CCIE SP Lab Exam Outline

The following is a detailed CCIE SP lab exam outline. The aim is to help people preparing for the respective exam in organizing their study and eliminating "white spaces" in their knowledge. In general, the ouline tries to follows the official lab blueprint as much as possible and covers the following topics in-depth:

Bridging & Switching
IGP Core Routing
BGP
MPLS
SP Multicast
L2/L3 VPNs
QoS
Security
High Availability
Management

Some of the sections may look too much detailed, especially the Bridging & Switching (particularly ATM technology) and maybe QoS and High Availability sections. You will probably want to spend most of your time on IGP, BGP, MPLS, L2/L3 VPN sections (the core of the SP lab) and slightly less on SP Multicast section.

Bridging and Switching
- Ethernet
  - VLANs & VTP
    - VTP Modes & Pruning
  - Trunks
    - DTP
    - ISL & 802.1q
    - Allowed VLANs
    - Native VLAN & Tag Native
  - SVIs & L3 Ports
  - STP
    - Root Bridge Election
    - Features (Portfast, UplinkFast etc)
    - Redundancy
    - RSTP & MSTP
  - Etherchannels
    - LACP & PaGP
    - Load-Balancing Methods
  - QinQ
    - MTU Issues
    - L2 Protocol Tunneling
- Frame-Relay
  - Interface Types (DCE/DTE/NNI)
  - Subinterfaces, DLCIs & PVCs
  - LMI
  - Inverse-ARP & Static Mappings
  - FR Switching
  - Multilink Frame-Relay (FRF.16)
- ATM
  - Subinterfaces & VC Mapping
  - PVC
  - SVC
    - NSAP Address
    - NSAP Prefix Learning and ESI
    - Signaling and Q.2931 (QSAAL) PVC
    - CLIP
  - ILMI
  - ATM VC Encapsulations
  - Inverse-ARP and Protocol Address Mapping
  - Frame-Relay Interworking (FRF.5 & FRF.8)
- PPPoE
  - PPP IP Address Allocation (IPCP, DHCP)
IGP Core Routing
- Intergrated IS-IS ***
  - Level-1/2 and Areas
  - Network Types
    - Point2Point
    - Broadcast
  - Mesh Groups
  - Route-Leaking
  - Metric-Style & Metric-Types
  - Redistribution & Filtering
  - Tuning Timers
    - Hello/Dead
    - LSA Generation/Throttling
    - PRC/SPF Throttling
- OSPF
  - Area Types
  - Network Types
  - NSSA Area
  - Filtering (Inter-Area filters, Database, Dist-Lists)
  - Redistribution
  - Summarization (External/Inter-Area)
  - Virtual-Links
  - OSPF Timers
    - LSA Flooding & Pacing
    - SPF Throttle
- Policy Based Routing
BGP
- iBGP & eBGP
- BGP Timers & Convergence Tuning
  - Advertisement interval (neighbor advertisement-interval)
  - VPNv4 Import Scan interval (bgp scan-time import)
  - General Scan interval (bgp scan-time)
  - BGP Next-Hop Trigger
  - Fast Fallover
  - Keepalive & Holdtime
- BGP Scalability
  - Route-Reflectors & Clusters
  - Confederations
  - Synchronization
- Redistribution & Filtering
- Outbound Route Filtering
- Route Aggregation & Attributes
- Conditional Route Injection & Advertisement
- Route Dampening
- Communities, Coloring & Signaling
- BGP Attributes & Best-Path Selection
- Backdoors
- BGP Multipath (iBGP/eBGP, DMZ Link BW)
SP Multicast
- PIM-SM/DM
- PIM-Bidir
- PIM-SSM & IGMPv3/UDR
- RPF failure and static mroutes
- IGMP
  - Versions
  - Timers
  - Filtering
- Static-RP/Auto-RP/BSR
- MSDP and Inter-AS Multicast
- MP-BGP Extension for Multicast
- Anycast-RP
- IGMP Snooping
- Stub Multicast Routing
- 3550
  - IGMP Profiles
  - MVR
MPLS
- Label Distribution
  - LDP/TDP,
    - Directed Sessions
    - Authentication
  - BGP Send-Label
  - Advertising Labels
  - Label Filtering
    - LDP and ACLs
    - BGP and route-maps
- Cell-Mode MPLS & Label Merging
  - ATM Control-VC
- MPLS TE
  - IGP Configuration
  - RSVP Settings
  - Attributes & Affinity Bits
  - Holding & Setup Priority
  - Path Options
  - Explicit/Dynamic Route
  - Routint Options: PBR, Static route, Autoroute
  - Cisco Forwarding Adjacency over TE tunnel
  - Inter-Area TE
  - MPLS TE with L3/L2 VPN
    - PE-PE Tunnels
    - PE-P, P-P Tunnels & LSP recovery
  - Unequal-Cost Load-Balancing
L3/L2 VPN
- L3 VPN
  - VRF & RD
    - Controlling Route Import/Export
    - VRF Lite
    - VRF Select & Route-Map VRF selection
  - MP-BGP
