Emerson Carli, CCIE #24337

My story has began on 2008, when I was selected by my company to be part of a study group team to achieve the CCIE R&S certification. My company was in a process to become a Cisco gold partner, and to achieve this, it was necessary to have at least 4 employees with CCIE. My company had none at that time. The group team was formed with 14 employees to achieve the goal. During the first 6 months of the study planning, I took part in several official cisco theoretical courses, to help passing the CCIE written exam. Sincerely speaking, those cisco courses really helped obtaining theory concepts, some of them I already had, but I realized that to achieve the goal of passing the CCIE Lab exam, which requires deeper knowledge and fast thinking, those courses wouldn't be sufficient. That was the moment that INE appeared and made part of my study program. I have never heard about INE at that time. A classmate told me about those INE Lab workbooks and the advanced technology classes, how well-explained the classes and the lab workbooks were (with the Brian McGahan and Brian Dennis being the instructors), and how they explained to use Dynamips to simulate routers to practice their Labs. Our group team has decided to buy the CCIE Routing and Switching Lab Workbook Vols I and II, besides the video courses. Between August 2008 and May 2009 I studied hardly all the INE video courses and the Lab workbooks, on a self-study fashion simulating all the INE Labs using a newly notebook bought specially for that purpose. I have studied all the Lab workbooks,repeating them more than once, to get all the concepts, tips, and double-checking what I have learned through video classes. On May 8th 2009 (this special day you'll never forget) I have obtained my CCIE R&S certification at my first attempt! Without a doubt, those INE materials were essential on my study program to achieve the CCIE certification. Without them I wouldn't have passed. I would like to thank INE for the quality of its materials.