Cart
The CCIE R&S Lab Exam starts with a real bang – the Troubleshooting section. Cisco promises us that we will see about 10 to 11 Trouble Tickets against a larger than normal (for the lab) topology. This topology consists of about 22 routers and switches. These devices are emulated Cisco hardware running in Cisco’s own version of a Dynamips-like product called IOU (the IOS on Unix).
OK, so we read these rules and we immediately think: “No problem! Bring it on! What is the big deal!?!?” Well, the big deal is two fold. One is the fact that you are only given a total of 120 minutes for solving the Trouble Tickets, and two is the fact that the potential scope of the Trouble Tickets is the entire R&S blueprint.
In the world of Professional Poker players, they often say that to succeed with a career in poker, you can be an average player, but if you are an excellent Money Manager, you will succeed. Here in the Troubleshooting section, we can survive this if we are an average Troubleshooter, but we better be an excellent Time Manager.
I think to assist you in this section, you need to build a Trouble Ticket Tracker. I would start it right when I sit down at the section. Just start with a Ticket ID for each of your 11 tickets (in this example, we will pretend you drew 11 total tickets). Next, skim over the tickets and pick one out that appears it would be easy for you and your skill sets. For example, perhaps I notice a ticket that indicates two OSPF speakers are failing to form an adjacency. Since I feel very confident in troubleshooting these types of issues, I start with that one!
I provide my Ticket Tracker with a quick title of the ticket next to the Ticket ID value, for example, OSPF Adj Fail (R12-R18). I also record my start time on the ticket - 9:08. As I am exploring the cause of the issue on the devices, I can jot down some shorthand notes about what I find. This will be very beneficial if I get stuck and have to leave the ticket. When I return to the ticket later (hopefully), I can review the discovery data that I was able to ascertain. If all goes well, and we solve the ticket directly, we record our end time and the total number of minutes on the ticket. If we approach the 8 minute mark and we still are having issues, we need to consider bailing for another ticket.
The best one of my students has ever done in this section? I had a student that made his living troublshooting his enterprise network. He used a tracker approach to Time Management and finished all the tickets in 45 minutes. He then spent 10 minutes doing a second pass of verifications for each ticket. Finally, he ended the section and enjoyed an extra hour in the Configuration section. This helped him pass that section with ease and earn his numbers.
At the rather slow and methodical pace I approach an exam with, it would be tough for me to complete this section early as I have described above, but that is fine, I would just stick with my tracker to ensure I solve at least 9 of 11 in the required 2 hours.
Do you have Time Management or general strategy tips for success in this important CCIE R&S Lab section? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below!
Anthony Sequeira, CCIE, CCSI
Twitter: compsolv
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/compsolv
Tags: CCIE, CCIE R&S, ccie r&s exam, CCIE R&S Lab, ccie r&s strategy, CCIE Routing & Switching
Good article and Lets Go Yankees!
@CCIEJourney!
You are too funny…thanks for reading!
nice article
I took the lab at the end of Jan & failed on the troubleshooting section mainly due to being under prepared for an area I’m usually strong on & ran out of time.
I was initially surprised at the size of the network (from memory I believe my network was greater than 22 devices) + restrictions on what could do to resolve.
Aside from good time-management I would say it’s important to practise on a similar large network as troubleshooting 3 seperate parts to a single question over a network with 4-5 hops between endpoints is quite different (& time-consuming) than doing on back to back devices.
The other tip I would give is to practise doing in the early hours so more accustomed to timeframe of the lab as going straight into to heavy troubleshooting first thing when the brain’s not at full speed isn’t easy.
I’m embarrassed to add this but why not, maybe it will help someone.
I failed the tshoot section because I was looking at the PC clock and it was off by 30 minutes.
I blame myself. The proctor said “use the wall clock” but that didn’t register with me for some reason.
IT Certification Information…
[...]CCIE-R&S Strategy-Troubleshooting Section Tracker[...]…