Wayne Downing, CCIE #40086

Where to begin? Foremost, I want to give special thanks to Brian Dennis. Brian was instrumental in my passing the CCIE R&S Lab. Sitting through the two week R&S bootcamp, followed up with the troubleshooting bootcamp really gave me the extra edge and confidence that my preparations were on the right track. After starting this journey in 2005, I settled on INE as my exclusive training partner. Simply said, they have the best product and support of any training vendor out there. My primary resources of training labs came from the R&S Volume I, II, and III, ATC, and many of the available VOD?s. I went through most of Volume I twice, and quite a bit of Volume II. I recommend everyone doing Volume III, maybe even twice; it will help with speed in the first half of the configuration section of the lab. After a failed attempt, I recognized knowledge was not an issue, this in part due to the quality of materials INE puts out. I did recognize speed as an issue unfortunately. I spent nearly a month between attempts doing nothing but Volume III labs and some of my own to increase speed proficiency. This was the extra boost I needed. I knew in my heart my preparations were spot on. The knowledge was there, I just needed to be faster. I knew if I could get faster, and actually finish the lab, I would pass, which is exactly what happened. Verification is important, configuring in notepad saves time in ways I just cannot explain. INE?s various products will help the candidate like no other. Spotting issues in complex scenarios, check. Knowing a plethora of ways to implement these complex scenarios, check. Increasing operational speed to implement this knowledge, check. CCIE certification, check! I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude again to everyone at INE for all the help over the years.