For years now I have joked with friends and students that I think Cisco has a special employee whose job is to watch what I’m doing and draft policy or changes to certification tracks accordingly. Just recently this became more than a joke.
I’m actually searching my studio/office for bugs (not the 6 legged kinds). No more than two months ago I announced to my family and my co-workers that I was going to pursue the CCIE Service Provider track. Let’s face it, once you get your first CCIE (in my case Routing and Switching), you find that you have more time on your hands than you can deal with. Additionally, those nagging voices in the back of your head keep you wondering; “Was it a fluke? Did I get an easy test? Did the proctors make a mistake and accidentally pass me?” Seriously, I promise all these thoughts will go through your head (or maybe I’m just that paranoid).
It won’t be long before you start wanting to take on another track. I pursued my second CCIE in Data Center. I mean let’s look at this critically; I already had my RS CCIE, and that was equal to about one third of the topics in Data Center, plus about 3 years field experience with Nexus. So by my reasoning I was already close to halfway done with DC without even cracking a book. Four months later, using iPexpert’s CCIE Data Center Videos and workbooks I had a second plaque hanging on my wall, where once I honestly thought I would never have even one.
My Data Center was finished seven months ago, and again I found myself asking what to do next. I looked at some other vendor storage and virtualization certifications, but being a hardcore Cisco guy, I found my eye drifting toward another CCIE. As I said earlier Service Provider looked interesting. From a thirty-thousand foot perspective it seemed like it was taking everything I learned as a CCIE RS and going about twice as deep. But it was technologies I loved, like BGP and MPLS. Add to that topics like MPLS TE, Metro-Ethernet and Integrated ISIS. So I dutifully, even excitedly, dove into the blueprint and started studying.
Here is where my tale comes full circle. Not even two months into my preparation Cisco announces, with no fanfare or glitz mind you, that the Service Provider Track Blueprint was changing and the new CCIESPv4 exam is being ushered in. Well ‘ushered’ may be too strong a word, but by May 2015 the SPv3 exam will be retired. Groan!!!! This means again I find myself a victim of a blueprint change. I should not have let the Data Center CCIE lull me into such a false state of security. Rather than lament the lost time studying topics like ATM, Frame-Relay, and a dozen others. I instead decided to try to push aside the paranoia and embrace the change.
So I’ll share my observations here with you guys.
First the good news: we have gone from 7 topic domains to 6. Why is that good news? Well think about it. That’s one less topic domain we need to concern ourselves with. Add to that that two topics have been completely removed. Yes it’s true, we no longer need to concern ourselves with Managing Services Traversing the Core and Service Provider Network Implementing Principles. The old individual topics of L3VPN Technologies and L2VPN Technologies have been combined into a single domain called Service Provider-Based Services. For ease of topic management the huge domain of Core IP Technologies has been broken into two more manageable sections: Core Routing and High Availability and Fast Convergence. The last change combines two previous sections into one topic domain: Access and Aggregation. These changes result in a topic domain listing like the following:
So the good news doesn’t end with the reduced number of the topic domains. The new domains illustrated on the right side of the table translate to sections that are better divided, smaller in scope, and represents an equal balance between the individual domains. How do I know that there is indeed a better balance? Well let’s look at the weighting that Cisco has assigned each of these six domains in the blueprint.
- (10%) Service Provider Architecture and Evolution
- (23%) Core Routing
- (23%) Service Provider Based Services
- (17%) Access and Aggregation
- (10%) High Availability and Fast Convergence
- (17%) Service Provider Security, Service Provider Operation and Management
To me this percentage breakout screams that each topic is going to be almost equally weighted with the others. Especially the core technical topics. This translates into an even playing field for new candidates coming to the Service provider track, especially now that many of the legacy technologies are being removed. Technologies are being taken out of the exam you ask? Did I forget to mention that? I would swear I mentioned topics like Frame Relay and ATM. Well I guess we need to clarify this. The topics removed from the exam are:
The following topics have been removed from the CCIE SP v4 lab:
- Describe, implement, optimize, and troubleshoot packet over SONET
- Describe, implement, optimize, and troubleshoot IP over DWDM
- Describe, implement, optimize, and troubleshoot SP high-end products
- Describe, implement, optimize, and troubleshoot SONET/SDH connections
- Describe, implement, optimize, and troubleshoot T1/T3 and E1/E3 connections
- Describe, implement, optimize, and troubleshoot IP over DSL to the customer
- Describe, implement, optimize, and troubleshoot IP over wire line to the customer
- Describe, implement, optimize, and troubleshoot IP over cable to the customer
Well, good riddance I say. SONET and E1/T1 are long dead in my professional world. The one topic that had me surprised was DSL. Especially in my “more rural” consulting world, I still see lots of DSL. But its removal opens the door for more engaging, future-proof technologies. I mean let’s not lose sight of the fact that Ethernet and Gigabit-Ethernet WAN is here to stay.
