This is a very busy list, and there's a lot of traffic to go through if one wants to make meaningful responses. It doesn't help that many subject lines are not meaningful. Since we always have newcomers, let me throw out a few reminders. Perhaps these should be in a bold FAQ at the entry, the first rule being "READ THE FAQ." 1. This is an education and certification issues group. It is not a substitute for the TAC or other paid technical support resources. Personally, when I see a post beginning "my customer," I tend to delete it immediately. While I actively give my time to help people progress in our mutual profession, I get paid to do customer support, and don't have much time for it anyway. If you must ask a support question, at least phrase it so it somehow relates to certification and study for it. Seriously, understanding how to request Cisco support is a test objective. Whatever people say about Cisco, it has superb support. If your production routers are not covered by maintenance agreements, you have a disaster waiting to happen. There's detailed IOS and platform information, and bug fixes, that really need to come from Cisco. 2. There are a lot of questions where people describe (sometimes vaguely) two protocol mechanisms and want a comparison. When this is asked abstractly, the answer may be very abstract. Personally, I have a tendency to answer in formal computer science terms. Always try to explain what problem you are trying to solve, or what you are studying for. On a list like this, and in Cisco classes, it's often rather futile to say "what if OSPF did this rather than what it does?" In the certification context, that's irrelevant. That's a question for a protocol design forum, rather than one that MUST focus on what the protocols, as implemented, actually do. 3. Yes, there are gurus on the list. See #1 above. In general, they are happy to answer questions such that the list as a whole can benefit from the answer -- if they have time to answer. They are not private resources for free support. Email to someone you don't know, asking for help on a customer problem, is rarely a good idea. Several "elders" on this list have stopped answering such messages, because they would otherwise be overwhelmed. On the other hand, the elders may choose to respond to followups from people they've gotten to know as active participants. 4. I, at least, am far more willing to answer a question when the person asking the question also identifies the resources they've tried to use and not gotten an answer. It's one thing for me to clarify something obscure in an RFC, but it's another for me to have to copy or type out the language in an RFC. ___________________________________ UPDATED Posting Guidelines: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/guide.html FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]