Show Correct Output to see exactly why I have missed this task.

Now I can see the correct assertions for this task.

This type of analysis is given for each task in the lab. This gives us a great way to determine where we might have messed up something and where we did things right. Overall, going through this process really help in our studies. Ideally, these poly-lab assessments should be taken about 4 or 5 times throughout our study process to guage our readiness for the actual CCIE Routing & Switching Lab Exam. Please post any questions below in the comment box.

Stil not convinced?
View the Poly-Lab FAQ.
Watch Brian McGhan’s V-Seminar as he walks through the poly-lab.

We are running a promotion for people who read our blog.  Save $5 off the poly-lab assessment just by using the discount code: 25082.  What is this number?  Read our previous post.