IP Expert BLS and IE Mock Lab 5

Over the weekend I got access to the IP Expert workbooks volume I, II and III, which are part of the BLS package. I am still waiting on delivery of the hard drive with the VoD and stuff on it – hopefully this arrives in the next week or so…

I spent a rack session on Saturday getting familiar with the a few of the labs from Volume I, which are technology focussed labs. I like the style of these, the lab I did on L2 tunneling seemed quite straight forward at first but led you down into a rabbit hole of issues, which are explained very nicely in the proctor guide. I also had a quick look at some of the volume II multi protocol labs, and am hoping to do a few of those as well. Its good to do labs that look and feel totally different to the IE ones, as I think I was getting a little too familiar with them and the topology they use – so good to mix it up a little. One thing I notice about the IP Expert labs is they have longer questions, usually a 4 or 5 point question with lot of requirements and mentions of RFC’s (come on, be honest, who reads and remembers RFC’s). 🙂

I also did IE mock lab 5 on Sunday, which went OK, but I missed out on around 30 marks (I think) but will probably get even less when the grading comes through in a few days – as I didnt spend any time working through at the end, even though I had a good 2 hours to spare! I need to keep my concentration for the full 8 hours if I want to pass this exam, which I think will be my main issue to be honest.

My study plan for the next couple of weeks will be to do some of the IP Expert multi protocol labs from volume II of the BLS during weekday rack sessions, followed by IP Expert mock labs from volume III at the weekends. I will also throw in some IE Dynamips labs to the mix as well – I will probably do mock lab 3 and 5 again at home on Dynamips (all except the switching tasks), to see if I can learn from my previous mistakes on these.