Bridging the gap between CCIE RS and SP

Lab day started off well. The proctor was late but this was a minor, almost expected. In fact I preferred to start a little late in Brussels. If you fly west then the opposite is preferred. Bruno, the first proctor, gives a long run down of do’s and don’ts. Somewhere in the long run down he mentioned the preconfig, but that was still not clear to me. I ended up spending way to much time verifying the preconfig.

After reading through the lab the first time, I had a deja vu moment. I remember distinctly when I read my first RS lab I thought it was going to be a walk in the park. Talk about counting chickens before they hatched. How quick we forget. So with this mindset I treated cautiously, just not wanting to throw it all away with unforced errors. The effect was that by lunch time I completed 40% of the lab. I knew I had the points on the board, but also knew I was behind,  so after lunch I tried to pick up the pace (in vain). Another two and half hours later I had (in my mind) about 70 points on the board. So with the VPN section left for last with just over an hour to go, I could spend a good part of 15 minutes per question and complete four of them, pushing me over the required 80. I spent some time on a couple and then started rushing through the rest just to at least finished and leave no points on the table. I believe this strategy was the correct one to follow, the only problem was that I arrived at this point at least an hour too late, two more hours would have been ‘fair’. When I walked out I knew it was going to be tight. I counted the points up, if I get all the points I think I should get I would easily pass, if I made unforced errors or miss interpreted some questions it would mean another lab. From my first RS lab experience I came to the conclusion that I have to be absolutely sure about 90+ points in order to pass. There will always be one or two requirements that were misinterpreted or one or two unforced errors. This can easily add up to 12 points or more.

The result, thanks for coming, please come again, arrived the next morning on the way back. After counting up the points I opted for the reread. Reviewing the score report suggested that I did not get points where I was absolutely sure I should have got. The only explanation I could arrive at was that I did not clear some neighbors after changes were made. After preparing for two ccie’s these are the things one can do while in a coma, so I knew they were correct, but was I so confident that I did not bother to verify in the rush. Yes, probably, argh. I counted up 18 points that I might have lost due to the above and two bugs I encountered. The one bug is normally solved with a bit of extra config and a reload. Although I had the bug fix config, the reload was not an option. This was the last question I configured while everyone was waiting for me . When I decided to go for the reread I was convinced this was going to give me that extra points I needed. Alas, the reread result came back with no change.

Personally I think the reread is not just a total reload with the saved configs, but rather the reload with saved configs plus an evaluation of the saved grading script output. Therefore if some conditions failed during the first grading and succeed during the second, they take the first result.