Re: OT - Version 4 Scoring

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 14:53, Antonio Soares <amsoares_at_netcabo.pt> wrote:
> It would be interesting to know how vendors will address this. Since IOU will not be available for 360 and non-360 vendors, i would
> say dynamips will be more important than ever. But it won't be easy to design stable topologies with up to 20-30 routers as Maurilio
> said.

Having been involved in some of this development for one of the
vendors, I can tell you that virtual or not, it doesn't really matter.
Here is why:

1. Those are network problems on routers utilizing IOS. Therefore,
they should all be about the same thing. Virtual environment only
lowers cost for Cisco, it does not change *anything* for candidates!
Don't forget that.

2. 30 routers network is big and complex. However, Maurilio mentioned
that problems would not be stacked (depend on each other). Hence, we
are talking about several "small" and isolated issues on the same
network. This can well be emulated on vendor racks containing some 12
routers and 4 switches. Using smart thinking, this number of devices
can easily be multiplied to reach the size of Cisco's virtual network.

3. Having problems "stacked", i.e. interdependent, while not 100%
relevant for the lab, can teach candidates to troubleshoot well and
deep and that's what matters! Nuff said :-)

Now, turn to vendors and look who comes up with the best material :-).
I know that one has pretty good things for v4.

--
Marko
CCIE #18427 (SP)
My network blog: http://cisco.markom.info/
Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net