Craig Russell, CCIE #25254

I passed the R&S lab in Sydney today on my third attempt. I started preparing for it about a year ago using the IE workbooks volumes 1 and 2 and would recommend them to anyone. The Volume 1 material particularly is excellent and certainly helped me to understand all the possible variations of each technology that are possible in the actual exam. On my first two attempts I realize now that I wasn't quite ready but this time I absolutely nailed it with about 2 hours spare at the end to verify everything. My advice to anyone preparing for the R&S exam is don't give up if you fail once or even twice, keep working at it and practice, practice, practice until most configurations become second nature. That way you'll have plenty of time in the exam to think about anything non-standard and then be able to verify everything you've done.