Welcome to Internetwork Expert’s CCIE Blog! This site is dedicated to helping you in your pursuit of becoming a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert in Routing & Switching, Voice, Security, Service Provider, and Storage. Through this blog you can submit questions to our expert instructors, Brian Dennis - Quad-CCIE #2210, Brian McGahan – Triple CCIE #8593, and Petr Lapukhov - Quad-CCIE #16379. Check back daily as this blog will be updated frequently.
The scoring in the CCIE lab is done on a per task basis and not a per section basis. If you do not pass the lab you will receive a breakdown of how you did by section (i.e. IGP, Multicast, etc) but they will not give you a breakdown on a task by task basis. The logic behind this is that the CCIE exam is designed to be a testing tool and not a learning tool.
A common question that I get from students in class is what are the options to resolve spoke to spoke reachability in a Frame-Relay network. Below are your “standard” choices in order of preference:
1) Use point-to-point subinterfaces on the spokes. This option is preferred as all IP addresses on the subnet will automatically be mapped to the DLCI that is bound to the subinterface.
2) Multipoint interfaces (physical or multipoint subinterfaces) on the spokes with Frame-Relay mappings pointing to the hub’s DLCI to reach the other spokes.
3) Multipoint interfaces on the spokes along with using the OSPF point-to-multipoint network type on all routers on the subnet. Each end point will advertise out a /32 and this advertisement will be relayed to the other spokes by the hub. This is exactly what the OSPF point-to-multipoint network type was designed for (full layer 3 reachability in a network that doesn’t have full layer 2 connectivity.
4) Use PPP over Frame-Relay (PPPoFR). By using PPPoFR IP will now be running over PPP and not directly over Frame-Relay. This means that IP sees everything as point-to-point links and no layer 3 to layer 2 mappings are needed.
5) Static /32 routes on the spokes point to the hub to reach the other spokes. Not a pretty solution but it will resolve the reachability issue.
A common question I get from students is, “when is the best time to take a CCIE bootcamp?” Ideally a bootcamp is taken either 5 to 6 weeks prior to your lab date or the week prior to your lab date. By taking a bootcamp 5 to 6 weeks prior to your lab date you will have time to reschedule your date if after the bootcamp you aren’t ready for the real lab.
For the students who take a bootcamp the week prior to their lab date I always recommend to take a couple mock labs 5 to 6 weeks out to see if they are close to being ready for the real lab. If they are scoring well on the mock labs then I recommend keeping their lab date that is scheduled for the week after the bootcamp. If they are not scoring well I recommend rescheduling their lab date to at least 4 weeks after the end of the bootcamp. This means that if after taking the bootcamp they still aren’t ready for the real lab they can reschedule their lab date. Also I would recommend trying to take time off to study for the last few days leading up to your lab date. In our last 12 day bootcamp we had a few students pass the lab the following week. All of them took the days off from work leading up to their lab date.
On a personal note I’m a big advocate of rescheduling a lab date as opposed to just taking the lab if you feel you aren’t ready for it. Its really easy to see if you are ready for the real lab by just taking a mock lab or two.
