Passed CCIE R/S Written v5
Well, I haven't seen too many write-ups of the CCIE R/S Written version 5, so I thought I would try to help the community out. On a personal note I reached the 10-year mark as a CCIE, and the biennial recertification is becoming more and more burdensome. I may go emeritus next time. I've also been working at Juniper for 5 years, and my Cisco knowledge is not quite where it was before I started here. Also, as an architect, I do far less hands-on work than in the past, so that doesn't help either.
For my first attempt at the CCIEv5 I attempted to do what had gotten me through the last exam (v4) two years prior. At that time Boson had a very good set of four practice exams, and I went in when I was passing the Boson exams at 90% or higher. Well, Boson has not released the v5 version of their exam, but I had the old ones still installed. Figuring that the v5 exam couldn't be that different, I re-ran the old Boson exams and then used the blueprint to supplement my knowledge for any area that was different. I failed miserably.
Second attempt. I did an extensive brain **** of the questions I remembered and made sure I could answer them if they cropped up. Then, I basically took the advice of someone on LinkedIn and went through the blueprint line by line, reading the Cisco docs for each subject area, and inputting questions about these areas into an Anki flashcard database. I developed 242 flash cards in Anki. If you're not familiar with Anki, it is a spaced-repetition flash card system that is a very effective tool for quizzing yourself on any subject. My advice is, however you want to memorize stuff, just google each subject area and read the docs. If it's MLD, look up "Configuring MLD". Just looking at that doc as an example, at the top there is an information section which gives you general facts about the protocol. For example, it tells you that MLD cannot be manually enabled, but is automatically enabled under certain circumstances. Write that down, learn it. Learn as many of these factoids as you can. Then study how the protocol works so you understand it, and don't just have factoids. Usually there is an example of how the protocol works. Read it, think about it, reproduce it on a sheet of paper. Then study the config guides carefully. Make notes on tricky spots, like whether a timer is in minutes or seconds.
You should also memorize the standard stuff, admin distances, reserved 224 addresses, LSA types, etc., etc.
OK, this said, a couple thoughts. I took my first Cisco exam in 2000, I have two CCIEs and one JNCIE. In short, I've taken a LOT of tests. In addition, I have been a question writer for Juniper exams and have been through our own process for developing tests. The CCIE v5 written is doable, but overall poorly written. There were a few questions that I can't believed they released. They were either intentionally worded confusingly, or none of the answers was correct. I saw one where the answers provided were clearly wrong, and I ran it in the lab when I got home just to be sure. There are a lot of "factoid" questions which are not that hard to answer, but these really prove nothing. When I wrote the questions at Juniper, we were specifically told NOT to ask silly things like "what MAC address does protocol X use" or "what IP protocol number is used for Y"... These just waste time. I'm not saying we were always successful, but as a Juniper test-taker myself, I've found our questions to be fair and reasonable. This test was silly. I'm not sure who they have writing their exams, but the fact that IGMP is listed as a layer 2 technology on the blueprint gives you some idea that they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
Anyhow, I hope this helps some folks taking this exam.
