[j-nsp] 13 Tips for Passing Juniper Lab Tests

[Joseph Soricelli]

In all seriousness part of my advice does include having a good  
breakfast - in addition to getting a good night's sleep and arriving  
early to the testing center. When I was proctoring these exams from  
2001-2005 I can't tell you how many people failed due to feeling  
rushed (arrived at 8:55) or from a sugar crash, etc.

I agree that experience and hands-on time are critical to the exam. I  
also like the tips about reading all of the steps before you start  
typing and about asking the proctor for clarification.

In the general test category I would also add one about drawing on  
your network maps as well as making notes on them (helpful for routing  
policy).

Specific to the exams themselves, for the JNCIP I would suggest  
knowing the following:
- How to quickly put "generic" information (system, snmp, etc.) on all  
routers in your pod
- How to do design a hierarchical IGP topology
- How to build a scalable (RR and Confed) BGP topology "correctly". I  
saw many a topology design met the criteria but fail to actually pass  
the correct routes. Worse yet, some of them formed routing loops.
- How to build ISP-style routing policies. I'm not talking about basic  
route filtering here, but doing them in conjunction with communities,  
route damping, LP alterations, and AS Path filtering.

I generally say that the JNCIP has a narrow topic list (really system,  
IGP, BGP, Policy) but that you need to know those topics really well.

When talking about the JNCIE, the topic list grows exponentially - and  
you still need to know those topics really well. Important things to  
be cognizant of include:
- The ability to make 3 different IGPs exchange routes with each other  
across mutual points of redistribution in more than one place in the  
network. Oh, btw, no routing loops or instability. ;-)
- Setup a scalable MPLS-TE network able to survive network outages and  
provide adequate connectivity to the network.
- Setup both L2 and L3 MPLS-VPNs networks
- Build a large multicast forwarding topology which utilizes different  
paths than the unicast traffic while also being able to cross AS  
boundaries
- Design and replicate a CoS setup given specific criteria (a bit of a  
typing exercise but what else is new about CoS)

HTH,
Joe

PS - I'll also post this to the blog as well.

Joseph Soricelli
JNCIE #14/ CCIE #4803
703-980-3999
joe at proteus.net
Twitter - @proteusnetworks



On Jun 29, 2009, at 4:22 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 01:14:52PM -0600, Chris Grundemann wrote:
>> New blog post that folks on this list might find interesting / worth
>> reading:  http://bit.ly/43A7K (13 Tips for Passing Juniper Lab Tests)
>> ~Chris
>
> Dude, really? Study a lot, read the question thoroughly, manage your
> time carefully? What kind of pussy advice is this? :) I think you  
> forgot
> "eat a balanced breakfast" and "sharpen your #2 pencil". :) Only like
> 20% of the book it actually on the exam, the only thing studying  
> left me
> with was a hurt liver from all the drinking it took to get that QoS  
> crap
> out of my head afterwards.
>
> Seriously though, your best advice is item #1, have some experience.  
> If
> you're new to this but you think you want to be a JNCIE, you will be
> infinitely better served by getting a job at a company with a decent
> network than you will be by putting 1000 olives in your basement and
> memorizing the handful of artificial scenerios that they were able to
> squeeze into an 8 hour lab. And probably have a lot more money at the
> end of the day too.
>
> I once had a quad CCIE customer who intentionally configured his  
> router
> to leak a full table from their other transit provider to me, because
> (and I really wish I was joking here) "why does it matter, your
> prefix-list will catch it anyways". Alas they haven't figured out a
> comprehensive way to test for stupid yet. :)
>
> -- 
> Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
> GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1  
> 2CBC)
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