Incomplete vendor materials
Posted by jrensink78 on October 28, 2009
I’m slowly getting into my Service Provider studies. As I’ve been exploring the videos and workbooks from both Internetwork Expert and IP Expert, they seem to be not as complete as they should be. They almost seem to assume that you’ve already gone down the R&S track.
Looking at Internetwork Experts videos, they don’t really touch some important topics such as frame relay, switching, and OSPF. Things that form the foundation of your SP network and will certainly be tested in the lab. These topics are heavily focused on in their R&S materials. Also, looking at their volume 1 workbook, which is meant to focus on individual technologies, they skip a bunch of technologies. There are no individual layer-2 or IGP specific labs. Nor are there Security or System Management specific labs. Again, the R&S volume 1 workbook had significant labs covering these topics.
Switching over to IP Expert, their volume 1 workbooks at least break up most all of the major lab topics into individual technology labs. So far, I’ve done about 5 of them that cover topics that overlap with the R&S track. They are proving not to be as complete as IP Experts R&S volume 1 labs on the same topics. Now this could be because these topics are not covered as in depth in the lab. I can’t really speak to that. But it feels like they should be getting a bit deeper into the technologies.
I have a few ideas as to why this might be. One reason is that the SP track hasn’t been updated an a number of years. So the workbooks and videos themselves are a few years old. I think the R&S workbooks have come quite a ways in even the last 2-3 years. So maybe these SP materials are somewhat on par with the R&S materials of yester-year. Another reason might be that it is pretty common that those going for the SP to already have their R&S. Looking at the global CCIE numbers, about 40% of the SP holders out there are dual R&S/SP CCIEs. I’m sure a number of the triple+ CCIEs also have both the R&S and SP tracks. That being the case, why would the vendors want to put in the extra effort to re-hash what a lot of these people already know? Especially for a track that has less than 1/10 of the numbers than the R&S track has.
Regardless of the reasons, I’m finding it quite beneficial that I have already gone through the R&S track. I have been going back to my R&S materials for videos and technology labs for a lot of the overlapped topics. We’ll see what happens when the SP track finally gets an update from Cisco. Hopefully the new materials by these vendors will kick it up a notch. Though I’m hoping that I pass the SP lab before any new changes occur.
