As Cisco has updated their CCNA earlier this year, it has recently announced the update to the upper level certification: CCIE. According to the vendor, CCIE Routing and Switching (R&S) exam will be revised from version 4.0 to version 5.0 to better target industry needs with regards to network professionals, especially engineers working in global enterprise environments. The revision should reflect both changes in technology and the evolution of job roles for CCIE certification holders.
The last day to test for both the CCIE Written exam v4.0 (350-001) and Lab exam v4.0 will be June 3, 2014. The CCIE R&S Written and Lab exam v5.0 will be available from June 4, 2014 onwards. So, if you’ve been preparing for the current version of CCIE exams, you still have 6 months to register and take CCIE exams v4.0.
The new Cisco expert level training materials are planned to be released next month.
New Exam Topics and Changes
The new exam curriculum organizes the topics into 6 large domains, which basically means full restructuring (note that v4.0 currently has 11 sections). V5.0 curriculum will include the following domains:
Network Principles – foundational topics covered on the Written exam only.
Layer 2 Technologies – LAN switching and WAN circuit technologies.
VPN Technologies – tunneling (MPLS’sL2andL3 VPN, DMVPN, IPv6Tunneling) and encryption (IPsecwithpre9 shared key for both the Written and Lab exam and GET VPN for the Written exam only) sub-domains.
Infrastructure Security – Device Security and Network Security (both focusing on features supported on ISR routers and Catalyst 3Ks witches). Excludes topics that rely on dynamic crypto (PKI) or on any remote servers
Infrastructure Services – System Management, Network Services, Quality of Services(QoS) and Network Optimization. Layer2 QoS topics are included in the Written exam only,supporting the Lab exam to focus on platform independent concepts.
You should also keep in mind the weighting factors for each of the six domains. They represent the relative amount of subject knowledge and focus that should be expected in each area for either the Written or the Lab exam. The most important domain is Level 3 Technologies, with 40% weight.
Topics Added to the CCIE Routing and Switching v5.0 Written Exam:
Describe basic software architecture differences between IOS and IOS XE
Identify Cisco Express Forwarding Concepts
Explain General Network Challenges
Explain IP, TCP and UDP Operations
Describe Chassis Virtualization and Aggregation Technologies
Explain PIM Snooping
Describe WAN Rate-based Ethernet Circuits
Describe BGP Fast Convergence Features
ISIS (for IPv4 and IPv6)
Describe Basic Layer2 VPN-Wireline
Describe BasicL2 VPN-LAN Services
Describe GET VPN
Describe IPv6 Network Address Translation
Topics Added to the CCIE Routing and Switching v5.0Written and Lab Exams:
Use IOS Troubleshooting Tools
Apply Troubleshooting Methodologies
Interpret Packet Capture
Implement and Troubleshoot Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
Implement EIGRP (multi-address) Named Mode
Implement, Troubleshoot and Optimize EIGRP and OSPF Convergence and Scalability
Implement and Troubleshoot DM VPN (single hub)
Implement and Troubleshoot IP sec with pre-shared key
Implement and Troubleshoot IPv6 First Hop Security
Lab Equipment and IOS Software List
Cisco’s new CCIE Lab exam tests any feature that can be configured on the following equipment and the IOS Software releases indicated below. You may see equivalent platforms and more recent IOS versions installed in the lab, but you will not be tested on the new features of a release unless indicated below.
Cisco ISR 2900 Series routers running IOS version 15.3T Universal Software release
Catalyst 3560X Series switches running IOS version 15.0SE Universal (IP Services) Software release
As this is the case with modern Cisco exams, the CCIE Routing and Switching Lab exam environment is fully virtualized and no actual hardware platform is being used.
Do visit Cisco website for more details and best of luck for your CCIE R&S certification.