RE: OT - Version 4 Scoring

You are absolutely correct. But i think that must be some other purposes behind the 20-30 routers network... For example, they might
ask you to troubleshoot an issue without saying explicitly in what router the problem must be corrected...

But we will need to wait to see.

Regards,

Antonio Soares, CCIE #18473 (R&S)
amsoares_at_netcabo.pt

-----Original Message-----
From: markom_at_gmail.com [mailto:markom_at_gmail.com] On Behalf Of Marko Milivojevic
Sent: sexta-feira, 16 de Outubro de 2009 16:34
To: Antonio Soares
Cc: Larry Hadrava; Johnny B CCIE; ccielab_at_groupstudy.com
Subject: 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