    - VPNv4 AF
    - Extended Communities
    - Route-Target
    - Filtering
    - RRs & Scalability Issues
      - ORF
      - Communities & Partitioning
      - BGP RR-Group & Partitioning
  - PE-CE Routing
    - OSPF
      - Super-Backbone and Extended Communities
      - Domain-ID
      - Sham-Links
      - VRF Lite Capability
      - Down Bit and VPN Tag
    - EIGRP
      - SoO Attribute
      - BGP Cost Community
    - RIP
      - Transparent Metric
    - eBGP
      - AS-Override
      - AllowAs-In
      - BGP SoO
    - Redistribution & Filtering
    - VRF Import/Export Maps
    - Importing from global table
  - VPN Topologies
    - Central Services
    - Extranet
    - Hub-and-Spoke (upstream, downstream VPNs)
  - Inter-AS VPN
    - Back-to-Back VRFs
    - Direct VPNv4 Exchange on ASBRs
    - ASBR Send-Label & VPNv4 Multihop
      - IPv4 BGP Route-Reflector for Label distribution
      - Redistribute into IGP + LDP
  - Carrier Supporting Carrier
    - IP only Customer Carrier
    - MPLS Enabled Customer Carrier
    - Hierarchical MPLS VPNs
    - Carrier Label Exchange
      - IGP+LDP
      - BGP+Send-Label
  - Multicast VPN
    - Default & Data MDT
    - PIM-SM/Bidir (ISM) in Core
    - SSM in Core (Ext.Comm/MDT SAFI)
    - Inter-AS mVPN
      - PIM-SM + MSDP
      - MDT SAFI + PIM SSM + PIM RPF Proxy
- L2 VPN
  - Generic
    - ATM Cell Relay & AAL5 SDU Mode
    - ATM OAM Transparent/Emulation
    - HDLC Frame Tunneling
    - Frame-Relay DLCI-to-DLCI
    - Ethernet VLAN and Port Mode
    - PPP and IP address Assignment
  - AToM
    - PW Setup & MTU Issues
    - Inter-AS AToM
      - Back-to-Back
      - Label exchange
  - L2TPv3
    - Manual & Automatic Signaling
    - Authentication & Cookie
    - Sequencing & Keepalives
    - pMTU Discovery & DF-bit
  - L2 Interworking (IP/Ethernet, Local Termination)
  - Local Switching (with & w/o Interworking)
  - GRE/mGRE Tunnels
  - MPLS BGP VPN over mGRE
QoS
- Classification & Marking
  - ACLs
  - DSCP bits, TOS & IP Precedence
  - NBAR & Protocol-Specific Matching
  - Policers (Single/Dual-Rate, Color-Aware/Blind)
  - FR DE bit/ATM CLP
  - QoS-Groups
  - MPLS EXP bits
  - Tunnel Modes:
    - Uniform
    - Short-Pipe
    - Pipe
- Congestion Management
  - Tx-Ring Tuning
  - Legacy Queueing
    - WFQ/CQ/PQ
    - IP RTP Priority
  - CBWFQ
    - Priority (LLQ)
    - Bandwidth
    - Hierarchical (Queueing at Subinterfaces)
  - Frame-Relay/ATM Per-VC Queueing (Legacy & CBWFQ)
  - WRED for Congestion Avoidance (Legacy & MQC)
- Traffic Flow Control
  - Rate-Limiting
    - CAR & Cascading
    - MQC Policer
      - Single-Rate
      - Dual-Rate
      - Actions
  - Shaping
    - Legacy GTS
    - FRTS
      - Legacy
      - MQC
    - Class-Based (MQC)
- QPPB
- DiffServ Aware TE
  - Interface Subpools
- 3550 QoS Features
  - WRR Queue Tuning
  - Classification & Marking
    - Policy Maps
    - Mapping Tables
  - Per-Port/Per-VLAN Classification
  - Policing
Security
- Application Level Filtering (NBAR)
- L3 Security
  - Control Plane
    - Routing Updates Auth
    - Signaling Protocols Auth (LDP, L2TPv3, BGP)
    - Control Plane Policing
  - Filtering with ACLs & ACL Logging
  - RPF and Spoofing (Strict/Loose Mode)
  - CAR and Flooding
  - TCP Intercept and SYN-Flooding
- L2 Security
  - Protecting STP (BPDU-Filter/Guard)
  - Port-Security
- DDoS Mitigation
  - Sinkholes/Blackholes
  - RTBH Scenarios
- Common Attacks
  - Worms & Viruses
  - Smurf/Fraggle/Generic Flooding
  - SYN-Flooding
  - Network Scanning
  - CAM-Table overflow, VLAN Hopping
High Availability
- NSF & SOO
  - BGP Graceful Restart
  - OSPF LLS
  - EIGRP NSF awareness
  - LDP Graceful restart
- LDP Session protection
- Tuning IGP Convergence
- GLBP/HSRP/VRRP
- MPLS TE FRR
  - Link Protection
  - Node Protection
  - L2 PW Protection
  - L3 VPN and FRR
Management
- SNMP
- Syslog
- Remote Access (Telnet/SSH)
- NTP
- Netflow
  - MPLS-aware Netflow
  - Flexible Netflow
  - Export Configuration
- IP Accounting
- Other IP Services