From: Joseph Brunner (joe@affirmedsystems.com)
Date: Mon Jan 19 2009 - 07:34:38 ARST
This is absolutely ridiculous.... I took the lab multiple times with
engineers who could barely speak English...
How in the world can Cisco do this??? Does Howard speak 118 languages (does
he have the time to learn them all?) Or does this just mean non-fluent
English speakers FAIL the lab now... This would not be fair as I work with
several people from other countries I still CANT FULLY speak to regarding
the technologies or they would not understand me... ENGLISH is that hard...
I have given a person an interview for a job that was a multi-ccie. He could
not say "etherchannel". Interestingly enough, a Cisco employee from Belgium
after the lab one time also didn't speak English very well.
This is a really bad idea considering the multi-cultural atmosphere in the
world today... I think a better way to root out fakers would be an intense
troubleshooting part of the lab, preferably at the end where you fix 10
issues plaguing a simulated real network (that you can reach after you
"close" your main rack you work on all day). Of course once you close your
rack you can't go back and work on it some more, so it would definitely be a
3 hour separate part at the end...
Maybe some JNCIE's can shed some light on how they do the troubleshooting
part- (or is it a 2-day lab??) I remember reading the JNCIE pages and them
discussing "troubleshooting a live network"
-Joe
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Darby Weaver
Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2009 9:39 PM
To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: Darby's CCIE Interview Guestimates:
One online-buddy of mine from the UK said this:
"I personally think it's hilarious, this is one of the premier
certifications in the I.T industry and I find it amazing that prospective
candidates are being spooked at the thought of answering a few questions
about a product/platform that they should be intimate with at this stage."
"And I could not agree with him more... and trust me we've had our
differences."
Are these questions as we used to (multi-choices) or direct questions and
you have to answer by writing & explaining ?
My reply:
By "open-ended" They will be questions we have to write and explain the
details of the technology or even explain how given a certain scenario. No
multiple-choice on this one.
Open-ended question might be something like:
1. Explain how Arp works?
2. Explain how spanning-tree works given this scenario based on this
topology after this physical topology change. (I'd advise referring to the
Cisco Press CCIE Exam Guide 3rd Edition for this)
3. Explain the Diffusing Updae Algorithm.
4. Explain Unequal-Cost Load Balancing.
5. Explain Poison Reverse.
6. Explain how Split-horizon works.
7. Explain inverse-arp.
8. Explain how a OSPF determines whether an area is transit.
9. Explain how peer groups work in BGP.
10. Explain how FRTS is determined based on a given set of criteria.
12. Explain how LLQ works and compare it to Priority Queueing and
Class-Based Weighted Fair Queueing.
13. Explain how BGP Synchronization works.
14. Explain how redistribution works.
15. Explain how ip forward-protocol works.
16. Explain how NTP peers work.
17. Explain the states that BGP uses to determine the best path?
18. Explain the states that HSRP uses.
19. How does a router determine which route is better? And if we give you
this scenario? Explain, please.
20. How does a route-map work?
21. How does a distribute-list work?
22. How does a summary-address work? What will the routing table look like 2
routers away?
23. Give some examples of how we might use a loopback address.
24. How does NAT work and if we give you this scenario, explain in detail
please.
25. Compare and VRRP and HSRP and explain why one might be chosen over the
other under a given set of circumstances.
26. Which is the preferred route, iBGP or eBGP, why?
27. Explain how Next-hop-Self works?
28. Explain why we might use a loopback address instead of a physical
interface in BGP?
This was a few of my questions I thought if it were me I might think up on
the fly. However, Cisco has had a seasoned team of very talented
engineers,. program directors, and test designers spend months if not years
working on this and I'm sure all of them outrank my knowledge by
comparison. So be prepared.
In general, I'd expect that none of the questions (5 if the rumors are
correct) would stump a CCIE Candidate who passed the CCIE Written and who
also spent at least 500 hours preparing for the CCIE Lab.
Now from my experience, and I've got a lot of experience with written exams
from Cisco, Cisco typically expects us as CCIE Candidates to be able to
successfully read, analyze, and select the correct answer at least 65-80% of
the time in most Multiple-Choice exams. Fair enough. Now we are going to
get about 10-12 or even 15 minutes to complete about 5 questions which may
constitute up to 5% of of our score on the CCIE Lab or 5 points.
So either the questions are going to be about 3x more difficult that a
typical CCIE Written exam or they are going to give us approximately 3
minutes to read the "open-ended question" and close the gap on each of those
questions and answer at least 4 of 5 of them successfully. Or perhaps we
will have succeeded in failing our lab exam despite the fact we know how to
type our commands correctly either through knowledge, experience,
brute-force, or sheer memorization, etc. nonetheless we will have probably
not passed that lab exam this time around if any of the rumors circulating
regarding this are true.
If they are false, then these 5 points might be weighted about the same as
any other section in the exam, however since no one has been to the exam as
of yet to see these questions, then no one can really say for sure.
There was talk of a verbal review. Somewhere along the way I read on
Cisco's QA this got cleared up and now it seems it will be a computer-based
writing drill as opposed to a face to face look a proctor or multiple
proctors in the eye kind of thing. I recall Howard saying that one of the
reasons that the face to face review was dropped from the lab in the first
place was because so many candidates were very passionate and very
unpredictable emotionally when receiving bad news or something to that
effect. Hey, in the USA we have shooting sprees for less. Just joking
here... no one needs to take up one's bad or lack of study habits with any
proctor. Nope, they don't fool with your configs at lunchtime either.
Disclaimer: This is just a humble opinion on what to expect and as you can
see it is non-vendor biased. From my experience, all vendors usually cover
most of this if not all of it somewhere between Network+/CCNA to the CCIE
level of instruction.
Overall, I'd say the best reference for these type of questions might start
with:
Internetworking Technologies by Cisco Press
It might sound simple but I think a lot of people overlook this reference.
<http://www.sadikhov.com/forum/index.php?act=report&t=49973&p=788915&st=200>
Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
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