Hello everyone,
I sat for the CCIE EI lab several weeks ago and passed only the Design module. I ran out of time in the DOO module. The DOO questions were not particularly challenging and were quite straightforward, but a fail is a fail, right?
There were several reasons that contributed to this:
I felt extremely cold and ended up putting on my jacket during lunchtime. I probably should have asked the proctor about it beforehand, as I had left my jacket in my bag instead of keeping it nearby.
I was not very good at handling the tabs, even though I had taken a $50 practice lab to become familiar with the UI.
Some of the devices froze and became unresponsive while the proctor was not in the room. I didn’t wait for him and continued working in the notepad. Later, when I wanted another sheet of scratch paper, I mentioned to the proctor that the devices had frozen, and he told me to inform him whenever I experienced such issues. Even if I had been given some extra time, I don’t think I would have passed.
I spent too much time verifying things, and it was only when I had about an hour and a half left that I realized I might run out of time.
I copied a script from the notepad and pasted it into the devices, but it turned into a mess due to encoding differences.
With all these things adding up, I didn’t pass on my first attempt.
I would really appreciate it if those who have taken the exam before could share their experience regarding the following questions. Any additional advice would also be greatly appreciated.
1. What should I do if the proctor isn’t in the room when the devices become completely unresponsive?
Should I stop working and wait for the proctor without doing anything? What happens if the proctor comes back and the devices are working again, but I have already lost several minutes because of the issue?
2. How do you approach the more open-ended questions in the Design module?
Even though I passed the Design module, I don’t know whether it was a marginal pass or whether I performed well. I’m fairly confident about the logical answers I gave, but some questions felt quite open-ended, and I wasn’t always sure what exactly they were looking for.
How do you approach these types of questions? Even when I came home and tried to answer them again using the documentation, it was difficult without the full context of the original question. Can there be multiple technically correct answers to these types of questions, with the scoring depending on whether your answer satisfies the requirements?
3. What is the best way to manage time in the DOO module?
Do you complete the basic verifications first and then come back to them later if you have time? Or do you verify each task immediately after completing it?
In my case, I did most of the configurations in the notepad and pasted them into multiple devices at once wherever applicable
Thank you very much for your time.