Important change in all CCIE labs exams. Finally the attendees for CCIE RS Lab will now feel discriminated by the Core Knowledge Questions, as starting with next year, this will become mandatory for all CCIE Lab exams.
Interesting is that they say for all CCIE Labs exam, but below the Security and Voice exams are not specified…
See below the official announcement:
Effective January 4, 2010, the Cisco CCIE® Service Provider, Storage, and Wireless lab exams will add a new type of question format in a section called Core Knowledge. In this new section, candidates will be asked a series of four open-ended questions that require a short written response to be entered into the computer, typically several words. The questions will be randomly drawn from a pool of questions on topics eligible for testing. Candidates can review the topics by visiting the CCIE track information on Cisco.com or the Cisco Learning Network. No new topics are being added as a result of this change.
Candidates will have up to 30 minutes to complete the Core Knowledge section and may not return to it once they have moved on. A passing score on the Core Knowledge section is required to achieve certification. Core Knowledge questions were implemented on Routing and Switching labs in February 2009 and Security labs in June 2009, and allow Cisco to maintain strong exam security and ensure that only qualified candidates are awarded CCIE certification. Candidates with exam dates on January 4, 2010 or later should expect to see the new question format on their lab exam.
Ivan Pepelnjak