How to Prepare for the CCIE Lab?

The CCIE lab exam is going to be an eight-hour, hands-on exam in which you will require to configure and troubleshoot a series of complex networks which would be given to you with specifications. So, the knowledge of troubleshooting would prove to be an important skill and you are expected to diagnose and solve the issues as the curriculum of the CCIE lab exam. You will not be configuring the end-user systems, but you would be responsible for all the devices which were residing in the network.

Here are certain points that are needed to be considered in order to gain success in the CCIE Lab Exam.

Lab Environment:

The Cisco documentation would be available in the lab room, but the exam is going to assume the knowledge of the more technologies and common protocols. The documentation could be navigated using the index. No outside reference materials are going to be permitted in the lab room. You must report any suspected equipment issues which the proctor during the exam; adjustments cannot be made once the exam has been over.

Lab Exam Grading:

The lab's exams are going to be graded by the proctors who are going to ensure that all the criteria would have been met. They would be using automatic tools in order to gather the data from the routers to perform the preliminary evaluations.  Candidates must reach a minimum threshold in all the three sections and they are required to achieve an overall passing score.

Lab Exam Format:

There would be three modules in the CCIE Lab Exam. The first one would be the Troubleshooting module which consists of about 2 hours. If a candidate wishes he cans extent the time of the Troubleshooting module by borrowing up to 30 min from the Configuration module. But do remember that, the total time of the Configuration module will be reduced by the extra time spent in the Troubleshooting module. If a candidate finishes the Troubleshooting module before time, the unused Troubleshooting module’s time will be added to the Configuration module’s time, but they have to ensure a total lab exam time of 8 hours. The time of the Diagnostic module is fixed in duration and that is 30 minutes.

 Troubleshooting:

The CCIE Routing and Switching Lab exam are going to be featured a 2-hour troubleshooting section. Candidates would be presented with a series of trouble tickets for the preconfigured networks and they need to diagnose and resolve the network fault or faults. As with the section of the configuration, the network must be up and running for a candidate in order to receive credit. The Candidates who finish the section of troubleshooting early may proceed on to the section of the diagnostic, but they will not be allowed in order to go back to troubleshooting.

Lab Practice:

Practice is the key element in the CCIE Lab Exam, you should plan as much as 800 hours of actual keyboard time configuring the equipment, this would not be only to learn the commands, and it is required to get your speed up. One of the ways the CCIE Lab exam is going to separate those that are ready and those that are not, is just by asking you to do what normally to takes the 12 hours to configure and require you to do it in the less than 7, so this means that you need to be able to do it in just 6 before you even try.

The cheapest way to study the rack rental, however, you have to stick to the time to share you purchase and this is going to require discipline, especially when you are doing this portion of study after work at night or during the weekends. There are many rack rental companies have automated their setup to back-up your configurations and restore them when you log in for your next session.