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Things to Do After Your CCIE Exam – Brussels

Posted by Richard McLain On October - 13 - 20091 COMMENT

Is Brussels really the spot for you after you complete your CCIE exam? Well, you might be surprised! Learn a whole lot more by reading on… Read the rest of this entry »

CCIE Routing & Switching v4.0 Blueprint

Posted by Richard McLain On October - 2 - 20096 COMMENTS

All of our R&S racks have now been upgraded to match INE’s new blueprint.

Update
We try to keep our rack rentals up to date with the actual hardware used stated in the latest Cisco Exam blueprint. This year we had significant hardware upgrades in preparation for the CCIE Routing & Switching V4 Blueprint. Due to these hardware changes we have increased the base price of R&S Rack Rentals by 5 tokens. This is still a great savings compared with other rack rental companies.


We still offer dynamic pricing for your rack rental, and if you are flexible with your study time you can rent a rack after the session has started or just before the session begins.

Steps to Take When Preparing for a 8 and 1/2 Hour Exam

Posted by Richard McLain On August - 19 - 20092 COMMENTS

Not many people take a long exam, so preparations might be hard to think of other than studying. Here are some basics for people getting ready to take a long exam that covers preparations that you might have overlooked. Read the rest of this entry »

The CCIE Poly-Lab Assessment Explained

Posted by Richard McLain On August - 11 - 20092 COMMENTS

This article expains in detail, the gradedlabs CCIE Routing & Switching Poly-Lab Assessment. This should clear up some confusion about what exactly this lab does and how it can help you study for your CCIE.

What is the Poly-Lab Assessment?

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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.

Generating a Lab From Your INE Account

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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.

From Graded Labs Dashboard

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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.

Self Assessment.

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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.

Self Assessment Setup.

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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.

Generate Lab

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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.

My New Lab!

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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.

The Assessment Lab

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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.

Loading configs.

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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.

Looking at our graded report.

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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.

Score Report

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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?

SAGE Rank

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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.

Recommendations

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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.

The fun part!

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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.

Ooops

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

Assertions

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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.

Correct Output

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Now I can see the correct assertions for this task.

Closing Remarks

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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.

FAQ

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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.

gradedlabs Poly-Lab Success Story

Posted by Richard McLain On August - 10 - 20091 COMMENT

We just got a note from Internetwork Expert about the success of our poly-lab for one customer.

Thanks to PolyLabs (6 tries) and one full lab I have successfully
passed CCIE R&S in a first try . Without it, it would be much more
difficult…  Mariusz Kazmierski CCIE#: 25082

We would like to congratulate Mariusz on getting his CCIE and we appreciate him sending us this message.  This is the reason we are in business after all.  To celebrate his success story we are offering all customers a $5 off coupon towards the Poly-Lab.  So if you haven’t tried it, now is a great time.  Just use Mariusz’s CCIE number as the coupon code: 25082.  Buy a poly-lab assessment now!

Coming soon we will be providing more details on the Poly-Lab. Update: New story regarding the CCIE Poly-Lab Assessment has been finished, you can find it here.  If you have received your CCIE and would like to send us a success story about one or more of the products used from gradedlabs, contact us here and let us know.

Have you ever wanted to show a possible employer that you are knowledgeable in your job or occupation? Did you have a desire to let your customers and clients see that you are serious in your work and strive to achieve perfection as a Cisco certified internetwork expert? Well if so perhaps the idea of obtaining a CCIE Routing and switching certification would benefit you. Cisco has such a course that can bring you more towards achieving these goals in your life.

When you are preparing to sign up for one of the Cisco CCIE certification courses you will notice that there are no formal prerequisites required. Most of the other professional certifications are no longer required by the Cisco training course administrators. The students selected are expected to have an understanding of the various subtleties and the challenges that the networking systems would involve. It is strongly recommended that you have at least three to five productive years on the job in that field prior to attempting to become certified. In order to obtain your CCIE Routing and switching certification you will be required to pass a written qualification exam as well as hands on lab evaluation. This assures that you are qualified and capable of performing the job at hand.

To those who may not be completely knowledgeable of what CCIE stands for. It successfully identifies those verified experts who have the necessary skills and the experience to enable them to handle just about any assignment in the networking field. The CCIE exams receive constant evaluations and are continually updated in order to assure top quality graduates who are favored within the industry. During these revisions the exams are centered upon the most current technology in the industry making Cisco graduates some of the more popular and most desired on the market today.

CCIE is recognized as the most high-level certification one can obtain in the industry today. When applying for a position dealing with networking most industry leaders look favorably upon CCIE Routing and switching certification. Value to the company generally translates of increasing salary in ones paycheck as well. What this boils down to is a great way to increase job security for you and your family’s future.

Often times when it comes down to a selection of possible candidates for a position the difference remains with the Cisco graduates. Various corporations and business tie up a considerable amount of money in their computer network systems and as such they want to ensure that anyone who may be handling this equipment is highly qualified to maintain it. Maintenance of the company’s networks is basic towards protecting their assets and ensuring continual operations. As the various computer environments become more and more complex the need for these qualified professionals is quickly becoming greater than ever before. Certified CCIEs are in high demand in the industry today.

Passing a CCIE exam is not as easy as one may think. Earning the honored CCIE certification requires passing the lab test successfully and there is only one way to prepare for this exam and that is by hands on experience.
Cost wise you will find that the average CCIE student has spent thousands of dollars and a minimum of eighteen months in their efforts to obtain their certification. In fact obtaining this certification is so difficult that the candidates are likely to attempt the lab more than once before they finally achieve their certification but it can be done and the rewards are well worth it.

Ready to get your CCIE? Click here to begin your training.

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Scheduling CCIE Routing & Switching Rack Rental

Posted by Richard McLain On June - 24 - 20091 COMMENT

This gradedlabs tech bit demonstrates how to schedule and unscheduled a CCIE Routing & Switching Rack Rental from the Internetwork Expert Members Site.

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