CCIE Success Stories

Finally, After walking into harsh terrain I have managed to Pass My RS lab in my first attempt. I started my CCIE preparation for SP. Throughout my study for SP I used also RS ATC Material (I failed 3 times, one time wasn't ready the rest I was too close and thanks to small mistakes I made, I failed). I wanted to take a break from SP and decided to go for RS and I was under pressure from my company to achieve the number, I set my sails!! It was a gamble (I did the written in July 04 and lab scheduled in Sept 21, I used volume one as my practice to the lab, I used my knowledge of switching thanks to the environment am working in and jumped in. On the lab day, most of the Questions was solved thanks to my experience in practicing SP material. I was all but nervous in my waiting for the result, Finally at sunrise time ( 6:00) AM Thursday 22 of Sept, 2011 i got the outcome which is as you see (30279). Am really thankful for all INE instructors ( current and former ) for their amazing and outstanding material and their contributions in the blog. Sure I will start Hunting SP lab again, no stop till I Achieve it. Yours, Yasser

I am happy to announce that I finally made it, I passed my lab in RTP on June 20, 2011, it was my 2nd attempt. The feeling was good, I felt more relieved than excited. I would like to take the opportunity to thank INE staffs, IEOC and the forum, reading other folks' experience, advices and comments, it helps me to identify my weakness, where I went wrong and need to work on. More importantly, I know that I am not alone in this long and tough journey with countless hours of constant reading/re-reading and labbing/re-labbing. For practice, I used: INE WB Vol 1,2,4 - (everything you need to know is in INE WB) Advanced Technologies Video-On-Demand R&S Open Lecture Series Class-on-Demand CCIE R&S Advanced Troubleshooting Video-on-Demand Little advice on the lab day: Don't panic; Don't make any last-minute changes; Troubleshooting section is challenging; Time management is the key; Read the "Lab Do and Don't" section carefully. For those who are in process of preparing, stick with it and don't give up. Know the technology, practice..practice..practice..in the end it's worth every bit of the effort. Best wishes to all! Joe Chan CCIE #29342

Hi Every One, I m so happy to inform you that I passed CCIE R&S Lab yesterday on my first attempt. I used INE WB I, II & Vol II Dynampis heavily to understand the technology & to practice . Without those INE WBs, It's going to be very tough for me to pass the lab. And Sales Team helped me in many ways by giving me discounts. Thanks again to all the INE Staff for giving us the best products to pass the CCIE Lab. And also many thanks to all my study partners.. Abel, Michael, Deepak & Johan. Dasuntha Dinesh CCIE#29293

After time spent on this exam, I just passed the CCIE R&S. 
Will like to thank the folks at INE, taking the pain to break down the different technologies. INE Workbook 1 is a really big asset, useful even for every day work and really helpful. Once I got a proper grasp of the technologies, I knew it was only a matter of time. Time spent at the bootcamp was also very incisive opening me up to how to attack the exam.

I passed the CCIE Routing & Switching lab in Brussels on Wednesday at the 1st attempt. It took a year of gradual build up then a final push of 3-4 months of solid hardcore study. The cornerstones of my success are hard work, dedication, sacrifice, love & support from family & friends and INE's high quality material. My CCIE journey started around 18 months ago after passing the Written. I started out by working through WB #1 a couple of evenings a week, I took it very slow and didn't finish WB #1 until the end of 2010 - it really opened my eyes to the depth and breadth of options and features that are within Cisco IOS that you don't see from your day-to-day job, it can be quite daunting! In early 2011 it was time to get serious. From mid-Feb I started repeating WB #1 in the evenings, while doing WB #2 and WB #3 at the weekends. After the first 4 weeks I was doing 10-12 hours every Saturday and Sunday and 4-5 hours an evening, 3-4 evenings each week. In total I did WB #1 twice, WB #2 1.6 times (Labs 1-12 twice) & WB#3 once. Workbook #2 really challenges you in every technology and gives you the key skill of lab management - watch what you've done, what you're doing and what you still need to do, make sure you don't configure a feature that breaks something you've done or clashes with something you have to do in a future task. Workbook #3 drills you through all the Core stuff that needs to be second nature on exam day, not just IGPs & BGP but PPPoFR, Bridging, PAP & CHAP & Multilink etc - a must! I used Workbook 4 in the last 4-6 weeks before exam day. The approach it takes feels strange at first but it helps you get really close to the show and debug outputs that you may need in your 2 hours Tshoot. In the last month the VoDs are excellent for recapping & the new ones from Brian McGahan are awesome - EVERYONE MUST watch the free sample on using the Doc CD! If you are truly INE standard, the Cisco lab has nothing to fear. Thank you INE! Jon Waller CCIE #29187

