Lab Attempts (Part 3 of 3)
Lab Attempt #1
I flew out early Thursday just in case there were any flight issues or delays. It is a good thing I did. It just so happened that a nice winter storm was rolling through North Carolina and surrounding states. It wasn’t very bad, but it was more ice/freezing rain than they were used to. My flight was delayed about 4 hours, but I still arrived in RTP with plenty of daylight.
After getting my rental car and checking into my hotel. I mapped out my exact route to Cisco’s campus. I then jumped in my car and drove there. I found where building 3 was and where I should be parking. I highly, highly recommend everyone does this because you don’t want to be surprised by any construction detours or bad directions. I found something for dinner, and then settled into my hotel room for a very anxious night.
Lab Exam Preparation (Part 2 of 3)
Step One: Acquiring Training Materials
Jumping to the next phase in my studying didn’t take me too long, I didn’t want to lose my excitement or drive. So, in February of 2010 I started poking around the Internets to find out what the best way to go about tackling the lab exam would be. There were two ways I could go: 1) do a complete self-study and piece it all together myself or 2) dish out a fair amount of cash and go with a training provider like INE or IPexpert. After looking through the different packages that they both offered and asking around on a few different forums, I decided on IPexpert.
Progress Update
In the last month and a half I really haven’t had much time to post anything. Between gearing up for my lab attempt on the 17th of December, the holidays and the vacation I just got back from, the last 5 weeks have really flown by.
For those of you wondering if I passed my exam on the 17th, I did not. I was close, but close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades. I was able to make it through the entire exam, but I spent too much time on certain sections and ultimately ran out of time to go back and tweak things that were not working.
Countdown: 24 days…
and I am starting to feel the pressure. Need to work faster, smarter and harder….
That is all
Home Lab – PSTN Phone Configuration
I have been contacted a few times by people that are running into problems getting their PSTN phone working in their home lab. This can be a little tricky, especially if you are just starting out in your CCIE Voice studies.
Your PSTN phone is going to rely on CUCME as well as very heavily on voice translation rules and profiles. If you are not familiar with either of these I would highly recommend reviewing the CUCME Admin Guide before starting to set up the PSTN portion of your home lab.
In my home lab I have a Cisco 2811 acting as my PSTN-WAN router. I have this 2811 as well as a 7961 IP phone connected to my Cisco 3560 switch. Below I will outline my 3560 and 2811 configurations that are relevant to getting the PSTN phone registered and assigned its configured numbers. I am assuming that you have already configured the PRI portion of your PSTN-WAN router.