Ejiro Luke Akpor, CCIE #52930

I finally had my dream come true of becoming CCIE-DC Certified this May, 2016 in Brussels. I initially wanted to do the CCIE Routing and Switching and bought the materials from INE in 2013 but immediately my job function changed where I needed to do more DC related work. I then decided to pursue the CCIE-DC track instead and bought again all the related material from INE and started studying hard for it, watching all the INE videos and using the rack rentals to practice the labs. I failed my first attempt in June 2015 and almost gave up on the whole idea of becoming a CCIE but with words of encouragement from my lovely wife and 2 handsome boys ? I decided to keep going and don?t give up. Today I am so proud I kept the faith, worked hard and followed all the advice I got from Brain and Mark from the INE videos. The Cram and Mock lab videos were awesome and really helped me to nail topic areas I wasn?t sure of. Using telnet session and having logging enabled was a brilliant idea. It always kept me on track when something I had configured hasn?t worked properly or successfully. One key advice to anyone undertaking this step is - work hard, study hard, be patient on the exam day, stay focused and most importantly try to finish the exam on time and make sure to carry out a full review of what you have done and check for errors as you may have missed something. I finished the lab exam 1hr, 30mins before time but managed to use the free time wisely to re-check, found and corrected issues that probably now made me CCIE-DC Certified. I would like to thank first and foremost, the almighty God who guided me during the exams and helped me recall what I read and troubleshoot various issues I encountered on the way successfully to thank Brain and his team for all the hard work they put in to the videos and lab guides, to my wife and kids for their patient, support, words of encouragement and enduring the difficult time of not having to spend much time with them as the CCIE-DC Lab became my new virtual wife and kids over the last two years Now it?s time to think which one will be my next goal ? the Routing and Switching, Service Provider or Security track.