The CCIE exam commences with 2 hours of troubleshooting “tickets” followed by 5.5 hours of configuration and then a final 30 minutes of additional questions. This troubleshooting lab has been timed to last for 2 hours and be representative of the format and difficulty of the tasks you are likely to encounter on your CCIE lab exam.
Ideally, you should work on this exercise for 2 hours and score yourself at that point. Of course, you may continue until you believe you have met all the objectives, but you will need to increase your speed as you near your lab exam.
You now are going to be guided through the equipment requirements and pre-lab tasks in preparation for taking this troubleshooting lab.
If you do not own seven routers and three switches (which have been used to create this troubleshooting lab), consider using the equipment available and additional lab exercises and training facilities available within the CCIE R&S 360 program. You can find detailed information about the 360 program and CCIE R&S exam at the following websites, respectively:
- https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/learning_center/cisco_360/360-rs
- https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/ccie_routing_switching
Equipment List
For this troubleshooting lab, you need the following hardware and software components:
- Seven routers loaded with Cisco IOS Software Release 12.4 Advanced Enterprise image and the minimum interface configuration, as documented in Table 1-1.
Table 1-1. Hardware Required per Router
Router |
Model |
Ethernet I/F |
Serial I/F |
R1 |
3825 |
1 |
1 |
R2 |
3825 |
1 |
1 |
R3 |
3825 |
1 |
1 |
R4 |
3825 |
1 |
2 |
R5 |
3825 |
— |
2 |
R6 |
3825 |
— |
2 |
R7 |
3825 |
1 |
2 |
Three 3560 switches with IOS 12.2 IP Services.