I have been spending the last week delving through the Switching labs from 3 different workbooks, and I thought I’d give you all my first impressions. The 3 workbooks are the one from IP Expert’s Blended Learning Solution, Internetwork Expert’s v4.1 workbook, and Internetwork Expert’s v5 beta workbook.
For those of you not familiar with the product lines, workbook 1 from both vendors focus on specific technologies. So there will be one or more labs that focus strictly on Switching, or EIGRP, or other technologies in the lab blueprint. These labs typically have an expected time of completion of 2-4 hours. Here are my observations so far along with what I like about each one.
IP Expert’s Workbook 1
Of the 3 workbooks, this one has proved to be the toughest so far. It is broken up into a lab guide that is composed of tasks to complete, and a proctor guide that contains the solutions and explanations. You are also provided with the starting configurations for the lab equipment.
The proctor guide does a pretty good job of explaining things. The labs also flow in a way that if you just do the tasks in order without looking ahead, you can cause yourself a bit of re-work. As I said before, it is the toughest of the workbooks so far. They do throw in some pretty obscure topics and also bring in related topics. Some of the tasks aren’t overly clear on what to do (where you would normally go and ask the proctor). Seeing as this is where most people will start their lab prep, that can get a bit annoying. I would expect to see that stuff further down the road.
Internet Expert’s v4.1 workbook
This is the version of their workbook that has been around for a little while. They are moving to a new version. But since the new version is still in beta, you get both version when you buy their product. Unlike the IP Expert workbook, there is not a separate proctor guide. It’s all in one book. So rather than getting a list of 20-30 tasks, you get one task at a time. It lists the objective (or task), individual steps to take to complete the task, and the solution that shows the config and verification of the task.
The tasks and steps are all pretty clear, so there isn’t much ambiguity. The tasks are also pretty self contained. So you don’t need to concern yourself with task interaction like you do with the IP Expert workbook. I haven’t seen any obscure stuff in the labs so far. So it does focus on the core of the technologies. The solutions are good about showing how to confirm your configurations with different show commands. But there really aren’t explanations about why things are done a certain way. But the labs are structured where there really is only one way to do things.
Internetwork Expert’s v5 beta workbook
This is Internet Expert’s new workbook, that is still in progress. Not all of the labs have been created yet. This moves to more of a format like IP Expert’s workbook. It separates out the list of tasks from the solutions. The tasks also come in groups as opposed to being isolated. So you do get some task interaction. You also get initial configs for your devices. This is my favorite so far.
It still focuses on the core of the technologies and doesn’t bring in much obscure stuff, which I like at this stage of the game. But it’s a little more like the lab where you get lists of tasks to do. The solutions explanations are also more verbose than the v4.1 workbook.
Conclusion
So which workbook would I recommend? Well, I don’t think you can go wrong with either. But I am digging the Internetwork Expert workbook 5 right now. For someone earlier in their lab preparation, I think it does a great job of helping you learn to configure the different technologies without trying to throw you too many curve balls. Plus, the fact that you get the v4.1 workbook as well makes it like a 2 for 1 right now. Later in my studies, if I want to go back to workbook 1 for different labs, the IP Expert workbook might be better since it’ll pull in some more of the related or obscure parts of the technologies.