It’s not all Blue Skies and Rainbows though, people. Cisco has decided to make this track a jam-packed thrill ride of features, technologies, and capabilities. Just look at the topics that have been added to Service Provider version 4:
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot advanced BGP features, for example, add-path and BGP LS
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot mLDP (including mLDP profiles from 0 to 9)
- Describe and optimize multicast scale and performance
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot MPLS QoS models (MAM, RDM, pipe, short pipe, and uniform)
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot MPLS TE QoS mechanisms (CBTS, PBTS, and DS-TE)
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot E-LAN and E-TREE, for example, VPLS and H-VPLS
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot Unified MPLS and CSC
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot LISP
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot GRE- and mGRE-based VPN
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot IPv6 transition mechanism, for example, NAT44, NAT64, 6RD, and DS lite
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot end-to-end fast convergence
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot multi-VRF CE
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot Layer 2 failure detection
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot Layer 3 failure detection
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot control plane protection techniques (LPTS and CoPP)
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot logging and SNMP security
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot timing, for example, NTP, 1588v2, and SyncE
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot SNMP traps, RMON, EEM, and EPC
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot port mirroring protocols, for example, SPAN, RSPAN, and ERSPAN
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot NetFlow and IPFIX
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot IP SLA
- Describe, implement, and troubleshoot MPLS OAM and Ethernet OAM
- Add path is important to provide redundancy in RR deployments.
- BGP-LS is used for seamless MPLS.
- MLDP is used for transporting multicast over MPLS.
Yeah look at that list. It’s an alphabet soup of acronyms and abbreviations. Some of these I was clueless about, others like LISP I remember from my Data Center studies. I also remembering saying thank goodness LISP is not on the CCIE Data Center blueprint, and voila its here in SPv4 (testing, testing… can you hear me Cisco?).
All joking aside, there isn’t a technology on this list that you should not expect to see in a modern or transitional service provider environment. The other element to this is that Cisco is going to demand that we know these topics, protocols, and features for both IPv4 and IPv6. In fact, so much emphasis will be placed on IPv6 that passing the Service Provider version 4 exam will earn you the IPv6 Forum Gold Certification and permission to use that logo. This tells me that this exam will be dual stack, and very future-focused. That means we will need to understand IPv6’s impact on our environments just as well as we know IPv4. We have to face facts: IPv6 is coming to the world at large, but for us Service Provider Candidates it is here like gangbusters.
This next part is what most out there will consider the most troubling piece of news yet. There is no way to be gentle with this tidbit. So using the “pull the bandage off in one swift motion” method seems to be the most appropriate. So with that said, the new CCIE Service Provider Exam will emulate the current CCIEv5 Routing and Switching exam exactly.
SPv4 will now have a Troubleshooting, Diagnostics, and Configuration section. Ouch!!!
I rolled my eyes too.
But here it is black and white from Cisco themselves:
Notice that in the SPv4 exam the Diagnostic Section is 60 minutes long. What that means exactly, “I don’t know.” The RSv5 exam has 30 minutes for 3 questions, maybe its 6 questions in SP now, or maybe its 3 very hard questions. I don’t know, but I’m not looking forward to it.
At the end of the day all we really want to know is what it’s going to take to pass the exam. Cisco goes so far as to tell us what it expects from us in each of the individual sections in this graphic:
Note that each section is cited as having an individual passing score, but to pass the lab you must meet or surpass an overall cut score. This is also identical to the CCIE RSv5 exam where you must obtain a passing score in each of the three sections, while needing to still obtain a quantitatively higher gross score to pass the lab. It will be interesting to see how this is going to play out.
Right now the information is so new that sharing much more than I have would be little better than spreading rumors and speculation. As I learn more I will keep you guys updated. Information I share will be verified and validated before I post it. My initial thoughts on this new exam is that it will be far more relevant to modern Service Providers and, as such, will be more meaningful as a professional certification. I also believe this particular certification will be a much more challenging track to pass (on par, if not harder than RSv5).
Let me know what you think.
-Terry
