What is the name of a well-known discretionary BGP attribute that is used to alert downstream routers that a loss of path information has occurred?
Highlight for answer: ATOMIC_AGGREGATE.
June 26, 2009
June 25, 2009
Core Knowledge Question of the Day: 25 June 2009
What is the name of a well-known mandatory attribute that uses a sequence of AS numbers to describe the route to the destination specified by the NLRI?
Highlight for answer: AS_PATH
June 24, 2009
Core Knowledge Question of the Day: 24 June 2009
What is the practice of advertising a contiguous set of addresses with a single, less-specific address called?
Highlight for answer: Summarization or route aggregation
June 23, 2009
R.I.P. CCIE Assessor Lab
I received the following email today:
Dear Anonymous Blogger Jerk,
As you know, the CCIE Assessor Lab has been retired. As someone who has used or expressed interest in the Lab, we want to make you aware of a new program to replace the CCIE Assessor Lab. The CCIE Assessor was the first product of its kind to provide candidates with an experience similar to the actual CCIE lab exam. Our recently introduced Cisco 360 Learning Program for CCIE Routing and Switching now offers a complete experience in gaining expert level knowledge and preparing for the rigorous CCIE certification exams including classes, assessment labs and mentoring.
If you have not yet achieved your CCIE certification, you can use the Cisco 360 Learning Program to differentiate your skills and take your career to the next level with the only authorized Cisco expert training. The program is available individually or in value-priced bundles, Essentials, Preferred or Premium packages. Currently, 90% of students completing the Cisco 360 Learning Program successfully pass their R&S lab exam and achieve CCIE certification on their first try!
The Cisco 360 Learning Program is a comprehensive, blended learning program designed to accelerate expert-level competency. In as little as six months to one year, you will elevate your command of technical topics and develop the skills necessary to tackle the types of expert-level configuration and troubleshooting challenges that appear in real-life networks and in the recently updated CCIE lab exam. You can also purchase the program by individual components that can benefit someone with your familiarity of the CCIE materials and examinations.
If you are interested in learning more contact your local Cisco 360 Learning Partner and schedule a free demo of the Cisco 360 Learning Program.
The following resources are available for more information:
Cisco 360 Learning Program website
Solutions Overview
Locate a Cisco Learning Partner
Training Component Details
Best of luck on your networking career,
Learning@Cisco
Actually, I did not know that the CCIE Assessor Lab had been retired. I used this product before my first attempt. For $399.00 you received two mock labs. Since this was Cisco’s official mock lab offering, I decided that it was a good investment of $400. The labs were obviously getting long in the tooth even then as the first lab only used two switches. While spendy, it was nice to get a look at the Cisco question verbiage and topology.
The death of the CCIE Assessor is part of the push to make the 360 program the single, official Cisco offering for CCIE training. There was recently an announcement about the unbundling of the 360 program(something I’ll blog about later). I think that it’s funny that the email bascially tells you that the 360 program – which can run into 5 figures – is the logical replacement for the CCIE Assessor Lab. If there is an unbundled 360 mock lab product, then it would have made sense to point out that product. 🙂
Kind of a side rant: The 90% pass on first attempt statistic is compelling, but what are the raw numbers? 90% of x? If x is a low number (say 10) then that impressive percentage means less. I would also think that given the high cost for the 360 program, that companies – and I have to believe that few individuals are footing this cost – that are willing to invest that type of cash into training are spending it on highly qualified engineers(there was a recent GroupStudy posting that showed evidence that this was the case). BUT…as always, I could be wrong and the 360 may be the ultimate CCIE training program. Maybe I’m just hating cuz I can’t afford it. 🙂
June 22, 2009
CCIE 3.0 Lab Seats Nearly Gone
The price I pay for procrastination. I looked at the CCIE lab scheduler a couple of weeks ago and was surprised to see tons of open dates available before the new 4.0 lab kicks in on 18 October. There were no dates outside of the 90 day “shit or get off the pot” cutoff, but plenty extending into September.
Today I checked again(I’ve been on a short family vacation for the last week) and there are very few remaining US dates left before the version change:
San Jose – 9 dates (latest is 14 July) and 20 seats left.
RTP – 5 dates (latest is 10 July) and 16 seats left.
Great. Now I have to decide whether or not I will take another shot at the 3.0 lab or wait until October and try the 4.0 lab. I have the money available, but getting time off from work will be difficult. If I take the 4.0 lab I will need to learn the new technologies as well as face the troubleshooting portion of the lab. If I take the 3.0 lab I won’t have much free time to devote to getting “fight ready”. At least if I fail it I will still have half of the summer to drown in my sorrows. 🙂
June 15, 2009
Core Knowledge Question of the Day: 15 June 2009
Which two commands can be used to disable the executive timeout feature?
