Woo yay, passed BCMSN

[MiniMatt]

On Friday - and damn was that a hard exam. Certainly knocked any "cockyness" out of me that I had about the CCNP (in that I've been doing this for a good while now and had gotten the notion that a quick brush up and I'll sail through them). I'd figured this one would be (for me personally) the easiest of the four as well, with most of my day being spent in this arena.

Ended up with a very suprising 941 but I honestly thought it would be close and could go either way as I pressed the final "Next" button. Was thinking 700 - 850. The score belies the fact that a sizeable chunk of my answers were my best educated guesses rather than 100% certanties - I suppose I'm a bit better at guessing than I thought I was :)

Rather shockingly bad 66% in "Implementing VLANs" though - VLANs for god sake! The most basic topic there is and I scrape 66% :)

[Fuzz]

Congrats, I'm busy prepping for mine next Monday. I hope a get a score as good as yours. :D

[Big Evil]

Well done Matt. Personally i though the BCMSN was harder than the BCSI. Certainly the labs. I was close the bone and got a scrape pass, one more wrong and it would have been a fail. Glad i am not sitting that one ever again.

Fuzz, best of luck of the morning. (if you read this tonight in the morning) I know you'll pass no problem.

[MiniMatt]

Monday as in tomorrow? Either way good luck mate. Can't offer much without breaking NDA but I guess it's safe to say learn why you do certain things rather than just what's normal/best practice. ie. auto QoS is great, you don't need to know the inner workings most of the time - in the exam however you do - same with STP - I regularly beat people with sticks for leaving default IEEE on network builds but for the exam you need to know exactly why Rapid is the best choice (in many/most situations - unless MST is a better choice) rather than "it just is".

The labs I found pretty straight forward, certainly nothing beyond the published exam criteria, but I've always preferred labs over multiple choice. Watch your time however, I left with 8-10 minutes to spare but rushed a lot of last third - I'm guessing they stick the labs in early but I ended up trying to leave time for a possible late stage lab just in case. This was the first Cisco exam I've done where I really felt pressured for time (this out of two CCNAs, a CCDA, two SE specialisations and now the BCMSN).

[anurag007]

On Friday - and damn was that a hard exam.
Congrats Mate...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Whats next ????
m dying to do ccnp track .......but i wil do ccnp v6....
Best of luck for next i think probably its going to be iscw ???

[MiniMatt]

Next will be routing (probably BSCI rather than new one, but either way). As for which of the four is "easiest" probably depends upon what you play with day in day out. Big E works (hope I've got this right) for an ISP and as such I'm guessing plays with layer 3 much more than I do, and conversely I work for a Cisco partner and hence mostly see other people's borked layer 2 networks (and boy do they screw them up - layer 2 is interesting, it'll work fine on a small scale no matter what you do, on a mid scale it'll work badly, on a large scale it'll screw you over in so many interesting ways).

As for lab experience, roll of the dice I guess, personally I got some fairly standard, fairly routine (for me at least) layer 2 and layer 3 stuff (the layer 3 part not really any more advanced than CCNA level).

[Big Evil]

Big E works (hope I've got this right) for an ISP and as such I'm guessing plays with layer 3 much more than I do.

Correct. Although i deal with a lot of layer 8 issues daily.

[MiniMatt]

Although i deal with a lot of layer 8 issues daily.

Carry a big stick :)

[Big Evil]

Carry a big stick :)
Too slow, choke them with a cat 5 cable. LOL...

O but it funny to say PEBKAC ("Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair"), PICNIC (Problem in Chair, Not in Computer) or ID-10T error (IDIOT).

[crissa]

On Friday - and damn was that a hard exam. [...]

Rather shockingly bad 66% in "Implementing VLANs" though - VLANs for god sake! The most basic topic there is and I scrape 66% :)

Hello,
congratulations!

I know that the results for some topics are sometimes shocking. :-(
Bye, Tore

[MiniMatt]

Too slow, choke them with a cat 5 cable. LOL...


I like your thinking - personally my favourite has always been "bungee jump with thine own patch lead" - ensuring those who regularly patch with 20 foot cables when 1 foot would suffice, leaving comms cabinets looking like Medusa on a binge drinking spree, would never repeat their crimes.

[Fuzz]

Monday as in tomorrow?

No the 8th March, still a week of practice to go (and I need it). I'm going through as many questions as I can to find my weak areas, but the labs are worrying me (they didn't for CCNA). My theory is pretty solid though on most of the content, I guess I'll read through the book again to be sure.

[MiniMatt]

No the 8th March, still a week of practice to go (and I need it). I'm going through as many questions as I can to find my weak areas, but the labs are worrying me (they didn't for CCNA). My theory is pretty solid though on most of the content, I guess I'll read through the book again to be sure.

How you get on mate? (fingers crossed)

[Fuzz]

Passed with 883, I've made a more detailed post in Announcements.


Thanks