At Last I made it CCIE 29161, it was my second attempt, i was scared by the troubleshooting, because first time i couldn't make, it was time management and wasted lot of time on couple of tickets, instead of doing the easy ones. But on my second attempt i took easy tickets first and resolved hard one's later, 2 tickets scared me but i finished in time, i had 10 minutes left in TS Started the configuration early and there were couple of tough ones , it took time for me to understand what exactly was asking,read the whole lab twice before I started , had couple of hiccups but was able to resolve all. Thanks to INE Support Staff and Trainers, Boot camp which I attended last year was helpful Thanks

Well Well Well, hard work paid off. I finally passed my CCIE R&S lab exam on 31 May 2011. My journey started two years back and I had my first attempt last year. Apart from the failure, it was a good learning curve and correct your mistakes and work much harder. To pick one, TIME management was on my top MUST DO, I was a bit slow and couldn't finish both trouble and config section on time. Firstly, I would like to thank all mighty GOD and my family for their great support. My company has been a great support, and I would like to pass my gratitude to the management for their support when needed most. I had a complete rack setup at work place. INE, you guys are great. I used your materials all the way from day one and I am really gratefully. Vol I Vol VI excellent resources both in terms of knowledge and ofcourse to achieve your CCIE dream. I enjoyed listening to VoDs presented by Anthony Sequeira and Keith Barker, full of energy and well organized. Last, but not least I would like to thank my friends for being there for me. Once again, thanks everyone who contributes to my success. Best wishes to people out there who are pursuing their CCIE dream. If you work hard and believe, yes it is possible..

Hello, Yesterday (30 May 2011) I passed CCIE RS exam in Brussels. This marks a year long dream come true. Three attempts (all of them in Brussels) were needed for it to become reality. Self-paced "INE CCIE RS 4.0 Training Program" was with me all the way. Especially I want to thank INE for "CCIE R&S v4.0 Advanced Technologies" VoD series. These lectures helped me brush up forgotten topics and grasp new ones. I accompanied them with an online rack session and tested each presented concept to further verify how the technology works. INE Blog provided me with essential information on documentation navigation - this helped a lot! A little on my journey... I started studying for written exam on April 2010 and passed it in June 2010. Then I started preparing for the lab. Built my own rack and meanwhile listened to ATC VoD series while commuting. INE R&S Lab Workbook Volume I challenged me to think outside the box and introduced me to different style of presenting information, where logical topology not always comes hand in hand with physical one. First attempt was in 10 November 2010. I had an extra stress due to first time. What I learned is not to make assumptions and consult proctor when in doubt. I ran to him for help a lot that time :) Second attempt was in 07 March 2011. This time I had more experience. I understood how the questions are asked and how to interpret the diagrams. What I learned is that i need more speed, both in TS and configuration part. And here it comes. A winning strategy (already seen this suggested to students many times): Notepad configuring. Yes - do all configuration in notepad. Third attempt was yesterday 30 May 2011. I used notepad for all configuration and tracking of activities. Scratch paper was used for tracking TS tickets. For configuration section I used scratch paper to note topics I want to review. And redraw partial topology for a quick reference. Notepad helped me to detect and correct a lot of silly mistakes made due to stress. In the end it proved to be a valid strategy which worked for me. Thanks for all the support during this journey! Ints, CCIE# 29095

Hello guys, I just wanted to say that getting a CCIE number beside your name means a lot and I must praise the folks at INE for their detailed explanations of every technology. I absolutely love watching the two Brians and Kevin and how they dissect the protocols to drive the point in. Special shout out to Brian McGahan; sir, you are my hero! I don't think there is any instructor as skilled as you are!! Keep the videos rolling. Maybe you can also teach some voice courses later on! Thanks again all and keep up the good work!!

Thanks to INE I passed my Lab exam on May 26th 2011.