From: CCIEin2006 (ciscocciein2006@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Oct 22 2007 - 11:09:57 ART
I agree.
From a technical standpoint vendor workbooks are excellent - they help you
learn the technologies inside out. And as Brian Dennis says, they try not to
focus on stupid router tricks.
Unfortunately I think the lab has become more about stupid router tricks
than core technologies. Or I should say more about stupid task wording than
core technologies. They expect everyone to already know the core
technologies, so why bother focusing on those?
Because vendors write their labs with the intention to teach you the
technologies, they make the questions as straightforward as possible.
When I pick up an IE lab I know exactly what they are asking me to do. The
diagram is beautiful, full color, and easy to read (no I don't own stock in
IE). Lines are clearly drawn and you know exactly what kind of connection to
configure.
Without breaking the NDA, lets just say in the real lab the diagrams are not
so pretty. I wasted a good hour trying to figure out what one of the
connections was because it was not specified in the lab what kind of
connection to use and the diagram was not clear. The proctor was of course
no help.
Also, as others have mentioned, the wording that the workbook vendors use is
very straight forward. If they want you to confiugre BGP confederations,
they'll say "hey dummy, configure BGP using confederation id 65222 and peer
R1 to R2 blah blah blah."
In the lab they might say something like "configure these routers using the
guidelines set forth in RFC 3065." Well maybe that's a bad example, but you
get my drift...
My 2cents.
On 10/22/07, Gregory Gombas <ggombas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have a suggestion for CCIE vendors...
>
> With all the recent talk about ambiguity of the lab questions, why not
> write a study guide called CCIE riddles? They don't have to have full
> lab scenarios, just different word puzzles that will make you think
> hard about what the task is asking you to do.
>
> Here's and example:
> You're manager, who is not very technical, has tasked you to design a
> new network in the San Jose office using routers R1 - R4. He has not
> told you which routing protocol to use, but if you had your drothers,
> you would configure R3 and R4 to not talk to one another.
>
> Answer:
> Configure OSPF with R1 and R2 as DR and BDR. R3 and R4 will be DROTHER
> state.
>
> What do you guys think?
>
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