Just took IE’s Mock Lab #1
Posted by jrensink78 on May 9, 2009
I took my first full scale mock lab from Internetwork Expert today. It was lab #1, which is rated at a difficulty level of 6. For reference, level 7 is generally considered the actual lab difficulty on their scale. So it was easier than what I should expect on July 9.
Here are a few details on the IE mock labs. You won’t have access to any of the lab documents (diagrams and actuall lab tasks) until you actually start the lab. You gain access to them electronically after starting the lab from your members page online. It also doesn’t look like you can print the documents (I couldn’t at least). So you’ll need to just have everything up on your monitor.
When you start the lab, you’ll have 8.5 hours to complete the lab. After then, you will get kicked off of your rack. The lab format an documentation are pretty much identical to what you get in IE’s volume 2 workbook. So if you’ve done some of those, you’ll be right at home. The mock labs also use the same topology as all of the other IE stuff. So it helps having some familiarity with that as well.
I knew that this mock lab would be easier than the real deal. But it seemed like it was really easy to me. The tasks never really got too deep into any technology. As I went through the lab, I really didn’t come across any tasks that stumped me. I was able to run through all of the tasks and check them off with at least some confidence that I had them completed. So I’m left wondering how much easier than the real lab this mock lab was.
I got done with my initial configs after about 5.75 hours. After that, I rebooted and went through the tasks again and verified that things were still working. That’s when I found one problem that stumped me. One of my hub and spoke frame relay setups didn’t have their OSPF adjacencies come back up. It came down to a virtual link breaking my adjacencies . It works just fine when you get the adjacencies up first and then get the virtual link established. But on reboot, it breaks again. I really couldn’t make it work. Seeing as I couldn’t gaurantee that my lab would be graded on my current rack without being rebooted, I just had to get rid of the virtual link. That’ll drop me a handful of points. But that’s a lot less than losing my hub and spoke adjacencies.
The mock labs take up to 2 days to get your grade back. So I’ll have to wait a few days before getting my final results. But I’m fairly confident that I got a passing score.