Highlight for answer: no exec-timeout or exec-timeout 0 0
June 10, 2009
So You Wanna Cheat On The CCIE Lab?
We all hear the rumors about the companies that have somehow procured all of the copies of the various CCIE labs and will sell you access to them for just slightly less than the actual cost of the lab. It’s nearly impossible to escape the Ad Sense served ads pointing candidates to these sites(it seems that every time I open a gmail with “CCIE” in it, Google serves up an ad for these sites). They’re constantly tempting candidates with a quick and somewhat cheap(compared to failing the lab multiple times – or if you get a group of candidates to pitch in to cover the cost) way to pass the CCIE lab.
Of course, most candidates wouldn’t cheat. Of those that might be tempted to do so, they’ll probably ask themselves whether sending $1000 overseas to an anonymous person for a product which you have no way to verify if it’s legitimate or not, is a good idea. Who would you complain to if the labs were bullshit or if you didn’t receive anything? It seems that there is a small percentage of candidates who decide to fork over the money to these companies. A recent GroupStudy post details the experience of one such candidate:
hi, guys
Just a kind reminder, the cciecert.net really sucks, I have very bad experience with this jerk evil company.
This company claim that they got the real lab exam questions and diagrams, and is selling their material for thousands of dollars, after you payed money, they will ask your real name, cisco candidate ID, ccie written test score and taken date, all these infor are used to watermark all the materals they are giving you to prevent you from leaking these materials to anybody else, and used to threaten you in the future, to bond you with them forever, if you don’t want give them these info, they won’t give you the material even you paid them, which make you feel very bad, after you sent them the info, they know that your infomation and they can access your cisco profile with this info anytime if they want
Finally, you got the material, you’ll found that the wording of the questions is very bad, you can’t understand what the question really about, confuse you a lot, and this company don’t have technical support about the material, later, you will find their resolutions to the questions have too many errors and mistakes, if you use this anwers to go for exam, you will fail for sure, the resolution to the question really sucks.
>From the website, they have the news about the new updates about the test, but when you ask for the updates, you have to send them your real name, cisco candidate ID, written test date and score again, if you put anything wrong in this info, they will refuse to give the updates. even though you give them the right info, you have to ask them 2 or more times to get it
After you failed, your account may expired, coz what you purchase is only 3 or 4 month account on their website, then you will lose the access to the materials ( it is web connection based access to the material, if no internet, you have no access, you can’t save it, and all water marked with your inportant info), if you renew it, you have to pay almost the same money.
At last you will find that you spent the money, you can’t pass the ccie in a short time as you expected, you may fail 3 or more times, finally found out that you waste money too.
Due to my personal life, I can’t pusue this CCIE anymore recently, I have to wait for 3 years, I really hate myself now and this cciecert.net, I created this new id here to tell you guys the story, coz the cciecert evil guys sneaks aroung here and solicite candidates in dark here, my advise is: don’t trust them, they are just liers.
Obviously, the poster received little sympathy on GroupStudy(or here).
So not only do you need to send a large sum of money to an anonymous person, but then after you have paid you will need to give them your real name and Cisco ID, as well as your written test score and the date you passed the written exam. The company now has you by the balls. Even if you pass the lab – with or without their labs – they have a very easy way to identify you to Cisco so that Cisco can revoke your digits. The more conspiracy-minded might even consider that this could be a honey-pot for Cisco. 🙂
Even if these companies have copies of the actual labs and you’re willing to shell out to cheat, do you really want a company to have your unique Cisco identification information on file? Your poor decision today could end up costing you much, much more in the future.
Core Knowledge Question of the Day: 10 June 2009
Which Cisco-proprietary STP feature detects indirect failures in the core of the backbone?
Highlight for answer: BackboneFast.
June 9, 2009
Core Knowledge Question of the Day: 09 June 2009
The Dynamic ARP Inspection and IP Source Guard features both require which additional feature to be configured?
Highlight for answer: DHCP Snooping must be enabled. Both Dynamic ARP Inspection and IP Source Guard rely on the DHCP Snooping database.
June 8, 2009
Core Knowledge Question of the Day: 08 June 2009
Given the output below, how long will it take for a MAC address to age out?
Rack1SW1(config-if)#do sh port-security int f0/4
Port Security : Enabled
Port Status : Secure-down
Violation Mode : Shutdown
Aging Time : 0 mins
Aging Type : Absolute
SecureStatic Address Aging : Disabled
Maximum MAC Addresses : 1
Total MAC Addresses : 0
Configured MAC Addresses : 0
Sticky MAC Addresses : 0
Last Source Address:Vlan : aaaa.bbbb.cccc:1
Security Violation Count : 0
Highlight for answer: By setting ‘switchport port-security aging’ to 0(the default), aging is disabled and the MAC address will never age out.
CCIE Pursuit Blog 