Let me comment on several aspects of this thread, with the disclaimer I am involved with a virtual rack business that will be announced Real Soon Now, and involves the cooperative efforts of several recognized groups.
First, let's talk about scenarios. Not long ago, I posted my taxonomy of lab scenarios, which range from "mini classes" to let the user get deeper understanding of a particular technology, to multistage scenarios more like the test but with mentoring features, to pressure-cooker lab practice. It's not super-hard to create a scenario that gives some practice. Speaking from experience, it's much harder to create scenarios that have specific instructional objectives. When I'm writing a scenario for gaining specific protocol knowledge, I will usually explore several ways to do it. When I'm writing one to be more like my understanding of the actual test, I will put in artificial constraints so there is basically only one solution. Should a practice scenario have supporting references, at least links? I think so. Second, the lab or virtual rack itself. There is a wide difference in features, stability, and operational support among commercial labs. While it may be practical and appropriate to have cheaper written products for countries where S prices are simply out of the question (incidentally, rather to my surprise, I just received Chinese translations of my Routing & Switching Architecture book), that isn't necessarily practical for labs. There are fixed capital costs for equipment, plus operational costs to support the lab. Let's put it this way...for this upcoming project in which I'm involved, we are now pouring the concrete for the backup diesel and UPS, but are still working on having redundant local loops. Not everyone has that kind of availability as a goal. It may be practical to clone shared labs into countries where operational cost is lower, and save on the transoceanic bandwidth costs. The equipment cost, however, is what it is. Incidentally, I am a strong believer in virtual racks rather than personal labs, because you certainly will have to deal with remote routers in real jobs, and it's my understanding that the 1-day CCIE lab also is hands-off the physical equipment. Even if you build a personal lab, rely on a terminal server and reverse telnet -- it will be better practice. I wish people well in rolling their own scenarios, and we will also have some scenarios for free download, as well as others that are associated with rack rental. But it's harder than it looks to write GOOD scenarios. Indeed, I treat them like any other formal software engineering project, with code version control, formal acceptance testing, etc. >Well to start of this exchange of labs maybe we should set some basic >foundations: > 1. All labs should not exceed more than 6 routers. > I think we all know why this should be the case. > 2. The frame cloud in every lab should not exceed four connections. > > I have spoken to several people who complain about the >current competition use 5 connections in the frame cloud. Most of us >only have the four port > 2500 at home that acts as a frame switch. > 3. Keep it up to date. > How difficult is it to do a practice lab while trying not to >be distracted by some technology that is not on the test any more. > 5. Keep it original. > Create your own work, don't take a lab out of Halabi's book, >add an extra router, then slap a 650 dollar price tag on it. > 4. Keep it FREE. > I don't know about the rest if you, but after dropping >13,000 dollars in a lab at home, and 4,000 dollars in training, spending >an extra 650 just hurts. > >I think my game plan is, at least for the first few labs, to create a >map in visio with some core requirements. Then the group can suggest >such things as Local Area >Mobility, NAT, etc that can be incorporated in to the lab. > >Where can we post the labs? Can every one read visio? Do we have to >send it out in a different format? > >And yes Marc, the email is bogus. I did not want to be spammed by you >or your affiliates. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=29788&t=29682 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
