All WAS quiet

All was quiet on the exam front. I took it. I thought I had failed miserably. I read and re-read all of the post exam quotes that said that you come out of the test feeling like you have no idea how you did. I was 80-20 that I had failed. I was wrong. I got the confirmation email yesterday. Why I didn't post yesterday is due to one of the worst headaches in recent memory. I was barely functional for most of the work day.

Now comes the fun part. Getting someone to vouch for my professional and moral character. How hard is that gonna be? I wonder if there is a time limit on finding someone and begging, errr I mean asking them to send in the appropriate paperwork.

2-3 more weeks and it will be official, as long as no one decides to back out on the sponsorship.

Waiting....

I hate waiting....

T minus two and counting

Ah yes, 48 hours till Exam time. I am really wishing it was today instead. I am starting to go over the same things again and again in the attempt to sharpen any weak areas. I will have the weak areas, don't get me wrong, its just that I think I need to stay away from trying to cram them right now.

More later...

Down to the wire

Well, after a weekend of practice tests and hammering down the Orange Book classifications, its not onto sharpening Crypto skills and making sure Access Control is solid. Then some time with App Dev to round things out. All sprinkled with practice tests from online and my handy dandy CD that came with the All In One guide. I also have some slide decks that help pinpoint the areas of concern.

The practice tests are not going too badly actually. Hitting in the 80's most of the time. Every once in a while I catch myself making a stupid mistake like reading thru the question and not seeing the double negative or catching the first answer I see that fits without comparing it to the other answers and I pay for it in the scores. These practice tests are more about getting the format and the rythm down than it is seeing the same answers over and over again. If you are memorizing answers then I have a feeling that this test will NOT be for you.

Man, this too early for this...

Here is the early morning edition....dateline dining room table....11pm on an otherwise quiet Monday evening. 24 has just ended and the adrenaline is pumping. No better time to tackle the ins and outs of the OSI model. It should be easy. The layers themselves are a no brainer. Its the danged protocols and sub-layers that are getting to me. I know that the physical layer is on the wire. The layer that handles the voltage. The top most layer, the application layer is another easy one. Its the one closest to the user. HTTP, SNMP, SMTP, and the such. The presentation layer, another easy one, NO protocols just services. JPG, TIFF, etc..... Session layer, application to application traffic cop. RPC, and SQL play there. So far so good. Transport layer, the computer to computer traffic cop. Now the protocols get a little fuzzy but I found a way around that. The T in transport leads me to TCP which helps me with UDP. TCP is a connection oriented protocol so the logic stands good there. Now onto the Network layer. And I seem to hit a wall right here. Data Link layer...same thing. I know that the data link layer has the sub layer of MAC and one other LLD, I think. But I draw a blank on the protocols for the network and data link layers. I know there is ICMP, IP, IGMP, and the like and I am pretty sure its the network layer for that. What I can't do is provide the details on just WHAT the network layer provides. I can stretch and say that the data link layer provides the LAN/WAN translation and that it draws me to FDDI, etc...you know, the protocols associated with LAN/WAN traffic. But still no confident statement.

These are the struggles I am having. My practice tests are coming along and with less than 2 weeks they better be. This is a stumbling block that I HAVE to get past. Even if there is not ONE question on this exam about the layers, yeah right, I MUST get this down.

Maybe some divine intervention would help.

Keeping up

Keeping up this blog is harder than I had imagined especially when I need to crack the books and take some practice tests. I did find a really good site cccure.org for taking online practice tests. They have the most detailed queries for taking tests. One can drill down and really pound your weaknesses. I also found some random slide decks from various sites such as cissp.com,etc..

All told I have quite a bit more material to pour thru. I guess I better get back to it.